The Carpenter & the Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

closed
and the shades pulled. Claire had never seen inside, but mystery
surrounded the house and its inhabitants—if there were any. Once
she had seen a truck pull into the driveway and disappear below and
behind. She knew from earlier visits when she had walked up the
road that the driveway dropped and circled around to the basement
garage which opened up behind.
    No one had landscaped the yard. What little
grass existed was brown and tufted. She pulled out her pastels and
began filling in the details she had drawn. The wooden siding was
gray and cracking, the porch missing a few boards, but there was
something romantic about the place.
    Claire’s aunt and uncle had traveled to
Great Britain when she was a child, returning with hundreds of
slides of castle ruins. Claire vividly remembered studying a photo
of Raglan Castle in Wales as her aunt described their visit on a
windy and rainy spring day.
    “There was an aura of sadness about the
place,” her aunt had said, “as though it had seen happy days long
ago and was in continual mourning.”
    The rest of the family had laughed. Claire’s
father had teased his sister-in-law about her feelings toward a
“bunch of old rocks,” but Claire understood. She had always wished
for her own castle, but since castles didn’t exist in America, she
had to create them in her imagination. A stand of birch trees could
be the remnants of towers from a white fortress. A single chimney
standing alone in a field became the remnants of a great hall.
    This house she sketched gave her the same
feeling, as though something grand had once occurred there, and now
the place was in continual mourning. Who lived in this house? What
had their lives been like? What had changed in their fortunes to
turn it into this old, magnificent ruin?
    She imagined the building was at least a
hundred years old, much older than the pre-fabricated dwelling her
parents had just moved the family into. Someday, she would own a
house just like this and fix it up. She would make it her castle.
Claire wanted a place with history where she could recreate a
romantic past and build an even more romantic future.
    She had been drawing for almost an hour when
she heard the backdoor open and a dog bark. Excited at the prospect
of seeing the inhabitants, she set down her pad and watched. On the
lawn space to the left of the house, a tall boy with sandy brown
hair emerged, carrying a hay bale. A caramel-colored dog trotted
behind him. The boy set the bale down about fifty yards back from
the road then went back behind the house again and soon returned
carrying another bale. She guessed he was older than Garrett, but
not by much. He disappeared behind the house a third time, now
carrying a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a paper target. After
securing the target to the bales, he carried his equipment to the
edge of the dirt road.
    Now Claire could get a good look at him. He
wore jeans and hiking boots with a brown Billabong T-shirt. As he
waxed his bow string, she could see his Roman nose, square chin,
and sandy brown hair falling across his forehead. His shoulders
were wide, his biceps thick, his skin tan. He was beautiful.
    He ordered the dog to sit beside him, out of
firing range. He strung an arrow, pulled back, and released. Claire
knew nothing about proper form for archery, but whatever this guy
was doing looked good. His neck was thick, and she admired the way
the muscles in his arms stood out when he drew the bow. Now here
was an advantage to spending the summer in the country that she had
not considered. How many of her girlfriends working the counter at
McDonalds were watching a handsome guy shoot arrows in his
backyard? None, she was sure. Was this exquisite creature the only
inhabitant of this romantic dwelling? Suddenly, the house she had
always felt a special attachment to became even more magical.
    She watched him shoot for a while, already
imagining how he would look in a tuxedo at their wedding. He rarely
hit the