Cleaning Up - Part 3

Yoreholder sighed watching him. "You expect too much from yourself, boy," she said. "If your enemies were to see just how earnest you are about simple things like this, they would not paint you into such a monster."

"Which enemies are those, Professor?" Oliver said, feigning ignorance. His was an enemy that he couldn't name in polite company, after all.

"You know as well as I," the Professor said. "The powerful, would be one way to put it. The sort of enemy that no sane noble would go against, if they had reason to. The sort of enemy that I counselled my husband against going against. He would have supported you, you know, if not for my interference – but I talked him out of it."