Re: [jude & hannah: tea]
She listened as he painted the picture of the handsome Scot. She'd read a few novels set in the Scottish highlands, but they were all lairds and kilts and marriages to genteel girls who didn't know how to survive on the hard land and among the hard people. In those novels, the girl always came to see the error of her ways, and the laird always fell in love, and everyone lived happily ever after. She wondered if Louis had the makings of a laird, and she stopped twirling her teacup as she considered the possibility. "He can't be too handsome, or he really won't work as a Scottish laird in a novel," she told him. "They can be handsome, but they have to be rough too. A few scars help in Scottish heroes. Does he have scars?" She wasn't sure Louis sounded like he was the kind of man that would have scars.
She peeked beneath the table, looking at her shoes and long skirt, and then she peered at him, still bent, from over the table. "I don't think I'm dressed for climbing trees," she teased, and then she sat up entirely and leaned back against her chair's back. She took the teacup in her hand now, tugged away from the table and near to her chest. "I've never climbed a tree," she admitted.
Religion was falsity to Hannah, but she knew it was something people were really touchy about, and so she didn't push, and she didn't question. She just listened. She thought people who believed, who really believed, would disagree with him about the story being believed or not, but she wasn't really sure. She listened. "I find that people who believe think it's really important in their lives," she finally said, because that was truth irrefutable.
But onward and romance novels, and she shook her head. "Oh, no, the way they begin is really important. It's the tension that makes it romantic when they come together at the end. The beginning is everything in those types of books. They aren't really smart books, and everyone does really stupid things and makes really stupid choices, but that makes them fun. They aren't well-behaved like Jane Bennet, and they aren't apologetic about it at all." She put her teacup down, empty now, and she stated emphatically and with newly acquired expertise: "I think it's really boring when people are always nice and always say the right things and never do anything ill-planned. I know people want to be like that, but it's really boring."
She considered who she would be, and she watched him tug at his curls. "I'd want to be Hester Prynne. She had an affair and refused to tattle, and I'm not sure you could keep a crazy wife hidden in the attic."