Chapter 20
Agatha crumpled the letter in her hand as tears streaked down her face, and then she forced herself to smooth it out and read it again word for word.
Dear Miss Allen,
It has come to my attention that you are to marry my grandson.
Don’t. If you do, it will be a terrible error.
Of course, I cannot make you do anything.
I would not wish to incur any sort of breach of promise.
My grandson will marry you because he has proposed to you.
But if you are wise, you will walk away from this marriage.
You are not suited for it. Your family blood is not suited for it.
Your lands are not suited for it. You do not have the manners for it, and you have certainly not been raised to take the position that I once held.
So, let me suggest to you that if you wish to have any sort of happiness, if you wish to have any sort of sway over your own children and how they are raised, that you part from my grandson and give up the idea of marrying into the Crawford family and becoming the Duchess of Westfort.
My grandson is clearly very misguided, and his own mother agrees with me.
This would be a terrible mistake. His mother has a list of other candidates.
And I think it would be most wise if you understood that even if Lady Hortense Larkin does not wish to marry my grandson, there are many other young ladies that we would prefer than you. You can, of course, defy all of this.
You can, of course, become the next Duchess of Westfort, but I guarantee that you will never be welcome in any of the Duke of Westfort’s homes.
My reach is far, and I will ensure that all the servants do everything they can to make every day of your life difficult, impossible, and cruel because I will do whatever it takes to protect the Westfort line.
Yours,
The Dowager Duchess of Westfort
It was perhaps the most brutal thing she’d ever read. Agatha wiped more hot tears away. She tried to laugh. But she couldn’t. This felt far too grave. This was exactly what her mother and father had been so afraid of.
Adam, bless him, had believed that he would be able to control it all, that he could make it work. That he could have love.
All her life, she had been working for this year. All her life, she had envisioned finding love at last in a good marriage, but her dreams were now devolving into the worst of grim nightmares.
Now, her life was going to be a battle, a war, the worst of all possible things. Every day was going to be a fight. For as long as that woman lived, and possibly also for as long as Adam’s mother lived too, she would not know peace.
“What is it, my dear?” her mother asked, racing into the room at the sound of her increasing sobs.
“Read it,” Agatha said and thrust the letter at mother.
And as her mother read it, her mother grew angrier and angrier, her body tensing.
Agatha had never seen her mother so furious, and then her mother stormed out of the room, letter in hand.
The next thing Agatha knew, she heard her father’s roar of fury from his study.
The dogs began to bark wildly, and she pressed her head into her arms and sobbed.
She sobbed her guts out because she’d always thought that she was stronger than this.
She’d always thought that no words could ever truly hurt her, but this was horrible.
This was cruel.
Her father and mother had entered the room and gently placed their hands on her back.
“We’re not going to stand for this and neither should you,” her mother said gently.
“What?” she asked through her tears.
“We’re going to go see the duke now,” her mother declared, her voice shaking with intensity.
“But you don’t want me to marry him if his family doesn’t approve,” Agatha lamented.
“No,” her father said. “That’s true, but we’re not going to let it end like this. You’re not slinking off to the country because of some poisonous toad of a woman. That’s not what we do.”
She lifted her gaze to them both.
“And what about him?” her mother asked softly. “Are you ready to abandon him to a grandmother like that?”
Laughter began to tumble from her as she remembered exactly who she was. “No, I suppose I’m not.”
The pounding on the door was quite surprising as Adam stood in the foyer with his mother, readying to go out to meet Lord Donovan and give the man his approval, though he didn’t truly need it. His mother was a grown woman, after all.
But he understood that no man, even Lord Donovan, truly wanted to be on the wrong side of a duke.
Adam peered at the heavy, ornate door as it all but jumped on its hinges as another knock pounded against it.
He wasn’t expecting visitors and, most of the time, he knew when his appointments were. He had none for this time.
His butler raced to the door and pulled it open.
Adam stepped away from his mother, surprised by the franticness of whoever was on the other side of that large oak panel. And when he spotted Agatha, his heart nearly stopped. She looked as if she was in the most severe distress. She’d clearly been crying. Her eyes were red.
He longed to cross to her, pull her into his arms, and assure her that whatever happened, all would be well.
For a moment, he feared it was her mother or her father, but then he spotted her mother right behind her, as well as her father and several of her younger siblings.
The older brothers had gone to Bath, as he understood.
Adam half expected to see the six mastiffs, two terriers, and the poodle too. The cats, of course, could not be moved from the library.
“What is it?” he asked, as his breath quickened. “Is something amiss?”
She strode into the room, her sunny yellow Spencer flapping about her, a letter in her hand. “Yes,” she said with surprising firmness. “I think your family is trying to summarily get rid of me.” She turned to his mother. “Including her.”
“What?” the duchess belted.
“Yes, you,” Agatha insisted. “I know that you can’t stand me, but surely this is heinous, even for you. You have the wit and the temerity to usually be difficult to my face.”
The duchess looked from her to Lady Allen and Lord Allen and threw up her hands. “I have no idea what you are on about. I have done nothing. I promise.”
Agatha thrust the letter at Adam, and he took it in his hand. He read it quickly, the color, he was certain, draining from his face, for he felt chilled to the bone.
Fury sparked in his belly and he ground out, “She apparently couldn’t wait for me to do it, and so she’s done it herself. And she’s put you in a terrible spot, Mama,” he added as he handed her the letter.
