“Distasteful?” She said in strangled tones. “Do you imagine for a moment I don’t know how to cope with something distasteful?”

Harriet dug her fingernails into her palms, the anger that surged through her familiar and like nothing she had ever wanted to experience again. When Gideon had died her gilded world had been shattered and she had wanted to hurl the shards that remained at anyone that came near her – that anger had pulsated below her skin like a current and this… this was different.

Because losing Gideon, much as she had cared for him, had not broken her heart. But her darling boy ignoring her definitely had.

“Why?” She asked, tears very nearly in her eyes.