Chapter 35

Ivy emerged into a brilliant spring day with a sky as blue and sharp as cut crystal, tender green buds and pink petals spangling the bare tree branches. The smell of damp earth and sweet pollen had never felt so decadent before, so liberating. The previous four months had been spent supervising repairs and renovations at the abbey, and Ivy would fall into bed each night exhausted by the work required to bring her vision of a restored abbey to life. Ralph had taken care of the remains of the Sphinxes' bloody experiment, though he refused to divulge to her how he had done it or what had become of Arthur's remains. "It isn't for you to worry about," is all he would say, and Ivy was glad not to know.

When she and Ralph had brought the Hewitts back to the cell to show them the monk, all that remained was a pile of dust and jewels. "He's gone back, then," Mrs. Hewitt pronounced with a taut nod of her head. "To think, his evil bones were under the floors all these years, taking and sucking like a leech." She toed a gold bracelet studded with rubies on the floor. "If we had known that he could be stopped, that it didn't have to be like this..." Her words trailed to nothing.

"Does that mean that you're free of your part of the pact now?" Ivy asked.

"Free of the library and our dark charge," Hewitt said. "But not free of Blackwood, never free of Blackwood. The pact may have been broken, but our service to the family transcends all that."

"It's in our blood," Mrs. Hewitt explained. "It's as much our home as it is yours."

Now as Ivy stood on the abbey's front steps, the ancient stones beneath her feet and the battlements silhouetted against the sky above her, she finally understood what they meant. It was not just memories and bloodlines that tied them to this place, but a deep sense of stewardship. She was as much a thread in the tapestry of the history of Blackwood as all those who came before her.

Ralph had brought the car around and was holding open the door for her, dressed in his deep green livery, brass buttons shining in the sun. Her heart did a fluttery dance in her chest as she stopped just short of him. She could still feel the light brush of his lips on her forehead, though neither of them had spoken of it. In fact, she had hardly seen anything of Ralph the past months, let alone spoken to him. He was a constant presence in the abbey, and she would often hear him overseeing the construction workers, but whenever she went to seek him out, he would suddenly be otherwise engaged or mysteriously just on his way out the door. But that morning he had sought her out in the library, and asked if he could drive her somewhere after tea. All he had said was that it was a surprise, a place that he thought she should see.

Ivy studied the back of Ralph's neck as he drove, where the starched white collar met his lightly tanned skin. It felt strange to share such a small, intimate space with him and yet not have the slightest clue what he was thinking, what was causing his shoulders to hunch just a little.

Eventually they crested a peak, and a valley scattered with ruins came into view, glittering in the sunlight trapped between the rolling hills. Ralph parked the car near the bottom, and helped her out.

The sun warmed her cheeks as she lifted her face to follow the stones into the sky. Here were the romantic ruins that she had envisioned when she'd first come to Yorkshire, rugged nature cradling something beautifully fragile yet defiant against the passage of centuries.

"It's beautiful. What is this place?"

"Rievaulx Abbey," he told her. "Didn't fare so well as Blackwood after the Dissolution. Been in ruins for centuries."

While it might have been a skeleton of its former self, it was a graceful decay. Arches made of honey-colored stone soared up into the clear blue sky, and birds sang their cheery sermons from the airy pulpits. A herd of disinterested sheep watched Ivy and Ralph as they scrambled over the rocks and through half-standing doorways. Ralph took Ivy's hand firmly in his, helping her navigate the uneven terrain.

By the time they had made it to what must have once been the transept, Ivy's color was high and her lungs were burning from the effort of climbing and scrambling. It felt wonderful. Later in the spring, the abbey must have been favored by local artists, easels set up to capture the romantic sprawl of ruins. But on this mild, early March afternoon, it was deserted save for the two of them, their footsteps and voices echoing off the shallow valley walls.

Ralph was gazing up at a pair of birds on one of the soaring walls, hands jammed in his coat pockets, a small furrow in his brow.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"They aren't worth that much."

"Ralph," she insisted.

He scuffed at a paving stone with the toe of his shoe. "I want to read something. What book would you recommend for me?"

The question caught her off guard, but the soft edge of vulnerability in his voice even more so. Ivy regarded him, the dark gray eyes and hard cut of his jaw, the invisible armor of sarcasm and bluntness that he draped around himself. Under there somewhere there was a scared boy who had been sent off to war, forced to witness things that Ivy could only begin to imagine. "A novel, something with some adventure in it, but also a love story. I think you may be a romantic at heart."

She thought he might protest her assessment, but he just nodded. Running her fingers over the pitted stones of the wall, she pondered what story would make Ralph feel safe within its pages. "The Count of Monte Cristo," she said finally. "It's long, but worth it, I promise."

"I'd like that."

She was lingering in an archway, marveling at the moss that thrived on the undersides of the cold, damp stones, when suddenly Ralph was taking both her hands in his, gently pushing her up against the stones and pressing his body into hers.

She froze, his sudden heat making her drowsy and excited all at once. "What are you doing?" she asked in a whisper.

Ralph's eyes searched her face, tender and hopeful. He skimmed his hands downward, letting them rest on the swell of her hips through her cardigan, and a jolt of heat shot through her.

"You kept it," he murmured.

She could hardly think straight. "Kept what? What are you talking about?"

"The muffler." He brought one hand up and gently ran it along the wool. "I had hoped you would."

Frowning, she touched the muffler at her throat. It had felt cooler when she'd woken up that morning, and she hadn't realized she was still wearing it. "This? I don't even remember where I got it."

