Page 17 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Ralph didn’t elaborate, though the hunch in his shoulders and tightness in his jaw told her he had more thoughts on the subject. Finally, he heaved a sigh. “Don’t get out yet,” he instructed as he dashed out, opened an umbrella, then came around to her door and let her out.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, surprised at the chivalrous act, though really, he was just doing his job.

He saw her to the door, then went back for the car. Ivy trudged up to her room, drew herself a warm bath, and indulged in a long soak. A truly impressive bruise was starting to blossom on her thigh where she had fallen in the rocky mud, and her muscles ached with cold. With the rain pounding against the windows and storm clouds racing along the moors, she felt small and young. Alone. She couldn’t expect to be able to get to the village on her own, and now it seemed that even if she did, she’d quickly be found out. What had Ralph been doing in town, anyway? Driving about, looking for her? The thought only made her feel more like a prisoner.

A draft of cold air blew in from somewhere, and she shivered, wishing that she’d secured the windows before getting in. Settling deeper into the tub, she let the warm water soak away some of her anger. But her eyes flew open when there was a long, slow creak, as if someone was walking across the floorboards, trying not to be heard. Ivy sat very still.

“Hello? Agnes?”

There was no response. Then footsteps, the soft sweep of fabric, like a dress trailing along the floor. Ivy had put the unsettling incident with the hairbrush out of her mind, but now she wondered if she’d dismissed it too quickly.

“Hello?” she whispered again, this time chancing a look over her shoulder back into her room.

Nothing.

James had always teased her for believing in ghosts, but to believe in ghosts was to believe in an afterlife. And there had to be an afterlife, there just had to. Otherwise Ivy would never see her family again, and without that distant promise, life would simply be unbearable. During the war, spiritualism had swept the nation, as mothers and wives, desperate for closure, had flocked to séances in the hopes of reuniting with their men, even if only for a moment. Susan had once dragged Ivy to one, where the table lifted and bangs and moans could be heard coming from the walls. The medium—an ancient woman draped in strands of pearls and dressed in black lace—had claimed to have sensed the presence of a man in military uniform. Every woman present had gasped, certain that it wastheirloved one come back from the battlefield. But Ivy had seen the strings attached to the table legs as they were leaving, and ever since then her romantic notions of ghosts had been tarnished.

She gripped the sides of the porcelain tub, her body wracked with shivers as the air grew colder. This wasn’t the dramatic commotion of a séance; this was quiet, a building sense of dread, as if she was sharing space with something that wasn’t human.

“What do you want from me?” Her voice came out cracked and small.

Closing her eyes, Ivy held her breath, feeling the air move about her. The smell of incense and warm herbs tickled her nose. Bells tolled in the distance—or were they in her mind?—reverberating through her bones. When she finally had the nerve to open her eyes again, the movement had stopped, the sensation vanishing. The water had grown cold, and her fingers were pruned with wrinkles.

She hurriedly clambered out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel. Everything was just as it should be, the windows closed and locked, the door firmly shut. If she had been disappointed by the séance, then she was downright disturbed by the confirmation of her beliefs. Something supernatural had occurred—she was sure of it—but rather than being comforted, all she wanted to do was escape somewhere safe and warm and filled with old friends.

It was time to explore her library.

8

The lock had been easy enough to pick.

Ivy and Susan had found themselves on the wrong side of Mrs. Beeton’s front door plenty of times after staying out past curfew, and a hairpin was all it took to pop the locking mechanism of the abbey’s library doors. She had only felt the smallest twinge of guilt as she stood on her knees and jimmied the pin until it had clicked. But shehadasked Mrs. Hewitt to leave it unlocked and itwasher library after all.

With a steaming cup of tea, warm lights casting shadows across the wood-paneled walls and a fire crackling in the marble fireplace, Ivy snuggled deeper into the plush velvet chair by the window. The battered copy ofLittle Womenhad been a gift from her mother, and Ivy could open it to any page and happily slip into the March sisters’ lives. No ghostly footsteps or strange changes in the air, just books and the sound of wind racing across the heather outside. This had to be heaven, and it was all hers. Ivy hadn’t needed to marry a man to gain her wealth or security. Besides, what man could have ever provided her with such a treasure as this?

Her reverie was interrupted by clipped footsteps and the clearing of a throat. She looked up from her book to find Mrs. Hewitt standing with clasped hands, a deep line of dismay etched into her temples.

“Good afternoon,” Ivy said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Mrs. Hewitt looked taken aback to be asked. “It’s only that I noticed you are in the library,” the housekeeper said, stating the obvious. “And what with the dark weather and the electric lights needed...” She trailed off, wringing her hands.

“Surely the wiring cannot be as bad as all that?”

“Unfortunately, it is, my lady,” Mrs. Hewitt said.

“Oh dear, we can’t have that. Perhaps we should have a man in to look at the wiring? Or, do you think Ralph would be able to? He seems awfully clever with automobiles and that sort of thing.”

“My lady, I—”

“Mrs. Hewitt,” Ivy said gently, stopping her. “I know that you worry, but this is my home now, and I intend to use the library. I’ll ask Ralph tomorrow if he can look at the wiring, and if he can’t, perhaps he can recommend someone in town who knows what they’re doing. In the meantime, I’ll be very careful, and turn off the lights at the first sign of trouble.”

The housekeeper’s neck went red and her lips tight, but she only gave a nod and then stalked out. Ivy had pulled rank, and Mrs. Hewitt had no choice but to fall in line.

True to her word, when dusk fell and the weak electric lights couldn’t adequately penetrate the darkness, Ivy reluctantly turned off the lamps and brought her book upstairs with her. It was just as well; a powerful headache had taken hold, and her eyes were starting to go fuzzy. It was time for another lonely dinner in her room, with only the sound of rain for company. Ivy had never been able to muster much sympathy for rich people who complained of unhappiness or really much of anything at all, but as she spooned up her creamy soup and nibbled at the soft white bread, she could understand how loneliness could chip away at a soul, wealthy or not.

Ivy was not keen to track down Ralph and ask for his help with anything, not after their encounter in the rain the previous day. Everything about him prickled her sense of pride and independence, from the way he never seemed to be more than a few steps away, to the manner in which he regarded her from behind heavy lashes, as if cataloging her every movement. Never mind that he also seemed intent on driving her from her home with his strange warnings. But she was desperate to spend more time in the library, and Ralph was her best chance at addressing the problems with the wiring.

It was a cool, gray morning, still damp from the previous day’s storm, and the smell of woodsmoke hung in the air, the distant bleating of sheep echoing across the moors. No motor engines, no honking buses, no street vendors hawking their wares. The quiet allowed Ivy to hear her own breath, and the crunch of gravel and leaves underfoot, reminding her that here in the countryside, she was more than just another face in a sea of humanity. Following the sound of an ax chopping wood, she found Ralph behind the stone barn, sleeves rolled to the elbow as he lifted an ax over his shoulder and let it fall, splitting a log neatly in two.

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