Chapter 29
CHAPTER29
That evening, Adam sat in the comfort of his study, listening to the muffled chatter of the household that drifted up to the turret window. Nancy was down there somewhere, keeping Marina company, and though he wished she was there with him, he knew he could not be selfish.
Nancy needed more than him if she was going to survive her new life.
He had just turned back to his book when a knock sounded at the door.
“Who is it? I am exceedingly busy,” he called.
The door opened, and his mother entered. She was carrying a tray in her hands.
“I thought you might be in need of some nourishment, as you did not eat much at dinner.” She paused. “Are you well? You have not caught Nancy’s sickness, have you?”
“I was not hungry,” Adam replied, for he had been nourished by something else entirely—the memory of Nancy’s pleasure. “But I suppose I am somewhat peckish now.”
Peckish for more of my dear wife.
“You seem happy,” Dorothea observed, setting the tray down on the low table in front of his chaise longue. “I cannot remember a time when I have seen you more joyful.”
“That is because I am rarely here,” Adam reminded her, chuckling.
She rolled her eyes and sank down beside him. “You know what I mean, darling. I am aware that you are always enjoying yourself in London and beyond, but the happiness I have seen lately is of a more… genuine kind. It radiates from you, whereas before, if I may be frank, you always seemed tired. As if you were trying too hard to prove you were happy.”
“Everyone seems to be making judgments about me, of late,” he remarked, closing his book. “Indeed, Nancy made a keen observation about me, but I am still contemplating whether or not she has found a nugget of truth.”
Dorothea frowned. “What observations did she make?”
Lounging back against the chaise longue, his gaze fixed on the window where the sounds of laughter fluttered up, Adam told his mother what Nancy had said about his potential fears and old scars and why he had been living as a Casanova for the past decade. He tempered the latter part, though he was aware his mother already knew, and waited for her to tell him that Nancy was mistaken.
After all, who had known him longer?
“Goodness, I think she is right,” Dorothea said, making him sit up straight. “I had not thought of it like that, but… it makes a good deal of sense, does it not? Why, whenever you would kiss my cheek or embrace me when you were a boy, and your father saw, he would strike you and call you weak. So, I withdrew my affection for your sake until it became a… strange sort of secret. Do you remember?”
Adam nodded uncertainly. “I think so. I was only allowed to hug you when he was away from the manor.”
“Affection and attachment must have seemed like something that needed to be kept secret,” Dorothea continued, furrowing her brow as if she, too, were putting together the pieces of their joint history. “A forbidden thing, almost.”
“Perhaps, but I do not see how it relates to me.” Adam shrugged, none the wiser.
Dorothea sighed. “Oh, Adam, it all relates to you. You have sought shallow encounters with women because they are easy to escape and require no emotional attachment on your part.”
“Can we not speak of my shallow encounters?” Adam’s cheeks flushed with warmth. “It is not an appropriate discussion between a mother and her son.”
“Well, you shall have to endure the embarrassment, for this is something that should have been discussed a long time ago,” Dorothea shot back, fiery even in her frailty. “You have engaged in these behaviors because they are simple and there is no risk of attachment, either because the lady in question is married or would be ruined if the encounter was discovered. Yet, you have been able to draw something akin to the affection you have craved from these women. It has been enough for you, and might have continued to be if you had not met Nancy.”
Adam shook his head. “I cannot be what she wants me to be.”
“You can, and you will,” his mother replied more gently. “Tell me this. Why did you marry her in the first place?”
He dropped his chin to his chest. “I felt… guilty. Responsible.”
“Why?”
“Because she was not one of my… shallow encounters. She was an innocent victim who would suffer if I did not do something, and do it swiftly,” he replied, hearing the reflection of his own past in his words as he spoke. It was like a flame flaring in the darkest cavern, revealing the exit. “I… wanted to save her. I wanted to save her because no one else could.”
Dorothea smiled. “Do they sound like the actions of an irredeemable, emotionless, indifferent rake?”
“No, but—”
“She is your gift, Adam. Your redemption,” she interrupted. “She is your cure and your medicine, and your healing began the moment you made that decision to save her. You are not what you think you are. You never have been. You were just… lost for a while.”
Adam snorted. “Ten years is a long while, Mother.”
“So? Was I not married for far longer than that, too afraid to speak aloud a single thought of my own? And am I not now healed in my own way, able to say what I am thinking, able to be free, able to wake each morning without fear?” Dorothea shook her head as if she despaired of her only child. “Just because one has grown accustomed to something does not mean it must be permanent.”
“You are sick, Mother. You are not free. He has his claws in you, even now,” Adam said, his voice tight with a pain that rose up from the very depths of him—the caverns and catacombs of his youth that he thought had been long buried.
His mother chuckled. “I am not sick because of him, my darling. He does not have any control over me anymore, nor is he somehow haunting me from the grave.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I have always had a weak heart. As a child, the physicians did not think I would live, yet I did. I have lived decades longer than I was supposed to, and that, my dear boy, is my gift.”
“What?” Adam gasped, for he had never heard his mother speak of a weak heart before.
