Page 81 of Winterset

She set the journal back in the trunk and glanced around the room. “It is so cold in here.” She rubbed her arms again. “I want to leave this place.”

“Of course.” Reed took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. They had been kneeling on the floor beside the trunk, and he stood up, reaching down to offer his hand to her.

Her hand was ice cold. Reed looked down into her face. It was pale, her eyes huge and haunted. He put his arm around her shoulders, sweeping her out of the room and down the stairs to his study.

“Here. Sit down.” He led her to the sofa that sat at one end of the room, then turned and walked across the room to the liquor cabinet, where he poured whisky from the decanter into two cut crystal glasses. He returned to Anna and handed her one. “Drink this.”

Anna looked doubtfully down at the strong-smelling liquid, then back at Reed.

“Trust me. It’ll put some color back into your cheeks,” he told her, taking a sip of his own drink.

Anna took a sip, and the whisky roared back through her throat and down into her stomach like liquid fire. She coughed, her eyes beginning to water. “How do you stand that?”

“You get used to it.” Reed smiled. “Take another drink. You’ll feel better.”

Obediently, Anna had another swallow before she set her glass on the table beside her. “I don’t know if I will ever feel better.”

“Did you feel something from the room?” Reed asked. “The way you did in the room off the gallery?”

“Not at first—or, at least, only a little. It wasn’t the same as the feelings I’ve had before. It just made me…uneasy, I guess, is the word for it. But the longer we stayed there, as we looked through his journals, I felt more…a kind of dark anger and…something that was like pleasure, but sick and repulsive. It was so cold, down-to-the-bone cold. I thought I might start shivering and never stop.”

“Cold. Like he was,” Reed commented.

“Oh, Reed, I cannot bear to think that that man was my grandfather!” Anna exclaimed. “He was evil through and through.” She turned to look at Reed, her blue eyes shining with tears. “I feel so ashamed, so sick, that I am related to him. His mania, his illness, runs through us. It is bred in me.”

“No, no!” Reed quickly set his drink aside and reached out to Anna, pulling her into his arms. “You are not mad. Whatever was wrong with Lord Roger de Winter, it is not in you. There is no evil in you—of that, I am sure.”

“But these things I see…” Anna cried out softly. “My feelings, my visions, whatever you want to call them. Don’t you see? He saw things, heard things. My uncle sees things, too. The Angel Gabriel speaks to him.”

“That doesn’t make you mad,” Reed retorted. “The things that your uncle sees, that the old Lord de Winter saw—those were figments of their imagination. The things you have sensed, or ‘seen,’ were things that had actually happened or were about to happen. They were very real things. Besides, you did not believe that they were playing out in front of you. You knew they were visions, that they had happened at some other time or in some other place.”

“Yes…”

“But your uncle believes that the angel is standing right there talking to him.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“So what you see is different. You are not like your uncle, and certainly you are not like your grandfather.”

“I wish I could truly believe that,” Anna sighed.

“Believe it. Listen, I have a large number of relatives whom I would rather not possess. We all do. My grandmother was the terror of the family. And my great-aunt, Lady Rochester, has a tongue that would blister paint. Great-Uncle Ballard lives in fear of her still. And you think they aren’t peculiar? My grandmother swore that she talked to her dead husband—and he answered. Lady Rochester has a vast array of wigs, all of them quite atrocious, which she switches as if they were hats, believing, apparently, that none of us notice that her hair is red one day and black the next. And my cousin Albert is an utter nodcock.”

“But none of them have murdered people.”

“Not that we know of, though, frankly, I would not put it past my grandmother. My point is that we cannot choose our relatives. We are simply stuck with them. But their actions, their lives, do not determine ours. I am not like my grandmother. You are not like your grandfather. I know you regret what he did. I do, too. But you are no more responsible for his actions than I am. You must not blame yourself. It took place almost fifty years ago. You cannot change what happened. You cannot put it right. And the man who did it has nothing to do with you. Whatever he was, you are a wonderful, kind, beautiful human being. That is what is important, not your grandfather.”

“Oh, Reed…” Anna let out a breathy little sigh. “It is so easy to believe that when I hear you say it. When I am with you, nothing seems to be so bad.”

“There is nothing bad. Not in you.” He kissed the top of her head. Her hair was like silk beneath his lips; her perfume teased at his nostrils. He raised a hand to her cheek, gently running his finger along it. “You are so beautiful.”

Anna’s heart seemed to skip a beat. The whisky she had drunk had turned her warm inside, making the cold recede. At the touch of Reed’s finger upon her cheek, the heat spread out through her body. She turned her face up toward his, and she was caught in his gaze.

“Anna…” His voice was barely more than a whisper, and the sound of it sent a tremor through her.

For a long moment, they did not move. Indeed, they scarcely seemed to breathe, as though the slightest movement might break the moment.

Then, knowing that she should not, Anna stretched up toward him. She wanted to feel the touch of his lips upon hers. She wanted to have his hands on her body. Everything inside her yearned for him.