Chapter Four #2
Mrs. Reid came through to the front room from the kitchen, bringing the tea she had made herself because, as she said pleasantly when she carried the tray to the low table, “The maid has enough to do.” Maid.
Singular. Cassandra imagined their staff also included a cook.
But no housekeeper, butler, or other excesses.
And no Mr. Reid in sight. Neither the father nor the son.
“My husband will not be joining us,” said the hostess, as if reading Cassie’s mind.
“There is much to do on a farm, even if he no longer works the land himself. I don’t believe he will ever retire like a country squire.
Nor do I think he would want to join in our women’s talk.
” She gestured toward the sofa. “Please, do sit. Shall I pour you a cup?”
Cassie nodded, then turned her head as Mr. Martin Reid hastened into the room.
“Oh, you’re here,” was the only greeting she received. Followed by, “I believe there has been an incident at the stables. Are you all right?”
“Why should she not be?” his mother wanted to know.
“Prescott.” It was only one word, but it was enough.
“I see,” said Mrs. Reid. “Perhaps you’d like to have some extra sugar in your tea, my dear.” Without waiting, she added a spoonful to Cassie’s cup. “It will take away the sour taste you no doubt have in your mouth.”
“I have dealt with him,” Mr. Reid said firmly, while his green eyes, both untamed and wholesome, like the hues of nature, offered Cassie refuge. “You need not fear him lurking about.”
His words were so confident, his manner so certain, that the residual tension left her body in one shuddering exhale.
“He had no business being here in the first place,” Mrs. Reid stated.
Cassie sighed. “Lady Webb has made him into something of a spy, I’m afraid. He is very likely heading straight to his aunt to tattle on me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.”
“Oh, no, my dear,” said Mrs. Reid. “His outlandish behavior is all the more reason you must hear the whole story of poor Mary Cushio. Once you are armed with the truth, Mr. Prescott will be forced to re-evaluate how he treats you.”
“You think she’s my mother, don’t you?” Cassie said suddenly. The Reids looked at each other. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the clues were all there. How much I look like her. The timing of her seduction twenty-two years ago.”
Mrs. Reid smiled at her son. “I told you she was clever.”
“Though perhaps no less stunned at what she has learned,” her son answered. He turned toward Cassie. “Rest assured, you will find no judgment here, Miss Richards.” Those honest eyes settled upon her once again.
Strange, thought Cassie, how Mr. Prescott’s gaze repels me. But I want to climb right inside the warmth that Mr. Reid’s eyes settle upon me.
“What was she like? My mother, I mean?” Cassie asked.
“Well, of course I knew her as a neighbor, not a maid,” answered Mrs. Reid.
“Outside of work, she laughed often. Enjoyed a bit of fun. Witty, she was, too. Though her humor was perhaps a little coarse. That might be why she did not find her master’s attention inappropriate.
He respected no boundaries, and she held up none. ”
“Her master?” The words trickled ice down Cassie’s spine. “The man who… My father… He was her employer?”
Mr. Reid’s hands clenched and unclenched several times. “See, Mother, she did not know. Such news can bring no joy. This should have been left alone.”
“We shall see,” answered Mrs. Reid. “There is power in knowledge, however great the shock of it.”
“Who…?” Cassie was afraid to know the answer, but the question nevertheless tumbled from her lips. “Who was head of the household at the time?”
“That man Prescott—Thibault was his name, an enthralling but ill-tempered creature. Still is, I suppose, though you never see him about anymore. Lady Webb is the first of that family to visit in many years. Not that I’m surprised.
Anyway, he’d been recently widowed, though you wouldn’t say so from the way he philandered about. ”
Cassie lowered her head in shame. “I don’t suppose he loved her, then,” she said in a very small voice.
Mrs. Reid shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid their time together ended rather quickly once she was with child.
It is so often the case. He moved on to new pleasures, for I am sorry to say she was only a temporary distraction for him.
And, once the changes in her body became obvious, she was summarily dismissed. ”
Cassandra folded her fingers into her lap, her humiliation no less raw because it had been expected.
Mr. Reid sat down, the weight of the conversation making it impossible not to. “My parents took her in,” he said quietly.
Her head lifted in surprise. “Why?”
Mrs. Reid shrugged. “I was a young mother myself. Martin was four years old, his sister still a baby. Mary and I could help each other. And she had no one else.” She shrugged. “That’s what neighbors are for.”
Cassie thought back to her many years in London. She couldn’t imagine any of her employer’s neighbors sharing Mrs. Reid’s sentiment.
A startling thought occurred to her. “Wait. Are you saying I was born in this house?”
Mrs. Reid gave her a wide grin. “Martin was not best pleased to have another sister. He would have preferred if you had been a boy for him to play with.”
“Mother!”
“Although,” continued Mrs. Reid, not the least bit bothered by her son’s indignation, “I am sure that he is very grateful now that you were a girl. Especially as you have become a lovely young woman.” She winked at Cassie.
“Mother! You must not continue such talk.” Mr. Reid was fully red in the face, which made his brassy hair shine in the glow. “Miss Richards is not like us. She moves in circles where such bluntness is not welcome.”
But Cassie was delighted. Not least because Mrs. Reid had plainly expressed her acceptance of Cassandra.
Her forthright manner was refreshing. Cassie spent so much of each day tiptoeing within the boundaries of convention.
It was the same prison in which Mr. Welsey Prescott held so much power.
Power he had because he knew, as an employee, Cassie could not counter him. As a Prescott, he…
Oh.
Oh!
Cassie’s heart thumped to attention. “If Mary Cushio is my mother…”
Mrs. Reid nodded. “Then Thibault Prescott is your father.”
“But that means Wesley Prescott…”
“Is your half-brother.”
Ah.
Perhaps she should have been more shocked.
Instead, laughter bubbled up. Her brother!
Oh, the irony, that he should think her—his cousin’s lowly companion—an easy target, when she was, in fact, his very own sister!
Of course, he couldn’t possibly know. But he would.
She would not spare him that. What humiliation when he should discover the truth!
And he deserved every ounce of it, rakehell that he was.
Another penny dropped. “He thinks Lady Webb has him following me about because she has given her blessing to a match between us. But she wants him watching over me like a brother!”
“Will you tell him?” Mrs. Reid asked, her thoughtful eyes on Cassie.
“No. I shall leave that to Lady Webb.” A pause. A little intake of breath. “My aunt.”
“Will you leave her service, then?”
“I… I don’t know. I mean, if Juliana and I are cousins…” Cassie paused to savor this one silver lining to the whole mess that was her circumstances. “How wonderful! She has always treated me like family. I might stay just for her.”
The double specter of the Prescott men loomed in her mind. “Then again,” she said more soberly, “I don’t like the idea of staying with the Prescott family, knowing how they abused and abandoned my mother.”
A frown creased into her brow. “Why did they take me in when my mother passed? Could you no longer take care of me?”
Mr. Reid cast a wary glance at his mother. “You’ve told her this much. Will you tell her all?”
Mrs. Reid stood and walked around the low table to join Cassandra on the sofa.
She took Cassie’s hand in her palm and covered it with her other hand.
“I have told you what I thought you needed to hear. We all know what the Prescott men are like, and I did not want you to endure another minute more under Wesley Prescott’s thumb.
But this other matter… Perhaps you are happy to leave it in the past.”
Cassie stared at the wrinkled fingers protecting her own. These hands had offered her mother shelter, had helped raise Cassie with love.
She looked up at Mr. Reid. Worry puckered the narrow space between his eyes.
There was so much love in this room. Here, she could bear almost anything.
“Tell me,” she said.