Portrait of My Heart Read Free Page B

parents. This was illustrated by the clod of dirt she promptly launched in her brother John’s direction when he failed effectively to carry out her orders.
    “And have you managed to talk your father into letting you attend that Parisian art school you were telling me about, Maggie?” Pegeen wanted to know.

    “No,” Maggie said. She couldn’t keep a note of sullenness from creeping into her voice. “He’s terrified that the moment I set foot off English soil unescorted, I shall allow myself to be seduced and whisked off to Morocco and sold as chattel to some Arab prince.”
    “Maggie!” Anne’s teacup went crashing back into its saucer.
    Lady Herbert echoed her eldest daughter’s astonishment, though in a considerably milder tone of voice: “Really, Maggie. What in heaven’s name are you talking about? Your father thinks no such thing.”
    “He does, though,” Maggie said, leaning back against the trunk of the cherry tree with a sigh. “Papa’s quite aware of my peculiarly carnal inclinations.”
    “Maggie!” Anne’s cheeks had gone crimson with mortification. “How many times do I have to beg you not to use words like … like”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“ carnal in public conversation?” Turning toward Pegeen, she pleaded, “Oh, do stop laughing, Lady Edward. You’ll only encourage her.”
    “Oh!” Pegeen wiped tears of laughter from the corners of her green eyes. “Oh, dear! Maggie, my dear, you mustn’t, you really mustn’t say things like that. You’ll end up getting a reputation—”
    “With whom?” Maggie asked disgustedly. “The local tenant farmers? I hardly think they care whether or not I use the word carnal .”
    “Not the tenant farmers, Maggie dear,” Lady Herbert said gently. “Young men.”
    “What young men?” Maggie reached behind her and began scraping bark away from the cherry-tree trunk with a sharp stick she’d found in the fresh spring grass. “The only young men around here are the ones herding sheep, and I’ll wager there’s not much they don’t know about carnality.”
    “Maggie!” Anne looked as if she would have very much liked to pinch her little sister. Unfortunately, the size of her swollen belly forbade quick movements, and she knew from past experience that she’d have had to be very quick indeed
if she wanted to pinch Maggie and escape a reciprocal slap. “For heaven’s sake!”
    Maggie shrugged. “Well,” she said. “It’s the truth.”
    “Yes, but you’re nearly seventeen, now, dear.” Anne spoke with obviously forced patience. “You’ll be coming out next year. The young men you’ll meet during your first season in London won’t care to hear about your, er, inclinations—”
    “Actually,” Pegeen interrupted thoughtfully, “I’m quite certain they’d love hearing about it, but I’m not sure it’s something Maggie ought to go about advertising … .”
    “There,” Anne declared. “You hear that, Maggie? Listen to Lady Edward. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. If you’re going to find yourself a husband in London, you’re going to have to start acting more like a lady—”
    “I don’t want to act like a lady,” Maggie muttered, the full of her concentration on the hole she was gouging in the trunk of the tree. “If acting like a lady means doing nothing all day but attend dress fittings—” She grunted as a good chunk of bark gave way beneath the point of her stick. “And nothing all night but listen to the insipid conversation of idiotic baronets—”
    “What are you doing to that tree?” Lady Herbert demanded. “Come sit down and put away that dirty stick.”
    Maggie dropped the stick, but she did not sit down. Instead, she pressed her back against the hole she’d made in the tree trunk. She didn’t know why she’d felt compelled to take out her aggression upon an innocent tree, but she felt that, overall, the tree was a better choice than her elder sister.
    “If you