Page 50 of Winterset

“How did they die?” Reed asked.

“They were caught in a fire in the summerhouse,” Anna said. “I’m really not sure of the details. They died when my mother was quite young, only three or so, and she didn’t remember her parents. She was raised by her aunt—my grandmother’s sister—who lived in London.”

“She did not grow up here?” Reed asked, surprised.

“No. My uncle was away at school when their parents died. He was ten or twelve years older than my mother, and he had already gone off to Eton. Except for occasional visits, I presume the house must have stood empty for several years then, too. I believe he returned here when he finished at Eton, but my mother, of course, remained with her aunt until after her debut.”

“Did she meet your father in London, then?”

“No. After her first Season, she came here to stay with her brother for a few months. It was then that she met my father. An unequal match, some said. She was a beauty, and the de Winters were of higher birth. But she didn’t care for that. She and my father loved each other very much.”

Anna was unaware of how her face softened and her eyes warmed as she talked about her parents, but Reed could clearly see her grow even lovelier as she talked. He looked down at her, a more carnal heat stirring in him.

“My parents, too, were a love match,” he told her, and he could not keep his fingers from trailing lightly down her arm.

Anna’s breath quickened in her throat. She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, and the heat she saw in them set up an answering warmth in her own loins. She remembered the moment earlier in the library when she had thought that he was going to kiss her. She wondered if he was going to now.

She wanted him to kiss her. However foolish or wrong it was, she wanted to feel his lips on hers, wanted to have his hands on her arms, sliding up over her bare skin, his fingers pressing into her flesh. Anna trembled, her lips parting slightly.

His eyes went to her mouth, and they burned suddenly with a silver fire. “Anna…you are so beautiful.”

Would it be so wrong? she wondered. Would it be so terrible to kiss him, to taste for a moment the joy, the pleasure, that she would never have?

But she knew the answer, even as she thought the question. Kissing Reed would only make everything harder. A taste of what she had given up would only leave her wanting more. And Reed…it would be unconscionable to do that to him. To stir his desire again. To let him know that desire still burned in her.

Anna stepped back, her gaze shifting away from him, even as everything inside her screamed not to.

“We ought to get back to the doctor’s journals,” she said stiffly.

“Of course.”

Anna glanced back at Reed. His face was set, his eyes unreadable. He extended his arm to her in a stiff, formal way. Anna took it; his muscles felt like iron beneath the sleeve of his jacket. They walked back to the house, the distance between them palpable.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the library. Reed took a seat across the table from Anna, and he started on the doctor’s notes again, while Anne read some of the articles from the clippings that the doctor had given them.

The newspaper articles were by and large lurid accounts, full of overblown language and possessing few facts. They wrote of the innocent girl “ripped from life” and made references to the bloody legend of a “ravening beast” who roamed the area. They made, in fact, a great deal out of nothing, and Anna soon realized that they had learned far more from the few pages of the doctor’s notes than they would from the stacks of articles.

“These are useless,” she said at last, tossing down the clipping she had been reading.

Reed glanced across at her with a rueful smile on his face. He had finished with the doctor’s journals and had read a few of the articles, too. “I fear you are right.”

He stood, rolling his shoulders to get out the kinks put there by hours of reading. He strolled across to the window and glanced out. “It’s gotten dark.” He paused for a moment, then said neutrally, “Will you stay for supper? If I know the cook, it is nigh ready. We adhere to country hours here, apparently.”

Anna glanced down at the papers as if they could tell her what to do. “I—Kit will be expecting me.”

“I can send a groom over with a note, explaining.”

She wavered. The thought of dining alone with Reed, chatting and laughing, was appealing. That was the problem, of course. It was too appealing.

“No,” she said firmly, standing up and giving him a false smile. “I must go. I have spent all day on this, and there are things I need to attend to at home.”

He acquiesced gracefully, with no further urgings for her to stay, and a few minutes later the carriage was brought around. Anna found, perversely, that she was a little disappointed by his seeming lack of interest in whether or not she left.

He rode home with her in the carriage, making plans for the morrow, and bade her a polite goodbye at her door. Anna went inside, only to find that Kit had sent a note home saying that he had been delayed at one of the farms and would be taking his evening meal there. So she dined in lonely state in the small dining room and spent the evening reading in her room, reminding herself now and then why she had chosen to live her life without Reed Moreland.

* * *

It was something she had to remind herself of on several occasions during the next few days. She spent most of her time with Reed, searching for answers about the murders, both past and present, and, despite the gruesome subject, those days were some of the happiest she had spent in years.