Page 2 of The Earl's Christmas Deal
“Do you truly wish for the estate to pass to Frederick? That rakish fool is not worthy of a penny of your father’s money.”
Her words were no longer designed to evoke sympathy and concern; they were laced with real fear. Adam risked a glance up at her face, noting the heavy frown that betrayed the import of what she said.
“You will be isolated and alone for the rest of your life, my boy, and you deserve to be happy.”
“Alright!” he snapped, and at her flinch, he lowered his voice and sighed. “Alright,” he repeated more quietly. “I will attend the damned party. Will that do?”
His aunt beamed at him, rising from her chair and walking around the large desk to kiss the top of his head.
“Yes. That will do. You know how grateful I am, and it may not be as terrible as you might assume.”
“You are filling me with confidence.”
She paused her head on one side, staring at the door. “Could I perhaps add a sprig of mistletoe above the threshold?”
“I shall cast it into the fire should you do so,” he replied, a fleeting smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
She sighed and squeezed her fingers around his shoulder. “Light some more candles then. You will go blind before you are five and thirty at this rate.”
She kissed the top of his head once more, a little longer than before, as her hand lingered on his shoulder in an affectionate gesture of support, and then she left him to the gloom.
Adam watched her go, his head beginning to pound with a headache.
Leaning back in his chair, he stared into the flames of the fire, contemplating all she had said, a familiar numbness creeping through his muscles at the prospect of yet another Christmas without his family.
His fingers involuntarily twitched toward the top drawer of his desk, and after a few thoughtful moments, he opened it and drew out the picture of his mother. Her face stared back at him from the gilded frame, more radiant every time he held it. Adam gently ran a finger over it, his thoughts scattering again; his mind filled with Anastasia.
By the time he had thought to have a portrait of his late wife painted it was far too late. The disease that had finally claimed her had stripped all the life and colour from her cheeks. He remembered her as vividly now as ever, but the large portrait in the gallery did not do her justice. He wished he could have commissioned another version of her, one he could have kept with him always.
Rubbing a hand over his forehead, he rose from his chair and stretched. His back clicked violently as he glanced at the clock. He had been working for five hours without a pause, and his body ached damnably.
Standing beside his desk, he was motionless for a few minutes, his gaze fixed on his mother’s face. The late Countess of Bellebrook had been a sensible, gentle-hearted womanwho doted onhim. The memory of her final days still caused a desperate jolt of pain in his chest, and he took a deep breath to banish it.
Even speaking of consumption made him shudder. Any time it was brought up in conversation, he would excuse himself or attempt to rapidly change the subject. He supposed, in some ways, he should be grateful. His mother had been spared the agonies many experienced with that disease, but to him, at just sixteen, he sometimes wondered if he would have preferred a longer farewell.
One morning, the hacking cough she had experienced rattled through the house with morbid regularity. Then, when he had gone in to visit her that afternoon, she was gone. Ithad broken his heart, and the blasted holly about her bed had forever bound his hatred for the Christmas season ever since.
And then, blissfully, Anastasia had revived it.
Her enthusiasm for all things festive was unquenchable and, ultimately, impossible to ignore. His love for his wife had driven away the sadness he had felt every time Christmas came around each year, and she began to instil in himnew happiness. Their whirlwind courtship had been a joyful, magical time during which the burdens of his life had been cast aside in place of love.
At Christmas, they always sang carols at the piano in Bellebrook Manor, his baritone mixing with her soprano, her laughter echoing through the corridors like a beautiful bell.
But then her voice had faded.
The lung fever that had taken hold of her after only three years of marriage had been rampant and vicious. Adam had grown to hate it more than anything else in his life.
He had been determined to save Anastasia, refusing to watch another woman he loved fade away without a fight. He had spoken to over thirty doctors in the course of the following year. They had tried everything to help her—bleeding, poultices, leeches—and every tonic imaginable.
Some remedies had even seemed to work for a little while, but Anastasia grew steadily weaker and had been bedridden for the final few months of her life. Adam now regretted the madness that had taken hold of him. He had travelled the country to find a cure, taking him away from Anastasia when he should have been at her side.
Only when their physician finally told him the grave truth did he realise the dreadful reality of all that he had wasted and the life he had lost. He had held her hand from that day onwards, and she had clung on for another two months before that dreadful rattling breathing had finally faded entirely.
Her death had almost broken him again, a horrible mixture of the pain of his mother’s passing now inextricably mixed with Anastasia’s too. Only his estate and his work had saved him, and he was disinclined to change that when he brought him such comfort.
He rarely left his office before the evening, and when he wasn’t travelling to see his tenants, he would beat his desk before the lark.
Adam poked at the fire, noting the ink stains all over his hands—he would have to wash before supper. He returned the poker to the stand, holding out his hands before him and examining them. They seemed suddenly old in the firelight, withered by grief, as though he were an elderly man himself. But then he looked again, and they had returned to normal. At two and thirty, he should hardly have felt as late on in years as he did.
