Chapter 19
Rivers charged into his house, throwing both doors open at once, and bellowed, his favorite thing to do when outraged, at the top of his lungs. “Harlowe!”
Harlowe somehow managed to pop almost out of thin air right in front of him. In reality, he’d stolen out of a hidden panel designed for the servants to make their way about the massive house with ease.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Harlowe, we have an issue.”
“What is that, Your Grace?”
“The Dowager Duchess of Westfort,” he gritted. “She is going to muck it all up. Fennyman and I had suspicions about what she’d do upon her arrival from Calais. She’s done them.”
Harlowe’s eyes flared. “Shall I go and tell Fennyman?”
“No, you shall go and you shall activate the maids.”
“The maids?” Harlowe echoed, his eyes crackling with excitement.
“Yes, Harlowe, activate the maids.” Rivers drew in a long breath.
“It’s time that we divide and conquer. That old trout of a woman, who hates her own life, is not about to destroy the future happiness of the two that I, you, Fennyman, and a whole team of people have worked so hard to bring together. ”
Rivers tugged at his cuffs, determined to remain calm.
“The dowager was supposed to be in Italy. She should have stayed in Italy. But since she has not, we’re going to make certain that our plan for Miss Allen to become the Duchess of Westfort succeeds.
And to do that, I am certain that your and my intentions for the current Duchess of Westfort must succeed. Has Lord Donovan done as we hoped?”
Harlowe gave a merry grin. “He has indeed, Your Grace. He has been sending flowers to her thrice times a day for the last week, accompanied by poetry, and he has visited her house as well.”
“Does she seem as if she is pleased?”
“Surprisingly so, Your Grace, because Lord Donovan is quite the specimen, and he is most persuasive. I think if we activate the network of maids, the current duchess will know that she is the object of Lord Donovan’s affection.
And has been for some time. I think it very possible that a touch of such love will turn her heart. ”
He smiled. How could he not?
Yes, Rivers was no longer concerned. If the maids did not manage to get the Duchess of Westfort to realize that she was deeply admired by Lord Donovan and that she should allow herself a bit of excitement and joy, then he’d eat his hat.
And thank God, The Marriage Managing Society was prepared to act.
Because he was certain that Westfort, bless his heart, was going to go and do the honorable thing. Then Baron Allen would do what he thought was the honorable thing, and all the honorable things in society would ruin all the happiness.
Rivers was not going to stand for that.
Several days later
“My dear boy, whatever happened to your face?” his mama exclaimed as she crossed his study.
Adam brushed aside her concern as the bruise had already begun to fade and truly looked at her. “Mama, has something happened? Have you tried a new cream or a new hairstyle?”
She laughed. “Both. Why do you ask?”
His heart leapt for her, pleased that she looked so light. “Well, Mama, you look happy and actually, it sounds rude to say, but younger. Somehow it appears as if the stress has left your face, and that’s quite odd, given that Grandmama has come to town.”
His mother, the Duchess of Westfort, waved her hand at him and smiled.
“Perhaps you are correct, my dear, that your grandmother’s presence usually would cause me to look as if I had aged into the stages in which Charon should be coming to visit me at night to take me across the river to meet Hades, but I feel sturdier than I did before.
If you must know, I’ve been having the most wonderful time with a new admirer. ”
“Mama?” he asked, stunned.
She cleared her throat. “Would it be terrible if I admitted that a gentleman has been paying calls upon me? And that according to my maid, he is likely to propose?”
“No, Mama. It would not be terrible. Not at all,” he said.
She stilled. “You don’t think it would be a betrayal of your father to entertain the idea?”
Adam swallowed back a wave of emotion as hope slipped through him. Hope that maybe the cold curse of their family was coming to an end. “Mama, I want you to be happy.”
She cleared her throat as if she was at war with her old self and the self she wished to be.
“All this happiness,” she said, “is spreading about like a disease. I worry that it shall affect us all terribly. Then in the end…”
“What, Mama?” he whispered. “That happiness will kill us? What a terrible thing,” he said. “To die happy rather than live miserable.”
She batted at his shoulder. “Now, really, what happened to your face?”
“The Earl of Seaborough punched it thoroughly.”
“Did you punch him back?” she asked, smiling slowly.
“I did,” he said.
“Thoroughly?” she queried, her eyes sparkling as if she found the world to be a much better place than she did before.
Love was a powerful thing. Even the promise of it, if one but allowed themselves to have it.
“Yes, Mama,” he said, eyeing the door and feeling the unpleasant reality of what he needed to say. “Now I have to go and see my intended.”
