So Many Bees

Ella let her gaze flit to the minder, and she stared at them for a moment. Why don't you tell someone? That the minder is misbehaving? An unsettling grin found her features, though she softened it after a moment. They deserve punishment if they act against your wishes. As long as those wishes are within the purview of the rules the minder has received, they must oblige.

Talk turned to the letter at hand, and Novella hummed. My wife is... eccentric. She worries, often. She was coming daily, in attempts to see me. Sometimes I think she'd stay outside quietly, waiting for me to pass a window. She chuckled at the absurd idea, and yet, she knew her wife was most likely to do that. Though, she'd not shown hide nor face since her father promised he'd take care of it.

She's... very loyal to me, but we were an arranged marriage. And we see our duties as spouses very differently. She believes that she should care for me, and doesn't understand that she upsets my... She tapped her temple. If we must lie to her to make her worry less, it won't mar my conscience any. She nodded once; vaguely wondering if she had a conscience in the first place.

She held the letter she had received; read by Malachai or one of the doctors on hand prior to coming to her hands, out to Ophelia. This is what we are responding to. She'd avoided answering questions about where Ophelia had seen her before; but the letter's sign-off would certainly clue the other woman in to who Ella was married to.

My older brother looks after Kaczor and my daughter, in my absence. She explained, as if that made it better that lying didn't affect her ability to sleep at night.

@Ophelia Jolfy