Wild and Wanton Read Online Free PDF

followed the usual line of questioning an applicant for any kind of job could expect. Where did she live? What were her interests? Was she prepared to travel? Lindsay answered like someone in a trance, refusing to believe this was happening to her, giving Luisa Delmar the blind obedience the elderly woman had come to expect as her right.
    â€˜Are you committed to anyone, child? By that I mean, do you have a lover?’ Perceiving the blush touching Lindsay’s cheeks, she said, ‘I should explain that I use the word lover the way it was meant in my day. So, do you have a manfriend?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜How old are you?’
    â€˜Twenty-two.’
    All Lindsay’s other replies had been favorably received, but this one was met with a frown. ‘It’s no good!’ She tossed an angry look beyond Lindsay’s head to Nick Farraday. ‘In my day, yes! Today, seventeen would be suspect, but you know we agreed on nineteen, Nick, and a naive nineteen-year-old at that.’
    â€˜
You
said; I didn’t agree,’ Nick replied. ‘A giddy teenager would be equally impossible. We need someone who has reached the age of poise and inner tranquility. Admittedly, I thought she was younger. I thought she was a little girl playing at being a woman.’ Then Nick Farraday scowled at Lindsay, as if it were her fault that her parents hadn’t waited another three years before having her! The bubble of humor rising in her made her wonder if she ought to apologize for her parents’ lack of patience.
    â€˜It doesn’t make any difference,’ Nick Farraday announced abruptly. ‘I tell you, she
is
.’
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous!’ Luisa Delmar chided. A gleam of wickedness entered her eyes as she said, ‘I might be a doddering old woman who forgets day-to-day happenings, but there are things I can instantly recall. I know that while it is possible for you to know that she
isn’t,
you can’t claim to know the opposite.’
    â€˜You’re not a doddering old woman, you’re a wicked old woman, and this business of forgetting things is all a pretense to get attention. I tell you that I
do
know. A man can tell these things.’
    â€˜Stuff and nonsense! A woman needs only a minimal amount of intelligence to hoodwink a man at any time, and particularly about that. Don’t you agree, Lindsay?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Lindsay said, trembling in her elegant sandals at daring to contest this imperious lady, and feeling her stomach sink as apprehension at what she could be agreeing to quivered through her.
    â€˜Immaterial,’ Luisa Delmar snapped. ‘I’m sorry to have to put you through this, Lindsay, but it can’t be helped. Only a direct question will resolve this. Are you a virgin?’
    Embarrassment flooded Lindsay’s cheeks. It wouldn’t have been as bad if Nick Farraday’s glance hadn’t been playing over her face in unbridled amusement. She wriggled in discomfort, wishing she’d never set eyes on that outrageously handsome, arrogant, smirking countenance. If only the power of thought were such that it was possible for her to transport herself a million miles away.
    â€˜Do you want me to repeat the question?’ Luisa Delmar inquired, uncaring of the turmoil she was causing. ‘No, Madame,’ Lindsay whispered.
    â€˜No, you are not a virgin?’
    â€˜No, I don’t want you to repeat the question.’
    â€˜So you are a virgin?’
    â€˜Yes, Madame.’
    â€˜Why not say so in the first place? Why make such a song and dance about it? As for you, Nick, you can wipe that silly grin off your face, because it doesn’t make any difference. I’m not saying that I don’t believe the girl, because I do. She’s painfully honest.’
    â€˜Then
what
?’
    â€˜Do I have to remind you? Woman awakening . . . a young girl in a white dress with the dawning