The duchess took it and read it quickly. Several gasps of fury and horror slipped past her lips.
“This was my grandmother,” Adam began.
“Yes, my boy,” a voice said from the top of the stairs. “I did it because this cannot be allowed to continue. You are clearly not taking this seriously enough.”
“Grandmother,” he said tightly.
“My dearest,” he said to Agatha, “this is my grandmother. If you have not had the misfortune to meet her, you are about to, and we shall settle this whole affair. Come along, Grandmama. You’ve lit the house on fire. Now let’s see if it’s going to burn to the ground or if I can put out the flames.”
He headed into the study with Agatha’s hand in his.
His mother, grandmother, Agatha’s parents, and her siblings, Eugenia, Iris, and Reginald, bustled in behind.
It should have been laughable.
It was not. He felt as if his entire future hung in the balance.
Agatha was trembling, and he looked down at her before gently cupping her face. “I’m so sorry.”
“She hates me,” she said swiftly.
“No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t know you at all. She hates the idea of anything making me or my mother happy.”
Agatha flinched, as if this was almost worse, before she said, “Your mother hates me.”
“No, I don’t,” his mother protested.
“But the letter,” Agatha rushed, gently pulling Adam’s hand from her cheek, not easily mollified.
His mother straightened. “The letter includes mention of me, but I certainly never gave my permission for it.”
Lady Allen paced the room in high dudgeon, and he loved seeing her in such fine fashion.
“I ought to lay waste to everyone in this room,” Lady Allen announced. “The amount of distress you have caused my daughter? She did not ask for any of this. You pursued her, Your Grace, and now she is the victim of—”
“We are the victims,” his grandmother cut in. “This young thing must have caught his eye, and even if she did, she has no right to sweep in and—”
Adam whirled on his grandmother and roared, “Sit down now.”
His grandmother took a step back, startled.
And she did indeed sit in one of the high-backed black walnut chairs held over from the time of Cromwell. She all but thudded into it.
“You have very nearly ruined my life,” he gritted. “I think you ruined your son’s. You tried to ruin my mother’s, and I think you most definitely ruined your own, so you will not say another thing.”
His grandmother opened her mouth, then, clearly not prepared to reply to such an onslaught, snapped her lips closed.
“Well said, Your Grace,” cheered young Reginald.
Adam winked at the boy, hoping the young fellow would grow up to always stand up for the woman he loved.
Then he turned to Agatha and was delighted to see that her brows had risen with astonishment.
She was gazing at him with the wonder and admiration that one might have hoped to see on a lady’s face when she gazed upon her knight.
“I will not tolerate any of this, Agatha. They are my family, but you are my heart, and just so you know, my mother has come to our side.”
“What?” Agatha breathed.
“It’s true,” his mother affirmed.
“Why?” Agatha yelped.
His mother licked her lips, looked about, then smiled rather nervously. “Because I’ve fallen in love.”
“You’ve done what?” Lady Allen asked.
The duchess squared her shoulders and her smile deepened. “I have fallen in love. Lord Donovan is pursuing me.”
Lady Allen let out an exclamation of surprise and then a note of amazement as she applauded. “Congratulations, my dear. It certainly suits you. This is the best I’ve seen you look in some time. Aside from this mess with your mother-in-law.”
“I don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment,” the duchess said, “but I shall take it as a compliment.”
“It was certainly meant as one,” Agatha’s mother praised.
His grandmother let out a cry of shock. “You are not to remarry. You are to keep monument to my son’s memory.”
“Your son has died, and he is already in a monument. We can go and pray at it anytime we wish,” the Duchess of Westfort said.
“Here, here,” cried Lady Allen, applauding anew.
“Exactly,” Lord Allen said. “The living must go on living, as the cycle of life intends.” Agatha’s father turned to the dowager duchess and harrumphed.
“You, madam, seem to have given up living years ago, and now you’re trying to make everyone else’s life a bitter draught.
Some of us won’t allow another adult to ruin their children’s lives. ”
“I’m not a child,” Adam pointed out to Lord Allen.
Allen shrugged his shoulders. “My boy, you are many, many years younger than me, and so you are like a child, and I shall not allow that old baggage to do this to you. You love my daughter. There’s no question about it.”
But even as the words tumbled past her father’s lips, Agatha was ashen. “But can you really stop her from making our lives miserable? Can you really stop anyone from making our lives miserable?”
It was as if his grandmother had woken her to a harsh reality, and Agatha could no longer unsee it.
“They will judge me every day,” she whispered.
Her eyes shone with tears and her shoulders sank.
“You were right. You were always right. I am not suited to this,” she said, her voice breaking as she gestured to the dowager duchess.
“Adam, you told me the first day that we met. This is a disaster. I should not have given any credence to this.”
She was one step away from retreating. And he cursed himself for a million kinds of a fool for ever saying that she wouldn’t suit, or that she wouldn’t like being his duchess.
Because she was perfect. With her big, open heart and her wonder of the world and the smallest joys?
And so he grabbed her hands, turned her to face him, and he gazed down upon her. “You’re absolutely right about the judgement,” he declared, determined to get through to her. “And I will confess it now.”
“What?” she gasped, clearly shocked that he wasn’t arguing with her.
He held onto her tightly. “I will confess it, and you will listen, and if you wish to leave me, you can, though it will haunt me all my life.”