A Christmas Escape Read Free

again.
    “You think that’s a good description, don’t you?” he observed.
    “Yes…I’m sorry. Is that rude of me? Please don’t tell Uncle Roger I said so.” She looked at him with a flicker of anxiety.
    “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promised. “I shall no doubt meet Mr. Bailey and form my own opinion of him. I might agree with you.”
    “And don’t be too hard on Colonel Bretherton,” she urged. “He’s quite nice, if you give him a chance. He really likes Mrs. Bailey. I think he’s sorry for her.”
    “Is something wrong with Mrs. Bailey?” Charles asked.
    She rolled her eyes and gave him a withering look. She did not bother to reply.
    “I see,” he said quietly. “And Mr. Quinn, what is he like?” He didn’t really care, but he was amused to hear her opinion of everyone.
    “Oh, he’s a writer,” she said without hesitation. “Everybody says he’s terribly good.”
    “Everybody?”
    “Well…except for Mr. Bailey,” she said, biting her lip. “He keeps making remarks that could have different meanings. He says that the book is so terribly clever, it’s as if Mr. Quinn had been there himself—only the way he says it, it sounds as though he doesn’t mean it. That he means something else entirely.”
    “Well, maybe Mr. Quinn was there?” Charles suggested. “Couldn’t he have been?”
    She laughed. “Hardly! Actually the book he’s famous for is wonderful. I wasn’t supposed to read it because it’s very grown-up. Uncle Roger says it’s much too risqué for me. But I think it’s marvelous.”
    Now Charles was really interested. How had this at once innocent and precocious child come across a copy of this apparently unsuitable book?
    “So you’ve read it?” He feigned a degree of innocence himself.
    She bit her lip. “You think I shouldn’t have? I was told not to.” She looked at him with a certain defiance, her dark blue eyes meeting his unblinkingly. Then she smiled and turned away. “It isn’t really bad, you know. It’s just…about a woman who cares very much about being alive. It’s full of laughter.”
    “What is it called?” He knew he had not read it himself because he had not read anything purely for pleasure in years.
    “
Fire
,” Candace replied.
    A memory came back to him of a conversation he had half listened to at some party or other. “
Fire
,” he repeated. “By Percival Quinn?”
    “Yes, yes,” she responded eagerly. “You do know it!”
    “I know
of
it. It’s quite famous, although very recent. Well, well! So we have Percival Quinn here. How interesting…”
    She pursed her mouth. “Don’t be too pleased. He’s not nearly as interesting as the book. Honestly, I’m not being mean—he really isn’t. That’s more or less what Mr. Bailey keeps saying.”
    “Perhaps he’s shy? Mr. Quinn, I mean.”
    She rolled her eyes again, gently this time, as if she were being very patient with someone a trifle slow-witted.
    “They don’t like each other, Charles.” She tried out his name shyly, but with a touch of pleasure, as if she were being grown-up, equal for the first time. “What they say to each other is really all about themselves and how they feel. Our neighbor back home has children who do that. They’re about eight!” She giggled again.
    In spite of himself he smiled, almost laughed. “But it’s a good book? Did you read enough of it to know what it’s about?”
    “Oh, yes! It’s the story of an old lady. She’s remembering all the wonderful things she did in her life. The people she loved and hated. All the admirers she had. You don’t always know if she really did what she’s describing, or if it’s just that she wanted to—but it seems like she saw everything, tasted it all, and had such fun!” She looked up at the mountain, then back at Charles. “I’d like to be like her, always really alive, never taking anything for granted, never being ordinary. She’d have liked it here. She’d have liked that mountain.