CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

As soon as Jennifer shut the door to her room, Paul went to the bookcase and reached for the book she had held in her hand. He opened it and looked at the flyleaf. What would make her study his signature in that way? He expected that people in the town had spoken of him to her, most likely weaving strange tales about which they knew nothing. Could such stories be affecting her in some mysterious way? He could tell by her taste in music and books that Jennifer was a romantic. Her literature was overwhelmingly slanted toward the nineteenth century romantics—the Brontës, Dickens, Eliot; and her music was heavy with Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

Oddly, her taste greatly matched his. He sat in his favorite chair and lit his pipe, book on his lap.

Whatever had gone on in that peculiar female mind of hers tonight? But then, well had he learned that the female mind was impossible to understand, or to place any faith in. What had caused her to stare at his books so? He took several puffs on his pipe as he pondered those questions.

Finally, he shook his head at his foolish reaction to the skinny baggage. Why should he care what she thought? If only he had scared her off that first night, he would have been spared such anxieties. It troubled him that he had allowed even one iota of his incorporeal self to feel any concern about her.

He must make Jennifer leave Squire House immediately … although he did have to admit that, generally speaking, it was rather pleasant having her there. She was actually an intelligent, sensitive woman—a species Paul thought did not exist. The image of her out in the world, alone, was strangely distasteful.

He took the book and flung it back into the bookcase, where it landed sideways on the shelf. Paul didn’t notice this, however, because he had, at the same time, shut the bookcase’s door and hurled himself back into his chair. He sat and brooded over the situation the rest of the night.