Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (21 page)

In hindsight, she was glad her mum shared that small part of her life. She only wished she’d told her more—about the brother she had lost and what happened to her first daughter.

When Heather was a child, she remembered being sad that her mum’s parents—her grandparents—died long ago. Her father’s mother—Granny Doyle—lived until Heather was thirteen, but she only came to visit once a year, during the spring. They never went down to Kent to visit her.

She yanked out another handful of weeds as she looked down at the overgrown hedges that surrounded her mum’s secret garden and the bench where Christopher had first kissed her. It was also the place where he’d asked her to marry him.

As they grew older, their friendship morphed into a powerful attraction they deemed love. Their parents both said they were too young to make promises for the future, but at the time, they hadn’t felt young.

In hindsight, their parents were exactly right.

The sun had begun to set, but she didn’t want to go back inside. Instead she tugged out another weed and added it to her pile.

No matter what happened, she wouldn’t let Christopher Westcott break her heart again.

CHRISTOPHER SILENTLY CHIDED HIMSELF AS
he walked up the hill in the darkness, away from the streetlamps in the village. If only Heather hadn’t caught him by surprise this afternoon—he could have controlled all the mixed emotions that erupted inside him. He was no longer nineteen and naïve, but for some reason, in her presence, he still felt awkward.

Of course Heather had stopped by to see his mother. He shouldn’t have been so presumptuous to assume that she would seek him out after all these years.

And then he’d been the slightest bit disappointed that she hadn’t come to visit him.

She’d looked beautiful with her golden-brown hair tied back, wearing a simple white blouse and jeans. And she’d looked so very different from Adrienne.

He groaned again, loudly this time. He was here to put the past behind him, not conjure up old feelings, but it would help if Heather had lost some of her beauty over the years.

After Heather left this afternoon, he’d told Adrienne the truth—that he and Heather had dated, almost thirty years ago, long before he married Julianna. There was nothing between Heather and him now, just like there was nothing between Adrienne and her old boyfriends.

Adrienne said he was fooling himself.

This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to come home this weekend. Unnecessary confusion when there was nothing to be confused about. He’d tried to explain to Adrienne that his feelings for Heather died with his teenage years, but she said that anger is still a feeling. She also said he may not feel love in his heart toward his old girlfriend, but plenty of strong feelings remained.

He should have been honest with Adrienne about his reasons for wanting to postpone their visit. They could have waited to return until Heather was back in the States.

The evening with his family hadn’t been a disaster, but it was just as strained as the meeting with Heather had been. His sister started talking about Julianna twice and awkwardly dropped the conversation. Then his brother mentioned he’d seen Heather Doyle in the village yesterday. Mum shut him down, but not before his brother asked what had happened between them. When dinner was over, Adrienne feigned a headache and then locked the door to the guestroom.

Mum went to bed early as well, but he hadn’t been the least bit tired.

Away from the village, a thousand stars showered the canvas of black above him, and in the light he could see the imposing gray stone of Ladenbrooke’s towers among the trees. Its eerie presence was woven into the fabric of their town, like the River Coln and Rack Isle. One rarely spent much time reflecting on the familiar things of life—like the presence of a home that had been abandoned for as long as he remembered—but things that had once been so familiar to him felt oddly foreign tonight.

As he crested the hill, the towers disappeared behind the ivy-draped gray wall and iron gate.

In the months before Walter died, his friend talked often about his former neighbors. At one point, Walter asked Christopher to send Lord Croft a letter, but then changed his mind. He thought it odd at the time, but Walter wrote incessantly in the weeks before he passed away. Christopher figured Walter had paid his dues in this life and paid them well—he could write whomever and whatever he wanted in his final days.

Even though Ladenbrooke intrigued him, Christopher had only been inside the walls one time. About ten years after the Crofts vacated the property, he and four of his buddies followed the wall down the hill, past the side entrance, until they found a place with enough footholds in the ivy and stone for them to shimmy over. The light from their torch beams reflected off the manor windows, and they tried to open the massive doors so they could explore inside, but the doors were as secure as the property’s front and side gates.

When they couldn’t get inside the house, he and his friends decided to explore the old gardens, fanning out as they crept toward the riverbank to search for Oliver Croft’s grave. But they never made it to the river.

One of the boys started screaming that he’d seen a ghost, and even though Christopher didn’t believe the boy saw any kind of apparition, it didn’t matter. His friend believed he’d seen one—an enchantress in a blue gown—so their excursion was over. The kid ran back toward the wall, and they all followed.

They’d done such silly things when they were younger. Believed in the craziest things. Like haunted gardens and ghosts. And love that lasted for a lifetime.

Christopher stood beside the gates of Ladenbrooke again, at a crossroads of sorts. He could turn back to check on Adrienne. Or he could continue walking over this hill to visit the cottage on the other side.

Perhaps what he really needed, what he and Heather both needed, was reconciliation. Not that Heather still thought about the past—she’d moved on after she first left Bibury, and over the years, he thought he had as well—but clearly all was not resolved.

