Chapter 36

The library had once again become her escape.

But this time it was not ghosts or the banal duties of being a lady from which she sought refuge, but Ralph. They had not spoken since the kiss on the ruins the day before, and really, what was there to say? Knowing that she'd had him and then lost him without so much as a memory of their friendship was somehow worse than never having had him at all.

Lucky for her, there was endless work to be done to salvage the books after the fire. Shelves needed repairing, books needed to be dried and aired after being damaged by water, and cataloging had to be started from scratch. Mrs. Hewitt pulled books from the shelves, gave them a dusting, and then handed them to Ivy who noted them in her ledger. They worked quietly, but companionably. It was pleasant, working with a shared purpose, a fire crackling in the grate and a tray with warm tea and biscuits between them. The headaches that had once plagued her were things of the past, and she no longer dreaded the aftermath of her time spent in the library. All of her plans for restoration came back to her, and she had the time now to dedicate to making the library as beautiful and welcoming as it was important. The lending library in the village was all well and good, but people deserved to experience the magic of a library like Blackwood, to have doors opened to them and be welcomed into a place of learning.

Dusting the spine of a book and about to hand it to Mrs. Hewitt to shelve, Ivy let out a little sound of surprise when a slim packet of letters slid out from between the pages and onto her lap.

"My lady, what is it?" Mrs. Hewitt asked.

Unfolding the envelope, Ivy shook her head that she didn't know. She quickly scanned the lines written in an unfamiliar hand.

To my kin and heir,

I write this with heavy heart, in a rare moment of clarity. If you are reading this, then perhaps you will already understand why I say that, or perhaps you have no idea what I am talking about. I hope that it is the latter, but in case it is the former, then I hope you are in a likewise lucid moment.

Firstly, my apologies. For everything. I know the Radcliffes are struggling, and many times I have battled myself in whether I should shed my cloak of anonymity and step forward. But in the end, I am a coward. My only consolation is that by remaining anonymous, that my misfortune and ill-luck shall not stalk the next generation of Hayworths. Perhaps my solicitor shall not be able to find you, though I doubt that will be the case with the dogged Mr. Duncan.

Regardless, if you do find yourself at Blackwood, I beg of you, run. There may be consequences, but these pale in comparison to what you will endure should you choose to stay.

Ivy paused in her reading, aware of Mrs. Hewitt watching her expectantly. Poor Lord Hayworth. He seemed well-meaning, but could he really have been so na?ve as to think that the next Hayworth heir wouldn't succumb to the same fate as all the others? She tried not to think of what would have happened if she had found this letter earlier in her tenure at Blackwood, all the heartache it might have spared.

"It's a letter, written by Lord Hayworth," she told Mrs. Hewitt. "It seems he had a stroke of consciousness and wanted to warn me, or whoever came after him, about the library."

Mrs. Hewitt let out a heavy sigh. "I often felt like a warden of a man awaiting the scaffold. It was my job to guard him, make sure that he stayed so the library could feed, but it didn't mean that I didn't feel compassion for him. He was a good man, a little aloof perhaps, but always even-tempered and kind to the staff."

Ivy didn't say anything. Mrs. Hewitt may have just been doing her job and holding up her end of a centuries-old agreement, but it was hard to feel sympathy for any grief on her part.

Ivy turned her attention back to the other paper in her hand. It was a letter posted from London, the return address their old flat. Hungrily, she unfolded it the rest of the way and drank in the familiar, yet long-ago handwriting of her father.

Cousin, if what you say is true about the library, then of course I am both shocked and sympathetic, though I fail to see how I could be of assistance. Work and family obligations preclude me from traveling to Yorkshire at present, but when next you are in London, pay me a call, and we can discuss it further if that will ease your mind.

