Daddy's Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

credit.”
    “For not wearing that disgusting sweatshirt to bed?”
    “Exactly.” They both smiled, and Nat stroked his chest under the covers. “You too tired?”
    “For what?”
    Actually, Nat wanted to tell him about the vice dean and the trip to the prison, but men never stay up to talk about work. “For Happy Birthday.”
    “Now that’s worth missing Conan for,” he said, rolling over and giving her a deep kiss.
    After they had made love, Hank fell fast asleep, but Nat tossed and turned. She couldn’t stop thinking about her seminar or the prison trip. She regretted saying yes to Angus. She should have just begged off. She even had work to do, writing another article that no one would read. What would she do at a prison? More important, what would she wear ? How do you dress to look terrible?
    Nat turned over and shut her eyes. She would have switched on the light and read but then she’d never get to sleep. She tried to relax, breathing in the sweetness of the dark bedroom, with the chill of winter safely at bay and the man she loved slumbering beside her. In time, she drifted off, and at the threshold of sleep, she remembered the birthday poem.
    My heart is gladder than all these , because my love is come to me.

CHAPTER 4

    N at and Angus were driving in his sunflower-yellow VW Beetle along a one-lane road that wound up and down through the snow-covered hills of the Pennsylvania countryside. Angus had been pleasant company on the drive from the city, and Nat was relieved to note that he didn’t smell like a controlled substance this morning.
    “It’s gorgeous out here,” she said, looking out the car window. The mid-morning sun climbed a cloudless sky, late to work as it lingered behind the barren branches of winter trees. They drove past a field of snow, its glazed veneer broken in patches from horses, which stood together under worn blue blankets, nosing the snow from habit or in vain hope of grass. Their long necks stretched down with a quiet grace, and chalky steam wreathed their muzzles.
    “This is southern Chester County, the Brandywine River Valley. Wyeth Country.” Angus downshifted around a curve. “The Wyeths live around here, and the Brandywine River Museum’s not far, in Chadds Ford. Ever been to the museum?”
    “No.”
    “I go there all the time. It’s dedicated to the Wyeth family. They have Andrew and his son Jamie, and N.C., the grandfather. Newell Convers Wyeth, the patriarch. I love his stuff.”
    “Why?”
    “The colors. The light. The superheroes. He was more into people than landscapes. He started out as an illustrator of adventure books. Old N.C. was a painter of knights and pirates, and I can relate.”
    “To the knights or the pirates?”
    “To the painter,” Angus answered, and Nat smiled. She sat enveloped in her toggle coat, unusually near him in the forced intimacy of the small car. Up close, he had intelligent, if narrow, blue eyes and heavy eyebrows of a darker gold shade. His thick hair, barely contained by an orange rubber band, still looked uncombed, and he wore the same clothes as yesterday; a faded blue workshirt, its wrinkled collar sticking out from underneath a thick fisherman’s sweater, worn with jeans and boots. He barely fit in the driver’s seat and looked as incongruous in a VW as a Viking.
    “That house is a funny color,” Nat said, as they passed a Colonial-scale home, its gray stone shining oddly green.
    “It’s the copper in the stone, leaching through. Have you ever been out this way, in Chester County?”
    “No, but I do a chapter on the Fugitive Slave Act in my seminar.”
    “What’s that have to do with Chester County?”
    “Chester County was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. On a map, you can see that it’s just north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Quakers down here, especially from the Longwood Progressive Meeting, brought thousands of slaves north.”
    “Longwood? That’s not far, about half an hour.” Silence