Chapter Twenty-Two

A few days later, Arabella stood outside in the shade of a dogwood tree, hurrying to catch the glint of afternoon light off the river before the sun sank any further toward the horizon. She was nearly finished with the crayon landscape of the river. She’d sketched this view in pencil many times, but this was the first time she had tried to color it. Mixing all the different shades of green and river brown challenged her more than the simple crayon illustrations of flowers she’d been working on for the last two weeks.

The landscape required all the more focus as she intended to frame it and send it to George’s Uncle William as a thank-you gift, along with a picture of the cottage itself, which she had not yet begun. If William Kirkland loved Dogwood Cottage as much as George claimed, he might appreciate a memento of the house. There were, of course, many pastoral scenes to delight the eyes in the country around Bath, but their beauty was quite different from the charm of the cottage, its garden, and the placid river.

She had just put down her crayon when she spied an open carriage rolling sedately down the road. When it drew nearer, she recognized it as the Cawley vehicle, and waved cheerfully at its occupants. She expected them to wave back as their horses trotted past the cottage. Instead, the carriage stopped right at the garden gate.

Mr. Cawley must intend to speak with her, Arabella assumed. Well, she had spoken to him after church, as well as having dined with him, so he ought not intimidate her. She drew a deep breath and left her art behind as she approached the carriage.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Cawley. Lovely day for a drive, isn’t it?” She had expected to see him accompanied by either his wife or perhaps his elderly aunt. Instead, two young boys occupied the facing seat of the carriage. Both had freckled faces and hair as pale as dandelion fluff, but one was a little taller than the other. Otherwise, Arabella would have wondered how people distinguished them from each other.

Mr. Cawley did not smile back immediately. First, he glared at the two boys, who lowered their eyes shamefacedly. Then he looked back at Arabella, one corner of his mouth twisted up in a crooked smile. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Kirkland. My boys have something they’d like to say to your husband. Is he home?”

“Yes, of course! He’s working in the study.” Arabella frowned, wondering why her words made the two boys look even less happy. “Won’t you please come in?”

They followed her inside. She led them down the short hall to the study before she remembered that George would not want to receive visitors there. If he did not like Arabella stepping foot inside his study, he would certainly not want the Cawley children poking about.

“Let me show you to the parlor,” she suggested, “then I will fetch George. I mean, Mr. Kirkland.” Her face flushed as she realized how badly she was bungling the usual forms of politeness. “Would you care for any refreshments?”

The two boys looked up hopefully, their eyes wide. But Mr. Cawley shook his head. “No, thank you. The boys do not deserve a reward.” The children hung their heads, staring guiltily down at their shoes.

What on earth had they done ? Arabella wondered as she scurried down the hall. She tapped on the door to the study and began counting as she waited for George to respond. When she got all the way down from ten, she knocked again, more loudly. When George answered, the heavy door muffled his words so much it took Arabella a moment to work out what he’d said.

“I’m busy right now! Can’t it wait?”

It was not a particularly encouraging response, but Arabella opened the door anyway. “George, I’m very sorry to disturb you, but you have guests waiting to see you.”

Her husband sat hunched over the desk. He’d taken his topcoat off and tossed it onto a chair, then wisely rolled up his sleeves. As a result, his shirtsleeves were blessedly free of ink stains, though the same could not be said of his hands.

George put down his pen, straightened his back, and ran a hand through his already-rumpled hair. “Don’t tell me it’s my cousin Benedict again!”

Arabella giggled at the sight of his mussed hair. “No, not Benedict! It’s Mr. Cawley and two boys. His children, I think.” She could not remember how many children the Cawleys had, but she knew they had more than one.

“Really?” George blinked, then stretched, and rose to his feet. He started to walk out the room in his shirtsleeves.

“Don’t forget your topcoat.” Arabella spoke hesitantly, worried she might be overstepping. She wasn’t at all used to being in a position to correct anyone else. For most of her life, she’d been the one at the receiving end of a scolding.

