“Thanks. I’ve heard your experience has been large for one of your age.”
Ben’s eyes danced.
“Perhaps, yes. You appeal to things in me that I didn’t know were there—to all the senses of body and soul at once. Your strength of mind, with its conceits, and your quick little temper seem so odd and out of place, clothed in the gentleness of your beauty.”
“I was never more serious in my life. There are other things more personal about you that I do not like.”
“What?”
“Your cavalier habits.”
“Cavalier fiddlesticks. There are no Cavaliers in my country. We are all Covenanter and Huguenot folks. The idea that Southern boys are lazy loafing dreamers is a myth. I was raised on the catechism.”
“You love to fish and hunt and frolic—you flirt with every girl you meet, and you drink sometimes. I often feel that you are cruel and that I do not know you.”
Ben’s face grew serious, and the red scar in the edge of his hair suddenly became livid with the rush of blood.
“Perhaps I don’t mean that you shall know all yet,” he said slowly. “My ideal of a man is one that leads, charms, dominates, and yet eludes. I confess that I’m close kin to an angel and a devil, and that I await a woman’s hand to lead me into the ways of peace and life.”