Second Best Wife by Isobel Chace Read Free Book Online Page A

gets hurt?'
    Her gaze flew to the yellow smudge that was all that was left of the black eye she had given him.
    'Only with you,' she confided. 'You're the only person I've ever hated.' She swallowed, summoning up all the reserves she had at her disposal. 'I wish I were as nasty as you think me,' she said passionately, 'and I'd make you wish you'd never been born!'
    His smile widened. 'You can try,' he invited her.
    He turned away from her, settling back in his seat, and began to read the printed menu he had found in the pocket in front of him. 'Good lord, they don't mean us to starve! Two dinners and three breakfasts! That ought to hold us for a few hours after we get there!'
    Georgina slept fairly well until the vast aeroplane prepared to come down at Bombay. She had watched the pirate film that had been provided for their entertainment, but had been unable to keep her mind on the rather trite story. She had enjoyed the fencing, though. She had done some fencing herself while she had been away at college and she found that that knowledge added to rather than detracted from the carefully staged fights on the screen.
    She had taken some pleasure in telling William that the heroine was very much better with the foil than the hero.
    'Are you a female chauvinist as well?' he had asked her. 'I am when she has to work quite so hard not to disarm him entirely,' she had retorted. 'She could take him apart any time she chose!'
    'It wouldn't do much for the story line,' he had observed. 'The helpless maiden rescuing the knight in shining armour doesn't sound right. That's the trouble with women these days, they won't stick to their own role in life.'
    'Wailing and weeping on the sidelines went out with crinolines,' she had said with satisfaction. 'We've learned it's better to rely on ourselves since then. It's better to make one's own mistakes.'
    'And have two heads in every household?'
    She had considered the point carefully, sure he had laid a trap for her. 'I suppose it works better when the man is the head and the woman the heart of the family, but some men abdicate their responsibilities and then the woman has to step in or the children suffer.'
    He had picked up her hand in his, examining the ring on her finger. 'I shan't abdicate my responsibilities,' he had said.
    It wasn't possible to get any accurate impressions of what Bombay was really like. Circling over it as they came down to refuel at the International Airport, it looked much smaller than Georgina had imagined it to be. But then, from the air, all India looked the same dun colour and practically uninhabited. The teeming millions of India were nowhere to be seen.
    'Next stop Colombo,' said William.
    'And then where?'
    'Nowhere today. I'll be picking up a car tomorrow and then we'll drive up to Kandy and settle in. Today, we'll sleep off the flight and catch up with ourselves.'
    'And see Colombo?' she prompted him.
    He shook his head. 'There'll be plenty of time for that. Don't look like that, Georgie. We're going to do things my way and it simply doesn't pay to rush about the moment you get off an aeroplane after a long flight. You'll see the whole island before we go home, I promise you. Only not today.'
    She looked up at him through her lashes. 'You're still angry,' she accused him. 'It will take more than that to spoil my pleasure, though. Everyone says Sri Lanka is a beautiful place, and even you can't make it ugly just to spite me!'
    He was taken aback by the attack. 'My dear Georgina, hasn't anyone ever told you about the effects of jet lag? If you want to make yourself ill, by all means take yourself off and visit the museum, or anywhere else you want to go. I'm going to bed!'
    She wondered if she wanted to brave an unknown city in an unknown world by herself and came to the conclusion she didn't.
    'You're sure it isn't because you want to ruin things for me?' she demanded, still suspicious.
    'My revenge will be a great deal more subtle than that,' he told her.