“The marriage is coming soon,” she replied swiftly. “Perhaps you should see her less. You don’t want to give her an excuse to cry off,” she teased.
“I may already have an excuse,” he said, his spirits sinking.
Her eyes widened.
“Don’t look too hopeful,” he said dryly as he leaned against his desk.
She let out a sigh. “That makes me sound like such a villain,” she said.
He reached forward and took her hand in his. “You’re not a villain, Mama. I know you want me to have a good life.”
“I do, my darling boy. I do. But what is it?” she asked.
He ground his teeth, wishing he didn’t have to say it. But he did. “Grandmama came to visit my rooms, and she made it incredibly clear that she was going to make Agatha’s life sheer misery if we wed.”
Her mother’s lips tightened.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Well, she made mine rather difficult, even when she approved of the marriage. So I’m not certain that you need to worry so very much. Even if you were marrying someone that she approved of, I do not think she would be the kindest of individuals.”
“Why is she like that?” he asked, struggling to understand.
His mother looked to the portrait of the Westfort ducal house upon the wall and then she closed her eyes.
“She was raised through a particularly difficult time, and I think her marriage to your grandfather was a harsh one. I don’t think her parents were particularly kind to her, even though she was a Diamond.
She was a thing, you see, an asset, something of worth to be passed on from one owner to the next.
The only power she has is in doing that to other people and hurting them as she was hurt. ”
“That explains a great deal,” he said, though he hated that that was the way of things. “But why are you being so honest about it now, Mama?”
“Because I’m tired,” she confessed, wiping her brow with her hand, her rings glittering in the sunlight that poured in from the windows. “And I’m old.”
“You are not old, Mama,” he protested swiftly. She was still beautiful, though she was weathered.
“Yes, I am, my dear,” she countered with a rueful smile. “And I’m proud of my age,” she said softly. “I have achieved these many years, and these many wrinkles, and now I think this much wisdom. As I have watched you these last weeks, I think that I’m a good mother.”
He sucked in a gasp. “What?”
“I think I am a good mother,” she repeated before she leaned forward and, in a show of rare tenderness, stroked his hair back from his face as she had done when he was a boy.
“I see the way that you act as your own man now. You do not wait for some centuries-old tradition to tell you what to do. Though I know that’s mostly what I have always told you that you should do, I see your strength.
Perhaps tradition is getting us into terrible trouble.
I look around at society and everyone is so miserable, including—”
She swallowed as if she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
So he said it instead. “Us?”
His mother lifted her gaze to his and nodded softly.
“We have lived fiercely, my boy, but we have not lived well. Watching you, and watching Agatha, and even, dear God in heaven, Lady Allen, who does love her cake, and music, and just simply being alive. Even though she is by far one of the least important ladies in a room, she’s happier than I am. Far happier than I am.”
“I didn’t think you really valued happiness,” he murmured, amazed at how his mother had been transformed by love. Love for her son. And the love of the Allens.
“I didn’t either. I didn’t think happiness was important, just like I didn’t really think love was important. But now I think that perhaps I have been mistaken all of my life, and I would rather learn that too late than never at all.”
He stared at his mother, truly shocked but also grateful.
“Mama,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“How is that you’re so much stronger than father was?”
He peered at her, waiting.
She peered back at him. “What?” she gasped.
Unlike his father, his mother, his beautiful, wonderful mother, was changing, and she wasn’t going to waste her life.
“He felt the same, you know? In the end,” he rushed.
She blinked. “I don’t understand.”
His heart began to beat faster, and he feared he was making a terrible mistake, but at long last, he knew he had to say it. “On his deathbed, Papa told me that he wished he’d let himself have love, that he regretted the fact that he never had.”
Tears filled her eyes. “We didn’t let ourselves fall in love with each other, you know. We should have. We liked each other well enough. It could have happened, but it was as if we both kept our hearts cold, resisting anything like it. I’m sorry that he died without it.”
She swallowed back a sob. “But I won’t,” she said. “I don’t want you to either.”
Adam took her hand and held it tightly in his own. “I don’t want you to die without knowing love either, Mama, and thank you,” he said, “for changing, for supporting me.”
“There’s no one to thank but yourself, my love, because I was your teacher all your life, but now you’re mine.”
He pulled her into his arms, feeling as if the world was going in such a different direction than it had been just a few moments before.
A few moments before, he’d been certain it was all going to rattle apart, that he would have no support, that his own mother would take his grandmother’s side, and that he would be left alone as he always had, feeling he was in a cold, silent, distant house.
But now he knew the truth. His mother had always been on his side, and she always would be.