Regina appeared in the doorway moments later, having followed Edmund's abrupt departure from the ballroom, her expression shifting rapidly from irritation to alarm as she took in the scene before her — her husband frozen in shock, shattered glass at his feet, and Charlie clinging to a member of the household staff with an intimacy that suddenly seemed to carry far more weight than she'd previously understood.
"Edmund, what is going on?" she demanded, then, noticing his stricken expression directed at Helen, added dismissively, "She's just a maid! Why are you looking at her like that?"
Edmund turned toward Regina with a fury that seemed to surprise even him, twenty years of buried grief and suppressed anger finding sudden, unexpected release. "Don't you ever speak about her like that," he said, his voice carrying clearly enough now that several curious guests had begun gathering near the kitchen doorway, drawn by the rising tension.
"Edmund, she's the household staff, I don't understand why you're—"
"Her name is Helen," he said, cutting across Regina's confusion with a raw, unsteady intensity. "She's Charlie's mother. The woman I was told died in a car accident twenty years ago. The woman my own mother apparently lied to us both about, for reasons I am only now beginning to understand."