Free Summer in the South by Cathy Holton Page B

knob. As she approached, he leaned suddenly and threw open the door.
    It was a recording studio, complete with several guitars propped on stands, and various amps and speakers scattered around. A computer sat on a narrow table crowded with monitors and microphones, and beside it stood an electric keyboard.
    “Wow,” Ava said.
    “It’s just a hobby,” he said. “A way to pass the time.” He seemed shy again, his face beneath his summer tan flooded with color. Ava guessed he hadn’t told many about his music.
    “What’s that?” she asked politely, pointing.
    “An electronic drum kit.”
    “Do you play all these instruments?”
    “Yes. I write the music and then record it.”
    “Everything?”
    “I lay down one track at a time. It gives me more control, and I don’t have to depend on anyone else to show up and play.” He watched her move around the room. “What are you thinking?” he said.
    “I’m thinking you’re a very interesting guy.”

    H e wouldn’t play anything for her but he did give her a CD, sliding it into her purse. “Listen to it later,” he said. “When I’m not around. And then give me your honest opinion.”
    They went back downstairs into the kitchen, which was the only room in the house that seemed to be undergoing renovation. The walls were stripped down to the lathing, and he had left the old brick of the fireplace exposed. A bank of dilapidated cabinets stood along the back wall, crowded beneath a window overlooking the porch and the distant fields.
    “This was added later by one of the tenants, and they did a terrible job,” he said, standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the jamb. “When the house was originally built, the kitchen was a separate building out back. They did that to prevent fires.”
    “When was it built?”
    “Randal started construction in 1806 and finished in 1810. There was an old log cabin just to the east of here where he lived until then. There’s nothing left now, just an indentation in the earth and what remains of an old stone fireplace. A group of archeology students from Harvard came down a couple of summers ago and excavated the site, as well as some of the other outbuildings. They found all kinds of interesting things: iron nails, buttons, broken pieces of pottery and china.”
    “I like the way you’ve left the brick exposed,” she said, running her fingers across the rough surface. She went over to the old farmhouse-style sink and flipped on the tap, letting the water run before shutting it off.
    “Are you thirsty?” he asked. “Would you like some lunch?”
    She turned and leaned against the sink, giving the kitchen a doubtful look. “Should we go back to town and pick something up?”
    He grinned and walked over to the back door, swinging it open. Outside on the porch was a table covered by a white linen tablecloth, set with a picnic lunch.
    A two-story white columned gallery ran across the back of the house. The bottom floor held a line of rocking chairs and several large pots of flowering plants, as well as the small table where Ava and Will sat enjoying their lunch. Beyond the scattered outbuildings a patchwork of rolling fields, hazy beneath the noonday sun, stretched beneath a wide blue sky.
    “This is delicious,” Ava said, chewing slowly with her eyes closed. She didn’t know what else to say. No one had ever made her a picnic lunch before.
    “Uncle Mait made the chicken salad,” he said. “It’s his grandmother’s recipe.”
    “He’s quite the gourmet chef.”
    “It’s his hobby, the way music is mine.” He had finished eating and sat watching her with a bemused expression, two fingers tapping softly against the table.
    Ava had been surprised that Maitland did most of the cooking. She would have expected a cook or a housekeeper in a house as large as Woodburn Hall, although perhaps Will was right; she had read too many English novels, had watched too many old movies. The aunts had a cleaning service