Page 20 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Her old landlady grumbled something. “Susan!” she yelled. “Susan, I can hear you up there with that infernal music. Come down this instant and relieve me of this bloody chore!”

Clattering, a muttered curse, and then the sound of footsteps and a muffled exchange ensued on the other end. “Hello?”

Ivy closed her eyes, the silky sound of Susan’s voice wrapping around her like a warm blanket, even through the tinny connection. “Susan? I can’t believe I’m finally talking to you.”

“No thanks to Mrs. Beeton. That old bag is standing around the corner of the hall staring daggers at me—I can see you, Mrs. B!”

Ivy could just see the old boardinghouse’s hall in her mind’s eye, the dusty carpet and cracked plaster walls. The inexplicable presence of a three-legged tabby cat that no one seemed to feed, yet was always lounging in the doorway. “I miss you. I miss London,” she told her friend.

“I miss you too. But don’t be silly—you don’t really miss it here. You’re a grand lady with a grand house now. You have to tell me everything.”

Ivy glanced around at the nearly empty post office, then lowered her voice. “I met someone.”

Silence on the other end, then: “Someone, as in, a man?”

The bell over the door tinkled, and a woman came in, a parcel in her arms. “Look, I’ll have to ring you back. I’m going to see if I can’t have a telephone installed at the abbey.”

“How is it that Vera Beeton of Bethnal Green has a telephone, but Lady Hayworth doesn’t?”

“Mysteries of the universe abound.”

“All right,” Susan said with a laugh. “Take care of yourself, will you?”

“I will. And write me back. You have no idea how much I need news of the outside world.”

“Goodbye, darling.”

Ivy stood a little longer with the receiver still in her hand, until the operator’s voice came on and she handed it back to the postman.

One peek through the car window told her Ralph was still sleeping in his seat, so she took a walk around the town green and the old stone church. The cemeteries and churchyards of the East End were higgledy-piggledy affairs, her mother’s burial place overrun with ivy and rats, and the occasional vagrant. The rich, of course, had marble residences in burial grounds almost as grand as the streets of Mayfair. But the small churchyard in Blackwood was neat and well tended, with potted red geraniums dotting the tidy graves.

So this was where all the Hayworths were buried. Walking along the crosses and old headstones, Ivy let her fingers trace the inscriptions. Autumn leaves lay scattered on the grass and shafts of warm afternoon light fell across the marble stones. Birds sang, dipping on the breeze. It was peaceful, calm. Cemeteries held no discomfort or fear for Ivy. They were a luxury, something her brother and father had been denied. It was as Arthur had said: everyone deserved to have their name remembered, a prayer recited for them. She stopped at a gleaming marble cenotaph, the engraved name jumping out at her. The late Lord Hayworth, Richard Barry.

Her predecessor. Ivy was surprised to see that he had only been forty-eight when he had died. She had envisioned an old, gray man enfeebled from age. Mrs. Hewitt had said that he had suffered from dementia, but he seemed far too young to have succumbed to such a disease. The portrait Ivy had seen of him had been of a man of middling years, and she had assumed that it had been painted years before his death. But perhaps it was done toward the end of his life, or even posthumously.

What would Lord Hayworth have thought about a young, single woman inheriting his title and his home? Was he spinning in his grave beneath her feet? Or had he been forward-thinking, a progressive like her father, who would have applauded her unconventional ascent?

“Paying your respects?”

Ivy spun around to find Ralph leaning against a stone, his coat slung over his shoulder. He was still tall and broad of shoulder, but in the afternoon sunlight, he didn’t look quite as unapproachable as he did in the misty gloom of the abbey grounds. She gave a shrug, trying to appear indifferent despite the sudden racing of her heart. “I thought Lord Hayworth was old when he died,” she said, nodding at the stone.

Ralph came to stand beside her, just close enough that his scent of leather and woodsmoke mingled with the warm autumn air. “He wasn’t young,” he said.

“Still, the way everyone talked, I just assumed.”

They stood in silence. He must have known Lord Hayworth, but like any good servant, he kept his opinions about his employer to himself.

“The car is ready, my lady,” Ralph finally said. A light touch on her elbow and she looked down to find his hand on her sleeve, as if he would escort her away. Her gaze snapped up to Ralph’s face and he quickly dropped his hand. “Excuse me,” he murmured in gruff tones, and stalked off ahead of her.

Her arm still warm from his touch, Ivy watched his long, uneven strides, an unexpected twinge of compassion running through her. What had that all been about? She threw one last glance at the gravestone glowing in the afternoon light, then hurried to follow Ralph out of the churchyard.

9

She awoke to a skull in the wood beam above her bed, with two vacant eye sockets and a macabre grin staring down at her.

As her eyes adjusted to the weak morning light, the skull receded back into the grain of the wood, nothing more than three knots in the shape of a face. Ivy lay in bed for what might have been hours or minutes, listening to the comforting tattoo of rain before finally dragging herself out of bed and dressing. She had hoped that her old ghosts would not follow her to Yorkshire, but with nothing but time and an empty house, it was easier than ever to slip into melancholy. Even reading late into the evening until she had a headache could not stave off old memories. Inevitably night would fall and she would be left alone with the moans and screams of a London infirmary, and the scrape of a shovel in the dirt of a communal grave playing endlessly in her mind.

The only thing that kept the loneliness at bay was the library. Cataloging, cleaning, exploring, and reading consumed Ivy’s days. Wandering the book stacks at the British Library had always been a favorite pastime, not just because of the books themselves, but because of the stories they held, the hands they had passed through. Dog-ears, unexpected bookmarks, even forgotten love letters tucked into pages made it feel like a treasure hunt. Ivy’s father would set her loose among the shelves, and when it was time for tea, she would proudly show him all of her prizes. Once she had found a funeral announcement tucked into a copy ofCrime and Punishment, and another time a pressed flower in a book of poetry. She wondered if the people who used these little mementos as bookmarks remembered them later, or if they simply forgot about them.

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