Ivy leaned against the shelf, read the brief letter again. Her father hadn't just known of Lord Hayworth and Blackwood, he'd known about the manuscript and library, and it seemed the curse that went along with them. Lord Mabry had said something about having her father removed from his job at the university; had her father actually met with Lord Hayworth at some point and seen the manuscript for himself? What had he made of it? He must not have believed the stories of curses surrounding it, or perhaps he simply thought there was no chance that he or anyone in their family would actually inherit Blackwood someday.

Mrs. Hewitt, bless her, was making a study of a book, giving Ivy time to hastily wipe her eyes and fold the letters back up.

"Is everything all right?" she asked presently.

"Yes. No, I don't know," Ivy admitted. "It was a letter from my father to Lord Hayworth." She didn't elaborate, and Mrs. Hewitt didn't pry.

The housekeeper pressed her lips, clearly fighting with herself about what she was about to say. "I don't want to add to your troubles, my lady, but there is something you should know."

"I suppose you had better tell me now while my handkerchief is still out," Ivy said.

"Ralph found Agnes."

For a moment a delirious happiness overtook her. "She's alive? What happened, I—" But then she saw the look on Mrs. Hewitt's face. "Oh, no," was all she could manage to say.

"It is my understanding that there was...well, there was not much of her left, from what Ralph told me." Mrs. Hewitt picked up a biscuit, put it back down again. She'd gone a little green. "Ralph said that there was evidence that the rest of the blood didn't just come from pigs as they claimed."

The implication settled between them; there had been others. The Sphinxes had tried to recreate the monk's experiments, trading in blood for eternal life or whatever it was they thought they would gain.

"We should call on her family, pay for a memorial," Ivy said. Poor, sweet Agnes. Her family could never know what had become of their daughter; it would devastate them.

"And it was all for nothing," Mrs. Hewitt responded with a shake of her head. "Those villains should rot for what they've done."

"I believe Ralph would shoot every one of them if he were given leave," Ivy said. She still felt as if she were holding her breath, waiting for Scotland Yard to come to investigate Lord Mabry's and Sir Arthur's deaths, and haul her away in handcuffs.

"That's just what I fear," Mrs. Hewitt said, bending to retrieve a book she had dropped. "He would do anything for the people he loves, even if it means landing himself in trouble." She squared a knowing look on Ivy.

Ivy's cheeks burned as she concentrated on pouring a cup of cool tea, her lips pressed tight. The silence grew heavy and prickly.

"He cares for you, you know. And I think," Mrs. Hewitt said, pretending to inspect the book, "that you have some affection for him as well, do you not?"

Pages flipped by in Ivy's mind, detailing embraces that she did not remember, kisses and hoarsely whispered promises that might have been dreams for all she knew. "Apparently," Ivy said. "Though it was built on gestures and words that I don't remember. Besides, I've had enough of men. I was hardly a bride and now I'm a widow."

"What on earth are you talking about? You're no more a widow than I am."

"But Arthur is dead." The teacup trembled in Ivy's hand as a cold panic started in her fingertips, spreading up her arms and through her chest. "Are you telling me he's not dead?"

"Of course he's dead, and I'm quite sure he's somewhere far warmer than here, where he belongs. What I mean, my lady, is that you were never married."

"But... I saw a photograph. Arthur showed me our wedding portrait."

Mrs. Hewitt actually had the nerve to laugh. "Did he now? I'll not pretend to know how he managed that trick, but mark my words when I tell you that Arthur Mabry died a bachelor."

"Are you certain?"

The housekeeper raised an affronted brow. "Quite certain. As soon as you announced your engagement, I wired Mr. Duncan, the estate's solicitor, and informed him not to draft a single document, unless instructed to do so by your ladyship herself, in person. I didn't want that snake Mabry having wills and documents drafted in your name while you were wasting away under the effects of the library. He told me that a friend of yours had come around his office, and was concerned for much the same reasons as I was. In any case, I heard from him shortly after—" here Mrs. Hewitt broke off and gave Ivy a meaningful look "—that night. He wanted to know if the engagement had been broken, as he hadn't heard a word from Lord Mabry, Sir Arthur, or yourself."

