Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(24)

“Bunny’s gone to a sleepover,” Kate said. She turned a page corner down and laid her book on the couch beside her. “What are we celebrating?”

“Ha! As if you didn’t know. Come on out to the kitchen with me.”

Kate stood up. She was beginning to feel uneasy.

“That Pyoder is a cagey one, isn’t he?” her father asked as he led the way to the kitchen. “He just slipped away from the lab while Bunny and her tutor were there; never said a word. I had no idea he’d gone to see you until he told me the news.”

“What news?”

Her father didn’t answer; he was opening the refrigerator and stooping to rummage at the back of it.

“What news are you talking about?” Kate asked him.

“Aha!” he said. He straightened and turned toward her, holding up a Chianti bottle that had been loosely re-corked.

“That’s several months old, Father.”

“Yes, but it’s been in the refrigerator all this time. You know my system. Get me some glasses.”

Kate reached up to the top shelf of the china cabinet. “Just tell me what we’re drinking to,” she said as she handed him two dusty wineglasses.

“Why, Pyoder says you like him now.”

“He does?”

“He says you two sat together in the backyard, and you fed him a delicious lunch, and you and he had a nice talk.”

“Well, I suppose that all more or less did happen, in a manner of speaking,” Kate said. “And? So?”

“So he has hope! He thinks this will work out!”

“Is that what he thinks! Oh, hang the man! He’s a lunatic!”

“Now, now,” her father said genially. He was pouring wine into the glasses, bunching up his mustache as he stood back to assess the level. “Five ounces,” he said, mostly to himself. He passed her a glass. “Sixteen seconds, please.”

She shut the glass in the microwave and stabbed the appropriate buttons. “What this proves,” she said, “is that it doesn’t pay to be polite to people. Honestly! He comes to the house uninvited, barges in without my say-so, and it’s true the front door was open which is so typical of Bunny, might I add—we could have been robbed blind for all she cared—but even so it was boorish of him to take advantage of it. Interrupts my nice quiet lunch, eats half of my roast beef sandwich, which I admit I did offer to him, but still, he could have turned it down; only a foreigner would pounce on it that way—”

“Aren’t you going to get that?” her father asked. He meant the microwave, which had dinged some time ago. He indicated it with a tilt of his chin.

“—and then look at how he twists things!” Kate said, exchanging the first glass for the second. She punched the buttons again. “What was I supposed to do: sit there in total silence? Naturally I talked to him, in a minimal kind of way. So now he has the nerve to say I like him!”

“But he is likable, isn’t he?” her father asked.

“We’re not talking about just liking, though,” she said. “You’re asking me to marry the guy.”

“No, no, no! Not immediately,” her father said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All I’m asking is that you take some time before you jump into any decision. Give my plan a little thought. Not too much thought, of course; it’s already April. But—”

“Father,” Kate began sternly.

“The wine?” he prompted her, with another tilt of his head.

She retrieved the second glass from the microwave, and he held the first glass aloft. “A toast!” he proposed. “To—”

She felt sure he was going to say “you and Pyoder,” but instead he said “keeping an open mind.”

He took a sip. Kate did not. She set her glass on the counter.

“Delicious,” he said. “I should share my system with Wine Enthusiast Magazine.”

He took another, deeper swallow. Now that the weather was warmer, he had abandoned the waffle-knit long-sleeved undershirts he wore all winter. His coverall sleeves were rolled up to expose his bare forearms, which were thin and black-haired and oddly frail. Kate felt an unexpected jolt of pity for him, over and above her exasperation. He was so inept-looking, so completely ill-equipped for the world around him.

Almost gently, she said, “Father. Face it. I will never agree to marry someone I’m not in love with.”

“In other cultures,” he said, “arranged marriages are—”

“We are not in another culture, and this is not an arranged marriage. This is human trafficking.”

“What?”

He looked horrified.

“Well, isn’t it? You’re trying to trade me off against my will. You’re sending me to live with a stranger, sleep with a stranger, just for your own personal gain. What is that if not trafficking?”

“Oh, my heavens!” he said. “Katherine. My goodness. I would never expect you to sleep with him.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No wonder you’ve been reluctant!”

“Then what did you expect?” she asked.

“Why, I just thought…I mean, goodness! There’s no need for that kind of thing,” he said. He took another slug of wine. He cleared his throat. “All I had in mind was, we would go on more or less as before except that Pyoder would move in with us. That much, I suppose, is unavoidable. But he would have Mrs. Larkin’s old room, and you would stay on in your room. I just assumed you knew that. Goodness gracious!”