She did not apologise – how low his expectations had been for her, and how effortlessly she managed not to even meet them – but Phineas’ raging resentment lessened to a more controlled simmering when she at least stopped smirking. He was standing too close to her not to have noticed how her lips had pursed slightly, how her jaw had tightened – but although she might be furious with him, Phineas rather thought she looked decidedly more dignified now. (And with that haughty dignity, it brought out all her best features again; those slate grey eyes, those full lips, her shapely eyebrows and nose and chin, the flawless arch of her neck...)
He released her forearm and let his hand and his gaze both fall away from her, only half-listening to her railing at him now. If he knew her less well, he could almost feign to himself that Ursula actually missed him, or was truly jealous of his commitments to the school over her. But the sad truth was she cared little for him in particular; no, he knew full well that all she cared about was whether she was being adequately smothered in attention at home, and whether she was admired by all outside it.
And the apology he wanted from her never would come, of course. His lip curled, more at himself for even bothering to ask her for so much as that. “I regret to inform you,” he said with a sigh, though of course this was an old, stale conversation, “that some of us do have other important duties in life for which we must divide our attentions. It is unfortunate that you, who has only ever had one,” (to him, as her present husband; even raising the children was hardly her absolute concern), “could not find the will to uphold it.”
It struck him that her constant baiting here might be all part of her ploy to make him to leave for Hogwarts sooner than he had just insinuated. Phineas was ashamed to admit it was working.
He released her forearm and let his hand and his gaze both fall away from her, only half-listening to her railing at him now. If he knew her less well, he could almost feign to himself that Ursula actually missed him, or was truly jealous of his commitments to the school over her. But the sad truth was she cared little for him in particular; no, he knew full well that all she cared about was whether she was being adequately smothered in attention at home, and whether she was admired by all outside it.
And the apology he wanted from her never would come, of course. His lip curled, more at himself for even bothering to ask her for so much as that. “I regret to inform you,” he said with a sigh, though of course this was an old, stale conversation, “that some of us do have other important duties in life for which we must divide our attentions. It is unfortunate that you, who has only ever had one,” (to him, as her present husband; even raising the children was hardly her absolute concern), “could not find the will to uphold it.”
It struck him that her constant baiting here might be all part of her ploy to make him to leave for Hogwarts sooner than he had just insinuated. Phineas was ashamed to admit it was working.
