Iron Lace by Lorena Dureau Read Free Book Online

nice," she
concluded lamely and fell into an uneasy silence.
    "And I haven't forgotten my promise to take you and your
sister to the theater, either," Vidal continued, hoping he could put
their relationship on a more friendly basis. "If I get good reports
from your governess about you, I'll take you the end of next week."
    "That would be nice," Monique repeated as she shifted
self-consciously on the bench, acutely aware of his nearness as he bent
his knee and leaned forward slightly on his booted foot and a
disturbing masculine scent of tobacco and lavender tickled her
nostrils. It was a pleasant odor, strangely appealing. Celeste had been
right to call him handsome, and he was especially so in his brown
riding habit, with the tousled locks of his blue-black hair cut
stylishly short about his face and the slightly longer back neatly
braided with a black ribbon into a short queue at the nape of his neck.
It was difficult to continue hating someone who had brought her such
lovely gifts, had just promised to buy her a new harpsichord, and was
going to take her to the theater!
    But suddenly she felt guilty, as though she were betraying
the memory of her mother. She could well imagine what Eugenie Chausson
would have said at that moment. The latter would have called Miguel
Vidal an overbearing, presumptuous Spaniard, intruding on their lives
and dispensing favors which, for the most part, could have been
obtained sooner or later with or without him as her guardian.
    "You know, Monica," he was saying, "although music and the
theater may both be important to gracious living, you shouldn't scorn
your sewing and other household activities so completely. Granted, you
have servants, but you should know how to do such things for yourself,
if only to be able to better instruct those under you when the time
comes for you to be mistress of your own house. I'm sure you'd like to
marry someday and have your own home… a husband…
children… right?"
    She shrugged her blue puff sleeves listlessly. "That's
what Maurice keeps saying, too," she sighed.
    Vidal put his booted foot back on the ground and planted
himself in front of her. "Maurice? And who, pray tell, is Maurice?"
    "Oh, just a young man I know."
    "You must know him quite well if he has already spoken of
marriage to you."
    Monique sensed a sudden sternness creeping into his tone
once more. "Oh, he's a beau of mine," she replied with a flippant toss
of her head, suddenly enjoying the opportunity to boast a little of a
suitor. Now perhaps her pompous guardian would stop thinking of her as
only a child and treat her more like the grown-up woman she really was.
    "Well, this Maurice had better present himself in the
proper manner and ask permission first to call on you before he even
entertains any thoughts of marriage," he snapped. "Are you interested
in this young man?"
    "Oh, I guess I like him the best of all my beaux," she
replied pertly. "I have several, you know." She could sense she was
ruffling that usually frustrating calm of his and was rather enjoying
it.
    "I don't doubt you do," he retorted dryly, "but, of
course, you realize you're too young to take any of them seriously yet."
    "Oh, I don't know… After all, I'm seventeen.
Many women my age are already married and have a couple of children."
    "Well, I do know, my little cousin, and you may look like
a woman outwardly, but you're far from being one inwardly. There will
be time enough to think of matrimony once you're of age."
    "But that's almost four years away!"
    "You're exaggerating, but it only goes to show how much
growing up you have to do yet."
    "Do you mean I have to be tied to your will all that time
before I can do as I please?"
    "The only way you could contest my authority over you
would be to go to the courts and ask that they emancipate you before
you're twenty-one, but before they would even consider your petition,
your grandmother and I would have to testify that we feel you're old
enough to be responsible for