Yuletide Treasure

by Jillian Hart

  He let the cat out and waited for her to do her business in the pile of sawdust they kept for that purpose. The day was glorious, the sun setting afire the snow-tipped branches of the trees beyond the garden that now lay hidden under a glistening white blanket. He glanced to the side of the doorway where his snowshoes stood propped against the wall. When carving grew too frustrating, he often trekked off through the woods until exhaustion drove him home again.

  Eugenia shook her paws, each one separately, and padded back inside to sit on the rug in front of the fire and proceeded to groom away any trace of her outing, at the moment ignoring the mewlings of her progeny. Even though their eyes were yet to open, the four kittens could cry loud enough to wake Nathan from a sound sleep at night. Yet she could ignore them.

  Nathan cut two slices of bread, enough cheese to cover and added beef already sliced, then slapped the two halves together and, chewing as he wandered, went to stand over the remains of the piano. There was plenty of wood there for other violins and still leave plenty of clock or box material for his grandfather.

  Why had the woman become so incensed with him? After all, he’d come when she called, not waiting for her to ring the bell on the counter. Strange female, really. He strolled back to the workbench where he had the neck of the future violin clamped in two vises, with one-inch-thick boards the length of the neck on either side. He smoothed gentle fingers over the newly glued case that yet needed a top. The wood grain on the under piece matched that on the top, which still lay off to the side.

  He heard the brush of boots against the scraper on the back stoop. His grandfather had returned. Shame he hadn’t been there earlier to wait on the young woman.

  “So how goes it?” Lawrence Gunderson unwrapped his scarf from around his neck and hung it with coat and hat on the pegs along the wall by the door.

  “I hoped to have the top glued, also.”

  “So what stopped you?” Lawrence rubbed his silvered hair back with the palms of both hands. “Is the coffee hot?”

  “No, sir, I forgot all about the coffee.” Nathan looked toward the kitchen stove and realized that he’d not put any wood in it or—he glanced at the clock—too many hours for there to be any flame left. He had kept the fireplace stoked, however, or he would have noticed the cold. “Sorry.” The rule was that whoever stayed to home was supposed to keep the fire burning and the coffeepot ready to pull forward to heat quickly.

  “Ah, lad. Don’t you know there is nothing more important than hot coffee after the walk from the station?” Lawrence rattled the grate before lifting the lid so see the lack of coals. “Did your mother teach you nothing?”

  “Nothing that would be helpful here with you. And I’d just as soon forget most of what I learned.” He suffered no inclination to return to city life, being content here with his grandfather in a backwater where most people didn’t even know his name or that he was here, for that matter.

  “Now, don’t go getting your dander up.” Lawrence glanced into the wood box. “We could use some wood in here.”

  Nathan flinched. That was another of his jobs, keeping the wood boxes filled. After one attempt at cooking, he’d been relegated to hauling wood and water. Life in a mansion in Minneapolis was a far cry from living in a humble wood-carver’s cabin. The store, if you could call it that, took up the front room across the width of the building, and the workroom and kitchen were behind. There was one long bedroom upstairs, and Nathan could stand only in the middle of it, as the roof sloped steeply to the low walls.

  “Bring in that haunch of venison before you start with the wood. I’ll carve us off some steaks for supper.” Lawrence had bought half a deer from a man in the village who enjoyed hunting. While he’d smoked the front quarter, the weather had been cold enough to hang and freeze the hind quarter. As long as it was hung too high for any marauding four-footed creature, they could hack at it until it was gone.

  “Of course.”

  Later that evening after supper as they sat reading before the fire, Nathan remembered. “Grandfather, a young woman came by to see you today.”

  Lawrence looked up from his magazine. “Who?”

  “I have no idea. I told her to come back tomorrow.” He lowered his book. “You will be here tomorrow, correct?”

  “I don’t deliver clocks every day, you know.”

  Nathan knew that his grandfather didn’t usually deliver his wares, expecting the customers to come and pick them up, but he’d taken two boxes with an assortment of his work into St. Paul to be displayed in a new store.

