A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance by Elisabeth Fairchild

all too soon, young man. Up to your room with you. Make haste.” Moffit made sure he was moving smartly up the stairs before he turned toward the servant’s quarters, which were sure to be abuzz that the master had come in so unexpectedly.
    Reed never made it all the way up the stairs, stopped by his father’s shout.
    “Out of my house!”
    The music master stumbled out of the door red-faced and disarrayed, waistcoat buttoned lop-sided and neck cloth undone.
    Heated words were quite shocking to Reed. Rarely were his parents to be seen together. When they were, so polite had their exchanges been, that Reed assumed them a happy couple. He was, of course, mistaken.
    “You, too, harlot. Be gone from my house.”
    “You mistake me, sir. . .” His mother’s voice had floated up the stairwell, cool, collected and scathing. “You mistake me, sir, for the common company you more commonly keep. So taken have you been with a certain young songbird of late, that I did but seek to educate myself in the ways of music that prove attractive to you.”
    Songbird? Reed had been intrigued. He had no idea that his father cared for birds.
    His father, face an unusual purple hue, strode from the music room. “How dare you, madame!” His voice had thundered in the stairwell. “How dare you bring this scoundrel, whose dubious services I have paid for, into our house, that our son might learn such tawdry behavior.”
    His mother maintained her cool composure. “There has been nothing in the least dubious about Monsieur La Prelle’s instruction or intention. The man’s teaching technique might easily be labeled cocksure. As to exposing our son to the ways of the world, would you have me believe that he may learn such behavior only from his father? You would have to be here to teach him anything. As you are never here, rest assured he has not been influenced by his sire in one way or the other, unless it is to understand that your presence is not required either as a husband or a father.”
    “Am I even sire, then, of the brat you would have me leave my name and inheritance to? I begin to wonder, madame.”
    The brat, Reed had realized, flushing with shame, was himself.
    “How I would love to spit truth in your face and say he is not, but you did your duty by me at least once, my lord. Reed is your issue. You do him and yourself disservice in classing him equal to the many seeds you may have spilled in other men’s fields.”
    His father had looked up then. He had seen Reed standing on the landing above--listening--face flushed, eyes wide with shock.
    “Damn!” he thundered, whirling on his heel to make for the door.
    “We are not finished.” His mother had begun to sound anything but collected.
    “You are wrong, madame.” His father’s voice had been taut with suppressed rage. “We are finished, my lady, completely and irrevocably. I am off to sow more seeds, my dear, in fairer fields. You will, of course, remove your well-ploughed acreage from my house before I return.”
    The sound of the door, slamming in his wake, resounded throughout the house.
    More doors had slammed as his mother, in a tight-lipped fit of rage, bundled up their belongings. They had raced away that very night to Talcott Keep, the most remote of his father’s holdings. Reed’s contact with his father, from that day forward, had consisted of no more than an occasional glimpse. Far from his father’s sensitive ears, Lady Talcott’s music lessons had immediately resumed, with a thundering kind of vigor.
    In time, Reed came to understand the full extent of those lessons. He did not care to remain in Talcott Keep while they were under way.
    He went wandering. Out of habit, he went to all of the places he was used to going with the Nutmeg for company. In an elemental way he could not recall experiencing so vividly since his childhood, he felt lonely. Megan’s vehement insistence that she meant to marry, that things between them must be changed by her going