Ivy sat in stunned silence. "And you didn't think to tell me any of this?"

"I hadn't the foggiest that you were under the impression you were married, my lady."

Ivy slumped back into her seat. She wasn't married. She never had been. All the unpleasant places her mind had gone trying to fill in the blank spaces of an unremembered marriage...none of it was real, none of it mattered anymore. Instead, she was left with a vast, unwritten page, one where anything was possible. One where she wasn't bound to a ghost, one where she was free to write her own story with whomever she wanted.

She took a long sip of her tea when she realized Mrs. Hewitt was watching her expression with keen interest. "It doesn't matter," Ivy said a little too quickly. "It doesn't change anything between Ralph and I."

"Doesn't it? Well, I will tell you one thing," Mrs. Hewitt said. "My first duty is to Blackwood, but I will guard that boy's heart as if it were my own."

Desperate to change the subject, Ivy chanced a sidelong look at the housekeeper and put down her tea. "You care for him," she said. "More than just as a friend or fellow servant."

The book lay forgotten in Mrs. Hewitt's hand as she stared out the window at the gathering rain clouds. She quickly whisked a tear from her eye and stared down into her lap, her thin fingers wound around each other. The silence grew long, but something told Ivy to stay her tongue, that Mrs. Hewitt was building to something. "Ralph is our son," she said finally.

Ivy's cup hovered beneath her mouth as Mrs. Hewitt's revelation settled around her. Had she known that, or was it a secret? There was a certain similarity between the firm set of their jaws, the serious gray eyes, but she wouldn't have noticed unless she was looking for a resemblance. "Ralph never told me," she murmured. "Or, if he did, I don't remember."

Mrs. Hewitt looked up sharply. "He doesn't know."

Was he the product of an affair? Were the housekeeper and butler not truly married, and had had a child in a clandestine relationship? How could three people—a family—work together their whole lives, and one not know that they were related to the others?

As if reading her thoughts, Mrs. Hewitt gave a ghost of smile. "It's nothing like it sounds. It was the war, his memory was..." She made a futile gesture as she searched for words. "Ralph came home different. Broken. He used to be such a good-natured lad, still is, I suppose, but without that spark in his eyes. He was such a spirited boy, always getting into trouble around the abbey. Bringing toads into the kitchen and giving the cook the fright of her life. I remember one time he put on a play for the whole staff, acting out each part himself," Mrs. Hewitt said with a misty-eyed smile. "But all that was gone after the war. I suppose some of it was just growing up, but I can't help but feel the war stole the rest of his youth."

Ivy slouched back in her seat, closing her eyes. Ralph was missing pieces of his life too. And not just memories, but the knowledge that he had a family that loved him.

"We were so careful," Mrs. Hewitt was continuing. "Even with our family history, we made sure that he was never about the library too much, or even in the house too long for that matter. But then the war came, and he insisted on fighting. It broke my heart as a mother, but I couldn't stop him. You know Ralph. And then he came back..." She dabbed a handkerchief at her eyes. "My sweet boy came back so...so angry. He didn't remember what happened to him, and there were these big black spots where he couldn't remember entire chapters of his life. He knew that he used to work at the abbey, and he remembered the library and its secrets, but he didn't recognize us as his parents anymore. He'd go into rages at the smallest things, and the longer it went on, the less we felt we could tell him the truth. It wasn't until you came that he began to calm down, though he still carries that anger, still doesn't have a name for it."

Ivy quickly cut her watering gaze away. Watching the usually stoic housekeeper fight the tremble in her lips gave Ivy no pleasure, but she had seen how Ralph hungered for companionship despite his hardened demeanor. "Don't you think he would have wanted to know, even if it was painful?"

"We thought it was better this way," Mrs. Hewitt said. "Mr. Hewitt and I are bound to the abbey, the library. We didn't want that for Ralph. We didn't want to burden him."

"Burden me with what?"

