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Had it not been for the child she carried in her belly, Kingston would have been rather pleased to sit in silence, chewing his meat and watching his wretched wife choke on her food. It would have made for a lovely dinner time show and he often tuned her foreign ramblings out while picturing her face purpling and her eyes bulging on the opposite side of the table from him. He swallowed his bite, that very image entering his mind just as the real Odette clenched her jaw and made a pained expression. Blue-green eyes lifted from his plate, a slight hint of worry gracing his large forehead. His wife’s discomfort was nothing to him were it not for their unborn child. Kingston was many things, cold, callous, and pompous but he loved his children dearly. Any trauma to Odette that could be linked to his child was cause for concern. Hands dropping so that his wrists rested on the table, King watched as Odie recovered and moved to take a sip of wine, asking an idiotic question the process. The worry vanished from his brow, replaced by a slight scowl. “Such a mystery why a woman with no qualifications fit for anything other role would want to tend to the only creatures on the planet who can stand her presence.” He began carving at another piece of meat on his plate. “Perhaps we’ll figure it out someday.”

This game again. King set his jaw, grinding his teeth as Odie feigned ignorance of a language she’d spoken since she was a teen. If there had been any reasoning or understanding between the couple, he wouldn’t have faulted her for this game she played with him now, pretending not to understand the very clear words he was saying. He shouldn’t have faulted her because he did the same thing to her, in fact, he’d been the one to start it early in their arranged relationship. Kingston had spoken fluent French since he was three years old, but he would often pretend he couldn’t speak a lick of his wife’s foreign tongue just to get at her. Why he had ever started it was a reason long forgotten, but he kept up the practice now mostly because he loathed the woman who bore him his children. She was dull and vapid and nothing like he would have picked for himself were he given the option. A real language barrier would have been preferred but time to time he settled for a false one, humoring himself in the process, but he did not appreciate having the tables turned on himself.

King set to cutting his meat, purposely scratching the plate with a sharp, ear piercing scraping sound as Odie finally “realized” what he had been asking. Odette finished her poorly constructed sentence in French, but Kingston understood it easily enough that he didn’t need the translation she provided. “Perhaps one day you’ll see fit to mind your own children like a proper mother.” His bitter words were said just as he shoved a large piece of meat into his mouth. He looked forward to very little about his personal life but the girls were the one exception. He could have done with their shining faces after such a long day but instead his wife had seen fit to pawn them off on his sister as if she were their babysitter.

It had been a long, tedious day at work but still King was not looking forward to coming home. Rarely did he ever. His children were perfect and his home immaculate but sharing his quarters with his wife was not appealing in the slightest. Even worse was having to look at her self-righteously smug expression over tea. How someone so classically beautiful could look so utterly repulsing was impressive, and King had to give it to her, no one could sneer quite like his darling Odette. Her smile made him want to gouge out his own eyes and were it not for the alliance their marriage had created between their two great families, Kingston would have cut the woman out of his life long ago.

He arrived home later than he was expected, though there was no need for him to be concerned that he would be rushed at the door by a worried wife. She was probably enjoying her extra time apart from her husband. Had she any real ambitions she might have had a job herself, something of value to contribute instead of sitting on her ever-growing arse and teaching his children to loathe their father in the same manner their mother did. Supper was already served, the family supposedly gathered in the dinning room but when he stepped into the room, having shed his cloak in the foyer and left their servant to worry about putting it neatly away, he was not greeted with the smiling faces of his daughters. “Where are the girls?” he addressed his wife without greeting, barely looking her direction as he moved to the head of the table where an empty plate was waiting for him. The candles at the center of the table blocked most of the view of his wife, though they had burned down considerably in his absence and thus the top of her forehead was easily observed. He looked to his plate which was now filled with food, and he looked back across the length of the table to the annoying forehead and waited for a response.