Page 55 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

When she had placed the manuscript prominently on the desk, she doused a handkerchief in water and held it to her face. Then, crossing to the fireplace, she opened the grate and poked at the coals. Embers sparked to life. Carefully reaching in a piece of scrap paper, she let it ignite, flames greedily licking at the edges.

With a flick of her wrist, Ivy watched as the paper landed at the base of the curtains. In only a few moments the flames were gobbling up the velvet, and smoke was spreading. There was nothing to be done about her clothes and other meager possessions, but they were a small price to pay for her freedom.

Removing the cloth from her mouth, she ran to the door and began screaming and pounding. “Fire! Someone help, there’s a fire!”

Almost instantly there was a key in the lock, the door swung open, and a large, red-faced man with wild eyes burst into the room. “Oi, get out o’ there!” He pushed her aside, frantically scanning the room. “Where is it?” But he’d already spotted the manuscript and was lunging to save it from the encroaching flames when she slipped through the door.

And just like that, she was free.

29

Shoes. Why hadn’t she thought to dress and put shoes on?

Ivy’s feet ached with cold as she ran down the hall, her thin nightgown twisting and wrapping around her legs. Though she didn’t know where she was going, a vague map took shape in her head. This was the east wing, and there was an armory, a second-story gallery somewhere. But more importantly, there was someone she was supposed to find, someone in trouble. But who? A gold band on her finger flashed in the lamplight as she ran. No, not Arthur. She had to avoid her husband at all costs. There was someone else.

By now there were servants running with buckets of water and a constant alarm of “Fire! Fire!” rang down the halls. No one noticed as she rushed in the other direction, down the main stairs and into the great hall.

She stopped when she reached the library. Animal instinct told her to stay far away, but she desperately wanted that astronomy book, the last piece to solving the manuscript. Smoke was curling down the stairs, and it was only a matter of time before the flames followed. There was no time for second thoughts; she pushed the doors open and plunged inside.

The books danced and shimmered around her, a maze of shelves that stretched endlessly into the murky dark. Blindly, Ivy began pulling books down. Smoke was spreading, and she had to bury her nose in her elbow as she searched. Shouts rang out from the hall, growing closer. She couldn’t risk it; she had to leave off her search. With only the faintest notion of where she was going, she fled down the servants’ stairway.

The kitchen was deserted, everything tidy and unused. Above her rang the pounding of footsteps and muffled shouts. As her gaze swept over the bare wooden table and the white china lining the wall, flashes of memories came back to her: a broad-shouldered man with haunted eyes sitting at the table, trying to protect her from an attack. Blood spreading across the tiles. A heart she hadn’t realized capable of breaking any further, tightening in on itself and threatening to implode.

Ralph.

They had bludgeoned Ralph and taken him somewhere, along with Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt. How long ago had that been? Days? Weeks? Months? Everything was lost, floating in a shapeless fog. Perhaps Ralph and the rest of them were long dead. Perhaps she had attended their funerals, Arthur with a tight grip on her arm as the vicar read the final rites. But those were just dark anxieties, not memories, and so she had no choice but to believe that they were somewhere, alive.

Ivy’s head was pounding, her lungs filling with smoke. Desperately, she ran down the hall, passing empty servants’ rooms until she came to a locked door. She threw her weight against it; pain shot up her shoulder, but it remained unbudging. She tried the next one and the next one, until, straining to hear over the commotion from upstairs, she could make out a rustle of movement. Her heart beat faster.

“Ralph, are you there? The door is locked, can you open it?”

“If I could fucking open it, the bloody thing wouldn’t be locked, now would it?”

She could have wept with relief. Ivy dropped to her knees in front of the lock and reached to fish a pin out of her hair before remembering that Arthur had confiscated them.

“Stay there, I’ll be right back,” she shouted through the door as she scrambled up.

“Not sure where you think I’d be going,” came the dark mutter from the other side.

She raced back to the kitchen where she found a small knife and then stumbled back down the hall. Fingers made clumsy with adrenaline, Ivy pried the knife in the lock until there was a click. Her slick hands grappled with the doorknob, and then the door swung open.

The stench hit her first, a stomach-turning combination of stale sweat and despair. There was a small, ground-level window which might have let in some light, had someone not pasted newspaper over it. A washstand with an empty basin stood in the corner next to a bucket draped with coarse cloth, and on the cot sat a very disheveled Ralph, his hands bound together and loosely tied to the metal bed frame. Even with a finger’s-length of beard, the sharpness of his jaw was pronounced, and his clothes hung loose, ill-fitting.

At her widening eyes, Ralph quickly cut his gaze away, a touch of color on his gaunt cheeks. “Don’t just stand there staring,” he said gruffly. “Cut these, will you?”

Ivy sprang into action and obliged. “How long have you been in here?” she asked as she worked to sever the ropes.

“Seventeen days.”

Over two weeks! That meant she had been captive for that long as well. No sooner had the ropes fallen away, than his arms came around her with surprising force. She stiffened in surprise, but then found herself dissolving into him, her body responding to some memory that her mind had forgotten.

“Ivy, thank God,” he murmured into her neck. Rough fingers ran through her hair, excruciatingly tender and intimate. “Did they hurt you?”

She didn’t know. Her body was unbruised, but how could she say for certain what had transpired while she was locked away with the manuscript? When she didn’t say anything, he wrapped her into his embrace even tighter. She could smell woodsmoke and warm stable leather beneath the peppery sweat, the familiar scents tugging at something deep in the recesses of her mind.

“I thought of you, every day. Seeing you again was the only light in the darkness.”

Why was he talking to her like that, like she was his sweetheart, or more? Had his time in isolation addled his mind even more than it had hers? Yet in the refuge of his arms with his breath warm on her neck, Ivy didn’t care. Words choked in her throat, but she didn’t need them. This felt right. More than right: destined. They stood entwined for what felt like hours, the sound of his heart strong and steady under her ear.

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