Marsha’s Reviews > The Trouble with Anna > Status Update

JULIAN ARRANGED TO TAKE ANNA FOR A DRIVE THAT WEEK, NOT out on the Promenade at the fashionable hour but on Hampstead Heath at the preposterous time of ten in the morning, when they could let the horses have their heads. He pulled up in his new phaeton, enameled glossy black except for the cherry-red spokes of its enormous wheels, with a high-spirited pair of matched grays between the traces.

A month ago, Julian would have laughed if anyone had told him he would spend an afternoon teaching a reluctant young woman how to waltz. If anyone would have had the guts to suggest he'd enjoy the activity, that his boots would ring out with haste as he strode across town to his grandmother's townhouse, he would have leveled them with a stare.

She was smiling.
At him.
He'd seen her small and ghastly social smiles, the kind usually reserved for disliked relatives. He'd had more than enough of her polite and faintly haughty nods, and very occasionally he'd surprised her into laughter, the slight, reluctant sound more satisfying than it had the right to be. But never once had she looked right at him and smiled openly. No hesitation, no wariness, no barriers.

"You have to say the most horrible things out loud. That's how they lose their power. That's how you turn them from nightmares into problems to solve." She thought a moment. "Either that, or we egg your grandfather's gravestone?"
For the first time since her grandfather died, Anna laughed. "Yes, let's!"
Charlotte peeped over at her. "Do you really lose everything in six months?"