Circles of Fate Read Online Free PDF Page B

his.
    â€œAnd then?”
    A faint pink prickled his skin and just for a second he had the look of a man who carried an intolerable burden. “And then, when you’ve had your sleep, we’ll go shopping. We’ll shop for all the things you didn’t pack into the big case which, luckily, I brought on ahead for you. That is, if your ankle will permit it.”
    â€œI’ve already told you, it feels much better.” A shiver of guilt ran down her spine. Not only was it wrong to tease Edward, it was a mistake. And yet he would treat her like a child!
    His hand was on the knob of the door, preparatively, when she called him back. “Edward, I’m twenty-two.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œJust that I’ve grown up. I’m a woman.”
    â€œI know you’re a woman.”
    â€œDo you? I’ve wondered. I’ve been tempted to show you my birth certificate.”
    He came back into the centre of the room. He seemed to bristle with interest. “Why didn’t you?”
    â€œBecause I haven’t been able to find it.”
    A frown touched his forehead. “Wasn’t it with your mother’s insurance policies and other important documents?”
    â€œNo. If I ever need to produce my birth certificate, I shall have to write for a copy.”
    â€œBut you have needed to produce it. When you applied for your passport, prior to this holiday.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t. I already had my passport.” He still looked puzzled, so she explained: “When Mother first took ill, we thought it was something or nothing, and that she needed a holiday. We decided on France – Mother expressed a wish to tour the Loire Valley. But, although the preparations were well advanced, it was not to be.”
    â€œI take it Inez did all the arranging. You didn’t actually see your birth certificate?”
    â€œYes, to the first. No, to the second. Is it important?”
    â€œNo, of course not.” He made an exasperated self-deprecatory gesture.
    â€œIt seems to be a habit I’ve got into. Picking the conversation to the bone.”
    It seemed very quiet when he’d gone. She closed the shutters and took off her clothes and hurried herself between coarse white sheets that smelt of the sun. The room should have been deliciously cool with the shutters closed. It was shaded in a green twilight, but it was still warm. She wiped the dampness from her forehead with the back of her hand. Everybody said that when she turned her back on music, she had renounced the vital part of her life. But they were wrong, because her mother’s going had done that. Something tight and solid began to unknot and dissolve, and she could cry. She couldn’t find her handkerchief, so she wiped her tears on the coarse white sheet that smelt of the sun. Edward had told her to cry, but she had insisted that she wasn’t a crier, and yet she had cried yesterday on a strange man’s shoulder and she was crying today in a strange bed.
    Edward understood. Did he miss her mother, too? Was that the reason ... she made herself go on, the reason for his tender concern that always stopped short of blossoming into the intimate interest a man feels for a woman? Did she need to be as tender with him as he was with her? The shock-thought stopped her tears. Lovely as she was, she had never thought of her mother as a woman desirable to men. Daughters never do. And, of course, her mother had never shown a spark of interest in any man other than the husband she’d lost after only four months of marriage. Anita thought her father must have been a remarkable man to have inspired such constancy and devotion.
    Their courtship had not been an easy one. Inez had been protected and guarded as though she were a rare jewel. In her father’s eyes she was. His only child, how proud he must have felt when he offered her hand in marriage to the son of his best friend. Inez