The Summer of You Read Online Free PDF Page B

Then the year she turned thirteen, she had come back to school fully formed and intoxicated by its power, and everything turned. Now, after years and personal tragedy on both ends, adulthood made them see each other as people again.
    Funny thing, growing up.
    If only Jason would join her.
    “I wrote those when I was sixteen!” Jason had said, the veins in his neck sticking out like the roots of a tree as he loomed over her desk, trying his best to be threatening. Jane simply smiled and turned back to her correspondence.
    It was taking much longer than Jason liked to hire a qualified nursemaid, pack up the London house, and leave for the Cottage, and so he took the opportunity to whine, once again, about the method his sister employed in forcing him to accompany them.
    “Yes, I can tell,” Jane replied calmly. “Your hand and syntax drip of juvenile feeling.”
    “Damn it, Jane, those are my letters; you have no right to them!” he grumbled.
    Jane would have answered this argument, but she already had, repeatedly, over the past three days. Jason knew that if he hadn’t wanted the letters he wrote when he was sixteen to be discovered, he should not have left them in his quarters at the castle, stuck between the pages of a book on Tudor-era architectural jointure, which was wrapped in oilcloth and hidden beneath the floorboards . . . where anyone could find them.
    Especially a restless, lonely sister with (as her mother had once lovingly described her) no talent for anything other than mischief.
    “Come, come, Jason,” Jane tried for her most light and reasonable voice. “If I recall, you enjoyed your youth at the Cottage very much. Surely you would like to see it again.”
    Jason grunted in reply.
    “Besides,” she continued with a sly smile, “I also believe that the intended recipient of those letters is in Reston. Perhaps you’ll chance to see her again.”
    Never in her life did Jane think she would see a ghost—but that is exactly the shade Jason turned.
    “No,” he croaked, his voice like dry paper. “You can’t know.”
    “No?” she replied, all innocence. “Are you sure? I was certain you wrote them to Penelope Wilton. I know, I know, you addressed them merely to ‘P,’ but you described her golden hair and her beauty mark rather profusely. Although I have to categorize the paragraphs about her backside as adolescent fantasy—I hope you know by now that human beings aren’t meant to bend in the ways you described.”
    “AAAARRRGGHHH!” Jason let out, causing Jane’s quill to blot horribly on her missive to Phillippa. “Jane—please, I am reduced to begging. Please, please, please . . . allow me to forego this trip. If I stay, you and Father could leave immediately—there would be no need to close up the house. And I could work on my paper to present to the Historical Society. I promise, I would visit often—write more so. Can’t you see it would be for the best? You know what to do for Father—I would be useless to him.”
    He was kneeling in front of her, prostrating himself before her mercy. Jane looked into her brother’s face. They shared the deep inky brown eyes and red hair of their mother, but otherwise Jason was so like their father: his jaw set, his aristocratic nose long and stubborn. His face and frame still had some of its boyish narrowness, but an extra layer of flesh had been added by his wine- and food-laden European excursion. All it did was make him seem younger than his four and twenty years. And, as he knelt before Jane, completely and wholly vulnerable, she felt her resolve crumble. Slightly.
    “Oh, Jason,” she said, placing a consoling hand on his shoulder, “I did not take into account how difficult the journey would be for you. Of course you should stay in London.”
    Jason’s face broke out into the most beatific grin. Goodness, the thought struck her, he could be very charming when he wished. “You are terribly understanding—absolutely cracking,