Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (22 page)

Mummy twisted her hands together, her voice sounding sad. “You should have asked.”

“You would have said no.”

Walter’s eyes were focused on the bedroom floor, flush with papers and paint. He couldn’t be angry about the mess. He hadn’t given her any time to clean up.

Mummy pressed her lips together for a moment before speaking again. “You missed dinner.”

Had she? She didn’t even know what time it was. “I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll bring you a tray.”

She didn’t care about food or sleep or anything else tonight. She didn’t even care about going back to the gardens. All she wanted was to paint.

She returned to the floor, and a tray appeared beside her with a sandwich, glass of milk, and some cubes of cantaloupe. She didn’t know who brought it in, but she picked up a piece of the cantaloupe and examined it. The color matched some of the roses in the lady’s garden, exactly what she needed for the flowers she’d drawn behind her butterfly.

Yellow, white, and a dab of red—she combined them on her plate until a soft peach colored her palette.

Walter thought she should grow up, like the lady wanted Oliver to do, but grown-ups didn’t spend their nights dancing in gardens. Or painting. “I will stay a girl forever,” she whispered, changing the lyrics from
Peter Pan
. “And be banished if I don’t.”

She began to paint her butterfly
.

“I’ll never grow up,” she chanted as she worked.

It wasn’t until the first rays of dawn spilled across her paper that she began to feel sleepy. Her floor was covered with pictures and papers, but where others might see a mess, she saw a new world. There were flowers and trees and butterflies she’d brought to life with her hands. And her heart.

A lot of people thought she wasn’t good at anything, but it wasn’t true. She was good at making things.

She dropped her brush into the water and, fully clothed, stretched out onto her wrinkled bed, smiling as she closed her eyes.

Oliver may be gone, the garden door locked, but no one could take away her butterflies.

Someone pounded on her door again, and she rolled over, exhausted. She didn’t want to eat or even paint now. Just sleep.

Seconds later, Mummy nudged her shoulder. “It’s time for you to get up.”

She shook her head, her eyes still closed. “It’s Saturday.”

Her mummy leaned closer. “Daphne’s here to visit you.”

Lifting her head, Libby saw someone else in the room. It was her former Sunday school teacher, wearing a pretty green polka dot dress.

Daphne sat down on the edge of her bed, scanning the floor of the room. “It looks like you’ve been busy.”

“Why are you here?” Libby asked.

“I asked her to—” Mummy started, but Daphne interrupted her.

“To play with you, of course. While your parents go to work.”

Libby shook her head again. “I don’t want to play.”

But Daphne wasn’t deterred. “We can read together instead.”

Libby almost said she didn’t like books, but that wasn’t entirely true. Words on a page didn’t make much sense to her, but she loved to look at pictures. And listen to the stories.

Daphne smiled. “We’re going to be the best of friends.”

She inched up on her pillows. With Oliver gone, and her butterflies locked in the lady’s garden, perhaps it would be good to have another friend. Perhaps Daphne could even find a way for them to get into the gardens.

Libby fought to keep her eyes open a bit longer to study her new friend, but she lost the battle.

As she drifted away, she heard Daphne say, “I’ll wait until she wakes up.”

“Don’t let her sleep past ten,” Mummy replied.

MAGGIE WAS ATTEMPTING TO GIVE
Mrs. Reynolds’ rather limp hair a permanent wave in the Bibury Beauty Shop when a white Cadillac pulled up to the curb.

“Now who could that be?” Mrs. Reynolds asked as Maggie wrapped a strip of her hair around the rod and basted it with lotion.

“Probably someone on holiday.” Though in the late-autumn months, when gray clouds plastered the sky and puddled the sidewalks, visitors rarely came to explore the gardens or castles in the Cotswolds.

The driver stepped out of the Cadillac and rushed around to the curb. When he opened the door, Lady Croft stepped onto the sidewalk, dressed in a tailored suit, taupe pillbox hat, and pearls hanging around her neck and dangling from her ears.

Maggie put down the bottle of solution in her hands, a mixture of curiosity and dread stirring inside her.

A shopping bag from Harrods hung from one of Lady Croft’s arms as she eyed the sign over the beauty shop. Then she opened the door and marched into the salon.

Maggie nodded toward her. “Good morning.”

Lady Croft was no longer her employer, but still every muscle in her body seemed to tense in her presence.

“I need to speak with you,” Lady Croft said.

There was no back room in the tiny shop, only a closet. “Should we step outside?”

Instead of responding, Lady Croft dumped her bag, filled with letters, onto Maggie’s hairdresser stand. Mrs. Reynolds turned her attention downward, pretending to be engrossed by the copy of
Vogue
in her lap.

Lady Croft crossed her arms. “Tell your daughter to stop sending him letters.”

Stunned, she stared down at the envelopes before picking one up. It was addressed to Oliver, in childlike handwriting, but there was no return address. “Libby didn’t write these.”

Her daughter wasn’t capable of writing a letter to anyone.

