Free Tracie Peterson by Bridal Blessings Page A

herself.
    “There is no need for anything to be between us,” Amelia said, trying hard to keep her voice steady.
How could this one man affect my entire being? She couldn’t understand the surge of emotions, nor was she sure she wanted to.
    “It’s a little late to take that stand, isn’t it?” Logan asked in a whisper.
    Amelia reeled on her heel as though the words had been hot coals placed upon her head. “I’m sure I don’t understand your meaning, Mr. Reed,” she said emphasizing his name. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other matters to consider.”
    “Like planting English roses?” he teased.
    Her mouth dropped open only slightly before she composed her expression. “Have we lent ourselves to that most repulsive habit of eavesdropping, Mr. Reed?”
    Logan laughed. “Who could help but overhear Lady Gambett and her suggestions? It hardly seemed possible to not hear the woman.”
    Amelia tried to suppress her smile but couldn’t.
Oh, but this man made her blood run hot and cold. Hot and cold.
She remembered Logan stating just that analysis of her back in Greeley. Just when she was determined to be unaffected by him, he would say or do something that made the goal impossible. She started to reply when Lady Gambett began to raise her voice in whining reprimand to Henrietta.
    “It would seem,” Amelia said, slowing allowing her gaze to meet his, “the woman speaks for herself.”
    Logan chuckled. “At every possible opportunity.”
    Lady Gambett was soon joined by Josephine, as well as Margaret and Penelope, and Amelia could only shake her head. “I’m glad they have each other.”
    “But who do you have?” Logan asked Amelia quite unexpectedly.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “You heard me. You don’t seem to have a great deal of affection for your sisters or your father. Sir Jeffery hardly seems your kind, although I have noticed he gives you a great deal of attention. You seem the odd man out, so to speak.”
    Amelia brushed bits of dirt from her riding jacket and fortified her reserve. “I need no one, Mr. Reed.”
    “No one?”
    His question caused a ripple to quake through her resolve. She glanced to where the other members of the party were engaged in various degrees of conversation as they saw to their tasks. How ill-fitted they seemed in her life. She was tired of pretense and noble games, and yet it was the very life she had secured herself within. Didn’t she long to return to England and the quiet of her father’s estate? Didn’t she yearn for a cup of tea in fine English china? Somehow the Donneswick estates seemed a foggy memory.
    “Why are you here, Amelia?”
    She looked up, thought to reprimand him for using her name, then decided it wasn’t so bad after all. She rather liked the way it sounded on his lips. “Why?” she finally questioned, not truly expecting an answer.
    “I just wondered why you and your family decided to come to America.”
    “Oh,” she said, frowning at the thought of her father and Sir Jeffery’s plans. There was no way she wanted to explain this to Logan Reed. He had already perceived her life to be one of frivolity and ornamentation. She’d nearly killed herself trying to work at his side in order to prove otherwise, but if she told him the truth it would defeat everything she’d done thus far. “We’d not yet toured the country and Lady Bird, an acquaintance of the family who compiled a book about her travels here, suggested we come immediately to Estes.”
    “I remember Lady Bird,” Logan said softly. “She was a most unpretentious woman. A lady in true regard.”
    Amelia felt the challenge in Logan’s words but let it go unanswered. Instead, she turned the conversation to his personal life. “You are different from most Americans, Mr. Reed. You appear to have some of the benefits of a proper upbringing. You appear educated and well-read and you have better manners than most. You can speak quite eloquently when you desire to do so, or