Both women snapped their attention to the door where Ralph was standing, an army-issued canvas sack hefted over one shoulder.

Mrs. Hewitt shot to her feet. "Ralph."

Slinging his bag to the floor, he moved further into the library. "Burden me with what," he repeated without inflection.

Mrs. Hewitt looked about the room as if she might find an escape route, as Ralph's energy heated and seeped into the library.

"Maybe I should leave," Ivy said, rising from her chair.

She could just make out their voices as she waited outside the library doors. Ralph did not seem to be taking the news well. There was shouting, then a teary rejoinder from Mrs. Hewitt. Ivy was just considering going back in to act as peacekeeper, when the doors flew open and Ralph stormed out, Mrs. Hewitt's voice calling out behind him.

Ivy chased after him out to the cold March evening. Raindrops were starting to fall, a thousand silent witnesses to Ivy's desperation. "Ralph, wait." Her hand caught the edge of his coat, only to have it slide through her fingers.

"Will you talk to me?"

"What good is talking?" he growled without turning around. "Words don't seem to mean much around here."

Still, she followed him out through the back gardens and to the edge of the moors, ignoring the sharp raindrops falling in her hair.

"Where are you going?" He still had his bag over his shoulder, and she had a terrible feeling that she already knew.

"I'm leaving."

She stayed her step, nearly losing her footing in the uneven heather. "What?"

"That was always the plan. I'm not needed here—the work on the abbey is almost done."

"What are you talking about? Of course you're needed here. I don't want anyone else. Ralph?" She scurried in front of him, planting her hands on her hips. "Tell me what's really wrong. I demand it. And don't tell me it's what Mrs. Hewitt said—I know it must have been a shock to learn the truth about your origins, but you had your bag with you before that."

He hitched the bag higher on his shoulder, gazing out into the dark rain. "You wouldn't understand," he muttered.

"Hogwash."

His voice was low, made even harder to hear by the wind and rain. She moved closer to catch his words. "I—I swore to protect you. And then I failed you, when you needed it the most."

"I don't understand."

Color touched his ears. "Lord Mabry," he said. "You were forced to shoot him, because I was too... I was..." His words trailed off into miserable silence.

She blinked away the rain from her eyes. "That's what all this is about?" She could have laughed. This was fixable, a question of a man's pride.

"You think I'm being foolish."

"No, no of course not," she hurried to reassure him.

"When that gun came out, it unlocked something, something I would have rather not remembered. And I... I couldn't get out of my own head. I was frozen. It was as if I was back in France again, and..." His words faded off as he swallowed whatever horrors they had contained.

"Oh, Ralph." Ivy moved closer still, put a tentative hand on his chest. His heart was beating hard despite his stillness. "I've seen firsthand what the war has done to men, and I don't think it helps to bottle it all up and keep it inside of you."

"Christ, Ivy." He regarded her with deeply haunted eyes, but did not move away. "That's why we fought, for people like you, sweet girls who have their whole lives ahead of them, so that you'd never have to know the hardships of the world."

"But I want to know you, and if you truly want to know me, then you have to trust me. I seem to remember placing my trust in you even when I was told not to."

Shaking his head, Ralph looked past her toward the abbey. "You can be bloody convincing with those big brown eyes, you know."

"I know."

He let out a snort that was a hair away from being a laugh. "I'll make a deal with you. You can ask me whatever you want and I'll give you an honest answer, but in exchange I can ask you anything as well."

"Fair enough. I'll go first." She took a deep breath, the cold air bracing her for asking a question she wasn't certain she wanted an answer to. "Why won't you give me another chance, now that I can remember? You must know—" She broke off, swallowed. Put her messy thoughts in order. "You must know that I have feelings for you. That everything that happened between us I remember, but only as the most wonderful dream. I didn't dare think it could have been real. And now that I know it was real, I can't go back to a life without you."

