She straightened. Mamma had spent her life teaching the paesani to read, and when she’d died, all that had stopped. For nearly a decade, Papà hadn’t just stalled Mamma’s plans to build a public library—a center of learning for all—he’d actively avoided it. It was meddlesome to want to dedicate her life to seeing the library built, to want to teach any and all who wanted to learn, just as Mamma had wanted? She huffed. “I want to do more than just be foisted onto royal bachelors,” she declared. “Is it so wrong to have dreams of something more?”
I think I like her...
