Winterset Read Online Free PDF

his hair with her fingertips. Warmth started deep in her abdomen. She remembered the touch of his lips on hers, the way heat had flared along his skin, the hard iron of his arms around her. Anna swallowed and looked away from him, praying that her face showed none of what she was feeling.
    Silence stretched between them awkwardly, until finally Anna rushed in with the first thing she could think of. “I was…surprised to learn that you had decided to return to Winterset.”
    “It seemed foolish to keep the house,” he replied. “I thought I should look at it…put it up for sale.”
    “That will be good,” Anna said, irritated by how stiffly her voice came out. She felt embarrassed and foolish, and she could not help but think about the fact that she was wearing her everyday bonnet and her sturdy walking boots and a quite ordinary dress. She must look like the veritable country mouse. Reed would probably wonder what he had ever seen in her. Why had she had the misfortune to run into him this way? And why the devil had he returned so early? She had thought she would have several more days to ready herself.
    “Yes, I am sure you must feel so,” he retorted in a clipped voice.
    He still hated her, she thought. It was what she had expected. A person did not forget slights—the son of a duke probably even less so than others. But she had not been able to explain it to him. She could not have borne the way he would have looked at her after that, the way he would have thought about her. Better that he think her callous and careless, an inveterate flirt.
    She cast about in her mind for something to say to alleviate the awkward silence. “I hope that they were able to get the house ready for you in time.”
    A trace of a smile so faint she wasn’t even sure it was there tugged at his lips for an instant. “I fear the butler was not best pleased to see me. Especially since I did not come alone.”
    Her eyes flew to his face at his words. Was he going to say that he was married? Had he brought his wife? His family? Anna’s heart squeezed within her chest. “Indeed? You brought a party with you?”
    “My sister and her husband. They thought they might be interested in purchasing Winterset. And my twin brothers—they were, once again, without a tutor.” His mouth curved into an actual smile now, albeit a rather rueful one, and his eyes lit with humor and affection.
    Anna remembered the look very well, and seeing it now was like a knife slicing through her. “Ah…Constantine and Alexander.”
    His eyebrows rose. “You remember their names? I am surprised.”
    She did not tell him that she remembered everything he had told her—nor that she had written them down in her journal like a lovesick schoolgirl. “They are difficult names to forget,” she told him quickly. “Two Greats in one family.”
    “They are difficult boys to forget, as well,” he went on in the same easy tone, without the earlier awkwardness that had been in his voice. Then he seemed to remember how things stood with them, for he looked away and his body shifted, returning to its former awkward stiffness.
    “I—how are you doing?” he continued abruptly, frowning down at her.
    “I am well, thank you,” Anna said, noting that there had been no real concern in his voice. He had sounded, in fact, more annoyed than anything else.
    “Then there has been…nothing unusual happening around here?”
    Anna looked at him oddly. What did he mean? Was he pointing out to her the dull contrast of her life to the exciting London life that he could have given her? She stiffened, her face turning defiant. “No. I fear that only the most ordinary things occur around Lower Fenley. It is not the sophisticated sort of place that you are accustomed to, I’m sure.”
    He raised a brow, obviously nettled by her words. “You have no idea what I am accustomed to,” he retorted sharply.
    He stopped, pressing his lips together as if to hold back whatever words had