A/N: Aggie meets Maude...
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
"Oh, Lord have mercy," Ezra said, seizing Aggie's arm and looping it through his own. He patted the hand she rested on the inside of his elbow, "Have courage, my dear, have courage."
"Ezra, shush, she's your Mother," Aggie admonished.
"We only have her word for that," Ezra replied.
The stagecoach came to a halt and a pounding sounded almost immediately on the door from inside.
"Driver, let me out of here this instant!" Maude called.
Ezra sprang forward off of the boardwalk and reached for the coach door, flinging it open.
"There's my darling son!" Maude cried, her tone of voice changing instantly.
Offering her his hand, Ezra helped Maude down out of the stagecoach and offered to take her bags. He regretted it when she pointed out six heavy looking cases and satchels the second driver was throwing off the top of the stage.
"I'll take one, Ezra," Aggie offered.
Maude put her hands to her chest and exclaimed, "And is this the darling girl who stole my little boy's heart?"
"Easy, Mother, don't go yapping like a terrier or you'll frighten her off."
"I'm Agatha. Agatha Campbell," Aggie answered, "Ezra has told me all about you."
"And just what has Ezra told you?" Maude demanded. "Oh well, never mind. Come here, come here, let me look at you."
Aggie stepped forward and allowed Maude to take her face in her hands and turn her this way and that, stroking a hand over her red hair and then checking the ring on her finger, which Ezra had given back to her on their night in the hotel. "The ring, dear boy, you used your Grandmama's ring," Maude fairly squealed.
Aggie could do little but stare at the woman, she'd never met anyone like her. Her Mam had been a subdued sort of woman. Well, for a Scottish woman, anyway. Maude was up and down and all over like a team of runaway horses and, if Aggie were being completely honest, a little intimidating.
"Mother, are you carrying stones in here again? I am not carrying bricks up to the second storey of the - Mother! Please don't maul my bride to be like an angry bear. Aggie, I do apologize," Ezra prattled on, growing increasingly more flustered by the moment.
"Nonsense, we're practically Mother and Daughter, aren't we, dear?" Maude said to Aggie.
Aggie was relieved when Ezra pushed two cases into her arms and directed her towards the hotel.
After hauling all six pieces of Maude's luggage up the stairs to the room next to Ezra's, Aggie suggested they have lemonade downstairs.
"What a sweet girl," Maude said, clapsing her hands together. "Lemonade, as if there isn't a bar full of whiskey to be had." She reached out and pinched Aggie's cheek which startled her.
"Would you mind giving me and my son a moment alone? After all, you'll be married the day after tomorrow and he will be more your husband than he is my son."
"Oh," Aggie said, somewhat deflated. Maude was certainly an exhausting person to converse with. "Well, I could go over to The Clarion, or I could go home if you'd like to spend the evening just the two of you."
Aggie had only spent one night in the hotel with Ezra; maintaing some sense of decorum she had returned to Nettie and Casey's the next morning and hadn't come back to his room until now. She was grateful that Nettie had taken her in again since even the humble, dirty little shack she'd called her own for a brief while was gone now, but she would be happy to marry and settle into a home with Ezra.
"I'm sure there's plenty for you to do, no need to go home yet," Maude said, ushering her out the door.
Ezra shot an aplogetic glance in Aggie's directions buyt she merely shrugged and let him know it was alright, no matter how eccentric his mother was she would tolerate it. As she had said to him, quite pointedly, "Better any mother than no mother at all."
She certainly wished her Mam could have seen her wed and happy, but if wishes were horses than beggars would ride - so she would have to make do with Maude.
"Now, Ezra, fill me in," Maude said once she had closed the door on Aggie and was certain she had descended the stairs. She flashed a genuine grin at her son that made him think she was truly pleased with him.
Ezra had given her a brief description of he and Aggie's meeting and courtship in the letter he had sent, but he had time now to tell her everything. As he neared the day of his proposal in his retelling, Maude began to get impatient.
"But what about the money, Ezra? Where's the con?"
