“Any women’s clothes in there are yours to do with as you like,” Roan said.
“You don’t think your wife might want them someday?” she asked, the words slipping out before she realized.
She glanced up at Roan, and it was her turn to blush red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You make a good point,” he said before she could try to explain herself. “But I think it unlikely that the future Mrs. Alder would even know these were here in the first place, and we could use them now. And if all you want to do is turn them into blankets for orphans, I don’t care. Nat has just as much right to them as I do, I suppose, and I’m sure someone at his orphanage could use them. They always have need.”
He stared down at the crate pensively, and Abigail cocked her head. “Do you want me to dig and see if there are any of your grandfather’s clothes here, too?”
“I doubt there are,” he said with a shrug. “My father had no issues taking what he wanted from my grandfather.” He put the lid back on the crate and moved on to the next one, as if to say that the topic was closed, too.
Inside were a set of teacups and a teapot, a beautiful collection with pink roses decorating them.
“Your grandmother must have loved roses,” she said, taking a cup out of its straw nest and looking it over. There was a small chip in this one, and the sight made her smile. They were clearly well-loved.
“We used to have tea parties with them,” Roan said, the words falling out like he couldn’t contain them. “Before my father found out.”
Abigail looked up at him in surprise, the bitterness of the words a strong contrast to the fondness of the sentence before it.
Had he had a difficult relationship with his father, too?
“Bring it all down,” Roan said, waving his hand. “It does no one any good up here, and bringing it down makes far more sense. It’s one more thing we can go through while we’re stuck here.”
“Did you give up on fixing things in the front today?” Abigail asked. “I’ve hardly seen you at all.”
“I was going over the books,” he said, dragging his hands down his face. “Not that I made much progress. It seems all they do is frustrate me.”
“I could help,” Abigail offered.
Roan glanced at her and frowned. “I’m not paying you to help with the books,” he said.
He was clearly hung up on the payment issue.
“You don’t have to pay me,” Abigail said. “I’ll help anyway.”
Roan eyed her curiously, then shook his head. “Let’s just get these out of here,” he said.
They dragged all the crates to the edge of the hole in the ceiling, and Roan made Abigail go down first for modesty, before climbing down onto a rung near the top himself.
Beastie whined and Abigail reached for her and patted her head. “Don’t worry,” she murmured to the dog, even as she worried herself.
He stood at the top of the ladder, reaching up into the hole to grab a crate, passing them down to Abigail.
“Be careful,” she said as the ladder began to wobble on the fourth crate.
“I’m fine,” Roan muttered. “Stop worrying about me.”
Worrying about him was most of her job, but perhaps it was best not to point that out. She took the fifth and final crate from his hands, and he disappeared into the hole one more time before returning with the lantern.
They gathered near the first crate, which only held his grandmother’s clothes. Beastie wormed her way between them, sniffing each item as they took it out and inspected it.
The second crate held the tea set and a few other fine dishes—far too fine for the tavern. The men would break them instantly. “We should give these to your brother, if he can use them,” Abigail announced as she put the tea set back.
The third crate held some books, which Roan announced could be given to the town’s new library, and the fourth crate held tools and kitchenware.
“Last chance,” Roan said as he pried off the lid of the final crate.
Abigail squealed in delight as a large patchwork quilt and what could only be a down-filled quilt appeared.