"No?" Some of the warmth left his voice, but he was still holding her so tightly against him that she could feel his arousal. It made her dizzy and hungry for more, so much more.

"I... I don't think this is appropriate," she murmured, despite the hammering of her heart. Was this the Ralph of her dreams? Or the Ralph who usually showed nothing but contempt for her, antagonized her? He had been milder, more agreeable since Arthur's death, but this was different. This felt like a continuation of something she didn't remember, something she may never have been part of. "I'm so grateful for everything you've done to help me, but—"

Cool air wrapped around her as he drew away, and she wished that she'd held her tongue even just a moment longer. "Ralph? What is it?" He had shed his cap and was running his hand through his hair, the afternoon sun catching the strands of gold. The man looked tortured. "I don't understand," she whispered.

"You don't remember," he said, his voice heavy with heartbreak. "I knew it was possible, but it had been a few months and I had hoped..." When he looked up at her, his face was a portrait of a man on the brink of despair.

Some foreign emotion cracked deep within her. Why was his pain making her feel as if she was the one falling down a deep, dark well? Why did the hurt in his eyes make her want to rush to him and cradle him like a small child, hushing away all his troubles?

"What, Ralph? What don't I remember?"

The sun had slid behind a cloud, a cold edge sharpening the air. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

The inexplicable tug at her heart again. "Whatever it is clearly means a great deal!"

"It once did, and to me, but clearly not to you."

"You can't say something like that and then not tell me. If something happened and I don't remember it, it still happened. Tell me," she urged. "I feel as if I were robbed of my own life. I don't know how much time I've missed, what I've missed. If you know something, then I am begging you to tell me, even if it is hard to hear. I need to know. I need to rewrite my life."

Ralph's hands fisted and uncurled at his sides. He let out a long breath and then nodded. "I have to show you. Please," he said, the single word holding a lifetime's worth of pain, so that she had no choice but to give a jerky nod and let him continue.

He was taking her by the shoulders, tilting her head back, his piercing silver gaze fixed on her. "Ralph! What are you do—"

His lips met hers and shock quickly faded into something warm and familiar, and she found herself responding to the kiss, even as her mind raced to make sense of what was happening. The stones at her back were cold, and as she pressed herself into his heat, some long slumbering part of her began to awaken. There was something deeply familiar and comfortable about the kiss, yet it felt exciting and new at the same time. He fit her body perfectly, her arms easily coming around his neck as his thigh gently nudged her legs wider beneath her skirt. Even the Ralph of her dreams could not compare with the man of flesh and blood whose touch was leaving her breathless. With hesitant hands, she ran her palms down the hard contours of his chest, tracing his muscles and memorizing the way his moans felt on her tongue.

When he at last pulled back, an involuntary whimper escaped her throat. Raising her gaze to his, she found something almost tender lurking beneath the feral gray eyes. "Do you remember now?" he asked, his voice husky.

"I—" she started, and then stopped. At first it was a soft patter like summer rain against a window, hazy images slowly clearing from the back of her mind. A hand held out and accepted on a foggy moor. Stolen looks and discreet brushes of fingertips. Then it was sharp and painful, as if a bullet were being dug out of her flesh with the blunt end of a knife. A longing so acute that her chest hurt when she lay alone in bed at night. A stolen kiss. What she had thought had been dreams, wishful, beautiful, hopeful dreams, had all been real.

Her breath caught deep in her chest, threatened to stop completely. "Oh, Ralph," she managed to choke out. "I didn't...that is..." What was there to say? Questions piled up one on top of the other faster than she could ask them. "We were lovers, weren't we? For how long? When?"

If her finally remembering brought him any pleasure, it didn't show on his face. He looked haunted, tortured even. A soldier whose mind was still in the trenches, despite being hundreds of miles away from battle.

"Not lovers, not really," he said, the faintest spots of pink appearing along his cheeks. "But friends with the promise of something more, from nearly the beginning," he told her. "I tried to keep my distance, but I couldn't... I couldn't stay away from you, Ivy. I tried to protect you, to keep the worst from you. I knew what would happen with your memory, just like with all the others. But you wouldn't go, and by then it was too late. The forgetting began, and you got engaged. It seemed like after the fire you started to remember more things, but I guess not us."

Her mind raced to make sense of the timeline, but it was hopeless. How could she finish a puzzle when she didn't even know what pieces she was missing? She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I don't."

"Maybe some things are more important than others," he said, a touch of petulance in his voice.

"That's not fair."

Ralph kicked at a rock, sending it skidding down the steep embankment. "None of it is."

"I don't remember my marriage to Arthur, and really, how can you even call it a relationship? He used me, lied to me and manipulated me. Even if I thought differently at the time, there was never any real love between us."

Ralph flinched, as if she had struck him. "Don't say his name. I never want to hear that name again."

She watched him, moving between the shadows and the light, all restless energy in the shape of a man. "He was part of my life, even if it was a dark part," Ivy said evenly. "I can't simply choose to forget him, and truthfully, I don't want to. I've come to realize that my memories are precious, even the bad ones."

Ralph had turned away, was recklessly climbing back down the rocks, heedless of his limp.

"Ralph, wait."

He stopped, but it was only to help her over the rocks. Once they were back at the auto, he let go of her hand and wordlessly opened the door for her.

"Here," she said, unwrapping the muffler. "Take it."

"I don't want it back."

"Don't be silly," she said. "It's clearly yours, you should have it."

With a dark look, he finally accepted the muffler and threw it onto the front seat. Then they left the abbey behind, the setting sun throwing the ruins into stark shadows and quiet obscurity once again.