But George grinned at her, turned on his heel, and grabbed his coat. She waited in the doorway while he rolled down his cuffs and shrugged the coat on.

“Are all the layers women have to wear as annoying as the ones men wear?” He grimaced at the ink on his hands, then buttoned the topcoat. “Because I get very tired of having to wear a coat in August.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Sometimes the stays are rather annoying. I don’t like the way the whalebone feels, even with a shift underneath.” She spoke in a whisper, not wanting anyone else to hear her discussing women’s underthings with a man. Not even if she was speaking to her husband, who had seen her without such articles of clothing. “And in hot weather, my shift always sticks to my skin. I hate that.” She shivered as she remembered how miserable she’d been walking home from church Sunday afternoon.

George finished buttoning the coat, then lifted his chin to meet her gaze. “Is that why you sometimes take your clothes off when you nap? I thought perhaps the stays were too tight.”

She shook her head. “Properly fitting stays don’t hurt, but when I get overheated, I can’t stand having so many layers. That’s why I sometimes strip down to my shift in private.” She eyed his snug-fitting wool jacket. “I suppose men probably have it worse in the summer,” she admitted.

“At least the fashion now is for loose dresses,” Arabella continued. “My mother showed me one of her old dresses from decades ago, with a narrow waist and panniers on the hips. I can’t imagine walking around with that!” Or, for that matter, walking in the high heeled shoes that had been popular in Mama’s youth. Arabella much preferred flat-soled slippers or comfortable half boots.

George reached up and tugged playfully on one of the ringlets hanging on the side of her head. “You would look smashing even in full court dress,” he informed her. “Or in a flour sack.”

Not knowing how to respond to such a compliment, Arabella bashfully lowered her eyes—but a shy smile teased at the corners of her mouth.

Her smile faltered when she saw the way the two Cawley boys cringed in their chairs when the Kirklands entered the parlor. The children only rose to their feet after their father pointedly cleared his throat.

“How do y’do, Mr. Cawley?” George asked. “These must be your boys?”

Mr. Cawley nodded grimly. “This is Stephen”—the taller of the two executed a clumsy bow—“and Owen.” The younger one bobbed his head. “I’ve brought them here because they have a confession to make.”

“A confession?” George frowned as he took a seat. “Have they been scrimping apples in the orchard? I wouldn’t have thought the apples were ripe yet. Not that they’d be worth stealing even if they were ripe. The cherries are much better.”

Arabella put a hand to her mouth to hide her grin. Surely children stealing cherries from the orchard was no better than scrimping apples? Especially as Mrs. Hastings seemed to know an endless number of dishes that utilized fresh cherries. Arabella enjoyed trying to predict in what form cherries would next appear on the dinner table. So far, her predictions had been consistently wrong.

“We have our own apple orchard!” the elder boy retorted. “And the apples aren’t ripe yet, anyway.”

“I always found the ones in my uncle’s orchard too sour, to be honest,” George confessed.

“They may have improved since you were a child,” Mr. Cawley suggested. “Your Hastings is quite good at gardening. I believe he improved the drainage in the orchards here. Or so my gardener tells me.” He shrugged, as if denying any knowledge of gardening. “But no, that is not why we are here today.” He looked at the boys and raised his eyebrows.

“We broke into the house looking for treasure!” the oldest boy blurted out. “And we damaged the wall.”

“And the floor,” the younger boy added.

“ You did that?” George’s mouth gaped wide for a moment. “Did you knock over the big dresser in the kitchen last Sunday? I shouldn’t have thought the two of you were strong enough for that.”

“Oh no!” the smaller boy exclaimed. “We didn’t touch the furniture. Just the wall. And the floor the time before that.” He cringed.

