Love Sucks

Dearest Betrothed - Chap. Twenty-Seven

Evangeline kept her impatience hidden the best she could. Honestly, the way her mother and father were constantly talking, a conversation of quickly spluttered sentences, were starting to dip into Evie's tiny pool of tolerance.

They had been going on for what felt like hours, the gossip pin-pointed directly on Abigail - whom was sitting alone at the vacant, long, dining table. Evangeline's expression cringed into a frown at her friend's distress.

Where was that imbecile, Nathaniel? The way he had crossly departed before had been rather strange, yes, but the boy was still a no-show - in fact, Evie was positive she hadn't seen him since - and that left the poor, dainty little human to sulk by herself.

Or - at least, that's what it looked like Abbi was doing; eyebrows lowering into her smoldering amber gaze, whilst her lips melted down just a bit. Maybe she was just trying to be brooding, like the overbearing characters in a heavy, melodramatic romance novel with-

"Evangeline!" Liliane said sharply.

Evie started, her emerald stare jumping up to meet the mirrored pair of her mother's. "Oh - um - yes, the pie is very sensational; have you tried the cherry one yet? My goodness, it even has these little chunks of-"

"Evangeline!" The woman scolded again, raising a perfect brow as she assessed her daughter's sudden ill-bred behavior. "Did you hear what I said?"

Not a bloody word, Evie thought with ample righteousness. "Miss Worthington, you mean?" She guessed hopefully, watching as to her own relief, Liliane smiled and nodded thoughtfully.

"Indeed; the skinny runt is vile; they might as well confirm the rumors now, you can see the way Nathaniel watches her, and she clings to him. To think, I left you, my precious daughter, in a traitor's company!" Liliane huffed. "Alexander is an absolute fail of a father."

Evie doomed her mother to the fiery pits of hades with just one glance, but she didn't say anything - the last thing Abigail and Nathaniel needed was to be sentenced to death (well, actually, she supposed they didn't need that at all), and the rumors were already bad enough.

Some part of her wished hungrily for the chance to redo inviting the couple. As selfish as that seemed, the exposure as a pair was flaring every hearsay, and Evie's own parents were now whispering about the gauche show of social class.

Across the room, Patten emerged from what seemed to be a gawky dance with the stiff and chilling Penelope Gertrude, a vampire who appeared twenty, but had the dark eyes of a worn ninety-year-old. Even with enigma of vampire movement, he'd never really been good at dancing'; probably making it an uncomfortable waltz with the woman who created the concept of dull, more embarrassing than it already was.

Patten looked relieved, and surprisingly to Evie, his flashing eyes met her's in only the smallest, of singular seconds, and he smiled soothingly, the gesture immediately making her heart operate on hard-drive.

It almost seemed like he heard the spluttering of her internally pounding adoration, because Patten ducked his head, shoulders shaking with laughter.

That laugh, the uproarious chuckling that would take him over, was one of the many reasons she would never be able to explain her non-sensual affections for the boy. That laugh, was the reason behind every waking thought she would ever think, and it was that laugh that brought her back to the very first significance in which they'd spoken.

In just a handful of days, she would be his, and he would be her's; nothing would ever make Evangeline Wright as happy as she was now, especially when she was faced with the fact that her life would be evidently fulfilled, when she had him.