Abigail demurred because of the snow, which was still falling.
“I suppose eventually I shall put in some modern French windows,” he said on the way back to the portrait room with the miniatures. “At Wayborn Hall, where I actually grew up, we have French windows leading out to all the terraces.”
“On no account,” cried Abigail, quite forcefully, “are you to put in French windows, Mr. Wayborn! You mustn’t do anything to compromise the historical integrity of the house.”
Cary raised his eyebrows. “It’s my house, cousin,” he reminded her, laughing.
“But you can’t!” cried Abigail. “It would spoil the whole house if you did.”
Cary grinned. When provoked, she quite forgot to be shy, as she had when he’d questioned Mr. Coleridge’s integrity in Hatchard’s Bookshop. “I suppose you think my ancestors were wrong to put in chimneys and staircases when they had perfectly good fire pits and ladders.”
“No, of course not,” said Abigail. She held strong views on the subject, he could tell, but she struggled to present them effectively, while he, without caring half as much, could talk circles around her. “A chimney is one thing. But to put French windows in a beautiful old Tudor house—! I think that would be a crime, Mr. Wayborn. You ought to be restoring Tanglewood to its original state, not disfiguring it with French windows.”
Cary couldn’t help laughing. “I told you what it was originally—a cow byre! Do you really want me to restore it to its original state with a bunch of moilies and milkmaids?”
Abigail pressed her lips together. She could not compete with him in open debate, but, in her view, the only way to truly win an argument was to be right, and he was definitely wrong.
Cary couldn’t resist teasing her throughout the rest of the first floor rooms, threatening to replace every arched doorway with a French window. Abigail did not once laugh.
“Don’t sulk,” he finally told her as they came to the main staircase. “I couldn’t possibly afford to have French windows put in. The historical integrity, as you call it, is perfectly safe.”
Abigail was delighted to see the exposed timbers at intervals in the plaster walls upstairs. In the hall, the plaster had been painted a green that had darkened with age, but clear, lighter areas showed where paintings must have hung until quite recently. She guessed, correctly, that Cary Wayborn was selling off the treasures of the house little by little.
“These are the two best rooms,” he said, coming to two doors at the end of the hall. “Since you’re my cousin, I think you should have one of them. Mrs. Spurgeon, I suppose, may have the other.”
He opened the first door.
It was not a very large room, but Abigail thought it was perfect. The casement window allowed in plenty of light. The paneled walls were painted a creamy white, and the coffered ceiling was decorated with the red and white double rose of the Tudors, symbolizing the union of the Lancasters and the Yorks. The feather bed was set on a huge, intricately carved box of walnut. From its four posts hung red and white crewel-work curtains. The only other furnishings were a large wardrobe against one wall, a small washstand with a mirror, a little chair near the window, and a stone fireplace that, at present, was cold and dark.
“I know this room!” Abigail exclaimed.
“Seen it in a dream, have you?” he teased her. “In novels, the heroine always comes to a room she has seen before in a dream. She usually faints in the arms of the nearest man.”
“I recognize it from the painting downstairs,” she told him sensibly. “This must be where Lettice Cary sat for her portrait.” She pointed at the red and white bed hangings. “She must have sat there, on the bed.” It occurred to her all at once that she was alone in a bedroom with a man, and she became rather flustered, to his immense enjoyment.
“I daresay only Lettice and her husband would have known she was sitting on her marriage bed. Apart from the artist, of course.” He grinned. “I always thought she looked as though she might fall over backwards at any moment. Now I know why.”
“This is not original to the room,” she said, moving quickly to the wardrobe.
“No,” he agreed, “but there’s a secret to it I think you’ll like.”
“What sort of secret?”
“I’ll show you,” said Cary, opening the heavy carved doors. “There’s a secret door in here. If you press it in a certain place, the panel slides back.”
“A door to a secret room?” Abigail asked eagerly.
“Not a secret room, more’s the pity. Just an ordinary, everyday secret passage between two ordinary, everyday bedrooms.” He gave her his wickedest smile.
“But why would anyone want that?” she asked, puzzled. “Why not simply go out into the hall and use the door there? Why go crawling around through somebody’s wardrobe? It makes no sense.”
“It’s all very strange and mysterious to me, too,” said Cary, his gray eyes laughing at her innocence. “But I must correct you on one point. One does not go crawling through the wardrobe. It’s really quite as comfortable as walking through a doorway.” He demonstrated this by stepping inside the wardrobe. “See? I needn’t even crouch down.”
“But there aren’t any clothes hanging in it now,” Abigail pointed out. “I imagine it’s rather annoying to have to go through a lot of dresses and coats to get through to the other side.”
He ignored this unworthy statement. He was busy feeling along the back paneling of the wardrobe for the secret spring. “It’s stuck,” he said, annoyed. “Warped from the damp, I shouldn’t wonder. This never happens in books—the secret panel always slides back at the merest touch of the hero’s finger, with a sibilant hiss, I might add.” He stopped trying to force the panel open and looked at Abigail. “Give me a hand, will you?”
“Of course,” she said, without thinking. Cary doubted the girl had ever refused a direct request for help in her whole life. She was, in fact, such a nice girl in every way that, if he hadn’t been so sure that she was going to enjoy what he planned to do, he might not have done it. As soon as she was in the wardrobe with him, he pulled the door tightly closed, sealing them together in the darkness, pulled her close to him with both hands, while at the same time kissing her mouth. Even in the dark, his aim was true.
Abigail felt something warm and furry brushing against her mouth and went berserk. She burst out of the wardrobe, brushing away from her body wholly imaginary vermin. “Mr. Wayborn!” she gasped. “There is a bat—or a rat—in that wardrobe!”
Once or twice in Cary’s life, he had come across a female who, inexplicably enough, did not want to be kissed by him, but none of them had ever resorted to inventing small rodents.
“A rat or a bat,” he repeated sourly. “In the wardrobe, you say?”
Abigail jumped onto the bed, frantic for a place of safety. “I felt it touching my face, and then—oh, God! It moved.”
“There isn’t any bat,” he said sharply, now quite annoyed.
“There is too a bat,” she insisted, treading on the featherbed to keep from falling over. “It’s in that wardrobe, and I am not coming down from this bed until you find it and kill it!”
Cary began to believe she was serious, which did not improve his temper. No one had ever mistaken his kiss for the attentions of a small flying mammal, and his vanity was wounded. Grimly he climbed out of the wardrobe. “Stand still,” he told her angrily. “Close your eyes.”