Dorothea nodded. “I was told I should not have children either, for I would surely die in the process. But I did not listen.” Her smile widened, her eyes gleaming with happy tears. “I had strength and defiance when it came to you, even before you were born. And I enjoyed the satisfaction of proving them wrong and having something that was wholly mine, to love and cherish, in a marriage that was otherwise dire. I loved you more than him, that is what he could not stand. That is what brought the very worst out of him. But if I was given the choice again, I would still have you and love you with all of my heart.”
“You… loved him?” Adam’s mind felt as if it were about to explode, listening to things he had never known. Things she had never spoken of, even after his father’s death.
Dorothea shrugged. “He thought I did, and maybe I did love him in the beginning, but when one suffers as much as I did at his hands, one forgets any love there might have been.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “What I am saying is, we can change who we are. We can change our future, our destiny, if we just have the strength.”
“You did not leave him, though,” Adam pointed out, not unkindly. But it had to be said.
Dorothea’s expression became pinched, her hand pressing against her chest. “I could not.” She met his gaze. “He said he would kill you if I did, or that he would kill me and make you watch. Perhaps you think that is not good enough. Perhaps you think I should have tried anything and everything to get us both out of this manor, away from him. But he locked me in my chambers each night, he had his men following my every move, and even if an opportunity had presented itself, he would have found us. He was nothing if not determined. But, above all, staying was the only way I could protect you—not from all of his punishments, though I did try, but from him separating us forever.”
“I… had no idea,” Adam rasped, realizing that his mother had endured far more than he had known, and what he had known had seemed unbearable enough.
“I saw no reason to trouble you with it,” Dorothea murmured. “And, besides, I did find the strength in the end. I believe it was after you returned from your second year at Cambridge, in the summer, when you were so happy, telling me everything about your friends and your studies and your new lodgings.”
Adam swallowed. “He shot at me.”
“He did.” She smiled tightly. “Not to kill you, I am certain of that, but to frighten you. The lead ball shattered a vase my mother had given me on my wedding day, do you remember?”
He nodded. “Vaguely.”
“It was the last relic I had of my family, for your father had sold or destroyed everything else to punish me,” Dorothea said in a voice so eerily calm that it sent a shudder up Adam’s spine. “And that, my darling, was the moment I snapped. After so many years, that shot and that broken vase became the last straw.”
Adam peered at her. “What do you mean?”
“Poison, my dear. I had acquired it years prior, though I do not know why—for myself, perhaps, if he ever followed through with his threat to kill you,” Dorothea explained. “I put it in his evening brandy, drop by drop. Watched as he drank it down each night. I knew I had to be patient. Gradually, he became unwell, and the physicians suspected a cancer of the stomach. He died months later, as you know, just as the seasons were changing.”
Adam gaped at his mother, not sure whether to be impressed or appalled. But all he had to do was remember the cruelties his father had inflicted on them, and he knew he could not blame her or reprimand her for doing what she had done. In the end, it had been survival—hers and her son’s, or her husband’s.
“We are not all what we appear to be,” Dorothea said softly. “We can all change, and we can all become something different. I chose my freedom and yours so we could be happy and at peace. I hope you will choose happiness and peace, too.”
Adam had almost forgotten why the conversation had begun, his mind overwhelmed with the knowledge of his mother’s courage.
“But you knew how to be strong, Mother. I do not know how to be a good husband to Nancy.” He paused. “I… feel things for her that I have never felt for anyone, but what if it fades? What if I hurt her more later? What if I regret not parting ways when we had the chance?”
“We can change our future, darling, but no one can predict it,” Dorothea replied. “But if you keep making the choice to be a better man, I am certain your future will be a bright and content one. She is lovely, Adam. She is precisely what I would have picked for you if you had given me any say in the matter.”
Adam had to laugh. “It was a surprise to me too, remember.”
“Love her, my boy,” Dorothea said, groaning as she rose to her feet. “Be what you both need, and you will not go far wrong.”
She stooped to kiss his brow, and he reached out to grasp her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Thank you, Mama.”
“Mama?” Her breath hitched, her eyes watering. “You have not called me that in… so very long.”
Adam nodded, kissing her hand. “Too long.” He hesitated, flashing her his best grin. “Had I known everything you had just told me, I think I would have visited more often.”
“Oh, you scoundrel!” She laughed, patting his cheek.
“I shall try not to be, from now on,” he said. He meant it.
With some color in her cheeks and a lightness in her step, Dorothea made her way to the door and, offering a shy wave, stepped out and closed the door behind her, leaving Adam with a million new things to think about.
In all his life, he had never expected to hear a confession of murder, nor had he expected to be gladdened by it.
She chose to protect her future happiness. I must do the same before the month is over. A fortnight. A fortnight to do the right thing.
But his mind was already made up, and he had never been more certain of anything.
Just then, a knock sounded at the door.
“Have you come to tell me that you poisoned Father’s henchmen too?” Adam called out.
The door opened, and Nancy poked her head around, her expression worried as she asked, “Who poisoned your father’s henchmen?”