Page 17 of Prince of Masks
I slip onto the couch, my knees pushed up against the side of her leg.
My smile is twisted. “What whispers?”
Her arm comes down on my shoulders. She tugs me closer to her. “A variety of proposals,” she says. “More than a dozen. Of course, how can we be surprised? Men must be crawling through fire to get to you.”
I glance at Mother.
She’s tossed her coat and gloves onto the side-table, where they are draped, unattended.
Nonna has not as many servants as she should.
Mother’s mouth puckers with the annoyance of it all as she drops into the armchair across from us. Her tight smile lifts to me before she reaches for a photo album left out on the coffee table.
“I don’t know about adozen,” I scoff, and I stay in Nonna’s hold, stay in the warmth and the ease of her company. “I only know of two that Father’s considering.”
Slowly, Mother turns over page after page in the picture album, finding herself in the images, finding her children, and her father who is long gone now.
I love photo albums. Suppose that’s why it has been left out—for me to flick through.
Mother beat me to it.
Nonna draws back my attention. “And who areyouconsidering?”
I bite down on a laugh.
Who amIconsidering?
Good one.
She draws her arm back from my shoulders before she shifts to face me. “At least tell me you have a sweetheart at school.”
I just shake my head—especially under the sudden inky feel of Mother’s gaze on me.
Nonna doesn’t play the game the way she should. She’s in it, as we all are, but she plays by her own rules.
Nonna is gentry. Or she was before my mother married up.
My parents met at Bluestone. Mother came in as gentry, got close with Amelia, and after years at the academy, my father had fallen in love with her. He made an offer before they graduated.
And that’s that.
Nonna hasn’t taken to the rise of society that the marriage brought her. She should live better, or with us at Elcott Abbey.
She refuses.
Stubborn, Mother calls her.
I consider Nonna, the stains on her overalls, the dirt she gets on the couch, the lazy braid of her grey hair.
I wonder if she’s the reason I am the way that I am. That her eternal casual approach to our roles in the world, her reclusive ways, her bond with nature over society, is in my blood, and it’s the reason I don’t quite fit in the way that I should.
Maybe I took after Nonna more than anyone else in the bloodline.
A sharp jab dents my side.
I bite down on a wince.
Nonna’s fingertip still pokes into the soft flesh beneath my rib. “Tell me, girl. Who has your lips at school?”
