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clearly.
    She gathered her reticule and a wrap and slipped from her room and out of the nasty boarding house. She had one last chance to turn away from this path, and she could only hope that a moment with the person she loved most would help her clarify her choices.
     
     
    When Lysandra had asked her cousins August and Marta Ingram to take in her mother, she had known they did it with reluctance and an eye for the money that Lysandra scraped together each month to pay for her board and care. Still, she had always prayed that what they gave in return was a loving home for her mother.
    Now, as she stood in their parlor with its ridiculously overdone furniture and knickknacks that could only wish to be as sophisticated as Andrew’s fine parlor, she worried her lip. The servant who had allowed her entry was as chilly as a north wind and seemed perturbed to have to fetch Lysandra’s mother.
    But the door finally opened and Lysandra stepped forward to greet the woman who had raised and loved her. Her heart dropped as she did so.
    Regina Keates had never fully recovered from the death of her beloved husband over eight years ago. The first few, she had tried to carry on, but illness and the pain of slow and creeping poverty had stricken her, and she had succumbed to the affects of both.
    Now her mother was pale, with dark circles beneath her once vibrant blue eyes, and her frame was so thin that Lysandra had to blink back tears at the sight of her. It was always so much of a shock to see her this way.
    “Mama,” she said, covering the reaction as best as she could and moving to offer her mother an arm of assistance. She pressed a kiss to her mother’s thin cheek and helped her to a chair.
    “My dearest,” her mother said with a smile that was still the same as Lysandra remembered from her childhood, even if nothing else was. “I didn’t expect you today.”
    Lysandra would have poured her mother tea at this juncture, but none had been provided by the servants. Instead, she tilted her head with a smile of her own.
    “I simply wished to see you.”
    “That’s so nice.” Her mother rested back on her chair and shut her eyes briefly, as if the exertion of the visit was already affecting her. “Your employer is kind to give you a day off. How is your life as a ladies maid? Any gossip to share about the lives of the Earl and Countess of Culpepper?”
    In that moment, Lysandra was happy her mother’s eyes were shut so she wouldn’t look at Lysandra as she formulated the best lie. She hadn’t told her mother that she’d been let go by the Earl of Culpepper over six months before. She certainly hadn’t told her why.
    What that one lie had resulted in was a dangerous maze of other lies that she was forced to twist and turn through each time she called on her mother.
    “Oh, nothing too interesting,” Lysandra said past suddenly dry lips. “Just the usual parties and soirees to ready the Countess for.”
    Her mother looked at her. “Ah, well it all seems very glamorous. I do wish you hadn’t been forced to enter a life of service, but since you have, I do take comfort in that you seem to be happy doing it.”
    Tears stung Lysandra’s eyes, but she had become expert at hiding them from her mother and instead forced a weak smile.
    “And what of you, Mama? Are you still happy here? Do August and Marta treat you well?”
    There was a moment’s hesitation where Lysandra swore she saw a flicker of fear in her mother’s gaze, but then it was gone. But the idea that it had ever been there was troubling in the highest way, and she stared as her mother talked.
    “They are kind to take me in,” she said softly. “Family or not, I realize I am a burden in my current state.”
    Lysandra pursed her lips. When she had asked her cousins to bring her mother into their home, she had believed they would welcome her. Her cousin August did well with his store and his wife and brats never seemed to want to anything.
    Yet there had