Page 87 of The Unwanted Duchess

Again, she had proven herself right because he turned scarlet. She swore that she could see a vein standing out on his forehead, and as she remarked that, he lunged towards her.

Samantha raised her hands to her face as she had done more times than she dared to count, but the hit never came.

There was an almighty amount of noise coming from in front of her, however. As she looked down, she saw Graham. He had her father on the ground, hitting him harder than her father ever had hit her.

Protecting her, just as he promised he would.

“Graham!” she exclaimed. “I —”

“Not right now,” he shouted, pinning her father to the floor.

“This is how you treat the elderly?” her father croaked out. “I can see where you got that behavior from.”

“That is quite the comment from a man who feels the need to beat young ladies. What is it? Are you too dim to be able to use words?”

“What sort of son-in-law are you?”

“One that protects his wife over some insignificant earl. How dare you treat her that way?”

“Enough!” Adam shouted, entering the room.

“You have no part in this,” Graham replied. “You have simply sauntered in to play the part of this man’s son. You do not care about him.”

“Perhaps not, but this is pointless nonetheless.”

“It is not pointless. If it shows him that what he did to his daughters has come back to get him, then it is not pointless.”

“But it is. Now, unless you feel better about yourself by beating a dying man, it might be for the best that you stop.”

Graham froze. Samantha froze. They looked at each other, and at last, Samantha found her words.

“What does he mean, Father?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself since he cares so little about me after all that I did for him.”

“All that you have ever done for me is lie,” Adam groaned. “If you expect me to think highly of that, then you are a fool. Now, are you going to tell her, or shall I be the man out of the two of us?”

“Very well, I shall speak once this heathen releases me.”

Graham continued to hold him against the floor.

“Let him go, Graham,” Samantha told him, and he obliged.

The Earl sat up, holding his head and then coughing once again. Samantha had suspected that it was more than a cold, but it had not been the important thing to ask about at the time.

“It is the truth,” he confessed, “and I have known for a while now. You may have thought that everything that I did was for Adam, but in truth, it was all because I knew I did not have long left. Samantha, if I did not have you married off, then it would have been on Adam’s shoulders. He is barely even a man yet, and so I had to do something quickly.”

“We would have managed fine,” Samantha said gently, suddenly washed over with sympathy.

It all made much more sense. The urgency, the sudden need to have his affairs in order, the fact that he did not drink so often. He was dying, and he knew it, and he had to act quickly as well as buy himself enough time to see it all come to fruition.

Samantha hated her father, loathed him entirely, and yet when she looked at him sitting on the ground, she could not help but pity him. He was no longer the father that had tormented and abused her for years but an old man that did not have much time left.

Graham was not as sympathetic.

“I do not care,” he thundered. “Come on, Samantha, you have said what you needed to say, yes?”

“Graham, he is unwell.”

---