The Sixth Victim by Tessa Harris

Author:Tessa Harris [Harris, Tessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-04-02T16:00:00+00:00

EMILY

I think her time is growing closer. I could tell from the outset that she was different. Her quick speech and willingness to engage stood her apart from the other bedraggled waifs. She was pleasing to the eye, but not so attractive to the opposite sex as to be a distraction. I did, however, find her large eyes quite captivating and her general mien intelligent and alert. She was older, of course, but at eighteen she was yet young enough to mold. I could still fashion her into a thing of refinement, sculpt her manners and her outlook. Yet, my task would have been futile, had she not been a most willing participant in her own transformation. She lapped up her education like a cat does cream. She devoured the books that I gave her to read, then sought out more—often less suitable ones—of her own volition. Her elocution, at least when speaking to me, was much improved. Her deportment, too, progressed as if she grew an extra inch in my presence. But there was more, a change perceptible only to me—a connection, a synthesis, a synergy, if you like. Between us, there was an undoubted chemistry. Whenever she read to me, or showed me her letters, or, latterly, when we began to discuss politics to a small degree, she would look at me as if to seek my approval in a way that I found both exciting and inspiring. There was an electric charge between us; the spark and fizz in her expression and manner, which had initially attracted me toward her, became quite magnetic. I had not managed to mold her, not entirely, but I had knocked off the hard edges, smoothed out those telltale irritations that make more genteel persons cringe and wince. And now I see that her physical metamorphosis appears to have created a vacuum. She is a glass awaiting a good vintage, a clasp open for a pearl. She is a vacant space ready to be filled, a room ready to be occupied. I think I am pushing at an open door.

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