Lady Croft swiped the envelope from Maggie’s hand, but instead of ripping it open with her gloves, she reached for a pair of scissors and slashed the top. A colorful picture of a boy and girl, holding hands in a garden, fell on top of the pile.

It seemed Libby’s fixation on flowers and butterflies had evolved to include the boy who wandered the gardens with her.

Lady Croft’s eyes flashed with anger. “Is your husband still the postmaster?”

Maggie looked back down at the stack. “He is.”

“What’s wrong with him—”

Maggie stiffened. “There’s nothing wrong with Walter.”

“Then tell him to stop delivering her mail.”

Mrs. Reynold’s eyes remained fixed on the magazine as Maggie curled her fingers over the back of the chair, facing her former employer. For the first time she realized that she was actually taller than Lady Croft by an inch or two. “Clearly you need to tell Oliver to leave my daughter alone.”

“He doesn’t want to see her—”

Maggie snorted. “Then why does he keep inviting her over?”

“Oliver does nothing of the sort.”

Maggie picked up the bottle again and turned to Mrs. Reynolds. Then she pointed the tip of her lotion toward an empty chair, speaking to the lady who stood trembling beside her. “If you’d like me to set your hair, you’ll have to wait for an hour. If not, I suggest you find your way back home.”

Lady Croft didn’t move, holding the shopping bag like a shield in front of her. “Lord Croft and I have plans for Oliver, and I won’t let some—” She stopped herself. “I will do anything to protect my son.”

Maggie met her gaze in the mirror. “And I will do anything to protect my daughter.”

JULY 1969, LADENBROOKE MANOR

L
ibby wore her prettiest dress as she glided through the backyard, a shimmering, blue one like Grace Kelly had worn in
To Catch a Thief
, before she became a princess. The moon was a perfect crescent, shooting rays of silvery light across the garden.

After almost a year of waiting, Oliver had finally returned.

She hadn’t seen him yet, but somehow he’d climbed the tree outside her window and left the loveliest bouquet of purple-and-bronze dahlias on the windowsill, tied together with twine, and a simple note that said to meet him by the gate tonight. At midnight.

Or at least, that’s what she thought the note said. After writing the time, he’d drawn a clock with both hands pointing to the top.

It was half past now, and she hoped she hadn’t missed him.

“Oliver,” Libby whispered through the wrought-iron slats.

When he didn’t answer, she waited for him in the shadows. Her fingers trembled against the metal, her heart racing. The family had been gone all winter and spring, but she hadn’t forgotten him for one single day. Not even a minute.

Had he received her pictures?

She’d sent dozens and dozens of them, but he hadn’t sent any letters in return.

It didn’t matter now. Oliver said he would come tonight, and he never lied to her.

What would he think of her and her new dress and her sandals instead of saddle shoes?

Her gaze roamed over the dark garden on the other side. For months she’d visited this gate, longing to be among the lady’s flowers as they bloomed in the sun and curled up in the rain. But even more than the gardens at Ladenbrooke, she’d wanted to be with Oliver.

He was her friend. Forever.

Her hands twitched at her sides, and she pinched the gauzy material on her skirt. Oliver had always known her as a girl, but she’d changed since last summer. She was a young woman now—a woman who had other friends.

She no longer attended school, but Daphne came almost every day after her work at the hospital for a visit. Daphne had married six months ago so she didn’t stay as long as she used to, but Libby liked it when her friend read to her.

During the day, while Mummy worked, she spent hours in her room, drawing and painting butterflies and fairies and new flowers that were even more beautiful than those of the lady’s. These flowers were planted in the soil of her heart, rooted down inside her. Their blossoms opened slowly in her sketchbooks and on the paper her mummy brought her, revealing the secrets of their beauty to no one but her.

Now that she was fifteen, visiting the flowers didn’t interest her as it once had. Instead she preferred drawing them alongside her butterfly friends.

Daphne was a friend as well, but Libby didn’t long for her company like she did with Oliver. That was the reason she’d failed school again. How could she concentrate on silly numbers and such when Oliver kept wandering into her mind?

She much preferred the study of Oliver Croft.

She was done with school anyway. For good. She didn’t have a job nor could she attend the secondary modern school for another term. Once she failed her classes for the second year, no one pushed for her return.

She didn’t care. Butterflies didn’t need to attend school and neither did she.

Something rustled on the other side of the gate. “Oliver?” she whispered again.

“Hello, Libby.” His fingers settled over hers, and she smiled at his touch. “I missed you.”

She grasped his hand through the iron slats. “I want to see you, Oliver.”

He quickly released her fingers to unlock the gate.

OLIVER SHOOK THE IRON SLABS
that separated him from Libby. The padlock was lying on the ground, the only thing that kept him from seeing the girl who’d danced through his dreams all year, but still the gate didn’t budge.

“Walter put a lock on this side,” she said sadly. “He doesn’t want me in your garden.”

His parents didn’t want her here either, but he needed to see her, more than anything.