Chapter 170

"Then I shall explain." Cassandra lowered herself into the nearest bench. "I understand that Mr Ravenshire has been paying for your care here and providing for your wife and son. I also know that you have received little else in the way of assistance since the accident."

Adam detected the faintest hint of distaste in her tone when she mentioned Mr Ravenshire and he didn’t like that one bit.

"Mr Ravenshire has done more for me than anyone else. He has paid for my treatment, made certain my family has a roof over their heads, and never asked me for anything in return. If you have come to suggest that I should be ungrateful for his help, I must tell you that you are wasting your time."

"I am not asking you to be ungrateful." Cassandra folded her hands in her lap. "I am asking you to consider why he has taken such an interest in your circumstances. John Ravenshire is not a man who gives freely without expecting something in return. I know him well enough to distrust his intentions."

"You know Mr Ravenshire well?" He didn’t seem at all convinced.

"Yes. I was once supposed to marry him." She explained.

"Then you have your own reason to dislike him," he retorted. "But that does not mean he has wronged me or ever plans to. In all the time he has supported me, he has never demanded anything of me. Why should I believe that you know his intentions better than I do?"

"I cannot tell you precisely what he intends. I will not pretend to know everything that passes through his mind. But I know enough of his character to recognize that his generosity is unlikely to be without purpose." Her voice remained even as she tried to get him to see reason. "You may believe he is helping you out of kindness. I believe he sees an opportunity to use you for his own ends."

"And what makes you so different?" Adam demanded. "You come here with promises of justice, offering to take me away from a place where I am at least fed and cared for. You tell me that the man who has supported my family cannot be trusted, and I am supposed to accept your word because you possess a title? What makes you any less likely to use me than he is?"

Cassandra chose her words carefully. She had expected him to be suspicious, but his bitterness seemed to stem from more than his distrust of her. Adam had spent years being treated as though he mattered less because he lacked money and influence, and he had clearly grown resentful of a society that favoured those who had both.

Men like her father.

"The man responsible for your injuries is my father. Before I became Lady Montague, I was Miss Ashford," she said, stunning him speechless.

"Lord Ashford knew there were warnings about the hazardous conditions of those tunnels, and he chose to ignore them. Forty-two men went into that mine. Forty-one never came out." Cassandra paused, she didn’t want to overwhelm him. "You survived, but survival did not mean you escaped the consequences. You were left unable to walk, and the families of the men who died were left to grieve without receiving the justice they deserved. My father continued with his life without facing any repercussions."

Adam’s hands had tightened around the arms of his chair.

"I know what happened at the mine," he said, his voice lower now. "I was there."

"Do you know what it was like to wake beneath all that rubble, not knowing whether you were ever going to make it out alive?" His eyes flashed and just then, Cassandra caught a small glimpse of what he truly felt, of what he had buried deep all these years. "Do you know what it was like to learn that forty-one men were dead, men I had worked beside, men whose families I knew? Or what it was like afterward

"No," Cassandra said. "I do not know what that was like. I cannot claim to understand what you endured. I was not there, and I will not insult you by pretending that I can imagine the full extent of the horrors you faced. But I know that what happened was not simply an accident, and I know that my father has escaped accountability for it. I intend to change that."

Adam let out a bitter breath. "And you need my help."

"Yes. I do."

She was certainly persistent in her pursuit of him, he had to give her that, much as he disliked it.

"Of course you do." His voice was tinged with disgust, the anger that had been building within him finally finding an outlet. "You people always need something from us. You need our labour when it suits you, our silence when we complain, and our cooperation when you decide it is time to put things right. All the while, you live in your grand houses and dine at tables crowded with food, and you never have to consider what happens to the people beneath you."

"Mr Dawson—"

"No. You asked me to hear you out, and I have done just that." He leaned forward on his chair, his face flushed with an anger that had been years in the making. "Do you know what it is like to live in poverty when you cannot even work to feed yourself? Before the mine collapsed, I could earn my wages. I could provide for my wife and son. I was a man who could stand on his own feet, and if there was work to be done, I did it. Then, in a single day, all of that was taken from me."

His fingers trembled, still curled against the chair. "No one wants to employ a cripple. Not for a decent position, not even for the most menial work. It does not matter what I could do before or how willing I am to work now. They look at my legs and decide I am useless. I became a burden to my family overnight, and I have spent ten years watching the people I love struggle with the consequences of something I did not cause."