“And please, call me Cassandra.”
As the room cleared and once again fell silent, Cassandra looked to her plate. She scarfed down the bread and salted pork she found there. She wanted to spend a little time before meeting the vicar and his housekeeper to plan her questions.
This was the time for her to find answers.
This was the time for her to finally seek what had never been divulged to her.
As dramatic as it seemed, this conversation could affect the future course of her life, and she was ready for it.
Chapter 11
The quietude was unnerving.
James sat at the breakfast table. Rachel sat across from him. They were alone in the chamber, and all was still save for the morning fire popping in the grate and the tap of the rain on the windowpanes. Neither of them had as of yet acknowledged the previous night’s happenings, but even so, a melancholy cloak shrouded them. Her capricious actions needed to be addressed.
In that moment, perhaps more than in any other, Rachel’s appearance garnered his attention. Even though they were half brother and sister, they bore little likeness to each other, apart from sharing their father’s steely gray eyes. Whereas he had his mother’s sand-colored hair and square jaw, she boasted her mother’s tightly curled tresses and round face.
But this morning, that usually wild mass of disorderly curls was tamed neatly at the base of her neck. Despite the pallor of her skin, a delicate flush had replaced the childish ruddiness of her cheeks. Even her posture was different. No longer was she hunched over with her arms folded across her chest and her lips fixed firmly in an ever-present pout. She sat straight. She was still. Restrained. And unusually reserved.
When had this change from rowdy child to willful young woman occurred? When had she become the young lady before him?
She pushed her food around on her plate with her spoon without gazing in his direction. “You’re staring at me. I know you’re angry. You might as well say it.”
James had to remain imperturbable. “No, Rachel. I’m not angry.”
“Not angry?” she scoffed, still refusing to look at him. “I don’t believe you.”
He didn’t want to argue. They’d already exhausted the subject of Mr. Standish. What mattered now was reestablishing peace in their home. Clearly she regarded him as the enemy—as if he alone was the very hurdle to happiness and freedom.
He had to make her see otherwise.
“Do you know why I insisted that you come and live with me when Father died?” James leaned back in his chair.
She raised a thin brow at the question, then shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly. “I suppose you had to.”
“No, I did not have to. You were seven. Your mother’s sister wanted you to come and live with her. But I fought her. I actually petitioned the courts, although I don’t expect you remember any of that now.”
She sat motionless, eyes diverted.
He forged ahead. “Maria and Rose were not even born, but Elizabeth and I felt it was important that family stay together.”
“Well, things were different then, weren’t they?”
James sensed the hurt in his sister’s words. Elizabeth and Rachel had been very close, and given the fact that Elizabeth had been the only real maternal influence in Rachel’s life, the resulting chasm was evident. “No, it’s not the same, but you’re missing the point. We must look out for one another, you and I. We’re family.”
She flicked a defiant gaze up at him. “Does family mean Mrs. Towler too?”
He swallowed, unprepared for the challenge hidden in her arrow-like question.
As he considered his response, her words lashed out. “If it is family you prize so much, why do you allow Mrs. Towler to be so cruel to me? In fact, why do you allow her to remain here at all?”
“That’s not fair, Rachel.”
“How can you say that?” Her spoon clattered to the table. “Of course it’s fair. She scowls at me all the time, and you do not intervene. Nothing I do is ever good enough for her. Poor Elizabeth! Could you imagine growing up with such a mother?”
He shouldn’t have been taken aback by Rachel’s outburst.
Yet he was.
