Chained: Reckless Desires (Dragon's Heart Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

was the man’s favorite word.
    When he’d finished, Bella tried again. “Why do you call him by his title?”
    “Because he is technically a lord and a baron of an estate in Scotland,” her father said. “And because the previous Lord Winterborn—the proper one—insisted upon it.”
    “Does the new Winterborn insist, too?”
    “No,” her father said with a sour expression. “He seems to dislike the title. There’s nothing worse than a child ashamed of his heritage.”
    The road wound its way up the mountains slowly, in a long endless curve. Winterborn, he’d said. He’d never mentioned the lord’s name when they spoken previously. She’d wondered who he worked for, and now she’d found out. Bella knew of the Winterborns. Her firm had represented one of them in a property dispute when she was first hired on. Her ex-firm, that is. Learning to give up her old life would take time.
    “Didn’t the father die under mysterious circumstances?” Bella asked. What could she recall about the case? Very little, it turned out—she hadn’t worked on it and only remembered other attorneys complaining about what a horror Winterborn was to work for.
    “Nothing mysterious about it,” her father sniffed. “The man was quite old and fell asleep with his pipe in hand in his hunting lodge. Fire used to be a very common way to die, before the government decided to cover everything in flame retardants.”
    “Right, I remember now. Mysterious fire. No last will that could be found. And his sons spent two years in court fighting over the estates.”
    Her father frowned so hard it looked like his face was going to crack in half. “His sons. A bunch of wastrels and layabouts. None of them are fit to fill his shoes. The Lord Winterborn—the real Lord Winterborn himself—was a great man. Hearst, Carnegie, Morgan, Edison, Winterborn—there are no men like them today. He was a titan. A man of bold ideas and bolder action. We used to walk the grounds together on Sundays and discuss plans for development, you know. He told me stories of his past. That was a man who had lived . He fought in World War One and Two, did you know that? And despite being a man of age, he was remarkably fit. His mental acuity was second to none.”
    Bella knew little about the former Lord Winterborn, but if her father gushed over him it was certain that the man was problematic. Franklin Hart loved his despots, his tyrants, his strong men who ignored basic compassion to write their names in the history books.
    “The new Winterborn, though? What’s his deal?” Bella asked.
    “Technically, he is the heir . The title is contested. As well it should be. The Lord Heir , he goes by Dorian. He has achieved nothing in his life but the frittering away of a small fortune and the amassing of great debts. He was the youngest of the real Winterborn’s sons. And the driving away of the household staff by means of his irritable and loathsome temper.”
    Dorian Winterborn, she was sure her firm—her ex-firm—had represented an Alexander Winterborn, so a different brother. There were thirteen of them, they said.
    Her father segued into a discussion of the local history, the estate’s history, and Winterborn’s success as a businessman, but Bella had a hard time following it all. Before she knew it, she was asleep and then being woken by her father nudging her with an elbow.
    There was no moon in the sky, only starlight to see by. A stone house, three stories tall and very wide, stood before her with a narrow garage attached.
    “You’ll have to exit here,” her father said. “The garage was built for carriages and opening the passenger door is quite impossible.”
    Bella nodded and slid out of the car, taking her suitcase with her. She edged her way towards the house. They were higher up, near the top of the mountains. The wind was much colder than it had been in Bearfield and the stars seemed closer, almost too close. If she reached her hand up, they could