A Favor for the Prince by Jane Ashford

Author:Jane Ashford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2020-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

On her way downstairs the next morning, Ariel walked past the open door of her mother’s former bedchamber. A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she stepped inside, puzzled. Prospero lounged magnificently on the coverlet of the huge four-poster bed. “You shouldn’t be in here,” Ariel said. “Come down to the kitchen. We’ll get you something to eat.” Prospero had charmed Ellen and Hannah from the day of their arrival, and there was no problem finding tidbits.

The cat ignored her. He stretched himself out at full length, extending his front claws luxuriously, and yawned.

“You’ll leave fur all over that silk,” said Ariel, reaching for him.

Rolling quickly over, he slipped from her grasp. Finding himself at the front corner of the great bed, he fixed his attention on one of its posts. This massive carved timber, six inches square, rose to the low ceiling. Bess had wanted a bed to match her old house, and she had convinced one of her noble friends to part with this relic of an earlier age.

Rising up on his hind legs, Prospero sank his front claws into the thickest part of the post, which was carved into small panels with a rosette in the middle of each side, and began to sharpen them on the iron-hard old wood.

“Don’t do that!” cried Ariel. She grabbed for him again.

Prospero evaded her fingers, gazed at her with his great golden eyes, and enthusiastically returned to the post. Ariel heard the click of his claws on the wood.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Come here.” She took him firmly around the middle to pick him up, but at that moment, one of the cat’s claws caught in a crack. He tugged to free it, and one side of the bedpost opened like a tiny door, revealing a hidden cavity stuffed with papers. Prospero mewed in surprise and sprang to the floor. Ariel stood staring at her mother’s secret hiding place. “The bed,” she murmured. “I should have thought of that.”

Ariel had always believed that her mother had some cache in the house where she hid papers and valuables. It was the sort of thing Bess would do. She had delighted in secrets, and she had never trusted banks or any other institutions. But search as she might, Ariel hadn’t been able to find the hiding place. She’d been over the house from top to bottom. She had gone through every box and drawer. She had emptied each wardrobe in the attic and the wine bin in the cellar. She had even tapped on the paneled walls and floors looking for concealed hollows. She had tried to follow her mother’s likely thought processes, and deduce the place from there. But although she felt certain the cache was in Bess’s bedchamber somewhere, it continued to elude her, and she had more or less given up hunting. Now here it was, open before her.

She reached up and pulled one sheaf of papers from the cavity, and then another. The hollow was surprisingly large, extending up into the post for a foot or more.

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