Matthew couldn’t be sure, but he thought this might be the longest conversation he’d ever had with his mother. While the subject was so macabre and rife with unbelievable turns of events, and his mother’s cutting tone would have stripped the bark off a tree, a small part of him didn’t want it to end.
“As to how I came to save you,” the Dowager Countess continued, “I’ve been having Bronson followed. As he was still encouraging Lockwood to marry Lydia, there had to be some intention to dispose of you.”
“But why?” Matthew asked quietly. “I mean, why would you save me? You have never had a kind word for me or a tender thought. Why not simply let him do away with me and be done with it?”
“Dear heavens, Matthew, I’ve always known you to be stupid but I did not realize it was this bad,” she said, though she made a sound that could have been mistaken for a chuckle if Matthew did not know she wasn’t capable. “If you die, what becomes of me?”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, taken aback by the selfishness of her answer.
“Think of it. You have no heir. Not only would I be penniless and turned out on the street when ninety distant relations all swooped in like vultures to lay dubious claim to our family’s fortune, but your little wife would be as well. I could not permit that to happen to me… oh, yes, and to her as well, I suppose,” she added as an afterthought.
“So even preserving my life had to benefit you in some way for you to lift a finger?” Matthew asked accusingly. “I should have known, I suppose.”
His mother’s cold expression was visible even in the darkness, her calculating, bitter features illuminated only by the faint light that filtered down through the clouds that had now moved in.
“My marriage to your father was arranged,” the Dowager Countess said blandly. “We never even laid eyes on one another until the day I saw him standing at the front of Westminster. While your father was not cruel, he was also not overly concerned with my happiness. I was a means to an end, that is all, and that end was to provide heirs.”
“It is expected in most marriages, yes,” Matthew agreed.
“Except for mine,” she said quietly. “Oh, I produced them, all right, and lost every last one of them before they were born. Your father spoke in hushed tones to his family members of putting me aside. His mother would thrash me with her cane when he wasn’t home, calling me the most horrible of names. Even my mother would chastise me for not being a better wife, one who was able to provide my husband with what he so desperately required.”
“Mother, I did not know,” Matthew said, his voice thick with the turmoil he was feeling.
“Why should you? It is not the sort of thing one talks about with anyone, let alone her surviving child,” his mother said coldly. “Then, when I realized I was carrying you, I feared it was my last chance. If I lost you too, your father would surely seek a divorce. I would be the ruined spinster who could not fulfill the most basic, animalistic of duties. I could not do what a common rat could do. So I took to my bed and never left it except for the most basic of needs. I spent those long months in solitude, with no one even coming to see me for fear that they would be the cause of too much excitement and you might perish.”
Matthew waited quietly while his mother’s story poured forth, a tale she had so clearly kept a secret for decades. Her unimaginable pain and loneliness spilled over now, and he knew not how to make it right.
“Then—miracle of miracles—you survived. You were born after three days of struggling to birth you, days when I was certain that everything I’d endured for those long months would be for naught,” the Countess said, her voice beginning to tremble. “But you were healthy and strong, the son your father required of me.”
“And you hated me for… what, for living?” Matthew asked.
“No. Of course not. I hated you for being so tiny, so fragile, so small and useless, yet still infinitely more important than me.” His mother stopped to clear her throat, pushing down the tide of sobs that threatened to emerge after all these years. “Your father resumed being cordial to me, his mother never cajoled me or struck me again, my parents threw a dinner in your honor before I was even able to leave my childbirth bed, a dinner that obviously I was not able to even attend. I was literally nothing before you were born, and yet somehow, I was still nothing afterwards. I realized I had no function other than to create you, and even that wasn’t good enough for them.”
Matthew began to pace silently, absorbing the great pain his mother had shared with him. Her explanation had been years in the making, and he had expected it would make him indifferent. Instead, it made sense in many ways.
“I am not the cause of your suffering,” he finally said, coming to stand in front of her. “They are. The people who should have loved you best, who should have rallied around you in your times of distress, they are at fault.”
“I know that now,” the Countess whispered. “But when you’ve spent your entire life believing something, it is very hard to undo its harm.”
“I know. I should know that better than you, seeing as how there was never a single day of my life when you didn’t hate the very sight of me,” Matthew answered. “But this life is also fleeting. I could have died tonight. For that matter, you could have accidentally been the one who shot me.”
The Dowager Countess laughed, a genuine sound that was filled with her true emotions.
“Therefore, I propose that we be done with this,” Matthew said formally. “I do not wish you to be dead, no matter how many times I may have implied it.”
“Implied? I rather think you were quite clear in stating it,” she interrupted with a laugh.
Ignoring her point, Matthew continued, “So I would like to invite you to return to Paxton Hall… on the condition that you are kind to my wife.”
“So you intend to keep up that ruse, do you?” his mother asked, though her tone was different, less antagonistic and more surprised.
Matthew nodded. “That I do. I find that I genuinely love Lydia, and that I have since we were but children.”
“You are certain that this is not merely a response to trying to reclaim all that you had as a child?” Lady Paxton asked innocently. “After all, she was perhaps the only kindness you ever experienced as a boy. Is that what this is about?”
“No, Mother. I love her. The fact that I always have is irrelevant,” Matthew explained. “For you to return and remain a part of my life, to become the mother you deserved to be instead of the creature they created out of you, you must accept and embrace Lydia as well.”
It was the Countess’ turn to think silently while Matthew waited, refusing to allow hope to swell in him. Finally, she nodded.
