Chapter 15
“I’d like to marry your daughter,” Adam said.
“No,” Lord Allen replied.
“No?” Adam echoed, certain he had misheard.
“No,” Allen said again.
Westfort was not accustomed to being told no, so it was quite an interesting experience. It had been happening more and more as of late and usually in conjunction with Agatha’s family.
“Do you mind if I sit?”
“Not at all,” Allen said from behind stacks of papers and books. “You may make your case.”
“Thank you, my lord,” he said, sitting down opposite the baron.
The dogs, which had been sitting beside the baron behind the desk, crossed around and sat beside Adam.
Allen let out a curse. “Bloody dogs,” he said. “Traitors.”
“We have an understanding now, you see.” He patted Rupert’s head and he couldn’t deny the mutual good feeling between himself and the massive canine.
Allen laughed good humoredly. “So, I see. But, alas, you and I do not.”
“Yes, so I can see,” the duke said wearily. “What can I do to assuage any concerns you have? Most men would want their daughters to be married to a duke.”
“Most men don’t give two damns about their daughter’s happiness,” Allen returned easily, leaning back in his green leather chair, apparently unintimidated by the difference in wealth, power, and status.
“They just want to make certain that their daughter is married off to wealth and privilege. I want to make certain that the man she marries does have money. Poverty is soul crushing,” Allen added.
“But more than anything, I want to make certain the fellow makes her happy and that he loves her.”
“You don’t think that I will make her happy or that I love her?”
“Do you?” he asked.
Love. It was a strong word. It was a word he had been pursuing quite recently, quite intently, but he didn’t entirely understand the emotion himself, and so it was difficult for him to say for sure that he was in love with her.
“I think I am falling in love with her,” he said. “But I confess to you that my family is not notorious for its affection, and so I am not familiar with how it should be.”
Allen let out a sigh that sounded as if he was quite sorry for Adam. He shook his head, his great brown wig wagging about his ears, rather like the mastiff’s. “You don’t know what love should be like, do you? I pity you, my boy. Indeed I do. I shall do my best to explain.”
He steadied himself, ready for an onslaught of conversation about poetry and feeling and all sorts of intensity.
Allen bridged his fingers and then intoned, “It’s knowing that your heart is at great risk every day, every hour, that it could be shredded to ribbons, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.
It’s a gaping chasm of knowing that everything you are, everything you desire, is found in letting the other person be themselves.
It is watching another person soar, all whilst having to control one’s own fear that they shall crash to the ground.
It is giving up all notions of trying to change a person but celebrating their fits and foibles.
And some days, you want to throttle them for their stubbornness. ”
“That doesn’t sound like love,” Adam ventured.
Allen harrumphed. “Well, whatever you think love is, it is definitely not. If you think love is swooning about, staring into each other’s eyes, clinging onto each other, well, you’ve read too many novels.”
“I don’t actually read many novels,” he said.
A sound of sheer disgust slipped from Allen’s lips. “There is another reason why the two of you should not wed.”
“I have a great deal of other things to read,” he defended. “I read more reports about the world than most could ever hope to get their hands on. And, besides, she reads enough novels for the both of us.”
“This is a very bad sign,” Allen warned. “Our family loves to read novels. The fact that you do not is just a strong indication that you have little empathy about you, and you don’t understand affection. You have spent too much time in details and facts.”
He ground his teeth, determined to convince Allen. Like his afternoon with Rupert and the run, he felt certain this was a test, and he wouldn’t fail. Like with Rupert, he would surprise the baron. “Dukes have to spend a great deal of time in details and facts.”
“I’m not arguing that,” Allen said, leaning forward, grabbing a pen and scribbling away on a note.
“As a matter of fact, I recognize that it is your nature, Your Grace. I don’t want you to change your nature.
I don’t think it’s reasonable for you to do so, but I don’t think a man with your nature can make my daughter happy. ”
His mouth dried. His own mother had expressed similar sentiments. Her mother had seemed wary too. “Is the world against us then?”
“I don’t know if the world is against you, Your Grace.
Probably many people will like the idea.
Everyone loves an underdog. My daughter here being the underdog, of course.
” Allen arched a brow. “Seeing a girl from the country marry a man like you will inspire romantic notions in many, but you and I know that this is not a fairy tale, and real fairy tales don’t end well.
Someone dies or someone has their eyes gouged out.
I don’t want my daughter to have such a thing happen to her. Do you understand?”
“I would never allow anything untoward—”
“Cease,” Allen all but thundered. “You cannot promise such a thing.”
Allen grabbed the decanter on his desk and poured out two large glasses of brandy and handed one to him.
“Drink that,” Allen ordered.
“I feel as if I’m about to face a firing squad.”
“Perhaps you are,” Allen warned. “I should drag you out back and put you out of your misery.”
“Everyone keeps suggesting, everyone, of course, being your daughter, that I am somehow miserable.”
“Aren’t you?” Allen said.
“I didn’t think so until I met your family.”
Allen took a drink. “Well, we’re the first people that you’ve met who are really happy. That’s why.”
