Winterset Read Online Free PDF Page B

sprung to his lips. “I should never have come back here,” he went on, his voice bitter.
    “No, perhaps you should not,” Anna agreed, and turned quickly away to hide the sudden, unwelcome glint of tears that had sprung into her eyes.
    “Anna…” He started toward her, then stopped, a soft oath falling from his lips.
    Her throat was suddenly tight and full. She knew that she could not speak without bursting into tears. Hurriedly, Anna began to walk away. She could not bear it if he followed her, she thought. Yet when she heard the rustle of movement behind her, then his quiet command to his horse and the sound of the animal’s hooves as he pounded away from her, she felt perversely insulted. He was so eager to get away from her!
    She turned, looking back toward Reed. He was galloping away, a magnificent figure on his horse. Tears blurred her vision. Then she turned, blinking the water from her eyes, and strode toward home.
     
    As he rode home, Reed called himself ten times a fool. He had rushed to Winterset, unable to rid himself of the uneasy certainty left by his dream that Anna was in trouble—and equally unable to convince himself that there was no reason why he should be the person to help her out of whatever it was.
    But nothing had gone right since he made the decision to come here. He had come up with a most reasonable excuse for returning to Lower Fenley: He intended to sell Winterset. It made sense; he knew that a logical man—a man who was able to let go of a nonsensical romantic fantasy—would have sold it years ago. He could go back to Winterset to look it over and decide what repairs needed to be done in order to sell it, even stay to make sure that the renovations were done to his liking. It was a logical-enough idea that Anna would not assume that he had come there just to see her—especially not after three years had passed. It would also, he thought, be something that his family would accept without questioning him.
    He had bought the house three years ago when he had been seized with the idea that he should purchase a country house, a home of his own, separate and apart from his beloved and eccentric family. He envisioned it as the place where he would someday bring a bride and raise a family. Inquiries had brought up word of Winterset, a large manor house in Gloucestershire that had lain vacant for almost ten years. It had been the seat of the de Winter family, a noble family whose numbers had dwindled away over the years until there was only the last Lord de Winter left. Unmarried and childless, Lord Charles had left England ten years earlier for Barbados. Apparently he had decided not to return, and the house had been put up for sale by Sir Edmund Holcomb, de Winter’s brother-in-law and the guardian of his estate while Lord de Winter was abroad.
    A description and drawing of the house had intrigued Reed, and he had ridden to Gloucestershire to see the place for himself. What he had not expected was that on the first day he saw the house, he would meet the woman whom he wanted to be his bride.
    The house and surrounding grounds had been everything he had wanted—spacious and elegant, built of honey-colored stone, with just the sort of odd, piquant touches to make it intriguing—and he had bought it, then settled into the most-habitable wing while he began the process of rebuilding it. And as he did so, he courted Anna Holcomb. For a few weeks, he had spun happy dreams, but they had all ended the day he had asked her to marry him. She had rejected his suit in terms that allowed for no possibility of her changing her mind. The next morning Reed had left Winterset, and the house had once again sat empty.
    He had told no one in his family about what had happened at Winterset three years ago, except for his older brother, Theo, his closest sibling and one whom he could count on never to reveal a secret. The sympathy of his sisters had been more than he had thought he could bear at the time,