  “Can you describe her?”

  Nathan slowly shook his head. “Average, I suppose. She wore a thick cloak and a blue bonnet with a brim that framed her face. Her eyes were framed by lashes so long they—” He stopped.

  “Average, you say?” The older man raised an eyebrow.

  Nathan ignored the teasing. “She carried a string bag, but I have no idea what was in it.” She’d left in a snit. He thought back to their conversation, if one could call it that. As he replayed the scene in his mind, confusion dogged him again. He’d been working on the pegs for the violin, and when he heard a voice call, his knife slipped and he…He glanced down at his thumb where a thin red line showed how close he had come to a bad cut. Brusque might be the term to describe his attitude, though she’d called him rude. “I just told her you weren’t in and to return tomorrow.”

  “You didn’t offer to look at what she wanted done and suggest she leave it for me to work on?”

  Nathan shook his head. “No. Though that would have been the polite thing.” But all he’d wanted to do was get back to his work. He glanced up to see sadness settle on his grandfather like a flock of crows. “She seemed mightily opinionated.”

  “But no name.”

  “No.” Because I didn’t ask her. Mea culpa. His years of Latin came in handy at times, especially when castigating himself.

  “Well, we can hope she does return. I’d hate to have a customer unhappy with me. This is too small a village to allow rancor to develop.” The old man went back to his newspaper and Nathan rose to check on his last glue application. His book hadn’t kept his attention, anyway. He glanced over his shoulder a few minutes later to see his grandfather with his head back on the chair, mouth open, eyes closed and Eugenia on his lap, a typical evening tableau.

  He picked up his drawing tablet and, taking it and a pencil back to his chair and the lamp, worked again on the drawing of the violin neck. His book had mentioned a slight change in the carved scroll that would be very attractive. If he were to have his dream of producing violins for concert performers, he needed to develop some sort of unique attribute. He laid his drawing aside. How could he be so foolish as to dream of his violins in concerts when he hadn’t even finished the first one? The tone was the thing, and that came from the violin itself. What set a Stradivarius so above the rest? If only he could take one apart and study each piece. Not that one would ever take apart a treasure like that, but how wonderful it would be to measure and inspect the instrument in minute detail.

  He closed his eyes for a moment but instead of seeing his violin, the young woman wearing a sapphire-blue bonnet that shaded snapping eyes demanded his attention. No woman had appeared in his mind like this since before the accident, the cataclysmic event that sent his life spinning off in a new direction.

  Chapter Three

  Arley

  Don’t be a ninny. Just open the door.

  How silly to be frightened of opening the door. The cabin was a place of business and the sign in the window said Open. But then, it had said that the day before, too. Arley kept talking to herself, but she continued to stand rooted to the stoop. Or frozen there, since it was indeed winter.

  You must apologize. The voice sounded amazingly like that of her grandmother. In fact, had she not known better, she would have turned to make sure she’d not been followed. At least her grandmother hadn’t realized that one of the nutcrackers was missing. If you stand out he
re much longer, someone is sure to notice, and guess who they’ll report to? She never had gotten away with anything in her hoyden days. She’d sometimes thought her grandmother sent out spies who raced back to the mansion to report before she could get back herself.

  Arley gave herself a shake and reached out to press down on the metal latch. With a firm push, the door swung inward. Nothing like gathering courage to brave the dragon, as the heroine so often did in the stories she’d devoured as a girl. She stepped over the threshold and paused for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. That was one thing about log cabins—they generally didn’t have a lot of windows, although the show window off to her right had been nicely arranged.

  Again, no one was in the front room. Please, Lord, let the wood-carver be here today, not that arrogant bear of a man. Her mind returned to delight in the timbre of his voice. The rich baritone would have sounded much better laughing, instead of being unpleasant. His identity had bedeviled her the past evening. This time she saw a bell on the counter and crossed to pick it up and ring it. The silver chime tinkled brightly in the still air.

  She heard a thunk behind the curtain and a voice.

  “Coming.”

  This was definitely not the voice from the day before. How could one word sound so welcoming?

