“I don’t need a lot of money.”
“But your charity...”
“Yes. It’s an astronomical waste of privilege, isn’t it.”
“Interesting that you think that way. When it isn’t as if you have a whole lot of choice.”
“I don’t. But I do have... I have benefited very much from all the money that has surrounded me my entire life. To completely disregard it seems shortsighted.”
And she realized that she stood there, staring up at him, that she also had no idea what her life looked like if she cut ties with Liri. With her homeland.
With this palace, and with this man.
No, she had never been close to Alex. But he had always been there. He had been there during her years at University, however distant.
It hadn’t been her mother who had supported her then. But the palace.
Her mother had gone off to find a way to keep herself in the lifestyle she was accustomed to, at least from Tinley’s point of view. She’d found lovers who aided in that pursuit.
She’d told Tinley she couldn’t understand why she didn’t find a rich husband.
Why she needed school.
Why she needed to make her own life.
Even being responsible and independent, Tinley was wrong.
The palace was the reason she had the cottage. She doubted Alex had overseen any of it personally, but her connections to the royal family had been a safety net for her.
And even now, this palace—though she had avoided it for many years now—was a particular sort of safety net. And she supposed that in some ways going along with all this was a bit of cowardice. But she couldn’t... Couldn’t fathom simply deciding to cut herself off from this. Her final connection to her father. Her final connection to the life she’d been meant to have.
She had a chance here, to have a say in her future. And no, not in the way other women did, it was true. But she could choose her husband. She could find someone who did suit her.
It was archaic in some ways, she knew. Or it would seem so to other people. But she’d had a husband chosen for her as a girl. To have an actual selection now seemed nearly decadent.
And marriage... This was the key to her succeeding, she knew it was.
She’d given up pleasing her mother.
But she could show her.
With the right husband she would have the assets she needed to make a difference in the world. The right husband would like her as she was. And she could show her mother that she could make a success of herself.
That she didn’t need to be a queen or even a princess.
“I don’t need to be turned into a robot. I want whoever I marry to marry me, not some elegant lie.” she said. “This is ridiculous.”
“Now,” he said, his voice stern. “That isn’t terribly polite, considering Madame Dansforth makes a living at this ridiculousness. It is her life’s work.”
Tinley turned to her instructor. “I didn’t mean your life’s work is ridiculous.” She turned back to Alex. “What I meant is it’s ridiculous to try to make me into something I’m not. I’m never going to be able to maintain anything like this.” She held her foot out, displaying the impractical high heel she was wearing. “I’m not going to be swanning around my house wearing things like this. So if I managed to impress a man, it’s going to be based on nothing but a lie that I will never be able to keep up for more than a few hours.”
“Best foot forward.”
She wiggled her toes. “Clumsy foot.”
She hated this. Because it reminded her so much of what it was like to be a clumsy, sad girl who couldn’t do anything right as far as her mother was concerned.
She took in a long, slow breath. And it caught, somewhere in the center of her chest, as her eyes met his.
“I am supposed to find a husband for you,” he said. “And I will do it by the means that I consider to be best.”
“And you never question your opinions?”
“I question them often,” he said. “Any leader should.” And she felt something bloom there at the center of her chest. Hot and reckless and strange. Irritation. Because it could be nothing more.
Because she resented him. Resented him, and the fact that he lived and breathed and stood there disapproving of her while his brother was gone.
That he had taken her here and manipulated the connection she still had to this family, to this place, against her.
That isn’t fair. You chose this. You chose this because you’re afraid to do anything else. Because you want to show your mother...
She shut that thought down.
Along with the reckless heat inside of her.
“How is dancing coming along?” he asked, not directing the question to her at all.
“We haven’t begun,” Madame Dansforth said.
“Then we will begin now.”
“The girl has not managed to walk across the room with the book on her head,” the madam snapped.
“Will she be walking across the ballroom with a book on her head?” Alex asked, his tone dry. “Because she will be dancing. So it is perhaps in her best interest if she practices one above the other.”
Madame Dansforth looked exasperated. “I have a method, and you did hire me to use it.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I’m still the King. And I’m overriding you now.”
There was a pause and if Tinley wasn’t mistaken, a hint of frost in the air. But the good madam knew better than to argue with a king.
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” the woman said.
It really was amazing how people deferred to him, even if they were irritated, as Madame Dansforth visibly was. It was only that no one dared say it to his face. That he was being high-handed. That he was overstepping. When he so clearly was.
When the music started, Alex turned to her.
“Dance,” he said. He extended his hand, and she looked at it, having the feeling that he had offered her a live spider.
“With you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I will be dancing with you the night of the ball. It is my job to present you.”
“That seems a little bit much.”
“It’s a dance,” he said. “Not a siege against your person.”
But for some reason, as she reached out to take his hand, slowly, ever so slowly, she felt as if they might be the same thing.
She thought of another moment. Another time.