Read A Christmas Escape for Free Online Page A

whether you would like it or not. You might be scandalized.” She glanced sideways at him to see his reaction.
    “Were you?” he returned.
    “Oh, no.” She sounded very grown-up, and looked so terribly young.
    He thought immediately that she had been just a little upset by it, but she would never admit it. She was on the brink of adulthood; it lay ahead of her, whether she was ready for it or not. And from the tiny bit he knew of her, he was quite sure she would embrace it. She would never retreat from life, even when it might be wiser to do so.
    “Then I think I might manage it,” he said conversationally. “If I can’t, then it will do me good to be scandalized.”
    She considered that in silence for several steps.
    “Why do you think it would upset me?” He was too curious to let it go.
    She weighed her answer while they walked another fifty yards or so. The track through the grasses was quite clear now, but there were still a few steep bits that required concentration.
    “It’s the way men think about women,” she said at last. “I mean, if men fall in love with women, they sort of…” She very deliberately did not look at him. She seemed to be watching her step in the grasses, but he knew she was avoiding his eyes.
    He waited for her to continue. He was interested in what she was going to say, but on the other hand, he did not want to embarrass her.
    “They expect them to be all very pure and obedient,” she went on in a rush. “We’re not supposed to be told about anything…scandalous. It isn’t ladylike. Women who enjoy that kind of thing are bad. Actually I think I would rather be bad.” There was a flush of color on the side of her face that he could see.
    He was very careful not to smile. At this moment she looked so very young. He could easily understand the weight of Finbar’s responsibility.
    She walked for several more paces before she turned to face him.
    “Have you any daughters?” she asked.
    It was the last comment he had expected.
    “No. No, I’m sorry to say, I haven’t.” He
was
sorry. Right at this moment he would like to have had a daughter more than anything else he could think of: a bright, funny, sensitive, impossibly brave daughter.
    “Oh. I’m sorry.” She was instantly contrite. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Uncle Roger says I ask all sorts of things I shouldn’t. I just thought you might, because you seem to understand me. We can be friends, though, can’t we? So I can still ask you things?”
    “Of course we can,” Charles agreed. His throat was choked with emotion. He was being absurd! He had never thought much about children before, and when he had, he had pictured sons. Now, in the space of a day, he felt as if he had been bereaved of an important pleasure.
    She smiled at him, shy and pleased. Then suddenly she increased her pace, and the next time she spoke it was about old, ordinary subjects.
    “Mr. Walker-Bailey says that Quinn is really a poor writer, which is just stupid, because everyone says the book is a masterpiece. He also says that Quinn will never write another one. What do you think?”
    “I think I need to read it,” Charles replied quite seriously. “I admit, from what you say of the book, and the heroine of it, Lucy…?”
    “Yes, Lucy. Nobody ever says what her other name is.”
    “Right, Lucy…she doesn’t sound like the sort of woman whom Quinn would understand at all, never mind create. Which goes to show that we have no idea what people are like inside.”
    She smiled at him again. “Of course we don’t. That’s marvelous, don’t you think? You could have all sorts of passionate dreams, wounds inside and no one else can see them, unless you allow them to.” Her face clouded again. “But of course lots of people don’t want to see. They don’t care. I care! Don’t you?”
    That was a hard question to answer. The truth was that until now he had not cared greatly. Maybe that was part of his unhappiness. But he could