  A barrel-chested man, with a smile that turned up his mustache and a bald pate rising through a circle of fluffy silver, pushed through the curtain. “Good morning. A fine day, is it not?”

  She nodded and smiled back at him. “Yes, it is indeed.” She held out her string bag. “I came yesterday to ask for your help.”

  “And my grandson told you I’d be in today.”

  “That’s right.” He shouted it at me, to be precise, but we won’t go into that.

  “I am Lawrence Gunderson, proprietor and wood-carver.” He extended his hand and smiled again. When she just nodded, he leaned forward slightly. “And you are?”

  “Oh, pardon me. I am Miss Dexter. I’m sure you know my grandmother.”

  “Ah, yes. Mrs. Arthur Dexter. I knew her when she was Louise Carlson, more than a few years ago. Now I know where I’ve seen you. Trailing behind her, carrying her baskets and fetching when she orders. Age has not been gentle with Louise.”

  Arley stared at him. The young man shouted and the old man made remarks too pointed for such a casual acquaintanceship. “You knew, er, know my grandmother?”

  “In a village the size of ours, it would be difficult to grow up without knowing most of the inhabitants.”

  “Then how come you didn’t know me?” Arlayna Louise Rachel Sharonn McGee Dexter, what on earth is the matter with you? Letting your mouth get away with itself like that! Again the voice of her grandmother with a little huff of her own thrown in.

  “I was living in the west for many years and only returned two years ago. It is easier to stay in the background, don’t you think?” His eyes twinkled, but his brows arched in a knowing look. “Besides, you’ve changed a great deal since I left.”

  “I see.” Arley straightened her shoulders and pulled in her chin. “Well, I have a problem I am hoping you might be able to solve. I was taking out all the nutcrackers to decorate the house with and I—” she drew the box from her bag and held the sorry spectacle out “—fell on this one.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.” He looked at her as if assessing damage, taking the box in hand at the same moment.

  “More my pride than anything else, but the nutcracker suffered the most.” She watched him remove the top of the box and stare down into the interior. “Please, I do hope you can fix it. This is my grandmother’s favorite. If she knew of the damage, she would be most upset.” Arley felt as if she was running in place, her words going faster and faster. She stared at him as he stared into the box.

  “Is…is it that bad?” Her voice trembled. Not that she was afraid of her grandmother’s rage, but she would hate to see her upset. This was the woman who had taken her in and given her a home all these years. She might want to scream and stamp her feet in frustration sometimes, but she loved the old woman dearly.

  When he finally raised his head, she caught a look in his eye, that had he not blinked it away, made her think of tears. One tear or a pool. Surely she’d been wrong.

  “Ah, I am sorry, Miss Dexter. Just an old man’s forgetfulness. But of course I can repair the nutcracker. I hope you do not need it by tomorrow, for it will take a bit of time. But when I am finished, your grandmother will never know this gentleman had an accident.”

  Arley forcibly kept herself from grabbing the counter to keep standing, so weak at the knees did she feel. “Oh, I cannot thank you enough. For a few moments there I feared the worst.” She heard noises from the other room that sounded like something crying. When she cocked her head to listen, the old man chuckled.

  “Eugenia just returned to her kittens. They quite resent it when she leaves them and like to tell her so.”

  “Kittens? You have kittens?”

  “Four of them, all of whom will be looking for homes before Christmas. Their eyes are just opening. Would you like to see them?”

  “May I? I mean, the mother won’t mind?” Kittens. All her life she’d wanted a dog or a cat, but her grandmother wouldn’t allow animals in the house. At least she could look at them and dream.

  “This way.” With the nutcracker and box in one hand, he held the faded blue curtain aside with the other, beckoning her to precede him. She stepped from the display room into a much larger room that appeared to be divided in two by some invisible line. On one side were clocks and boxes, small tables and simple chairs all in various states of completion. A workbench with shelves above and below, along with tools lined up on pegs between bench and upper shelves, took up one entire wall. On the other wall a fire crackled in a stone fireplace faced by two worn but comfortable-looking easy chairs. An oval braided rug sat between chairs and fire. A kitchen with cast-iron stove, counters and shelves and a table and chairs took up another quarter of the space, with the drop-leaf table in front of a window overlooking the woods behind the house.

