current state. Except... That would have been true if Tinley had been unchanged by her time with Alex.
But she had been. Utterly and completely.
Walking into her mother’s drawing room, her inner sanctum, made Tinley’s chest go tight, but she didn’t feel nervous. She didn’t feel cowed or afraid.
Her mother was lounging on a chaise, her red hair more a dark copper, sleek and twisted up into an elegant chignon. “Tinley,” she said. “I’m quite surprised to see you here.”
“Why is that? I am your daughter.”
“You haven’t been here for the past four years. Why would you show your face now? Especially in light of your broken engagement to King Alexius. It is being talked about in all of the important social circles. Soon to be in the news, I suspect. Though, I must admit, the dissolution of the arrangement surprises me less than the arrangement itself.”
“How wonderfully predictable for you, then,” Tinley said.
And if she meant that it was predictable her mother had said such a thing, and not that the turn of events was predictable, it was open to interpretation.
“Well,” she said. “What will you do now?”
“I don’t know. I’ll continue to work with my charity. I’m going to be putting on more events. Speaking more.”
“It’s quite fashionable to be involved in charities, Tinley, but not really in the way you do it.”
“I don’t care about being fashionable.”
Her mother’s brows rose a fraction. “Oh?”
“Why does that surprise you? I’ve never done anything to indicate that I cared about being in fashion.”
“I assume that you couldn’t,” her mother said, “not that you wouldn’t.”
It was a strange thing, because her mother was being hurtful, that was undeniable. But she was also being...genuine. And suddenly Tinley saw things through an entirely different lens. Her mother truly believed these things. That Tinley would be happier only if she found favor with the fashionable people. That she would be happier with a certain measure of status. That she would be happier if her hair was straight or her freckles faded.
“We don’t want the same things,” Tinley said. “I want... I want to make a difference. And I want to spend less than five minutes on my hair in the morning. I want to find a man who loves me.” It made her chest catch to say it. “Who loves me as much as I love him. And I don’t care if he’s a king. A prince. A pauper. It doesn’t matter. I just want someone to love me. With my five-minute hair and my unfashionable charitable pursuits. With my cat and my other animals. I just want to be me. I’m... I’m happy with myself.”
“That’s impossible,” her mother said. “Nobody’s happy with themselves.”
Tinley’s heart crumpled. “I... You believe that, don’t you?”
“The public is never entirely happy with anything I do,” her mother said. “How can I be happy with it, then?”
“There’s always room for improving yourself, mom, and I don’t mean looks. I mean your heart. What does it matter if your hair sits just right if the content of who you are is all wrong? That’s what I work at. It’s what I’m trying to find my way with. I want to be happy with the person I am in my heart. The rest of it doesn’t much matter.”
“The press doesn’t care about your heart.”
“And I don’t care about the press. So it’s all fine then.”
“Tinley...”
“I love him,” Tinley said. “I hope you know that. I’m actually heartbroken. Because I was in love with Alex. I’ve been in love with him for a long time. But I didn’t care about being his Queen. That was why I was there. It was why I was with him.”
“Love? Darling, in the grand scheme of all the years you will be joined to a man, love doesn’t mean much of anything. You need to want the life that he can bring you.”
“Things, Mum, you’re talking about things. I don’t care about things. I care about...” She imagined then, the way that he had lain on top of her in the grass. The way that he had come for her in the wood. How beautiful he found her in sweats or a ball gown. “It’s not in the house you live in. It’s in the small things between you.”
“Small things won’t keep you fed. I married a man with influence, in hopes that my child might have influence. Might have better.”
“I do have better. It’s just not the better you wished I wanted.” She let that truth