Page 67 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

“But youarethe authorities,” she said. She didn’t know all of the men who comprised the secret society, but she knew that most of them were wealthy aristocrats, and wielded power both in Parliament and among the nobility. No officer or barrister would dare to go against them.

“There will be questions,” one of the Sphinxes said. “She’s a lady, and her death would draw undue attention.”

Ivy’s eyes darted to where Ralph was standing. He was looking past her, eyes locked on the pistol trembling in Lord Mabry’s liver-spotted hands. “Ralph?”

He stood still as a statue, his eyes glazed as if witnessing something only he could see, throat working compulsively. At his side, his fingers twitched. He looked young, scared.

“Never mind him,” the general sneered. “He’s war-addled.”

Ivy dragged her attention back to where the argument over her life was raging.

“We can’t let her go free. It will be over for us,” another man countered.

“Then put her in the cell. Let her live out her days there. The love of her life died and she went mad, became a recluse. It’s an easy enough story to peddle,” Sir Alfred said.

The pistol wavered in Lord Mabry’s hand and Ivy held her breath. She should run, at least try to make an escape, but she found herself rooted to the ground, unable to tear her gaze away from the pool lest Arthur miraculously resurface.

“You truly are a credit to your father’s legacy,” Lord Mabry said, thoughtful. “I always felt badly that we had to see him removed from his position at Cambridge, but it wouldn’t do to have the manuscript fall into the hands of someone like him, someone who didn’t understand it the way we did. He got close several times, even going so far as to correspond with his cousin, the late Lord Hayworth. Can you imagine the damage they could have done? It would have been the end of a dynasty, the waste of the culmination of centuries’ worth of knowledge.”

“You...you knew my father?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly, but I knew enough to see that he had to be stopped. I was only too glad when I learned that he’d enlisted and would no longer prove a threat to us.”

The smell of blood filled Ivy’s nostrils, her lungs, her very being. Her father’s demise, her mother’s broken heart and subsequent decline, it had all stemmed from this man and his obsession with the manuscript. She was frozen in a moment in war where a soldier must decide if he is to stay in a foxhole, or take his chance going over the top. Ivy’s vision narrowed to the pistol, a dangerous glimmer of metal in the candlelight.

No one was expecting it, least of all her. Lunging forward, she hurtled her body into the old man, knocking him off balance and sending the pistol clattering to the floor. She snatched it up, scrambling to her feet and pointing it at Lord Mabry with trembling hands.

“Put the gun down, girl,” Lord Mabry instructed.

She felt light-headed and far away from her body, as if she was still on the gallery looking down at herself. “The blood,” she said, gesturing with the gun to the fountain. “Where did the blood come from?”

The old man’s lips tightened. “How should I know? Arthur was responsible for all that.”

She swung around in a wide arc, men shrinking back as the gun passed over them. “Where is the blood from?” she demanded before turning the pistol back on their leader.

“I—I believe there was a girl, a maid,” a thin man in wire-rimmed spectacles volunteered in a shaky voice.

She closed her eyes. Agnes. All this time, Agnes had been dead, and Ivy had been none the wiser. Had they imprisoned the girl, keeping her alive until just before the ritual? Had it been fast, a merciful killing? Or had they drained the blood from her in a slow, steady stream while she was still alive? Bile rose in Ivy’s stomach, acid filling her mouth. But it was so much blood, more than from just one person, surely. “Who else.”

Several of the men exchanged looks. “Pigs, my lady. When it became clear that it...that it wasn’t enough, we—”

“Stop.” She wavered on her feet, tightening her grip on the smooth pistol handle. “You killed Agnes, an innocent girl. And for what?”

“How little you understand,” Lord Mabry said, unrattled by the pistol trained on him. “Men die by thousands in war for the greater good. What is one girl when it is for the good of our nation? Our race? You think of only what you see before you, of the present moment. But I see the larger picture, a world where war can be fought on paper instead of distant battlefields. How many people did you lose to the war? Would you deny the mothers of the future their children’s lives?” The earl’s long face twisted in a sneer. “Of course not. You are selfish and small-minded. This is why someone of your station is unfit to hold a title, to be responsible for the purity of English blood. You were a means to an end, but I was never pleased about my son taking a wife from the gutter.”

She was going to kill him. Ivy’s finger tightened on the trigger, the cool metal inviting her to release all her anger and rage. Was this how James and her father had felt on the battlefield? What a terrible burden to hold a man’s life in the balance, even if the man was evil incarnate. The rush of power shamed her, yet her heart beat fast, her finger tightening on the trigger. Memories, hidden ones that she had always kept close to her heart, smoldered and flared like lightning striking a tree.

James, crouching at the edge of the pond in Regent’s Park, crooked grin on his face as he watched the ducks and geese. Too young to die.

Tightening.

Her father, spectacles askew as he held her on his knee, showing her the manuscript he was working on. The world robbed of a great mind, a loving man.

Tightening.

Her mother, kind and generous and warm, who could fill a grimy London flat with music more beautiful than any orchestra, lying in a hospital bed, unable to afford a doctor who cared enough to try to save her.

Tightening.

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