“What my brother means to say,” the older boy clarified, “is that last spring, we tried to dig up the paving stones to see if there was a cellar under the kitchen floor. But we didn’t find anything, so we thought there must be a hidden room behind the kitchen wall. On our second visit, we tried poking through the wall with an awl, looking for the hollow space. But that was weeks ago, and we never touched the dresser, sir!”

George rested his forehead on his hand, as if it pained him. “There is no hidden room in this house! If there were, my sister and I would have found it years ago.”

“Precisely what I said!” Mr. Cawley shook his head and directed a look of pure reproach at his children. “But even if there were a hidden room, that would not justify breaking into someone else’s house and damaging the floor or the walls. Trespassing and vandalism are both against the law. Mr. Kirkland would be within his rights to turn you over to the magistrate!”

The boys’ eyes widened as they nervously turned their attention from their father to the householder whose property they had damaged.

George made a sound suspiciously like a smothered laugh. He hastily cleared his throat. “I don’t think we need go that far.” He spoke to the two children in much the same tone he might have used after the puppy left a puddle on the kitchen floor. “But you should never break into someone else’s house.”

“We didn’t break in!” the younger boy protested. “We had a key to the kitchen door!”

Both Mr. Cawley and George stared blankly at the boys for a moment. Mr. Cawley recovered from the surprise more quickly. “How on earth did you get that?”

“From Aunt Tilly,” the older boy explained. “Mrs. Kirkland gave her a copy of the key a long time ago. They were friends.”

“I see.” George’s impassive face gave away nothing of what he might be thinking. His voice remained calm and gentle, though. “I think you had better return that key, boys.”

“Yes, sir.” The older boy dug around in his pocket, pulling out a handful of marbles, the remains of a peppermint stick, and, finally, a large metal key. He handed this to George and returned the other paraphernalia to his pocket.

“Thank you very much, Master Cawley.” The corner of George’s mouth twitched, and Arabella guessed he was more amused than annoyed. “I hope this is a lesson to you not to trespass on other people’s property. Not even if you think there’s a hidden treasure. I assure you, this house has no hidden rooms!”

“Yes, it does!” the elder boy protested. “There’s a secret room under the stairs.”

“There is?” Arabella’s eyes widened as she looked towards George for confirmation. He had never mentioned a secret room under the stairs. On the contrary, he insisted there were no secrets about the house, and no hidden treasure.

George merely chuckled. “Do you mean the storage closet under the stairs? There’s nothing there but old odds and ends.”

The boy lifted his chin, looking stubborn. “No, I mean the hole underneath the floor inside that closet. Haven’t you ever seen that?”

George’s mouth gaped for a second. Then he shook his head, disbelief written all over his face. “That can’t be. I searched this house for secret rooms every summer from the time I put on short pants until I turned fifteen or sixteen. There couldn’t be a room I didn’t know about!”

“It’s more like a hole than a room,” the boy explained. “Let me show you.”

Arabella turned to Mr. Cawley. “ Is there some kind of hole beneath the closet? A root cellar, perhaps?”

Their neighbor shook his head. He looked just as baffled as George. “I’ve never heard of any kind of cellar under the stairs. But then, I’ve never lived here, either.”

“It is there!” the younger Cawley boy piped up. “We found it when we were exploring last winter.”

Mr. Cawley frowned. “You should not have been exploring in someone else’s house! How many times did you break in?” The boys hung their heads again, looking supremely guilty.

“Never mind that,” George interjected. “I want to see this hole, or cellar, or whatever it is. Can you show me?”

“Oh, yes!” The older boy rose to his feet with alacrity. He was probably relieved to be met with curiosity rather than condemnation. “Follow me!”

They all followed him out of the parlor to the front hall. Mr. Cawley looked confused, but George looked just as excited as the boys themselves. Arabella struggled to hide her smile. She did not want George to know how much he amused her. He was rather like an overgrown child himself.

But she followed the others anyway. If there were some sort of secret room in their house, she wanted to see it, too.