How I loved my mother.
Ellie practically choked on her asparagus, but she recovered quickly enough. “Of course. I’m of the opinion that gifts are the perfect way for a person to show how closely they’ve been listening to their loved one.”
My mother’s smile faltered, and she bounced her knowing eyes between the two of us.
My father appeared to be savoring his potatoes, a conniving smirk spreading across his mouth.
Fine, Ellie didn’t like my gift. I was two hundred thirty years old; I wasn’t going to let my feelings get hurt over something like that. She had every right not to like it if she didn’t want to.
But to be angry with me?
When I’d tried. I might have failed, but I’d at least tried.
I didn’t get it.
I didn’t get it then. I didn’t get it three days later, and I was still stewing.
My mother spent the rest of dinner initiating discussions that sputtered into nothing.
Ellie excused herself from the table early that night, my father on her heels. I supposed he’d gotten used to having her around to buffer my presence and could no longer bear sitting at the dining table with me any longer than absolutely necessary.
My mother stayed awhile longer as I picked at my chicken breast.
Everything was so bland today. Had Collins fallen ill?
“Evander.”
My mother’s voice was gentle, but there was a sternness to it I rarely heard, even in childhood. She’d always used that tone with Jerad, never me. I always figured she spared me many a reprimand, thinking I got more than my fair share from my father.
“Yes?”
“You’re not being very responsive to Ellie lately,” she said.
“I don’t see why that’s unexpected,” I said. “Neither of us wants to marry the other, after all.”
My mother frowned. “I understand that you say you don’t have feelings for her—”
“Oh, I have feelings—”
“—but trust me when I say your life will be easier if you try to grow to love her.”
My gut twisted at that. Was that what my mother had done, grown to love my father? I’d always wondered. She seemed much too kind to love someone so cruel. But perhaps that was a fault of kind people; they tended to see good where there was none. My parents had been married for centuries before I came along. From my perspective, my mother had always seemed smitten with my father, adoring him despite his manifold faults. But had she always loved him so, or had she simply done what she always did, and made the best of a less-than-ideal situation?
I couldn’t decide if that made me proud or sad or a little of both.
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem. I tried, but El’s not so great at being on the receiving end.”
My mother sat straight up in her chair. “What exactly did you do, Evander?”
“Like I said. I reached out. Ellie’s always talking about setting up a glassblowing shop, except instead of windows and bland functional items, she wants to make art. Like crystal sculptures and plates and dishes, and all sorts of things out of glass, that way the working class can afford pretty things. So I spent all this time and effort recruiting artists who were up to the task and buying supplies, and I even got the deed to a shop that was perfect. And then we get there, and she acts like I’ve just murdered her favorite puppy. I just…I don’t know how to win with her, Mother.”
My mother’s face remained pleasant and gentle, but there was something there brewing under the surface, a knowing look that always had me wondering what she was remembering from my childhood that I didn’t. “Why do you think Ellie was upset?”
I tapped my fingers against the table. “I don’t know. Actually, you know what? I know exactly why. Because she’s so stubborn, and she’s convinced she has to do everything herself, and it’s like if you try at all to help her, then you’ve soiled the whole thing.”
“Hm,” was all my mother said.
I craned my head to the side. “What?”
“Did you ever consider, Evander, that perhaps it wasn’t the shop that was Ellie’s dream, but the sense of accomplishment she’d get from building it on her own?”
I sighed. Ellie had said as much, but that was still beside the point. “It just aggravates me that she won’t accept anyone’s help.”
“Help? Is that what you would call it?” my mother asked. “Because it sounds to me as if you didn’t help her at all. In fact, you did all the work for her.”
I huffed a laugh. “Most people would consider that better than help.”
“Is Ellie Payne most people?”
I choked. “Obviously not. If Ellie was most people, she’d be basking in the riches and the fortune of her life. Fates, she happened into being accidentally betrothed to a prince. Instead, she spends all of her time thinking about how she can rid herself of me.”
“But dear,” my mother said, placing her hand upon mine. “Do you even like most people?”
CHAPTER 36
ELLIE
Blaise must have either been feeling sorry for me, or gotten tired of my ill mood because she’d popped her head into my room an hour ago and announced that she had a surprise.
