Page 5 of Decorated

“I’d guessed,” Alfie stopped his train of thought. His voice betrayed nothing of his feelings on the topic, which made Blaine panic for a second. Corporal Gorgeous was in the RAF. No matter what the optics of the whole thing were these days, there was a fair chance a military man like him was homophobic.

Blaine must have let his worry show on his face. Uncle Robert cleared his throat and steered them toward the new photography studio that the arts center was in the process of setting up.

“Hawthorne House is a community arts center now,” he explained, “but this was a classroom in your father’s era, and it was a bedroom for centuries before that. Two bedrooms, most likely. Several walls were knocked down to make the rooms bigger when the school conversion happened in the late nineteen-forties”

Blaine knew the script of the tour by heart. It wasn’t a formal script, of course, but Uncle Robert and other members of the family had been called on to take people around the house so many times that all of them had developed a routine.

That routine involved showing off the current art classrooms first, then taking people around to a few of the rooms that had yet to be converted from the antique-looking classrooms of the past. Frankly, Blaine hoped they’d keep at least one of the rooms filled with old desks, dusty textbooks from the last century, and chalkboards just the way it was.

From there, they took Alfie downstairs to the more active classrooms and studios on the ground floor. That included a peek into Rhys’s painting classroom and Robbie’s ceramics studio. Blaine was on edge the entire time they walked that hall, however. At any second, they could run into Dave, and then his life as he knew it would be over.

“As you can see, the east wing is larger than the west wing,” Uncle Robert explained as they started up toward the front hall again. “I believe that’s why they converted the parlors on this side into classrooms to begin with. The ballroom that once took up the entire back part of the house was divided into more classrooms and a dining hall after the Second World War. That’s where we usually host events like the Christmas party for the toy drive the RAF is holding.”

Uncle Robert’s explanation stopped when they walked past his and Aunt Janice’s office. The old-fashioned desk phone that Uncle Robert still insisted on using was ringing, though Blaine couldn’t see it under the masses of art and mess that filled the room.

“Excuse me,” Uncle Robert said. “Let me just figure out what that phone call is about. Blaine, can you take Corporal Spears here on and show him the canteen?” He chuckled at his military term for the dining hall.

“Sure,” Blaine said with a smile, though he was looking frantically up and down the hall instead of focusing on his uncle. “Come on. We’ll take the secret hallway to get there.”

He caught Uncle Robert shaking his head and grinning as he touched Alfie’s arm, then gestured for him to walk back the way they’d come.

“Secret hallway?” Alfie asked, following like Blaine was a puppy who thought he was off his leash when he really wasn’t.

Blaine wasn’t completely opposed to that feeling.

“I think it was originally a servants’ hall,” he explained, opening one of the few doors on the corridor that didn’t lead into a classroom. It took them to a narrow staircase which they followed down into what had definitely been the realm of the Hatfield House servants of the past. “Sadly, most of the servants’ hall has been turned into storage. Especially after they divided and converted the ballroom and built a more modern kitchen in that part of the house.”

“I see,” Alfie said. He glanced around with apparent interest as they walked the long, dim corridor that led past a few rooms that had been piled with boxes, some of which contained supplies for various classes and some of which no one had looked at for twenty years or so, and on through the old kitchen.

“I think this kitchen could be a lot of fun to cook in,” Blaine said, turning lights on and off as they passed through the space. It dawned on him that the old kitchen was the very last place Dave would come looking for him, so he decided to stop and stall there. “Other than these electric lights that were installed in the nineteen-teens, I think, it doesn’t have a lot of modern conveniences. Can you imagine cooking a meal in an old fireplace like that, without electricity or any like that?”

Alfie looked at the hearth and raised a hand to rub the back of his neck with a wince. “People in Afghanistan cooked a lot more with a lot less,” he said.

Instantly, Blaine felt horrible.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a spoiled westerner like that,” he said feeling like, yet again, he’d stuffed things up. “Is that where you served? Afghanistan?”

“Partially, yes,” Alfie said, looking uncomfortable with the subject.

“I can’t imagine it was very fun,” Blaine said, moving on.

“War seldom is.”

Blaine winced and felt like he was going to combust with embarrassment on the spot. “No, I imagine it isn’t. I’m sorry for belittling your experience.”

“I didn’t think you were belittling anything,” Alfie said.

His honest tone of voice was enough to convince Blaine to glance over his shoulder at him as he turned a corner and led them up another staircase to the new kitchen.

“Not everyone has those sorts of experiences in life,” Alfie went on with a shrug. “I’m glad for that, too. I wouldn’t wish that kind of conflict or warfare on anyone.”

“No, the sort of conflict and warfare we have in our everyday lives is more than enough, thank you very much,” Blaine said with a nervous laugh as he opened the door at the top of the stairs. “This is the new kitchen,” he breezed right on, stepping into the much more modern room filled with the latest in cooking technology.

Alfie followed him into the room, but instead of looking around at ovens and refrigerators, he studied Blaine. Blaine couldn’t decide if he should pose or preen to show Alfie what was on offer, like he would at a club when he was looking to get lucky, or if he should make himself small and apologize for being such a disaster.

“I know I asked this before, but are you in trouble of some sort?” Alfie asked once Blaine had turned off the downstairs lights and shut the door at the top of the stairs.

He thought about denying it. Thinking about that only made him antsy. He stepped over to the swinging doors that led from the kitchen into the dining room and peeked out, just to be sure Dave wasn’t there.

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