Then, as though they were bosom friends reconnecting after spending time apart, she continued, "but now that you are preparing for such a grand wedding, you really ought to delegate more of your responsibilities. You cannot possibly manage everything yourself. Let others take care of the smaller matters so that you can devote your attention to more important things."
Cassandra stared at her, stunned by the sheer audacity of the woman standing before her.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, unable to tolerate another moment of this charade.
The smile on Vivienne’s face faltered.
"I asked you a question. What are you doing here?" Cassandra repeated, her voice sharper this time.
Vivienne looked affronted. "That is hardly an appropriate way to speak to your mother."
Cassandra couldn’t be bothered by the reprimand.
"I will speak to you however I please. If you dislike it, you are free to leave."
Vivienne narrowed her eyes, another crack appearing in the pleasant facade she had been so carefully maintaining.
"I will overlook your poor manners. Though you clearly intended for me to be the last person to hear about your engagement, I was gracious enough to come here myself and offer you my congratulations." She paused, her gaze travelling over Cassandra. "It is quite an accomplishment, what you have managed to do."
"After everything you have done, you still have the audacity to stand there and say that to me?" Cassandra felt the tremor beginning in her fingers and curled her hands into fists at her sides.
Vivienne tilted her head. "And what exactly have I done?"
Cassandra stared at her in disbelief. The question was so ridiculous that a short, bitter laugh escaped her.
"What exactly have you done?" she repeated, mimicking her mother’s words with thinly veiled contempt. "You lied and claimed you were ill. You nearly married me off to a man I had never even met. You drugged me and allowed them to take me away so I could be married to Lawrence Whitmore, and now you are standing here asking me what exactly you have done?"
"That was more your father and Edmund’s doing than mine." Vivienne’s lips thinned in displeasure. "I did not arrange the marriage myself, Cassandra. I had nothing to do with the manner in which they carried it out, so do not hold me responsible for actions that were not mine."
"But you knew." Cassandra argued. "You knew what they intended to do, and you let them do it."
Every second she spent in that woman’s presence made it harder to keep her anger under control. Her mother had a talent for twisting every situation until she emerged as the innocent party, no matter how deeply she had been involved.
"When your father first presented the idea to me, I was not in favor of it," Vivienne said. "I told him as much. But I also had to consider the circumstances we were facing. We were suffering, Cassandra. This entire family was suffering because of the scandal you caused. When the opportunity arose to marry you to someone like Whitmore, I thought about your future."
"My future?" Cassandra could hardly believe the rubbish her mother was feeding her. Her expression made her disbelief plain.
Her mother truly must have thought her a fool.
"Yes! Your thoughtlessness may have caused the scandal, but you are still my daughter. Above everything else, I was thinking about what was best for you." Vivienne’s voice turned defensive, as though Cassandra’s outrage were completely unreasonable. "Whitmore was wealthy. He was successful. He could have given you a life of comfort and security. You would never have wanted for anything. You would have had a legion of servants at your beck and call. Jewels, beautiful gowns, a grand house—everything money can provide. He could have built you a home that rivaled this palace."
Vivienne gestured around the richly furnished parlour. "You would have been well cared for. You would have been comfortable. And perhaps, given enough time, you might even have been happy."
Cassandra studied her mother’s face, searching for something that might prove she did not truly believe the words coming from her mouth. She looked for remorse. Shame. Even the smallest flicker of regret.
There was nothing.
Vivienne was not sorry. Worse, she genuinely believed she had done the right thing.
This woman could not possibly be the mother who had given birth to her.
A mother could be imperfect. She could make mistakes. She could be frightened, misguided, or too weak to stand against the people around her. Cassandra could understand those things.
What she could not understand was how a mother who claimed to love her daughter could speak so casually about handing her over to a man like Whitmore, as though she were discussing something mundane rather than the fate of her own child.
"You cannot possibly believe that." Cassandra slowly shook her head.
"I did what I could. I made the best decision available to me with the choices I had."
"No. I do not want to hear another word." Cassandra’s voice trembled slightly. "You are truly the worst mother in the world."
"If you had truly loved me, you would have fought for me." Cassandra broke beneath the weight of everything she had kept buried for years. "You would have fought harder. You would have stood between me and them. You would have demanded to know what sort of man Whitmore was before agreeing to send me to him. You would have asked yourself why any man would willingly marry a woman who had been drugged and was barely in her right mind. What kind of person agrees to something like that? But you did not. You gave me up so easily."
For the briefest instant, Cassandra saw the words strike her mother. Vivienne’s posture faltered, and a wounded look flickered across her face.
𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
Then her mother straightened. Her shoulders squared, her chin lifted, and the familiar indignation returned.
"I am not incapable of admitting when I have made a mistake. I should have looked more closely at the sort of man Whitmore was. I should have questioned your father’s judgment. I admit that I was complacent." Vivienne pressed a hand to her chest and drew a slow breath. "But I will not apologize for doing what I believed was right for my daughter at the time."
She paused, gathering herself before continuing.
"I have been your father’s wife for twenty-eight years. For twenty-eight years, I have done everything that was expected of me. I stood beside my husband through every difficulty this family endured. I tried to be a good mother to you and to Edmund. Perhaps I was not always the mother you wanted me to be, but I will not stand here and allow you to judge me when you have no understanding of what my life was like."
Her hand remained against her chest.
"You were not the only one suffering. But I suppose that hardly matters now." Her voice softened, flashing a strained smile. "If I had known you would make such a success of yourself, I would never have put myself through all that trouble. Look at you now, my dear. You are going to become a duchess. You have done remarkably well for yourself. I could not be more proud of you."