He tried to look past the wall, to see if the lights were still on at Willow Cottage, but he couldn’t see the Doyle’s home.

It wasn’t his place to judge Heather, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. If she had visited her father more often, perhaps she would have known that he and Walter had become good friends. If she hadn’t run to America and left them all behind, she would have known a lot of things.

He shook his head to clear his mind. He hated this ugly bitterness that kept creeping up inside him. He talked all the time about the power and freedom of forgiveness, but it was hard to live it.

If the lights were on in the cottage, perhaps he’d knock and try to finally sort out what happened so long ago with the woman he’d once loved for what he thought would be a lifetime.

Then he would forgive and forget what was behind them.

SEPTEMBER 1968, WILLOW COTTAGE

L
ibby turned the lever, but instead of opening the gate, the wrought iron caught on something. Libby shook it again, trying to make it move, but she was trapped. On the wrong side.

Her fingers searched the rusted iron until they found something new hanging on her side of the gate. A cold piece of metal. A claw clutching the gate closed. She shook the gate again as if she could break the barrier, but it wouldn’t budge.

She fell against the slats, devastated. Had Walter locked her out this time?

Her parents told her that she must stay away from the gardens in the summer, like Peter Rabbit had to stay away from Mr. McGregor’s gardens so he wouldn’t end up in a pie. Not that the lady would eat her, but they said the lady might send her away.

But the lady wasn’t even home now. Mummy was busy working at the beauty shop this afternoon and Walter was delivering mail.

Why wouldn’t they let her play while they were gone?

Through the slats, she could see a flutter of butterflies dancing above the flowers. Without her. Soon it would be winter, and they’d fly away. She wouldn’t be able to dance with them again until spring.

“Come here,” she whispered, trying to lure her friends toward Mummy’s garden. “Please—”

But they ignored her.

She shook the gate one last time, tears streaming down her face. Then she looked at the stone wall on both sides of her. If she couldn’t go through the break in the wall, perhaps she could go over the stones. The river terrified her, but she wasn’t afraid to climb.

Determined, she inched left along the wall then anchored her sturdy shoe against a rock as she pulled herself up, climbing steadily until she could see the butterflies dancing right beneath her.

But before she propped her leg over the top of the wall, her hand began to slip and suddenly there was nothing else for her to grasp. Teetering, she slipped backward and fell, scraping her knee on the rocks before she landed back on the grass.

Limping, she stepped back from the wall and glared at it as if she could make it crumble.

How she hated that wall. Any walls.

She hurried back to her bedroom and curled up on her bed, her legs clutched close to her chest, her bloodied knees staining her blouse as she rocked herself back and forth.

What was she supposed to do if she couldn’t dance?

Eyes closed, she imagined the butterflies soaring over the petals, riding the tail of the breeze. She imagined a fairy leading their dance, her wings shimmering in the sun.

Then one of the butterflies seemed to come alive in her mind, like a character on the silver screen. Twirling in the sunlight that spilled through the window.

She was pale blue, laced with gold, and Libby could see her, inside and out, every detail on her slender body, every color on her wardrobe of wings.

Libby released her legs and sprung down onto the rug on her floor. Under her bed was a box with her old sketchbook and colored pencils. She hadn’t wanted to draw in a long time. She’d only wanted to be among the flowers and butterflies.

But if she couldn’t be with her friends, perhaps she could entertain them in her room.

The sketchbook in hand, she hopped back on the bed and began drawing the blue butterfly who’d twirled in the lamplight, but her butterfly looked so dull on the paper. Nothing like the butterfly she’d seen moments before.

She—Libby Doyle—was a creator, and her creation begged her for more.

Rushing to the bathroom, she filled a paper cup with water. In her parents’ bedroom were tubes of special paint. And a brush. Mummy once told her she’d kept the paints to remember her father—Libby’s granddad—but what better way to remember him than to use his paints to birth another life?

Life.
She wanted to breathe light and color and life into her friends.

She tucked the box of paints under her arm and retreated back to her bedroom, locking the door behind her. Then she rolled back the rug to lay her paper on the hardwood. With a firm squirt, blue paint leapt into the bowl. She dipped a brush into it and began to give life.

For hours she played with the colors, adding streaks of gold paint onto the sheer blue wings before her, then reaching for a new paper to craft the lines of another friend. Nothing else mattered more than the picture before her. Nothing could stop her from making new friends . . . until someone knocked on her door.

“Go away,” she shouted, angry at the interruption.

Walter called her name, and she gripped the paintbrush tighter between her fingers. He’d dropped her into the river, kept her away from her friends. Now he would try to stop her from painting, and she wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—stop.

She dabbed her brush back into her paint.

Minutes later, Mummy called her name from the other side of the door. Then Walter said they were going to unlock it if she didn’t open it on her own.

Sighing, Libby put down her brush and as she walked toward the door, the aching in her heart returned.

“What are you doing?” Mummy asked when she opened the door.

“Painting.”

“Where did you get paint?”

Libby nodded toward her parent’s room across the alcove. “From your special box.”