Rain fell between them, a veil through which Ralph's gray eyes watched her without a hint of what thoughts might be lurking behind them. Plunging her hands into the pockets of her thin cardigan, Ivy shifted her weight. Cold was creeping through her shoes and the wind nipped at her nose. She could bear it all if only he would say something, but he just stood there, immovable and silent as one of the busts in the library.

"Please," she whispered into the cold air, "please say something."

A dark movement in the murky gloaming, and then he was in front of her, radiating heat and that exquisite scent of woodsmoke and leather that transported her to cozy and safe spaces in her mind. Shrugging out of his coat, he draped it over her shaking shoulders and she closed her eyes.

"It wasn't a dream," Ralph said. "It was real, every stolen minute of it." Pulling her into the refuge of his embrace, he clung to her as if drowning. "Ivy, I didn't make sense until you came here." His voice was a hoarse whisper against her hair, sending reverberations through her body. "I felt like a sheepdog without sheep," he continued. "Something in me... I wanted to protect, to guard. And then you came, and you were so good and sweet, and actually cared. I would do anything to keep you safe."

"You're a Hewitt," she said against his chest. "You were born to protect the library, but your parents never told you. All that instinct had to go somewhere. I never needed protecting though," she felt compelled to add.

A shudder of his chest, and she realized he was laughing. Pulling back, she marveled at the way the dark shadows that usually haunted his face instantly cleared. He was a beautiful man, but when he laughed, a sort of brilliance shone through him.

"Of course not, you're Ivy Radcliffe, a force of nature, a titled lady who would rather ride a bicycle through a rainstorm than ask her own chauffeur for a ride. Now it's my turn," he told her.

Ivy stiffened in his arms, loath to end the lovely moment.

Gently cupping her face in his hands, he brought her gaze up to meet his. "What are you afraid of, Ivy?" he asked softly. "You say that it was all a wonderful dream, but you wouldn't kiss me back, wouldn't even let me touch you, and that was real. Even the bravest soldiers harbor some secret fear, and there's something that you're afraid of. Is it me?"

She looked away, unable to bear the desperate sadness in his eyes where only a moment ago had been laughter. "I suppose I'm afraid that I'm not the person you fell in love with, that I don't remember who she was or how to be her." The truth of her confession hadn't fully settled until she'd said the words out loud. At least when she had thought it a dream, she had been safe from the risk of disappointment.

"I see." He squinted up into the rain, deep in thought. "Do you still love books?" he finally asked, bringing his gaze back down to rest squarely on her.

"Of course," she answered, puzzled.

"And would you still go out of your way to defend a friend in need, or help an injured animal?"

She frowned. "Did I help an animal?"

"You brought me a barn swallow with a broken wing," he told her. "We were able to mend it. So, would you do it again?"

She didn't remember that, but she answered without hesitation. "Every time."

"Are you still the most beautiful woman in Yorkshire—no, in all of England?"

Her cheeks heated. "I—"

"No, don't answer that, I can see that you are."

She gave him a sardonic look.

"Are you still stubborn as a bloody mule?"

"I am not stubborn! I'm—"

He stopped her with a raised brow. "I think I already know the answer to that one, too."

At her indignant expression, he drew her closer to him, his hands strong and sure as they clasped her at the small of her back. "If there's one thing the war taught me, it's that we can try to forget and push away memories all we want, but we are still the same, damaged people. Those forgotten memories shape us as much as the remembered ones. Everything that we shared, whether you remember it or not, brought us here. So I suppose the question isn't if you are the same girl that I fell in love with—because you are—but if you will have me, broken and unpolished as I am."

She didn't answer him, instead fingering the edge of his collar, wishing that she could follow the trail of heat down his chest. "Where was our first kiss?"

His brows rose at the sudden change in subject. "Out on the moors, the day I found you running like your life depended on it. I'd been drinking whiskey, and you came crashing through the heather all pale and breathless, and..." He scuffed his boot in the mud as if suddenly self-conscious. When he spoke again, some of his old gruffness had returned. "And I decided I had to kiss you, right then or die from the wanting."

