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“Hardly a child,” Benedict’s wry voice reached her. “She’s only a little younger than you are.”
Alyssia harrumphed. “Well, she didn’t have my upbringing. Have you been able to discover what happened to grandma’s jewellery?”
There was silence. A rustle of papers. “She says she doesn’t have them.”
“She must have sold them to pay for her new life,” Alyssia hypothesised incorrectly, her tone scathing, and Cassandra felt the ache in her stomach that came from being wrongly accused. And knowing she couldn’t do a darn thing about it.
“More than likely,” Benedict sounded unconcerned. “Either way, you’re not likely to get them back, so you must reconcile yourself to that.”
“She was an ill-behaved teenager and she doesn’t seem to have changed. What that girl needed was a good smack on the bottom every now and again.”
“She still needs a good smack on the bottom every now and again, in my opinion,” Ben drawled cryptically.
Cassandra could practically hear her stepmother pouting her artificially plumped lips. “Hmm. I just don’t understand why Peter took it so hard. Her leaving, I mean. It was like his world ended. She made our lives hell for years, all because her father had the audacity to marry me.”
She held her breath, the resounding injustice of that statement almost physically knocking her over. Benedict, who she had believed she loved, whom she believed had loved her, spoke, and his voice was diffident and non-plussed. “Parents are programmed to love their children, Alyssia. Even those least deserving of love find it in their parents’ arms.”
Cassandra felt the blood drain from her face. Undeserving of Love.
She slumped her shoulders as his words kept rattling around her mind, over and over again. Undeserving of love. What a stupid, idiotic fool she had been to imagine he loved her! How had she misread him so badly? She thought of all those times they’d made love, curled up afterwards, shared stories and philosophised about the universe. It was a cruelty of almost unimaginable depths to realise how false that had been.
The temptation to turn and flee gripped her, but she ignored it. That’s what the old Cassandra would have done. Holding her head up high, and with a last shaky breath to steady herself, she walked up to his study and tapped lightly on the door. Without waiting for a response, Cassandra pushed it inwards.
Alyssia was sitting across from Benedict, and when she saw Cass, she had the sense to look guilty. Benedict’s eyes flared as they met Cassandra’s, but his expression did not alter. A week ago she would have said she could count on him for anything, but now she knew that wasn’t the case.
“Alyssia,” Cass spoke stiffly, “I want to apologise for my behaviour last night. I had no right to be so unwelcoming or unkind to you. I’m sorry.”
Alyssia’s jaw dropped. The visage of Cassandra Hervey apologising was one she thought she’d never behold. Caught on the back foot by this unexpected turn of events, she stuttered a little, “I-I understand how emotional it must have been for you.”
Not looking in Benedict’s direction, Cassandra nodded. “It’s not an excuse, but yes, it’s been an emotional few days.” With a small smile at the woman who’d taken over her late mother’s life as though the first Duchess Hervey had never existed, Cassandra turned a blank face to Benedict. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. I’d hate to interrupt whatever it is you two were doing.”
She spun and walked out of the study, shaking with nerves.
Cass sank into a deck chair by the pool and shut her eyes. She’d only been lying there for a minute when the sound of the door sliding open behind her alerted her that she was no longer alone.
“That was...unexpected.” Benedict observed sardonically, standing over her and blocking the sunshine.
She squinted up at him then closed her eyes again, huffily rearranging herself on the lounger. “Go away,” she muttered. He crouched down on his haunches, so that his face was at her eye height.
“How do you feel?” He asked quietly, and she couldn’t tell if he was asking because he cared or because he was gloating.
“What do you care?” She retorted.
He was quiet for so long that she opened her eyes to look at him. He was staring out at the water, unseeing. “I don’t know.” He said finally. “But apparently, I do.”
She felt her heart contract painfully at the confusing statement. Why was he lying to her, even now? If his behaviour hadn’t been proof enough, she’d heard it with her own ears.
“Tell me how you and Cherie met.” He said out of nowhere, a frown on his lips.
“What?” Confused, she turned eyes as wide as saucers to him, questioningly.
“How did you meet?”
Despite the tension crashing between them, memories of that day brought a small smile to her face. Cass had been walking to her first lecture, daunted and excited by the prospect of undertaking her university education, when a small crying sound had caught her attention. Curious, she’d gone to investigate, and found the petite Cherie huddled into a ball behind a row of ferns. She’d been miserable, because she’d lied to her parents and promised them she’d enrolled in medicine. They were both doctors, and their parents before them, and so Cherie’s decision to enrol in film and television to chase after the bright lights of television news reporting would have come as quite a slap in the face. “I have all these stupid anatomy textbooks and none of the resources I actually need!” She had wailed despondently. “Why, oh, why couldn’t I tell my parents the truth?”
Cass had taken an instant shine to the elfin girl. “I know a bit about parents you can’t be truthful with. Anway, you’re in luck,” she’d said, trying to smooth some of the toffee vowels out of her voice. “I’m enrolled in the same course, and I have books w
e can share. Come on. We’ll be study sisters.” Her bright enthusiasm brought a small smile to Cherie’s triangle shaped face.
