“He needs a wife,” Tuppence replied.
“It is the natural order of things. A man like him should find a wife, settle down, have a few children, and wait until they are old enough to be able to run the ancestral home when he has passed on, don’t you think?”
“I do indeed,” Tuppence murmured. Strangely, though, she couldn’t think of anything worse than handing over Hilltop Farm to any children she had. She now rather felt that she would be condemning them to a life she too had been forced into through circumstances beyond her control.
When Gertrude didn’t say anything else, Tuppence looked up at her. Their eyes met. “He has to have someone of his choosing; someone he considers his equal. I know that now. I was a fool, an old fool, to expect to be able to push him into a marriage to someone I thought he should have.”
“You have tried?” Tuppence’s brows shot up. She tried to control her jealousy, but it stirred within her heart anyway.
Gertrude nodded. “But he has rejected it every time. I never realised why until now.”
“Oh?”
“He adores you.”
Tuppence felt her cheeks heat. She shook her head, amazed that his mother was saying such things to her.
“It is the truth. I will admit that had the recent spate of murders not happened, I would have still objected to any union between you two. But life has a way of reminding you how fragile it is, doesn’t
it? Moreover, I now understand just how similar your situations are.”
“I don’t see it,” Tuppence whispered. “I have literally been a farmer all my life. Isaac is a Lord.”
“That doesn’t mean you cannot be together. This estate is half farmland. While Isaac is the landlord of hundreds of acres of farmland, which is mostly run by tenant farmers, he also has his own farm attached to the estate that he must run. He is essentially a farmer. Don’t get blinded by your differing financial situations. Without the financial differences, you are still people.”
“But people will never accept us being together,” Tuppence whispered.
“That is their loss then. If they are so spiteful that they cannot be happy for you, if they are so cruel that they won’t accept you, then it is no great loss for you to not have them in your lives, is it? They can take their bigotry and their narrow-minded condemnation somewhere else, to someone who does care about their opinions. If you are going to allow your life to be bullied into situations created by other people’s judgement, condemnation, and malice, you would be better off in your box.”
“You have been damaged by my presence in this house.” It was something that had worried Tuppence ever since she had overheard Gertrude telling her son about the withdrawn invitations.
“They are people who have made judgements against me based on what they think they know. They haven’t stopped to consider a miscarriage of justice might have left a person hanging for a crime they didn’t commit. They haven’t considered even Reginald’s position as a Barrister. He is here to make sure that the innocent is proven innocent. Any supposed friend of mine who is so quick to condemn this family, and turn their backs on us so readily, really is no real friend. They are no great loss to me. They can take their condemnation and shove it down the throats of someone who cares.” Gertrude sighed. “There will always be people who have their own opinions. When those opinions get pushed, quite rudely, at other people, unsolicited and unwelcome, that is when poor judgement and opinionated behaviour shows the arrogant rudeness of the ignorant. Anybody that quick to condemn, who are so vocal about their criticism of others, has no opinion worth noting. It is always the most critical who have the loudest voices because they want to feel self-important and heard over everyone else. Living life is not a crime. Helping others is not a crime. Issuing words of advice and support, or providing a philosophy in life, is not a crime. Being vociferously scornful and critical of others when they are working to help others is nothing but a pitiful attempt at being spiteful that should be ignored. Anybody who wants to criticise us for helping you in your hour of need can take their criticisms and keep them. You will learn in life that you can never please everyone. There will always be someone quick to judge and loud in their condemnation. Ignore them because they have problems they don’t see.” Gertrude leaned forward and issued Tuppence with a piercing look. “What I am trying to say that if you love my son, and you want to be with him, don’t let anything or anyone stand in your way. Be together. Only you and Isaac know if what you have is right. It isn’t up to anybody else to tell you how to live your life, or what you do with it. The gossips don’t have to wake up next to your husband every day. They don’t have to live your life and run your house. You do that, and you do that with a man you choose in a home you make together. It is that simple.”
Stunned, Tuppence watched the woman smile briskly and move toward the door. Now that she had said her piece, Gertrude clearly had other things to do. “Now, I have a long list of jobs I need to attend to before I start on those travel plans.” With that, Gertrude sailed out into the hallway and headed straight for the lady’s study at the back of the house; soon to be Tuppence’s.
Isaac, who was standing in the hallway with one brawny shoulder propped against the wall, had been listening to everything his mother said. He was stunned by it. Speechless, in fact, but inwardly so overjoyed he wasn’t at all sure whether he should leave Tuppence to mull it all over for a while, or storm in there and demand that she marry him. Eventually, the news he needed to share with her forced him into the room.
“What is it?” Tuppence demanded when she saw Isaac’s face. Isaac pursed his lips but before he could say anything Tuppence added: “You heard all of that, didn’t you?”
He grinned. He couldn’t help it. “I don’t think I have ever heard her say so much unless she is ranting at me to find a wife.”
Tuppence’s smile faded. She frowned a little when she heard the rattling of harnesses outside of the window. “You have company,” she whispered.
Isaac crossed the room and stopped when he was directly in front of her. He lifted a hand to stroke the pad of his thumb down her cheek. “You look better. Did you sleep well?”
“I did actually,” Tuppence replied, fighting the urge to rest her cheek against his palm. It was a little concerning that Isaac looked exhausted. She didn’t want to be rude enough to say so to his face, though.
“She is not wrong, you know,” Isaac whispered.
Tuppence’s heart skipped a beat. “About what?”
“All of it.”
Tuppence sensed that everything she had ever wanted in life was right before her if only she had the strength to reach for it. She doubted it would ever be so obtainable in her life again. Tuppence now knew that despite everything in life, Isaac was everything to her. He was, without question, the man of her dreams. Whenever she had envisaged her life in the future, what it would contain, where it would be, who she would share it with, Isaac was right in the centre of it all. He was the centre of her world, and always had been. She had just always firmly been of the belief that a life with a man like him wasn’t going to be possible partly because of his social status but partly because she didn’t think a man like Isaac would realise she was alive. Yes, they had met on several occasions in the past, but he had always been passing, or friends with Mark, and had been distant and vague as a Lord should be with a peasant farmer.
“You know why, don’t you?” Isaac whispered.
Tuppence felt an instant of horror that she might have just said all of that aloud. She had been so lost in her thoughts that it took her a moment to replay everything in her head and try to remember if her lips had been moving. “What?”