Page 75 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

She gave him a sardonic look.

“Are you still stubborn as a bloody mule?”

“I am not stubborn! I’m—”

He stopped her with a raised brow. “I think I already know the answer to that one, too.”

At her indignant expression, he drew her closer to him, his hands strong and sure as they clasped her at the small of her back. “If there’s one thing the war taught me, it’s that we can try to forget and push away memories all we want, but we are still the same, damaged people. Those forgotten memories shape us as much as the remembered ones. Everything that we shared, whether you remember it or not, brought us here. So I suppose the question isn’t if you are the same girl that I fell in love with—because you are—but if you will have me, broken and unpolished as I am.”

She didn’t answer him, instead fingering the edge of his collar, wishing that she could follow the trail of heat down his chest. “Where was our first kiss?”

His brows rose at the sudden change in subject. “Out on the moors, the day I found you running like your life depended on it. I’d been drinking whiskey, and you came crashing through the heather all pale and breathless, and...” He scuffed his boot in the mud as if suddenly self-conscious. When he spoke again, some of his old gruffness had returned. “And I decided I had to kiss you, right then or die from the wanting.”

At his words, a key clicked into place, and out tumbled a precious cache of memories. The loss of time walking back from the moors. Whiskey-warmed breath on her lips. The electric brush of Ralph’s stubbled jaw against her cheek. The cold and rain fading away until it was just Ivy and Ralph clinging to each other, a lonesome island in the rolling mist.

“Take me there.”

With a searching sidelong glance, he looped her arm through his, guiding her further out of the grounds until the heather grew wild and the dead grass brushed at their legs. The patchwork view of rolling hills and valleys was familiar, the trees all crooked lace with branches feathered against the dark sky.

She stood still, closing her eyes, the breeze sweeping off the moors and invigorating her. “I remember,” she whispered. “You were standing close to me, but you felt so far away. I was scared, but that wasn’t why I stayed.”

Ralph’s breath hitched beside her, his arm tightening around her waist. Spinning to face him, she planted her palms flush against his chest, savoring his stability, his realness. “Kiss me, here. It will be our first kiss, again.”

He pulled her closer, obliging. “I would forget everything every day if I had to, just for a lifetime of firsts with you,” he murmured.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, lifting her mouth to meet his. The world stretched out before her as sweeping as the rolling moors, as promising as fresh sheets of paper just waiting to be filled with words. And she would savor every unfolding moment of her story, every gentle touch, every look from Ralph. Every cup of tea and joke shared with Susan. But most of all, she would carry her family’s legacy with her; James’s sense of adventure and endless encouragement, her mother’s warm love and practical advice, her father’s brilliant mind. She was the best parts of all of them, and they would live on, through her.

Darkness was creeping in, the rain becoming too persistent to ignore. “You’re cold,” Ralph said, unlooping his muffler and gently wrapping it around her neck. It smelled of sweet straw and leather, of gusty moors, of Ralph. It smelled like home.

She laced her fingers in his, his warmth, his vitality, traveling up her arm and spreading through her chest like a bird coming home to roost. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go warm up in the library.”

---