A Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page B

rapists. Sometimes I worry about that look of terror in her eyes.”
    “What do you expect? All her life she has been totally protected. It’s hardly surprising after all, then, if she’s shy.”
    “No, but she’s almost eighteen now, and it’s going to be a real problem for her, unless she spends the rest of her life in Spain. In Paris she ought to be able to at least talk to a man without half a dozen women standing in the room, most, if not all, of them related to her.” He said it in a tone of amusement, but there was also something very serious in his eyes. He was looking long and hard at John Henry, sizing up the expression he still saw lingering in the American’s eyes. “She is lovely, isn’t she? It’s immodest of me to say it about my own daughter, but …” He spread his hands helplessly and smiled.
    And this time John Henry met his smile fully. “Lovely isn’t quite the right word.” And then in an almost boyish way he asked a question that brought a smile to Antoine’s eyes. “Will she dine with us this evening?”
    “If you don’t mind very much. I thought we’d dine here, and then we can stop in at my club. Matthieu de Bourgeon will be there this evening, and I’ve been promising him for months that I’d introduce you the next time you’re here.”
    “That sounds fine.” But it wasn’t Matthieu de Bourgeon that John Henry was thinking of when he smiled.
    He had managed to draw Raphaella out successfully that evening and yet again two days later when he had come to the house for tea. He had come especially to see her and brought her two books he hadtold her about at dinner two days before. She had blushed again and fallen once more into silence, but this time he was able to tease her back into chatting with him, and by the end of the afternoon they were almost friends. Over the next six months she came to regard him as a personage almost as revered and cherished as her father, and it was in the light of an uncle of sorts that she explained him to her mother when she went to Spain.
    It was during that trip that John Henry appeared at Santa Eugenia with her father. They stayed for only one brief weekend, during which John Henry successfully charmed Alejandra and the armies of others staying at Santa Eugenia that spring. It was then that Alejandra understood John Henry’s intentions, but Raphaella didn’t come to learn of them until the summer. It was the first week of her vacation, and she was due to fly to Madrid in a few days. In the meantime she was enjoying the last of her days in Paris, and when John Henry arrived, she urged him to come out with her for a walk along the Seine. They talked about the street artists and the children, and her face lit up when she told him about all of her cousins in Spain. She seemed to have a passion for the children, and she looked infinitely beautiful as she looked up at him with her huge dark eyes.
    “And how many do you want when you grow up, Raphaella?” He always said her name so deliberately. It pleased her. For an American it was a difficult name.
    “I am grown up.”
    “Are you? At eighteen?” He looked at her in amusement, and there was something odd in his eyes that she didn’t understand. Something tired and oldand wise and sad, as though for an instant he had thought of his son. They had talked about him too. And she had told him about her brother.
    “Yes, I am grown up. I’m going to the Sorbonne in the fall.” They had smiled at each other, and he had had to fight himself to keep from kissing her then and there.
    All the while, as they walked, he was wondering how he was going to ask her, and if he had gone totally mad for wanting to ask her at all. “Raphaella, have you ever thought about going to college in the States?” They were walking slowly along the Seine, dodging children, and she was gently pulling the petals off a flower. But she looked up at him and shook her head.
    “I don’t think I could.”
    “Why not? Your