“And what makes you happy?” he demanded, drinking the brandy, trying to savor the taste, but it was no easy thing given the nature of the conversation.
How was one supposed to take the commentary that one was miserable?
Allen clasped his brandy and rested the shifter on his belly, which indicated he loved good food.
“Because we don’t actually care about power.
We don’t care what other people think. We help people and we have money.
But unlike you, we are not here to pursue power at any cost. Is there any duke alive who does not pursue power at any cost? ”
A muscle tightened in Adam’s jaw. “That’s not true. I don’t do those things.”
Allen boomed with laugher until he was so overcome he wiped at the corners of his eyes. “Yes, you do. Your entire way of life is made upon the backs of the poorest and those struggling most in the world.”
He ground his teeth.
“You really haven’t had to think about that much, have you?” Allen said softly. “It’s not something your parents asked you to think about?”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s not. It’s not as if I’m the worst of the worst.”
“Of course you’re not, but you’re not the best of the best either, are you?
” Allen pointed out. “Being a duke doesn’t inherently make you the best, and I want the best of the best for my daughter.
And in my mind, the best of the best is not a duke.
The best of the best is a man with a good heart who looks about him, sees the world for what it is, and still does the right thing. ”
“I do see the world for what it is,” he protested.
“There is a tide coming, Allen,” he said.
“A political discourse full of uncertainty and poison. The American Revolution set things in motion. France is going to descend quite quickly into chaos, and I think a lot of people might die. And if we’re not careful, that will happen here.
I don’t want it to happen here. I love England, you see, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to your daughter, and so I will fight with everything that I have to make certain that that is not the case. ”
“By putting more soldiers on the streets?” Allen ground out. “Keeping the rabble in line?”
He sat up straighter, understanding the man’s suspicion and admiring his humanism. “No, Allen, that’s not at all the way to go about it.”
“What is?” Allen asked, leaning forward.
Ah…here was the test. Somehow, he knew it in his bones, and he wouldn’t fail.
“Giving people bread, making certain they have oysters to eat. Food is the answer. When people are cold, you make sure they’re warm.
I can hold wealth but spread it too. Most people like me do as you accuse.
Most people like me want ever more and more.
They take and they take and they refuse to give because they feel like they’ve earned it, unable to see that it is not they who have earned it, but the system in which they are living that gives it to them.
Because once you have a little bit of wealth, it is much easier to get a great deal of wealth, but I understand the financial systems. And when so many people have so little, they can never put two pennies together, let alone a few hundred thousand pounds.
So, I understand I am merely carrying on the coffers of my ancestors.
I do not make judgements about people who cannot buy bread except that I want to make sure that they are fed and their children can do more than just not starve. ”
“Then do more,” Allen said. “You know my daughter would want you to do more.”
“And yet,” Adam returned, “you want her to go live a little life in the country instead of helping change the world.”
Allen scowled. “It’s frightening out there, and I don’t want to see her crushed.”
“Then it’s you who don’t believe in her.”
Allen looked like he was about to protest, but then he clamped his mouth shut and stared at the banked fire. At long last, Allen let out a sigh. “Perhaps I can allow it if your family genuinely approves.”
A muscle tightened again in Adam’s jaw, and he clutched his glass.
Allen’s eyes widened. “They don’t, do they?”
“My mother is stubborn,” he said.
“Good, a mother should be,” countered Allen. “She loves you, doesn’t she? I have heard that she is a good woman, even if she is difficult.”
Adam nodded. “She is a good woman and she does love me. She’s simply doing for me what she thinks is the best.”
“As do most parents,” he said.
“That doesn’t make it right,” he whispered.
Allen gazed at him. “That’s the wisest thing you’ve said since we’ve met.”
“What do you suggest I do?”
Allen finished off his brandy and placed the glass on his desk, turning it slowly.
“If you can truly win your family over, then I will not stand in the way, but I know how it is for a daughter-in-law who is hated by her mother-in-law. No matter what you do, you will not be able to stand in the way of the two of them, unless you cut off your mother, and I don’t think you truly wish to do that, do you? ”
He winced. “No, I don’t. But nor can I…”
“What?” Allen asked.
“I can’t turn away from this chance.”
“Chance?” Allen asked.
“At love.” He licked his lips, uncertain how to explain.
“You see, I felt all my life that I was cursed to never know love, that I wouldn’t be allowed and nor should I permit myself to find a wife I could love.
But then something happened, something that whispered to me that I had to at least try, that I couldn’t live my life and regret. ”
Allen leaned forward. “I’m really listening to you, boy. You’re making more sense.”
Adam gripped the glass so tightly he feared he might crack it. “I don’t want to be on my deathbed and wish that I had known what you and your lady wife have.”
Allen stared at him for a long moment, then said, “I don’t know if a duke can ever have what my lady wife and I have.”
And there it was. The truth, the curse, that the Duke of Westfort never could know love, at least not with a wife.
But then Allen said, “But you must try, my boy. You must try.”