Retreat From Love Read Free

straight as pain and self-recrimination could make it. “I’m sure I did a great deal to warrant it. I hurt her, Freddy. As I said, I never came to see her after I returned.”
    “Yes, well, neither did I and she didn’t slap me.”
    “I guess she didn’t want to see you.”
    Freddy felt a stab of unreasonable jealousy. “Yes, well now you’ve hurt me.”
    Brett looked bleakly at him then. “By God, I’m having an exemplary day. I’ve hurt the two people in the world I’d least like to harm, it seems. Perhaps if I’m lucky I’ll find a puppy or two to kick on the way back to the Park.”
    Freddy was again amused in spite of himself. “If I’m lucky we’ll find a puppy or two to kick you .”
    * * * * *
    Late that night in her bed Anne turned onto her right side again, the move jerky with frustration. She’d been tossing and turning for hours.
    10
    Retreat From Love
    Her mother had known something was wrong the minute she came in the door this afternoon, but said nothing. She could convey more with silence than others could with a thousand words. Anne skipped dinner and went to bed early. She added guilt over not confiding in her mother to the list of things keeping her awake.
    He was here. At this moment he slept at Ashton Park. She could walk over to the Park and stand beneath his window right now. Well, if she knew in which of the many bedrooms he’d been housed. And what would she do there, she wondered with a self-deprecating snort as she lifted her head and punched her pillow down. Stand beneath his window and low like a lovesick calf? She fell onto her back with a thump against the mattress. An ignorant cow, more likely. Anne viciously yanked the pillow from under her head and covered her face with it. She hit him. With all her strength, meager though it was. And then she’d run, like a childish little ninny.
    He was so unbelievably handsome. Even more so than she’d imagined, and she’d imagined him countless times. But in her dreams he’d never looked as he did today.
    Thick, wavy dark hair, a devilish smile accented with a deep dimple in his chin, and dark, seductive eyes. And those shoulders! Even with the limp his legs had been long and well-muscled. Anne felt more than her face heating. She’d offered herself to him like the basest strumpet. What must he think of her? No more than she deserved certainly.
    How could she have hit him? He had every right to enjoy the company of any woman who offered. She had no claim on him whatsoever. He’d made that plain five years ago when he hadn’t responded to her letter inviting him here. What a fool she’d been to even offer. As if he had nowhere else to go. He was with Freddy, after all.
    The thought of Freddy made her uncomfortable. Her reaction to him made her uncomfortable. He was no longer that awkward boy who’d followed her and Bertie around like a stray pup when he managed to escape his tutor and his mama. He was every inch the duke now, a tall, handsome duke with a shock of dark red hair. And yet he was still Freddy, still Bertie’s sweet younger brother, and that connection pulled her to him.
    She couldn’t help but smile at the thought of dear Bertie. How she missed him! He had been her best friend. Everyone assumed he was the love of her life—that she had never married because she still loved him. The truth was she had never loved him like that. He had been the best friend she ever had. They had shared everything, every secret. They had dared everything too, including sex. When she became curious about it, who better than her best friend to satisfy that curiosity? But then Bertie had insisted on marriage, and she’d only been able to put him off when it was apparent she was not with child. She’d always planned to tell him after he came back from the Peninsula. But she’d never had the chance.
    And now here was young Freddy, all grown up into the powerful duke. Anne had heard stories around the neighborhood, of course. He and