Chapter 21
Agatha wanted to run.
She wanted to rip her hands out of Adam’s, even though she loved the feel of his touch.
All her life, she had planned on a little one.
Yes, all she’d wanted was a nice life with a man who loved her, children running about with dogs, cats, and animals; a place in the country where she could play music and walk with her children.
They’d have a governess and a tutor, perhaps.
They’d eat good food. They’d take care of animals, and there would never be anything truly tumultuous on the horizon.
Just the usual vagaries of life, the usual hardships that came in the cycle of living.
This? This was so much more than she’d ever known or thought she could experience. The cruelty of the ton was brutal, if Adam’s grandmother was any indication. She was not prepared for this, for the absolute viciousness of the dowager duchess.
But Adam was looking at her as if he needed a lifeline, and she could not take that from him. Not yet.
But his words? They terrified her. For she feared that he was about to tell her that she should run, that she should walk out of his life forever, because he could not stop his grandmother, or members of the ton, from hating her.
And she did not think she could bear it if the great-grandmother of her grandchildren disapproved of her.
What kind of family life would that be for her children? She would not raise her children in such a horrible environment, where there was always acidic commentary and cruelty and judgment.
Adam was only one step away from that himself. He’d chosen a different path. It was true.
Her thoughts began to spin, the words of the letter having left her shaken.
What if one day he changed and turned cold? What if one day he reverted back to the way he’d been raised, and he regretted his choice to marry her, with her little ways and her lack of knowledge about society and her pure enjoyment of Mozart and dancing?
After all, he knew so much more of the world than she did. And what if he raised their children to not want love?
That would be the greatest sin of all.
“Whatever is going on inside that beautiful and quite remarkable head of yours? Cease,” he urged gently.
“You are torturing yourself, and if I could take that all from you, I would. But you must understand this,” he said, his gaze searching hers.
“I cannot stop my grandmother from trying to hurt you. I cannot even stop my mother from trying to hurt you. They have hurt me my whole life.”
His mother sucked in a sharp breath.
Adam looked to the woman who had given him birth and said with grace, “I know, Mama, that you didn’t mean to.”
“Nor did I, my boy. I have done everything I can for you,” his grandmother stated.
“You are a more complicated case, madam,” Adam returned archly. “But I will allow that you believe what you say to be true.”
He drew in a breath, then turned back to Agatha. “I cannot stop anyone from hurting you. Not really,” he confessed before he licked his lips, wound their hands together, and then said, “Only you can do that, my love.”
She gasped at the word “love” and her heart began to pound wildly in her chest, for he had never said he loved her.
“Only you can build up your heart so that it is strong enough to face the world and its cruel storms and brutality and weather them. I have weathered them my whole life alone. My mother could not give me the affection that your mother has given you because of the way she was raised.”
His mother stood watching, her heart clearly aching, but she was unable to go back and change the past.
Suddenly, Agatha felt for them, for the coldness that had been their lives.
“You now have to decide if you can enter my world, if you have it within you to leave the little circle of the country and come into a place where many people will wish you ill. Many people will try to tear you down, because they hate themselves, because they are afraid, but I think so much more of you than that, Agatha. This pain that you feel? It is the sign that you are about to become so much more. And if you can but endure it and understand that the pain is nothing compared to what you and I can have together, and what we can build together, then we shall be the happiest people alive. For no one will be able to touch us, because a little pain will mean nothing to you and I.”
Tears filled her eyes as he painted a picture of life full of love and strength despite suffering.
“My grandmother’s letter is only the beginning,” he admitted, pulling her gently closer to him so that her skirts skimmed his boots.
“People will try to hurt us, because what I do makes enemies from every side, and if you wish to leave that and go back to your home in the country, I won’t stop you.
But know this. You will be in my heart every year, every day, every hour, every minute, every second.
I will love you through all of that and always know that you were the one and that I had to let you go, because I could never ever make you do what you did not want. ”
Agatha knew there was only one thing to do.
She threw herself into his arms. “I love you too,” she professed. “And I am so afraid, afraid of everything that you have said. I have known happiness all my life and so to know that we will face continual storms? It is frightening.”
She glanced back over her shoulder and looked at her own mother and father.
“But I think my parents’ love and yours will get me through it, and the love I have for myself.
I don’t think I could walk away from you, Adam, from us, from this, from the world that you offer and the help I could give people, because I too would think of you every year, every day, every minute, every second, every season, for you are in the sun and the moon and the stars and the winter, the spring, the fall, and summer now.
You are in my heart, and how can I walk away from my heart? ”
His grandmother let out a cry of rage as she started to stand. “This is the most ridiculous claptrap.”
“Sit down,” the Duchess of Westfort ordered before she gestured to Adam and Agatha. “This is utterly delightful, and I hope to God that I will get to say something like it myself soon.”
Agatha beamed at her future mother-in-law, realizing that it was her family that helped the duchess choose love.
Her own mother and father gazed upon them with warm affection.
Adam tilted her head so that he could gaze upon her face. “No regrets then?” he asked softly.
“I know that you fear regretting things,” she whispered gently.
“Yes,” he said softly. “My father regretted his life, and so that’s why I said what I’ve said just now.
Because I will never regret a thing,” he said.
“I will not make it to the end of my life and wish that I had done something differently. I will lay on my bed as death comes with a smile on my face, knowing that I have tried, that I have striven, that I have always chosen love.”
She slipped her hands from his and wound her arms about him, like the ivy winds about the oak, knowing that they’d be forever intwined.
“Then let us reach the end of our life together and face every enemy, every cruelty, every person who would tear us down. For we will not have regret. We will have love instead.”