Marrying Mr. Darcy (Love Manor #2) - Kate O'Keeffe Page 0,74
she replies without looking at me. “Even that hideous woman from the television company wants you gone. I imagine that’s the only thing we agree on.” She turns her whole body to face me and squares her bony shoulders. “It’s time for you to do the right thing, Emma. This charade of yours has gone on quite long enough.”
I knit my brows together, my heart rate leaping as my belly sinks. “Charade? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you, Emma Brady from Houston, Texas,” she spits. “You have bewitched my grandson for your nefarious and selfish means, and we have all had enough. It’s time for you to go back to where you’re from and leave my poor grandson to find a more suitable match.”
My anger flashes. “There’s nothing nefarious about me.” Not that I know what nefarious means, but considering the context it was delivered in, I know it’s got to be something terrible. “Sebastian and I love each other. We’re getting married. I…I thought we were getting along.”
“Who are you? Who is your family? They’re no one. You are just an American gold digger from peasant stock.”
“Peasant stock?” I repeat in shock, barely believing my ears.
Is this really happening?
And how can I gold dig when there’s no gold to be dug?
“Your father was a builder, of all things. Your mother? Well, goodness only knows what she does.”
“Mom works in admin at an insurance office,” I explain weakly.
“Do you expect me to sit around and watch my grandson throw away the family name on you? Some girl of no consequence, with nothing to her name, who he met on a television show? Sebastian must learn to value his family, his standing, his very self. If you have any feelings for him at all you will see that and leave. Either that or you will irrevocably divide this family.”
Finally, I find my voice.
“I love Sebastian, we are getting married, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry that you feel I’m dividing the family. That was never my intention. I hope you can learn to accept me. But if you don’t?” I pause. What am I going to say? Screw you? I don’t give a damn? Even if I think those things, I can’t say them. She’s an old woman, Sebastian’s granny, and despite the things she’s saying to me right now, she’s still someone I want to win over. So instead, I finish my speech with, “I really hope you can find it in your heart to accept me.”
“Accept you?” she scoffs. “You’ve known him all of what? Five minutes? It won’t last, Emma. What you fail to appreciate is that you’re not our kind. You’re not one of us. You’re”—she looks at me with pure venom in her eyes—“no one.”
I suck in air.
Everything I’ve wanted, everything I’ve tried to do is to fit in, to show Geraldine and everyone here that I’m worthy of Sebastian’s love, that I’m enough.
“I’m not no one,” I say through gritted teeth as tears threaten my eyes. “I’m Sebastian’s future wife.”
“You obstinate, headstrong little minx,” she spits at me.
I half expect her to launch into Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s speech, asking whether by marrying me are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted. Which I realize with a stab of shock she is.
“How dare you pretend to be something you’re not. You don’t fit in now, and you never will. You mark my words.”
I’d like to shove your words where the sun don’t shine, lady.
We glare at one another, my tummy in knots. Before this moment Geraldine had always been civil enough, often with the odd barbed comment thrown in. Sure, I knew she didn’t approve of me, but I thought we could work on that, and earlier today, I even thought she was coming around.
I feel such a fool.
“If you need any help getting yourself back to Texas, I’d be more than happy to help,” she says.
“Are you offering to pay for my flight?”
“I’d buy you the plane if it meant you’d leave tonight.”
“Enough!” I say loudly before I check my volume. “Enough. You’ve made your point perfectly clear. But I’m here to stay, so you’d better just get used to it.”
Before I say any more things to her I can’t take back, I turn on my heel and stomp away. She may be a nasty old woman with venom pumping through her veins, but she is Sebastian’s grandmother.
At the door leading inside, I literally smack straight into Chris Hampshire.