Free Second Best Wife by Isobel Chace Page B

and Jennifer if you have any over. I'll pull my own weight, thank you very much!'
    He stopped her with a touch of his hand. 'Not against me you won't, my love!' He pulled her close against him and kissed the tip of her nose with a mockery that made her want to cry. 'Little Miss
    Independence!' he added on a laugh.
    CHAPTER FIVE
    The road to Kandy enchanted Georgina. She loved the changes in the scenery as they climbed further and further away from the sea. First there had been the coconut palms, their trunks weaving gorgeous patterns against the vivid blue sky; then there had been the paddy fields, some of them bright with water and some of them covered with the vivid green of the rice; and then, finally, there were the first of the tea plantations, hundreds of ruthlessly clipped back bushes marching their way across the higher slopes of the hill country, their lines keeping a military precision.
    There were the changes in the people too. In an island noted for its beautiful women, most of them seemed to be out in the streets that morning, smiling and waving and dodging out of the way of the constantly hooting traffic as they went about their tasks of the day. The clutter of shops, single-storied and bursting at the seams with fruit and coconuts and other local commodities, came and went, giving way to long stretches of teak forest, rubber plants, and other crops. But it was the rice fields that appealed most of all to Georgina. To see the water-buffaloes doing their twice yearly task of ploughing the inundated mud of the terraced fields, their owners urging them on to greater effort, was for her symbolic of a whole way of life she would never have seen anywhere in the familiar world of the West. This was what she had dreamed would be the stuff of the intriguing East.
    ‘Still want to go home?' William's voice cut across her contented thoughts.
    She shook her head. ‘No wonder they thought this must have been the Garden of Eden. Is it always so beautiful?'
    ‘Probably. The Buddhist temples help the scene along, don't you think? The shape of those stupas must be one of the most satisfactory ever invented by man.'
    Georgina followed where he was pointing to the domed buildings surmounted by a steeple, pencil-thin and narrowing towards the summit, and had to agree with him. ‘Some of them are very old, aren't they?' she asked.
    'Before we go home I'll take you to Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa where you can see some really old ones. They were building these huge domes here when we in Europe were congratulating ourselves on managing a few arches. Originally, they were built over a relic of the Lord Buddha, or of one of his more renowned followers, together with the treasure given by whoever had had the temple built as an act of devotion. I can't believe there were enough relics to go round for all of them, however, but it doesn't matter, for Buddha and his teachings are brought to the mind whenever one sees a stupa, or dagoba, or pagoda, as we call it in England, after a while.'
    'I'm surprised no one thought to steal the treasure,' Georgina remarked.
    'I've never heard that they ever did,' William told her. 'I rather like to think the Buddhist philosophy precludes such reprehensible vices as greed and violence. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't.'
    Georgina gave him a saucy look. 'I didn't know you had pacifist leanings. They don't show much, if you don't mind my saying so?'
    'It takes two to make peace, just as it takes two to quarrel,' he observed. He grinned suddenly, taking her breath away. 'Besides, I shouldn't like my warrior wife to find it dull living with me. As far as you're concerned, my girl, I give as good as I get!'
    It was strange to feel such a strong liking for her old enemy as she did now. 'I'm still one black eye to the good,' she reminded him. 'Perhaps it doesn't count,' she added, 'because I repented it almost at once. And it was partly your own fault. You practically dared me to hit you!'
    'I