A New Foundation Rochelle Alers (read aloud .txt) 📖

guests to wear out their welcome? Taking a bath in an unheated bathroom in the dead of a northeast winter had to be torture.”

“I agree. Revised plans dated 1912 included running water and the installation of central heating.” Taylor knew the house’s electrical system had to be upgraded and Wi-Fi capability added, and the plumbing had to pass code before Bainbridge House could be licensed as a hotel.

“What are you going to do with the water closets?” Sonja asked.

“Convert them into spaces to keep linens and cleaning supplies for the housekeeping staff, and stockrooms to store personal products for the restrooms. The house has two elevators, but I won’t know if they’re operable until they have been inspected. We’ll probably need two more elevators, but I’ll have to confer with the architect to determine where they will be located.”

“When you open Bainbridge House as a hotel and wedding venue, what will be the capacity?”

Taylor pinched the bridge of his nose as he attempted to recall the original floor plans for several rooms. “I believe the larger ballroom can hold three hundred and the smaller one somewhere around a hundred. I’m considering making modifications to the bedrooms. I’d like to remove walls to convert them into connecting suites. Right now, there are one hundred bedrooms and I doubt whether we’ll be able to book that many rooms at any given time.”

“How many connecting suites are you talking about?”

“Probably seventy-five. Bainbridge House has gone through a number of architectural and structurally modifications since 1889 and must undergo even more to make it viable as a business.”

Sonja nodded. “Most of these mansions have servant quarters. Do the plans include one?”

“Yes. In fact, it is quite large, which may indicate the Bainbridges needed a full staff to keep the house operational. Once you go through the documents, you’ll have to let me know how many were in their employ.”

“I recall you saying something about cottages.”

Taylor realized Sonja had remembered a lot of what he’d told her. Then he realized she must have an incredible memory if only to be able to identify thousands of years of relics and works of art. “The caretaker lives in one, which leaves five unoccupied.”

“Does he live there with his family?”

“No. He’s not married.”

“What do you intend to do with the other five?” Sonja had asked yet another question.

Taylor’s plans for the cottages included turning them into family residences. “Unlike the Bainbridges who occupied the first two floors in the main house, I plan to live in one of the cottages.”

“What about the rest of your family?”

“We’ll see when that time comes. The floor plans show one large bedroom and two smaller ones. There’s also a kitchen, bathroom and an area for a living and dining room.”

Taylor talking about the cottages had Sonja wondering what they had been used for when there was more than enough space in the main house to accommodate friends, guests and family members. If they weren’t occupied by tenant farmers, then the only alternative could have been for guests who had insisted on complete privacy, or men of wealth and privilege who’d sequestered their mistresses on the property away from the prying eyes of their wives and her friends.

“Maybe the next time I come I’d like to see inside one,” she told Taylor.

“I’ll make certain they’re cleaned and aired out. Do you want to see a bedroom on the third or fourth floors?”

“No. I’d rather to go up to the turrets and look out over the property.”

Taylor reached for her hand, and Sonja felt a slight shiver sweep up her arm. Whether Taylor was assisting her in or out of his SUV, resting his hand at the small of her back or touching her hand, it had become a struggle not to pretend she was a heroine in a romance novel and he the hero, and they would live happily ever after. Everything about him made her feel safe and protected. However, she had to remind herself she wasn’t a character in a novel, but a real flesh-and-blood woman with deep-rooted trust issues when it came to men.

When she’d first walked into Professor Hugh Davies’s classroom Sonja had been awestruck by the middle-aged man with the handsomeness of leading men in 1940s and 1950s movies. And when she’d glanced at the other female students, she realized their reaction was like hers: they were mesmerized. Professor Davies was the total package: tall, slender, perpetually tanned, and he’d been blessed with a velvety baritone voice.

He periodically conducted a slideshow quiz, and students were required to name a painting and painter or piece of sculpture. Because she’d been able to identify each slide every time, she’d believed he had taken a special interest in her whenever he’d asked her to stay after class to discuss her grades. Her fellow students were unaware she’d grown up visiting European medieval cities with museums and churches displaying priceless artifacts.

Her passion with art also extended to photography and she owned coffee table books depicting black-and-white photographs of the celebration of Black culture and the struggle for freedom dating from 1840. Many of the photographs were now a part of the Smithsonian.

As a twenty-year-old art major at Boston College, Sonja hadn’t realized she was in over her head with Hugh until it was too late. She hadn’t told her mother she was involved with one of her professors until after they were married. There was complete silence on the other end of the call, and then the sound of a dial tone. Her mother had hung up on her. Telling Maria that Sonja had become the second wife of a man old enough to be her father had shocked and disappointed her mother. Her father’s reaction was different. He’d wished her well. It was what he’d said next that proved prophetic. He said because she was an adult and responsible for her own actions, she had to be willing to accept all and any consequences of her marriage.

Although she thought