125218.fb2 Never After - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 134

Never After - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 134

Her mother had been deaf to her pleas, and even now sat smiling at the other end of the huge banquet table. It was the celebration for midsummer. It was a time of games, dancing, bright colors, and looking the other way when some of the young girls and men went off by themselves. Many a hurried marriage followed midsummer. Elinore had always been a good girl. She had refused all those handsome young men. She had been dutiful, and pure, and everything a daughter should be. She had her mother’s long yellow hair; skin like milk that had never known a hard day in the sun. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers—by far her best feature, so her mother told her. She had her grandmother’s eyes—again, so she was told. Her grandmother had been a great beauty in her day, but sadly stubborn. Elinore was even named after that lost ancestress. She’d always been very unlike the dead grandmother. She had been pliable, and look where all that good behavior had gotten her.