The Secret Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

will stay warm enough.” She stood to face him. “We’ll talk first. If you didn’t know about my father, then you had another reason for coming. What was it?”
    He braced one hand against the casing at the side of the window and stood in statuesque rigidity, staring at the snow-covered trees and bushes. His broad shoulders strained the fabric of his finely tailored suit, making his size and the breadth of his shoulders appear even more massive. The deep claret of his jacket enhanced the golden bronze of his skin, giving it an even richer hue.
    Hair a thunderous mahogany lay in thick waves. The length in back touched the top of his white collar, the front combed to one side instead of in the fashionable part down the center. One dark lock fell errantly against his forehead, giving him a fierce, roguish look.
    Everything about the man gave him a foreboding mystery.
    There’d been a tough texture to his palms when he’d taken her hand. The calluses she’d felt told her he earned a living doing something other than sitting behind a desk or playing cards at his clubs.
    Stephen’s hands had been soft, the look in Stephen’s eyes gentle, until…
    Abigail focused on the scene he watched outside the windows. Snow had started to fall in huge flakes, the kind that blanketed the ground quickly and made the earth seem clean and new. She thought of her father lying beneath the snow, and the breath caught in her throat. “I want you to leave, Mr. Cambridge. I would like to be alone.”
    His shoulders lifted as he took a deep breath, then he turned and pinned her with the concentration of a swordsman ready to lunge.
    “You have something that belongs to my brother, Miss Langdon. I am here to get it.”
    His words struck her with the force of a deadly blow.
    He knew.
    Abigail clenched her hands around the back cushions of the chair and took one labored gasp after another.
    “Get out,” she rasped. “Get out of my house and leave me alone.”
    “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m sorry I have upset you, and I regret coming here on the day of your father’s funeral, but I will not leave until I have what belongs to my brother.”
    She shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    Abigail took one threatening step toward him. “Out! Get out!” She pointed a trembling finger toward the door.
    He came toward her. Even his footsteps sounded harsh and angry. He clamped his hands around her shoulders and glared into her eyes. “You have no right to keep what legally belongs to Stephen’s family, Miss Langdon. Surely you realize we cannot let you have something so valuable?”
    She shook her head, frantic to have him gone. Frantic to protect the only thing in the world she had left. How could he have found out? Who could have told him?
    “I don’t have anything that belongs to Stephen, or to you. Anything I have now belongs only to me.”
    “That’s not true.” He dropped his hands and reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter. A letter that bore her father’s seal.
    “Here. You can read this for yourself.”
    Abigail’s hands trembled violently as she reached for the letter. She unfolded the paper with the greatest trepidation, already knowing what her father had done. Before he’d died, her father had begged her to take her gift and give it back to Stephen’s family, but she could not. She would rather die than do a thing so unthinkable.
    She glared at the words written in her father’s hand and railed silently at the renegade tear that rolled down her cheek.
    She took a step away from him and sat in the nearest chair. “I will not give you anything.”
    “And I cannot let you keep it. If it is a fight you want—”
    He stopped, a hint of regret filtering through the look on his face.
    The room was suddenly stifling, the air suddenly too heavy to breathe. How could her father have done such a thing? How could he have invited Stephen’s brother back into their lives?