Free Ghosts of Winter by Rebecca S. Buck

she did to keep fit. With a figure like hers, it was clearly something strenuous.
    “To the right.” We walked, leaving smudged footprints in the dust, into the next room, and I gestured at the impassable locked door. “Of course we might find the skeletal remains of a long-dead lunatic cousin behind it,” I added, as we regarded it together.
    “You remind me of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey .” Anna managed to make it sound like a genuine criticism.
    “Sorry. Active imagination I guess. You like Jane Austen?”
    “Doesn’t everyone?” Anna had a unique intonation, giving me the impression I’d asked her a question with the most obvious answer in the world.
    “I suppose,” I said, mildly surprised. She didn’t strike me as someone who would particularly enjoy reading of any kind, but I guessed Austen’s biting sarcasm would probably appeal to her. I decided to probe further. “I always wanted to be Lizzie Bennett myself,” I said. “I guess most girls do when they read Pride and Prejudice .”
    “I wanted to be Mr. Darcy,” she replied nonchalantly, as though there was nothing unexpected in her words, and certainly no joke. I narrowed my eyes slightly but could think of no suitable response. Anna was such a conundrum.  I wondered what else she did and didn’t like, in reading and life in general. She was so infuriatingly intriguing. I began to see that a lot more lay below her controlled surface, just waiting to be discovered. I grew uncomfortably conscious that part of me wanted to be the one to uncover her secrets.
    I glanced at her as she looked down at the keys in her hand and at the keyhole below the handle of the door. Despite the measured lack of excitement in her tone, I could see she was almost as curious as I was to discover what, if anything, lay behind this door. Her glasses had slipped low on her small nose as she peered down at the key in her hand. She straightened, pushing them back into place, wrinkling her nose slightly as she did so. The movement was girlish and unaffected, and combined with the determination with which she looked back at the door, all of her illusion of professionalism and lack of interest was dislodged. I saw the woman she was and the girl she had been in one arresting moment, and my heart stuttered.
    “I think this might be the one.” She held up one of the keys. I was thankful she remained ignorant of the sudden emotion that gripped me and which I now forced myself to struggle against.
    “Give it a go.” I watched eagerly as she stepped towards the door. The key was small and not at all rusted. She gripped it in those slender, short-nailed fingers. They were the sort of fingers that I knew would be talented. She could draw, that was a must of her career. Her handshake was firm to the point of crushing. I would have bet she played the piano, but it seemed an odd question to ask of her at that moment. Overwhelmed by an unaccountable urge to take her hand in mine and stroke those fingers, hold them to me and feel what their soft tips were like against my face, my stomach tightened and I felt my pulse in a lower place where I’d thought I wouldn’t feel anything for a long time. Thank goodness Anna was too intent on trying to fit the key into the lock to pay me and my turbulent feelings any attention.
    She eased the key in carefully. It slid into the hole without a problem, then she paused and turned to smile slightly at me. I hoped my face didn’t look as hot as it felt. “Moment of truth,” she said, turning the key. Her eyes lingered on mine, and uneasy with the direct nature of her gaze, I dropped mine to her hand. I saw her fingertips turn white as she strained against the aged stiffness of the mechanism, but after a moment, there was a loud click and the key turned.
    “Well done,” I said enthusiastically, “you were right first time.”
    Her pale cheeks had turned just a shade pinker. She looked happier and my answering smile was not just