“This is absurd,” she mutters under her breath.
I don’t engage.
“Why are we even here?” she asks.
“I got summoned just like you did,” I say dryly. “That’s all I know.”
She snorts. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I thought you’d be too busy counting your unmerited inheritance.”
I ignore her taunt. “I never say no to an opportunity to learn something.”
“Oh?” She arches an eyebrow. “Then you must know, since you’re such alearner, that Millie is Geoffroy’s direct descendant. Not you.”
She won’t let me be gracious, will she?
“The other reason I’m here,” I add with a mean little smile, “is that one doesn’t decline a royal request even when one is a duke.”
Her glare slices through me. “We’ll see about that.”
I don’t speak anymore. I just stare at her.
The silence stretches out. The air in the previously chilly waiting room starts feeling hot and heavy.
“We’re going to court,” she says, voice low. “You know that, right?”
“I assumed.”
“We’ll bring up every oral commitment, every witness, every promise Geoffroy made in front of witnesses, including Prince Richard himself.”
I shrug. “Do it.”
Her brow lifts. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Threats don’t work on me. If anything, they make me dig in harder.”
She leans forward. “You think this is some kind of game?”
“No. I think it’s a mess.”
“A mess you’re making worse.”
“I’m following the law,” I point out. “Geoffroy didn’t leave a will. It’s not my fault.”
She clenches her hands. “He told me he’d broken the entail. He told Millie, Julian, Brigitte—everyone!”
“Well, obviously, he lied.”
She goes still.
As often in such situations, I wonder if my purely factual observation was too blunt and if I should’ve toned it down. It’s always hard to know which facts can be stated as they are and which should be modulated because they might hurt someone’s feelings.
Are Eva’s feelings hurt now?
It would seem they are. And that just confirms my “empty shell” assessment of her. One must be extremely unintelligent to believe Geoffroy was the kind of man who wouldn’t lie about something important. If she still thinks highly of him after sixteen years of living under the same roof and sleeping in the same bed, there’s nothing I can do for her.
Being dead doesn’t change the fact that he was a self-absorbed jerk in life. He couldn’t even be bothered to protect his own child!
Eva exhales sharply. “You don’t want this. You’re a math professor, Alex. You lecture. You do… equations?”
