Janice Johnson - The Daughter Merger

Once in herself, Grace repeated her praise. “What about you?” she asked David. “Did you ever do any acting?”

“Actually, I did,” he stunned her by saying. “I even played Benedick in Much Ado, once upon a time.”

“You did?” his daughter exclaimed from the back-seat. She sounded as if he’d admitted to having flown to the moon or served time for murder one.

“Uh-huh.” He was smart enough to keep his response low-key. Starting the car and pulling on to the street, David continued, “I acted in both high school and college. Not during football season—I was a wide receiver. But the rest of the year…heck, I did A Streetcar Named Desire, Inherit the Wind…probably a dozen plays.”

“Well.” Grace tried very hard not to sound as poleaxed as Claire had. “I can see you as Benedick,” she heard herself saying, and realized it was true.

He shot her a glance. “Flailing against the inevitable?”

Marriage and love, he meant. Benedick had been determined never to take a wife. To his horror, his friends fell one by one to the lure of gentle women—or, perhaps more accurately, to the lure of the manors and acres with which fathers were willing to dower daughters of marriageable age. And Benedick, poor Benedick, loved a sharp-tongued spinster without even knowing it, until she taunted him into admitting to his weakness. And until she admitted to needing him.

Grace wondered if Benedick had tried marriage once before, and failed. Shakespeare hadn’t said, not that she recalled. Benedick might well have been a man who didn’t know how to tell his daughter he loved her. He was rather clumsy about expressing affection.

She could hardly say that, however. “I was thinking more of his cynicism.”

Could a man’s eyes smile when his mouth hadn’t curved?

“So you think I’m a cynic,” he murmured.

“What’s a cynic?” Linnet piped up.

“Somebody who thinks everything is going to turn out bad,” Claire said.

“Not exactly.” Grace smiled over her shoulder at the two girls. “That’s a pessimist. A cynic is more somebody who thinks everyone is really behaving selfishly no matter how it appears on the surface.”

“You mean, like saying Mother Teresa was only in it for the press?” Claire suggested.

“Uh…I have a feeling that even a cynic would have a tough time with her.” A laugh bubbling in her throat, Grace took a shy look at David. “Shall we ask our resident expert?”

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