The Secret of Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 4) Read Free

worn and dirty. Many of them stopped for a moment and looked up at her, frozen in curiosity as well. In Louisa’s mind there was a story in every face. She looked around the crowded car and imagined her gentle mother among these people, then turned and stepped from the compartment, closing the door behind her. Between the speeding cars cool air rushed up from the tracks beneath her and she stood gasping for a breath of fresh air.
     
          Back in her seat, Louisa recalled a time as a child when she had taken ill in the middle of the night and her mother had come to her.
          “Oh, Loo, honey. Let’s get you out of those nasty things.” She had stripped off the soiled nightgown and hurried to run a warm bath.
          Her mother rinsed her hair and dressed her in fresh nightclothes and Louisa remembered how beautiful she had looked. It was one of the few times she had seen her without her hair perfectly arranged and it tumbled in shiny dark waves over her shoulders. Her mother’s touch was kind and gentle. She smelled of honeysuckle and lavender. The way she saw her mother that night was a rare and important moment. It was the way her father saw her when they were alone, beautiful and soft and feminine. The following morning when she watched her father kissing her mother goodbye she had her first thoughts about falling in love. At every wedding or whenever she saw a couple looking into one another’s eyes she would recall how intimate and precious that feeling had been. She would always remember that night as the moment she discovered that love wasn’t a fairy tale, it was something you could touch and feel.
     
          At Stavewood there were bits and pieces of the story that Louisa wanted to see. She knew there was a photograph of her mother and there was the ad that she had answered. There may have been more keepsakes as well. She knew her father and was sure he would have saved them all tucked away in his comfortable study. Louisa smiled and pictured him there. His chair was so massive that she would sit in the great depths of it and not be able to bend her knees. The lamps would be lit and he would be reclining in that huge chair with his stocking feet upon the massive desk with sheets of paperwork in his hands.
     
          In the dim light of the carriage, Louisa made her way to her berth and prepared for bed. She had boarded this second train in Chicago and would reach Billington, Minnesota just before dawn. She would try to sleep. Louisa was anxious to get home. She donned her nightgown and lay back on the mattress, staring up at the flat surface just above her. Memories crowded her mind. She thought of her brothers and cousins and her niece and summer afternoons at the lake. They played games and made daring midnight raids on watermelon gardens. She chuckled to herself, recalling the mischief they had often gotten into together. Louisa drifted off with Stavewood clear in her mind.

 
     
    Three

                       H awk Bend Station, a squat, log building tucked into the wilderness, rushed by in a blur and Louisa felt the big locomotive slow. As it approached the station closest to her home the porter called out, “Elllllgersooonnn Miiiillllsss Staaaaation!”
          The quaint, wooden train stop had been built there when she was a child, when her father had expanded his massive mill operation. She was arriving far earlier than expected, before the workers and before the colossal saws would begin their deafening screams. Just as the sun was about to break over the horizon she walked the private path that led to the back entrance and the kitchen at Stavewood, bounded on either side by towering pines. She knew she would find her father there, in the big estate’s kitchen, alone with his enormous mug of coffee, sitting in a quiet moment with the soft light of dawn streaming through the windows over the big, stone sink. He’d be there before the cook, Birget, would