Road to Avonlea: Double Trouble

By Marlene Matthews

Meanwhile, desperate to understand why her darling Sara, is acting so strangely, Hetty King employs all sorts of hilarious tactics to control her niece. But the new Sara who steals, lies, cheats and continually burps, has Hetty King at her wits end. Will the real Sara Stanley ever made it home before it's too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Davenport Press
• Release date: May 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781926978055

Book preview

ROAD TO AVONLEA

Double Trouble

By: Gail Hamilton

Based on Sullivan Films Production written by Heather Conkie adapted from the novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY: Davenport Press

Copyright © 2012 Sullivan Entertainment Inc.

Image Copyright © 2012 Sullivan Entertainment Inc.

Road to Avonlea is a trademark of Sullivan Entertainment Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reviewers who may quote brief passages.

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Chapter One

Sara was dreaming—a gentle, lovely sort of dream in which she floated like a feather borne by the wind, weightless, high above the clouds. She smiled to herself, happily dozing. Everything would be perfect—if only her toes weren’t so cold.

Instinctively she snuggled down, tugging at the patchwork quilt Aunt Hetty had fashioned for her birthday and pulling it up under her chin for warmth. But her feet were still freezing.

She pulled again, but the quilt stubbornly refused to budge. Had she grown overnight...or had the quilt shrunk? Sara resolved to register a complaint with Aunt Hetty first thing in the morning. After all, how was a person supposed to sleep when her toes were turning to icicles?

Suddenly a sharp sound pierced her dream. Something whisked and scrabbled across her cheek. Sleepily she brushed at her face, longing to drift back to the sweetness of her dream, but the noise persisted. The gentle breeze began to feel damp and chill. Once again she groped for the quilt. This time, however, she was half awake and, with a sudden shock, she realized there was no quilt—her fingers were clutching at thin air!

She opened her eyes and let them adjust to the dim light. Then, with a horrified gasp, she realized what had happened.

She wasn’t in her feather bed at Rose Cottage! She was on a filthy dirt floor in a miserably cold room, staring into the beady eyes of a rat, its nose twitching, its whiskers flicking mere inches from her face!

A scream caught in her throat. She sat bolt upright, her heart pounding like a sledgehammer. Her hand touched something cold...a tin pail. In one swift motion she hurled it at the rat. The pail missed and hit the wall with a great clatter. The rat scrabbled and scurried across the floor, disappearing into a hole.

Sara looked around in a panic, suddenly remembering rough hands throwing her into this hovel of a room, voices shouting at her— That’ll learn ye, Jo Pitts!—then the door bolting shut as she screamed, pounding the walls for help. She recalled the same harsh voices arguing into the night, then an ominous silence as she huddled in the corner, finally crying herself to sleep.

With an awful rush of guilt she thought of the foolish bargain she had struck with Jo Pitts, the ragamuffin Felix swore was her double. It had seemed so innocent, such a lark! The two girls would simply trade places long enough for Sara to take a brief vacation from Aunt Hetty’s strict rules and regulations. Sara pictured Jo Pitts snugly ensconced in Rose Cottage, sipping a cozy cup of hot chocolate with Aunt Hetty.

The kitchen would be softly lit, a delicious smell wafting from a freshly baked plum pie cooling on the rack. And from outside, the fragrance of roses and newly mown hay would drift through the kitchen window framed with crisply starched curtains.

Tears brimmed in Sara’s eyes and spilled over, running hotly down her cheeks. How could she have been such a fool, running away from the dearest place in the world, from home, from all that was safe and secure? With a desperate yearning, she longed for the sound of Aunt Hetty’s voice. How could she have fled willy-nilly, without a care in the world for Aunt Hetty’s feelings? And Gus Pike. She had no more considered him than the man in the moon! With anguish, she remembered how she had finagled her way onboard ship, selfishly convincing Gus to take her with him on his quest to find Captain Crane. She recalled trudging with Gus through the winding streets of the city, the sign of The Black Parrot suddenly emerging from thick, dense fog....And with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she thought of that last glimpse of Gus...frightened, pale, fallen into Abe Pike’s murderous hands. A sob caught in her throat. Was it only last night? It felt like weeks, months. Time had vanished.

She was a prisoner. There was no escape from this filthy, foul-smelling cell. And they had called her Jo Pitts! Was that why they’d locked her up? They had mistaken her for Jo! What awful crime had Jo Pitts committed to deserve imprisonment? In despair, Sara stared at her hands. They were raw and bleeding where she had scraped them, pounding against the rough wooden door in a desperate attempt to flee. Her dress was ripped and filthy, her stockings torn and streaked with dirt, and her stomach grumbled with hunger.

Just then a glimmer of light caught her attention—daylight, creeping in pale fingers across the floor. She hadn’t noticed it the night before, but there was a window, high and narrow and boarded over with a wooden slat. If she could reach it, maybe…just maybe...

Quickly she shoved the pail beneath the window and, standing on tiptoe, she tugged at the board nailed across the frame. With a creak, it gave way. She froze, glancing nervously back at the bolted door. All was silent. Frantically now, she seized the wooden board and swung it with all her might at the window, leaping back as the pane smashed to smithereens. Winding her sash around her hand for protection, she knocked out the remaining jagged bits of glass clinging to the frame, then hoisted herself up and desperately tried to squeeze through the narrow opening.

The sound of the iron bolt slipping its latch stopped her cold. The door flew open and a