should be allowed in the same room where there is food. However, when I met
George, I was so quickly besotted, I was willing to let him even drink my
chocolate in the morning. He is a despot, that small fellow.”
And my very tolerant husband of four days laughed. .
Thirty minutes later I was back in The Blue Room replacing my soft kid slippers
with some stouter walking boots. The morning was lovely, and Amelia was ready to
explore the grounds with me.
I was whistling as I untied the ribbons around my ankles. A sudden glint of
light made me blink. I turned my head at the same angle again, and there was
another glint. It remained. I cocked my head in question and walked, one slipper
on my foot and the other off, to the long bank of windows.
I faced east. The morning light was brilliant. I opened one of the wide windows
and looked out. I could see the lads with their long wooden staffs driving the
cows to pasture. I heard the gardeners talking about the roses in the lower
garden just beneath my window. Then I heard a knock at my bedchamber door.
I turned only to feel a tug at the sleeve of my gown and then a tear. I looked
down to see that my sleeve had caught on a jagged piece of metal attached to the
outside of the window casement. Carefully I managed to lift the material from
the jagged metal.
“Now, what is this?” I said aloud. George wuffed, but didn’t get up from the
soft rug in front of the fireplace. I looked more closely. It was a small, sharp
piece of metal, and it seemed to be buried partially in a small circular hole.
Holes?in the window casing? I looked more closely and realized quickly enough
that there were several such holes placed at equal intervals along the outside
casing.
There was another knock on the door.
“Come,” I called out.
It was Amelia. “I am just changing my shoes,” I said, smiling toward her. “I
will meet you at the front door.”
The moment she closed the door, I was back at the windows, studying that long
row of holes.
I nearly fell over when I realized exactly what those neatly lined-up holes
meant.
There had been bars in this window. I looked upward and saw matching holes in
the window casing at the top of the windows.
“Oh, goodness,” I said, and rubbed the gooseflesh on my arms. My heart began to
pound, slow sharp beats. The Blue Room was the bedchamber none of them thought I
should have. And I had wondered why.
There had been bars in these windows. Who had been imprisoned in here? How long
ago had it been?
Maybe a mad uncle in the last century, I thought, and looked over at George, who
was still snoozing with his little head on his front paws.
I walked to all the other windows and flung them open, only to find that all the
windows were just the same. At some point all of them had been barred.
I shivered, not from the cold of the fresh air pouring into the room, but from
my discovery. It made no sense. Someone had imprisoned a mad relative in this
beautiful room?
Naturally, there was an excellent explanation. It wasn’t a question of
otherworldly phenomena or errant specters, unless the specters had terrorized
the inhabitant of this beautiful bedchamber into madness.
I flung my slipper across the room. I had turned very suddenly into a twit. This
was nonsense, all of it. Who cared if there were bars? For heaven’s sake, this
house had been built nearly four hundred years ago. There were probably ancient
bloodstains on many of the floors. Each room in this magnificent house had known
death in all shapes and forms.
Those damned bars?they had to be from a long time ago. They had nothing to do
with me. Still, I was intrigued. I would ask Lawrence as soon as I could find
him alone. I slowly closed the windows, every one of them.
I found my boots in the bottom of the armoire and pulled them on. I laced them