Page 74 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

She blinked away the rain from her eyes. “That’s what all this is about?” She could have laughed. This was fixable, a question of a man’s pride.

“You think I’m being foolish.”

“No, no of course not,” she hurried to reassure him.

“When that gun came out, it unlocked something, something I would have rather not remembered. And I... I couldn’t get out of my own head. I was frozen. It was as if I was back in France again, and...” His words faded off as he swallowed whatever horrors they had contained.

“Oh, Ralph.” Ivy moved closer still, put a tentative hand on his chest. His heart was beating hard despite his stillness. “I’ve seen firsthand what the war has done to men, and I don’t think it helps to bottle it all up and keep it inside of you.”

“Christ, Ivy.” He regarded her with deeply haunted eyes, but did not move away. “That’s why we fought, for people like you, sweet girls who have their whole lives ahead of them, so that you’d never have to know the hardships of the world.”

“But I want to know you, and if you truly want to know me, then you have to trust me. I seem to remember placing my trust in you even when I was told not to.”

Shaking his head, Ralph looked past her toward the abbey. “You can be bloody convincing with those big brown eyes, you know.”

“I know.”

He let out a snort that was a hair away from being a laugh. “I’ll make a deal with you. You can ask me whatever you want and I’ll give you an honest answer, but in exchange I can ask you anything as well.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go first.” She took a deep breath, the cold air bracing her for asking a question she wasn’t certain she wanted an answer to. “Why won’t you give me another chance, now that I can remember? You must know—” She broke off, swallowed. Put her messy thoughts in order. “You must know that I have feelings for you. That everything that happened between us I remember, but only as the most wonderful dream. I didn’t dare think it could have been real. And now that I know it was real, I can’t go back to a life without you.”

Rain fell between them, a veil through which Ralph’s gray eyes watched her without a hint of what thoughts might be lurking behind them. Plunging her hands into the pockets of her thin cardigan, Ivy shifted her weight. Cold was creeping through her shoes and the wind nipped at her nose. She could bear it all if only he would say something, but he just stood there, immovable and silent as one of the busts in the library.

“Please,” she whispered into the cold air, “please say something.”

A dark movement in the murky gloaming, and then he was in front of her, radiating heat and that exquisite scent of woodsmoke and leather that transported her to cozy and safe spaces in her mind. Shrugging out of his coat, he draped it over her shaking shoulders and she closed her eyes.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Ralph said. “It was real, every stolen minute of it.” Pulling her into the refuge of his embrace, he clung to her as if drowning. “Ivy, I didn’t make sense until you came here.” His voice was a hoarse whisper against her hair, sending reverberations through her body. “I felt like a sheepdog without sheep,” he continued. “Something in me... I wanted to protect, to guard. And then you came, and you were so good and sweet, and actuallycared.I would do anything to keep you safe.”

“You’re a Hewitt,” she said against his chest. “You were born to protect the library, but your parents never told you. All that instinct had to go somewhere. I never needed protecting though,” she felt compelled to add.

A shudder of his chest, and she realized he was laughing. Pulling back, she marveled at the way the dark shadows that usually haunted his face instantly cleared. He was a beautiful man, but when he laughed, a sort of brilliance shone through him.

“Of course not, you’re Ivy Radcliffe, a force of nature, a titled lady who would rather ride a bicycle through a rainstorm than ask her own chauffeur for a ride. Now it’s my turn,” he told her.

Ivy stiffened in his arms, loath to end the lovely moment.

Gently cupping her face in his hands, he brought her gaze up to meet his. “What are you afraid of, Ivy?” he asked softly. “You say that it was all a wonderful dream, but you wouldn’t kiss me back, wouldn’t even let me touch you, and that was real. Even the bravest soldiers harbor some secret fear, and there’s something that you’re afraid of. Is it me?”

She looked away, unable to bear the desperate sadness in his eyes where only a moment ago had been laughter. “I suppose I’m afraid that I’m not the person you fell in love with, that I don’t remember who she was or how to be her.” The truth of her confession hadn’t fully settled until she’d said the words out loud. At least when she had thought it a dream, she had been safe from the risk of disappointment.

“I see.” He squinted up into the rain, deep in thought. “Do you still love books?” he finally asked, bringing his gaze back down to rest squarely on her.

“Of course,” she answered, puzzled.

“And would you still go out of your way to defend a friend in need, or help an injured animal?”

She frowned. “Did I help an animal?”

“You brought me a barn swallow with a broken wing,” he told her. “We were able to mend it. So, would you do it again?”

She didn’t remember that, but she answered without hesitation. “Every time.”

“Are you still the most beautiful woman in Yorkshire—no, in all of England?”

Her cheeks heated. “I—”

“No, don’t answer that, I can see that you are.”

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