Natalie's Surprise Engagement by Julia Ridgmont

Author:Julia Ridgmont [Ridgmont, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-12T06:00:00+00:00

To find the second bell,

I’ll tell you what to do.

Go to the structure that spans the river

And find something blue.

Another clue for another bell. Well, it looked like she needed to take Drew out to the covered bridge a few miles outside of town—just as soon as his three o’clock appointment was over.

Chapter Eight

“I don’t understand,” Drew said sometime later while staring at the jingle bell that Natalie held in her hands. This one had been set quite deliberately in the northeast corner of the covered bridge and had a long blue ribbon attached to it. So long, in fact, that it could be worn like a necklace. Strange. This time, he knew better than to snatch the note from her hands. “Read the note to me again, please.”

She unfolded it and did so.

“Something blue, huh?” What did it mean?

Natalie voiced the thoughts running inside his head. “I feel like whoever hid these bells are trying to give us a message. Since there was nothing attached to the first bell, I’m guessing the place where they hid it is what they want us to focus on. And now this blue ribbon means something, and perhaps the covered bridge itself.”

“A rock by the skating pond? How is that significant?” Drew scratched his head.

“Tell me what you know about the skating pond.”

He shrugged. “People go there to skate on it and have a good time.”

Natalie didn’t look amused. “Come on. Think harder. What does the skating pond mean to you personally?”

“Nothing. I haven’t even taken a girl there.”

“Well, of course not, silly. I’m your girl.”

She flashed him a flirtatious smile, and Drew’s heart flip-flopped. Did she really mean that or had she only said it in jest? Whether she had or not, her words reminded him of something. “Come to think of it,” he said slowly, “I’ve heard my father mention how he saw my mother for the first time at the skating pond after he’d gone away for a few weeks to work in a neighboring town. She had come to teach school after the last schoolmarm got married at Christmastime.”

“I’ll bet she didn’t stay the schoolmarm for long, either,” Natalie said with a grin.

He smiled. “No. They married that spring and had Jason a year later. And then me. But every year they go there when the weather starts turning colder and sit by the fire and eat chestnuts even before the ice freezes. It’s their tradition.”

“It sounds like fun,” said Natalie. “Are you still planning on taking me tomorrow?”

“If you still want to.”

“I do,” she said softly.

His heart did another flip-flop.

Her brow furrowed. “In the meantime, though, we need to figure out what this blue ribbon attached to this bell means.”

No answers came to them then or even the next day as they skated to their hearts’ content, with several people in the town watching them circle the pond, including Walt. Drew noticed the little spat he and Emeline had on the edge of the pond. A short time

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.