Redeeming-Love-By-Francine-Rivers

F R A N C I N E R I V E R S
able. I have to find a groom so I can wear all those pretty unmentionables
Mama’s made for me and packed away in my trunk.”
Thinking of this sweet girl with Paul disturbed Angel greatly. “Pretty
things don’t mean very much, Miriam. They really don’t. Wait for someone
like Michael.” She could scarcely believe she had said it.
“There’s only one Michael, Amanda, and you’ve got him. What’s Paul
like?”
“The opposite of Michael.”
“So that would mean…ugly, weak, glum, and irreverent?”
“It’s not funny, Miriam.”
“You’re worse than Mama. She won’t tell me the least little thing about
men.”
“There’s not much to know. They all eat, defecate, have sex, and die,”
Angel said without thinking.
“You really are bitter, aren’t you?”
Angel winced inwardly. This girl couldn’t possibly understand. Not without
having experienced Duke. She should have kept her thoughts to herself
rather than blurt them out without forethought. What could she say? “I was
raped at eight by a grown man? When he got tired of me, he turned me over to
Sally, and she taught me how to do things a nice girl couldn’t even imagine?”
This girl should stay innocent, find a young man, marry him as a virgin,
bear his children, and have a family just like the one she came from. She
didn’t need to be polluted.
“Don’t ask me anything about men, Miriam. You wouldn’t like what I
would tell you.”
“I hope a man looks at me someday the way Michael looks at you.”
Angel didn’t tell her that men had been looking at her like that for longer
than she cared to remember. It didn’t mean anything at all.
“Papa says I need a strong man who’ll keep a firm hand on me,” Miriam
said. “But I want a man who needs me, too. I want someone who can be
tender as well as strong.”
Angel studied Miriam as she sat dreaming in the stall about her Prince
Charming. Maybe things would have been different if Michael had met
Miriam first. How could he have helped but love her? She was vivacious,
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