She was taken aback, her shoulders hunched up as if someone had just thrown something at her. Constance tried to keep her face from turning sour as Luna began cutting into her, but the woman was too worn out from her battle of trying to hide the pained expressions to keep up any sort of facade. Her eyes narrowed until they were little more than slits, her face wrinkling as if she had just taken a sip of a wine that had turned into vinegar. She could feel her heartbeat quicken as Luna accused her of the most absurd of things? Constance, treat Luna like rubbish? Not once, there was not one single time that Constance could ever remember being rude to the little ingrate, not that she didn’t deserve a harsh word or even a slap from the way that she had behaved cooly towards Constance. It was almost as if the nurse did not like her. 

[i]That’s absolutely impossible,[/i] thought Constance, her thinned lip twisting up into a smirk. [i]Is she joking?[/i]

And her story had been quite the happy one! Constance had deserved a better life, and she had achieved a better life; it was practically a fairytale (and, considering some of the glossed over details, about as accurate as one to boot). It wasn’t her fault that the people she left behind in the Bottoms deserved their position in life; besides, she had grown up with them, and she knew what a beastly lot they were. Helping even one of them would be an open invitation for a knife to appear between her ribs, and that was a fact. 

Constance was growing more and more convinced that Luna just did not understand anything—the prude. She had only been trying to make a joke and besides, even though it was true, it was just the nurses that Constance knew that were such fast women. She didn’t know all the nurses in the world, that would be absurd, and she most definitely didn’t know the ones that came from the convent Luna had apparently been schooled at. 

The wealthy woman’s body language began to shift from the initial shock to one of a more cruel confidence. Her copper eyes widened and shined with an almost marvel, and her smirk grew into a rather toothy smile, not unlike the kind seen on dogs before they bite a hand. Her shoulders relaxed as she also stood to her full height. She was already taller than the woman, and her boots gave her another inch or two, her nose turned up ever so slightly as the woman inadvertently complimented her for becoming what she, or at least she supposed Luna thought that she should, hate. Yes, it was absolutely dreadful being smart, sophisticated, and successful; truly, she had become a monster! [i]The horror,[/i] she thought, shaking her head in amusement as Luna continued to make a buffoon out of herself.

“Okay,” she said as Luna finish divulging her entire reason for being aboard the Garrloch, her gloved hand perched underneath her chin. She flashed Edward a sideways, somewhat guilty glance before looking back at the shaking Luna, her smile softening into something that almost sold her as being sympathetic. Constance could have torn into the other woman, hell, a good part of her felt she was damned justified to do so after having her good character slandered, dragged through the mud, and then assassinated in front of a reporter, but she bit her tongue [i]because[/i] they were in front of a reporter. 

“I can see that you’re upset,” she said, her words measured and calculated as she began to highroad the other woman, “and I’m sorry if I happened to offend you. I was only trying to have a little fun. I’m positive that you’d be an absolutely fantastic doctor one day.” [i]But not unless you fix your dreadful bedside manners and give me a proper apology,[/i] she thought, knowing how easy it would be to whisper into the few necessary ears to make the nurse’s dream an impossibility. Constance gave Edward another look, trying to silently signal him to help bail her out of this horrendously uncomfortable position Luna had put her in.