At his words, a key clicked into place, and out tumbled a precious cache of memories. The loss of time walking back from the moors. Whiskey-warmed breath on her lips. The electric brush of Ralph's stubbled jaw against her cheek. The cold and rain fading away until it was just Ivy and Ralph clinging to each other, a lonesome island in the rolling mist.

"Take me there."

With a searching sidelong glance, he looped her arm through his, guiding her further out of the grounds until the heather grew wild and the dead grass brushed at their legs. The patchwork view of rolling hills and valleys was familiar, the trees all crooked lace with branches feathered against the dark sky.

She stood still, closing her eyes, the breeze sweeping off the moors and invigorating her. "I remember," she whispered. "You were standing close to me, but you felt so far away. I was scared, but that wasn't why I stayed."

Ralph's breath hitched beside her, his arm tightening around her waist. Spinning to face him, she planted her palms flush against his chest, savoring his stability, his realness. "Kiss me, here. It will be our first kiss, again."

He pulled her closer, obliging. "I would forget everything every day if I had to, just for a lifetime of firsts with you," he murmured.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," she said, lifting her mouth to meet his. The world stretched out before her as sweeping as the rolling moors, as promising as fresh sheets of paper just waiting to be filled with words. And she would savor every unfolding moment of her story, every gentle touch, every look from Ralph. Every cup of tea and joke shared with Susan. But most of all, she would carry her family's legacy with her; James's sense of adventure and endless encouragement, her mother's warm love and practical advice, her father's brilliant mind. She was the best parts of all of them, and they would live on, through her.

Darkness was creeping in, the rain becoming too persistent to ignore. "You're cold," Ralph said, unlooping his muffler and gently wrapping it around her neck. It smelled of sweet straw and leather, of gusty moors, of Ralph. It smelled like home.

She laced her fingers in his, his warmth, his vitality, traveling up her arm and spreading through her chest like a bird coming home to roost. "Come on," she said. "Let's go warm up in the library."

Press release for the unveiling of the Blackwood Manuscript at the British Library, 1931

The Blackwood Manuscript, c. 1350 Anon.

Translated by Dr. Ivy Hewitt (née Radcliffe),

the Lady Hayworth

Discovered by Lady Hayworth in Blackwood Abbey, the Blackwood Manuscript has been hailed as a momentous find by both academics and occultists alike, and sheds light on the study of astrology and herbology in the fourteenth century. Much of the knowledge within the brittle pages was hitherto lost to time, and will greatly advance not only our understanding of life in the fourteenth century, but also herbal remedies and their applications today.

Though the artwork is crude and vernacular in style, the text is written in an incredibly sophisticated cipher, one that might have gone centuries without decryption if not for Lady Hayworth's indefatigable will and singular skill with code-breaking. Lady Hayworth credits her late father, Dr. Matthew Radcliffe, as both her inspiration and mentor in working with codes and ciphers. His oeuvre is currently enjoying a renaissance among the medievalist community, and several exhibits and catalogs are being planned to coincide with the unveiling of the Blackwood Manuscript.

Perhaps the most enduring mystery of the manuscript is the missing pages. Lady Hayworth explains that it was not uncommon for manuscripts to be re-bound over the years and lose pages in the process, yet the torn vellum feels intentional. This hints that there was perhaps other knowledge bound within this book that was removed for whatever reason, be it censorship from the Church, or simply a long-ago owner who thought to take the job of editing upon themselves. But whatever became of these pages is unknown, and will most likely remain a mystery. What is known, is that the Blackwood Manuscript will leave an indelible mark on the field of medieval history, and is a jewel among medieval manuscripts, both in Great Britain and abroad.

Those wishing to view the manuscript can do so at the British Library where it currently resides when not in use by scholars. Lady Hayworth has also graciously opened the Blackwood library to visitors, and welcomes anyone and everyone to experience her incomparable collection of books and manuscripts.