Page 57 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

“Oi!” Ralph was leaning over her, patting her cheek. “No sleeping, d’you hear me?”

Her eyes flew open. She hadn’t even been aware that she’d shut them. The next time that happened, she could awaken with no memory of where she was or how she’d gotten there, never mind anything about the manuscript.

With the doors bolted and Hewitt armed with an ancient hunting rifle, Mrs. Hewitt hobbled to the kitchen to put on tea before Ralph stopped her and took over. Outside, the shouts and clanging of bells drifted through the night, a surreal backdrop to an even more surreal situation.

“We need to secure the manuscript. This might be our only chance to take it back,” Hewitt said. He was standing beside the couch, one hand braced on the armrest as he swayed slightly, the other gripping the rifle.

“Won’t you sit down?” Ivy asked, concerned that the older man might faint away at any moment.

He bristled. “No, my lady. Not in your presence.”

“Harold,” Mrs. Hewitt admonished, “I do believe we are past that. Sit down.”

With obvious reluctance, the butler lowered himself to the couch, his hindside barely perching on the edge of the cushion.

“They’ll have found it by now,” Ivy said. “I’m sure of it.” She darted a glance at Ralph, trying to discern by his expression if he was disappointed that she had chosen to save her own skin at the cost of risking the manuscript. But he was busy carefully pouring and handing out mugs of tea, his expression blank and miles away from their discussion.

“We have the advantage of chaos on our side. The house will be in disarray, and the library will be unguarded,” Mrs. Hewitt said, raising her cup to her lips with shaky hands. “They’ll assume that we are dead, locked in our rooms and killed by smoke or fire. Lady Hayworth is the only one who is at risk right now.”

Hewitt shook his head. “I doubt the fire would have done much damage down in the servants’ quarters. It’s only a matter of time before they realize we aren’t where we’re supposed to be.”

Staring into her tea, Ivy willed her eyes to stay open. It was dark and cozy in the little cottage, and it would be so easy to give in to exhaustion, closing her eyes and letting sleep take her. A giant weight had been lifted off her shoulders now that she had escaped her imprisonment; didn’t she deserve to rest? But that was just her body trying to persuade her to sleep; her mind knew better. “I deciphered it.”

All heads swung toward her, Ralph finally coming out of his daze.

“That is, I cracked the code. I didn’t have time to actually set the translation into work, but I think I could.”

“My God,” Mrs. Hewitt whispered. Hewitt crossed himself. “All these years, these centuries, and no one has been able to get close to it, let alone figure out how to read it.”

There was little time—or point—in celebrating Ivy’s success. It was a hollow victory, won of desperation. She hadn’t found an astronomy book, so the translation wasn’t complete anyway.

Ivy sat bolt upright. “My notes! I left my notes in my room.” Closing her eyes, she slumped back against the sofa. Out of all the things to forget, how could she have let herself leave her precious research to the fire? She couldn’t even rightly blame the library or her lost memories, she had just plain forgotten in the heat of the moment. Her tongue darted over her dry lips as the full weight of her realization settled on her. “What would happen if Arthur were to find them and decipher it himself?”

A heavy glance between Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt. “It...would not be good. The manuscript unleashed is one matter, but under the control of a madman is another altogether.”

“I’ll get them,” Ralph said, slowly standing. In the low-ceilinged cottage he was still large, imposing, but there was a frailty about him now, and the way his shirt hung off him made Ivy want to gently sit him back down and wrap him in warm blankets with a proper cup of hot tea.

Mrs. Hewitt shot to her feet. “Absolutely not. You can barely stand.”

“I’ll go,” Ivy said. “It’s my fault I forgot them, and—”

“No,” Ralph said, the force of the single word nearly enough to send her back to her seat.

“But I know where they are, and what they look like. I—”

“And what? You’re going to walk into a burning building and just walk out again? How will you get past Arthur and his servants?”

“The same way you would, I suppose,” she shot back. Ralph’s old querulousness was returning and she felt herself heating at the exchange. The embrace in the servants’ room had been a fluke, a tender moment born out of desperate circumstances. “I’m going,” she ground out.

“No, ye are not, and that’s final.” His Northern accent broadened and deepened, his nostrils flaring. A flash of the old Ralph shone in his eyes, feral and stormy, commanding despite his weakened state. Even with her scattered memories and spotty knowledge of her chauffeur, Ivy knew that there was no dissuading him; it would only serve to further his determination.

Mrs. Hewitt must have sensed this too, because she gave a resigned sigh. “Very well,” she said. “But at least have a proper bite to eat before you go, or you won’t even make it down the garden path.”

Ralph wordlessly obliged, slowly chewing the stale bread and hard cured meat that Mrs. Hewitt had found in the larder. He might as well have been a condemned man eating his last meal before the gallows, and Ivy had no choice but to sit back and watch, knowing that she was the one sending him there.

When he was done, Ralph pushed the plate away and stood up. “What do they look like?” he asked Ivy.

“It’s a red, leather-bound book,” she whispered, hardly able to meet his eye. “They’ll have taken the notes, or else they were destroyed in the fire in my room. I’m so sorry, my mind is so foggy and I didn’t think—”

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