He was confused for a moment. Did she mean the three hundred dollars Aggie had inherited? He hadn't mentioned it specifically, just as he had left out the tense love triangle between Aggie, himself and Mr. Larabee.
"What money? To what con are you referring Mother?"
Maude rolled her eyes, huffing an exasperated breath. "The money, the Campbell money."
"I'm sure I have no idea what money you mean."
"I have been talking to all of my contacts back east, you can't fool me son. I know what you're up to and I must say I'm impressed by your committment, but what a grand scheme."
Ezra narrowed his eyes at his mother, feeling distinctly that they were on separate pages.
"I am aware that Miss Campbell, your bride to be, is of some relation to Joshua Campbell, the coal magnate and he is sitting on a fortune."
"I am certain the only connection between them is a surname, Mother. Agatha has no relation to anyone this side of the Atlantic Ocean."
"What is your reason for hiding this from me, Ezra? Don't you think I'm proud of you?"
"I'm not hiding anything from you, Mother," Ezra said. I'm sorry to disappoint you but Aggie has very little money and certainly not the fortune of a coal magnate."
Maude deflated like a baloon stuck with a pin. "Well then what on earth are you doing marrying her?! Tell me you have something worked out to your benefit."
Ezra felt a sinking feeling in his chest. So, Maude had only been pleased because she thought he was running a con, that he was marrying for fortune just as she had done time and time again.
"I'm marrying Agatha for love, Mother, nothing more."
"Sweet Jesus, didn't I raise you better than that?" Maude wailed. "Than to marry for love? What good is love? You can't eat it, sell it or spend it!"
All of his life, this was the mother he'd had to rely on. Always searching for an angle, always wanting to know how she could manipulate and use people to her own advantage. If she couldn't beg, borrow or steal something from someone, she didn't see the point in any interaction at all, let alone a lasting one.
Ezra had known, more or less, that she had always felt the same way about him. She hadn't truly wanted children but he had come along anyway and spoiled her plans, until she discovered he could be useful running one con or another. When he wasn't, she dropped him off somewhere along the way and returned only when she felt it was necessary. He mostly tolerated it although it had shaped his childhood into something cold and hurtful, and it had caused him a turbulent and traumatized manhood. But now, to hear her nattering on at him, insistent that he was about to make the mistake of his life, wounded him deeply.
"Mother, enough."
"Ezra, listen to me. Soon this infatuation will end and then where you will be? Tied down to a simple country girl with no future and no chance of doing any better."
"I said enough!" he roared.
Maude sat there, open mouthed with surprise. Her quiet, gentle boy never spoke to her that way; as a matter of fact no one spoke to her that way and she wasn't entirely sure how to respond.
"I won't have you saying anything, anything at all about Aggie, and you will not spoil this for us. I love Agatha and my future is with her. I may live as a pauper with her for the rest of my life but I'll never be as poor as you. You don't know how to love, you never have, not truly. Not even your own son."
"You can't marry her-"
"I am marrying her, the day after tomorrow. You can either be happy for us or you can leave. I will never do better than Agatha, not in one hundred years could I find someone to love even half as much."
"You have more than yourself to think about, consider what your father would want!"
It was a low blow, bringing up his father. He'd never even met the man, but Maude had a way of mentinoing him whenever she felt she was losing an argument with her son.
"I'm sure my Father, if he was worth anything at all, would have been overjoyed to know his son was marrying the woman he loved. After all, he married you didn't he?"
He narrowed his eyes at her pointedly, suddenly not caring if she left and he never saw her again. All the years he had spent loving her in spite of himself, because she was his mother, desperate for her attention and affection, suddenly disappeared. He had a woman who was worth his love, and he didn't have to chase it.
"Your father," she began to reply, but he got up and went to the door.
"Be happy or be on the next stage." he said with an air of complete finality.
Aggie knew by the very set of Ezra's body that he was agitated, angry even, when he came into the Clarion office.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, cautiously.
"No, nothing," Ezra answered, giving her a tender kiss.
She knew he was lying, but she also suspected why, so she said nothing and kissed him back.