Free Angel Sister by Ann H. Gabhart Page B

least not to Victor. Nadine wasn’t quite as sure about that.
    “Give me a few more weeks to let him get used to the idea,” she told Victor when he asked if he could come to her house to call upon her.
    “He’s never going to get used to the idea. He doesn’t like me. He’s never going to like me.” Victor didn’t see any use dancing around the truth.
    Nadine frowned at Victor. They had stolen a few minutes to talk outside the school before classes started. “What a thing to say! Of course he will like you once he gets to know you better. Right now he thinks you’re like your father.”
    “If that’s true, he’s the only person who ever thought that,” Victor said. He moved in front of her to block the cold wind off her face.
    She had her hands tucked inside the sleeves of the black wool coat one of the church members must have passed down to her. It was too short and showed a wide band of her dark blue skirt sticking out below it. She had let the hood of the coat fall off her head and the wind was blowing strands of her long honey-brown hair across her face. Her nose was red and her beautiful blue eyes were tearing up either from the chill wind or the stubbornness of their fathers.
    Victor’s hand shook a little as he smoothed back one of her curls. She was so lovely that it was all he could do not to reach out and fold her in his arms and kiss her. But Miss Penman, the head of the school, frowned on romantic embraces between students, so he restrained himself. “If only I could write a poem that would do your beauty justice.”
    “Beauty is only skin-deep,” she whispered.
    “Not in your case. You are beautiful inside and outside, through and through, and I love you completely. Desperately. With every inch of my heart and soul, and I always will to my dying day.” He wasn’t sure behind the school building was exactly the best place to first profess his love to her, but he didn’t wish his words back.
    Her eyes widened and she sounded breathless as she said, “I don’t know what to say.”
    He smiled down at her. “I could suggest a few words. Three notable ones if they are there in your heart.” He lightly touched the wool of her coat over her heart.
    She looked truly distressed that she couldn’t say the words of love he so wanted to hear. “It’s just that I can’t imagine what my father will say. Or do.”
    “Why worry about what your father will say? Why not worry about what you want to say?”
    She dropped her eyes away from his. “The bell is going to ring in a few minutes. We should go inside.”
    Victor put his hands on her shoulders to keep her from turning away from him. He hesitated and then pushed out his next words. “I hear your father has been visiting Carla Murphy.”
    Her eyes shot back to his with a flash of anger in them. “What do you mean by that? My father visits people in Rosey Corner all the time. They ask his spiritual counsel. He is a preacher. It’s his calling to help people.”
    Victor held his hands up and stepped back. “Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just repeating something somebody told me.”
    “Well, you shouldn’t listen to gossip. Maybe you should read in the Bible what James says about the dangers of an unbridled tongue.” She whirled away from him and stormed toward the front of the school.
    He waited a few minutes before he followed her. Perhaps he had been wrong to speak of Carla Murphy and the rumors going around Rosey Corner. Obviously Nadine wasn’t ready to surrender her spot in her father’s life to another woman. Obviously she wasn’t ready to step into the spot Victor had wide open in his own life for her.
    He hesitated on the steps into the school and thought about not going inside. He wanted to go down to the stable, get his horse, and ride away from here. To Frankfort or Lexington. Anywhere away from Rosey Corner. Anywhere away from the anger in Nadine’s eyes.
    How could she be so angry with him when he’d just