  All this she saw in an instant, then her gaze focused on the man working at the bench on what looked to be a violin. The fragrance of wood shavings permeated the air, not unlike the scent of cedar that filled the mansion now that she had cedar and pine garlands wrapping the banisters.

  “Miss Dexter, I’d like you to meet my grandson, Nathan Gunderson. Nathan, Miss Dexter.”

  The Viking laid down his tools and turned to greet her. He ducked his head just a bit as if out of some sense of courtesy. “Miss Dexter.”

  Arley felt her temper sizzle a little. The nerve of him. Two could play this game. “Mr. Gunderson.” At least he wasn’t growling at her the way he was yesterday.

  “Miss Dexter has brought me a nutcracker to repair, and I’m showing her the kittens.”

  “I see.”

  The younger Mr. Gunderson could take lessons in manners from his grandfather. Apologize! No, I don’t think so! Arlayna Louise…Don’t start with that, she ordered the voice in her head. I am going to look at the kittens, go read to my children and go home. I will return for the nutcracker and then I won’t be seeing either of them again. So I do not need to apologize. All the while her mind was throwing fiery darts back and forth, she followed the older man to a wooden box lying off to one side of the stove. A fluffy gray cat lay on her side with four kittens busily nursing. She blinked up at her visitors and went back to cleaning a front paw. One kitten was mostly white, another all gray, at least from what she could see of them. Another gray one had white front paws with which he was kneading his mother’s belly. The last one had a hint of tiger stripes in the gray.

  “They are so precious!” She smiled at her host. “I’ve never seen kittens so tiny.” She thought of dropping to her knees and stroking first the beautiful mother and then each of the squirming babies. The thought of having one of her own was like a pain in her heart.

  �
�When they are old enough, you may have the pick of the litter, you know.” His voice went up on the last syllable, in the charming way of those of Scandinavian heritage.

  Was he Norwegian like her grandmother? Surely they had known each other; they looked to be about the same age. And yet, she’d never heard his name mentioned. But then, if he’d been gone for a long time, perhaps Grandmother Louise had just forgotten. Not that the woman had forgotten anything in all the years Arley had known her. “That’s not possible.” With a sigh, Arley straightened. “I must be going. Thank you for agreeing to fix the nutcracker.”

  “Wouldn’t you stay for some coffee? It can be ready in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you, but no. I have a date with some children who are waiting to hear the next chapter in the book I’m reading to them.”

  “You are a schoolteacher?”

  “No. I read at the orphanage every week and they are expecting me. When should I return for the nutcracker?”

  “I will let you know.” He led her back to the curtain.

  She caught the look of puzzlement he cast at the younger man, who was now sanding a piece of wood as if his life depended on it being just right. “Goodbye, Mr. Gunderson.” She raised her voice the slightest and smiled inwardly when he started and looked up at her.

  “G-good day.”

  “Thank you again.” She stepped over the threshold when Lawrence held the door open for her. “I’ll look forward to picking up the nutcracker. Goodbye.”

  “Enjoy your reading.” He closed the door behind her and she lifted her face to the sun’s rays. Now to decide on a present for her grandmother. The thought of the broken nutcracker had taken up her mind. Or was it the Viking, Odin of the carving tools, who preoccupied her? Don’t be silly, she chided herself as she strode off to the orphanage, past the courthouse and the Carnegie Library that provided her with such constant pleasure in books and a place where she could be helpful and out of her grandmother’s sight. Then she passed the bookstore where she’d purchased the book about the dollhouse. She’d read the first chapters of the story last night and knew her children would love to hear it. Her father had promised her they’d make a dollhouse one day. What would her life have been like had her parents not died? She’d mentioned her dream of having a dollhouse to her grandmother only once. She’d been good even then at burying her feelings when they got stomped on.