Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (24 page)

After their glorious summer, Christopher had met her in the garden and slipped down onto one knee. He didn’t have the money yet to buy a diamond, but she accepted the brass band with a pink opal and told him she didn’t like diamonds much anyway. And she’d given him everything that night, thinking they would marry—

Her parents hadn’t been as excited about the proposal as she had been, but at the time, she didn’t care.

The next night Christopher was supposed to take her to one more dance before they left for school, but instead of dancing with her, he’d been out with a girl a year younger than Heather. Her gift to him had meant nothing, and it shattered her heart. And her ability to trust another man.

“I wanted to marry you,” he said.

“Then why were you fooling around with Britney Garnett?”

He lurched back like she’d thrown a stone at him. “What?”

“You never came that last night to take me to the dance. Mum said she saw you and Britney kissing near Arlington Row instead.” She took a deep breath. “The next day, I drove over to Oxford to talk to you, but you seemed to be quite occupied with another woman there.”

“That’s why you wouldn’t return my calls,” he said slowly.

“I gave myself to you, Christopher, and you crushed me.”

He opened his mouth slowly, as if he were still forming the words, when the phone in his pocket began to ring again. He took out the phone and then looked back and forth between it and Heather.

“Is it Adrienne?”

He nodded.

“You better take it.”

“I’m sorry, Heather,” he said as he stood, though she wasn’t sure if he was sorry for taking the call or for what happened long ago.

When he answered his phone, he apologized to Adrienne too—for not answering the first two times she phoned.

Heather felt numb as she crawled into her bed that night. Alone.

She had been so angry back then—at herself and at Christopher. At least she had finally been honest with him.

Or almost honest.

Perhaps it was time to tell him about Ella as well.

PART THREE

For many years, I thought Maggie’s sin had stained our family, ruined any hope for our—
my
—future. While I was busy criticizing the splinter in my wife’s eye, I should have been chopping up the log in my own.

Even though it’s small, a splinter can cause tremendous pain, and if someone doesn’t pull it out, an infection can spread through an entire body. Or an entire family.

Instead of criticizing, I should have helped Maggie heal.

Perhaps God’s heart isn’t to punish sinners. Perhaps it’s to wash away the guilt from our sins, the pain of our hardship, and bring us back to Him.

The aftermath of sin might remain, like the destruction after an earthquake, but He cleanses it from our souls so we can rebuild, healing our wrongs from the inside out.

Libby wasn’t a punishment. She was a blessing.

Maggie, Elliot, and I—we all had choices. But Libby had no choice. When she was afraid, I should have been there beside her, encouraging—not forcing—her to overcome her fears.

Maggie asked for my forgiveness, and I refused to give it for far too long. My stubbornness came between all that was right. And I hurt too many people.

I’ve tried to make my amends.

Some in life. Some will have to wait until after death.

I pray Heather will understand.

DECEMBER 1969, LADENBROOKE

O
liver’s folly was terribly cold. Clouds hid the warmth of the moonlight along with all the lovely stars that offered Libby comfort when she couldn’t sleep.

She pulled another blanket over her chest to shield herself from the winter air, but her trembling wouldn’t stop. Something was wrong with her, but she didn’t know what it was. Or what to do.

Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, she tried to warm herself under the blankets, stop the shaking, but she couldn’t rid herself of the cold.

She’d left home weeks ago, afraid Mummy would take her to a doctor, and she hated the men who asked her all sorts of strange questions and probed her skin with their tools.

Oliver was the only man she wanted to touch her, but he’d been gone for months now.

If he was here, he’d know what to do.

Walter had been searching for her in the evenings, calling her name over and over in the gardens, but whenever he came close to the folly, she hid, afraid he would force her to conquer her fear of the doctors. She’d thought about going to visit Daphne, but her old friend had a husband and a baby to care for now. Besides, on the last day Daphne had come for a visit, Mummy had given her money.

Daphne wasn’t really her friend. Libby was her job.

She’d been neglecting her real friends for too long—the ones who would fly alongside her if only she had wings. But winter was here now and the butterflies were gone along with most of the color in the lady’s garden. All that remained were the lonely browns and greens. And the fiery red of the heather.

Sometimes late at night, she snuck away from the tower and stole through the unlocked servant’s door in the back of the manor to borrow items from the lady’s pantry. She never stayed long, afraid Henry or someone else would find her wandering the house. Last time she’d found some tonics in the lady’s medicine cabinet, but even with the tonics, her ailment remained.

She didn’t like feeling sick. Didn’t like the queasiness when she moved or the growth in her belly. And the darkness—it felt as if it might swallow her.

She pressed against her stomach, trying to make the lump go away, but it was as hard as one of the stones by the river.

Wind rattled the glass, confusion and sickness overwhelming her as she rocked on the thin mattress. Was this what it felt like to die?

Death wasn’t something she’d thought about much. The rector spoke about it at church, but her mind usually wandered during the talking. She’d much preferred thinking about color and movement and all manner of things to a cold body in the ground.

If she was dying—would God take her in or would He mock her, reject her, like so many of His people?

She closed her eyes and pretended that Oliver was here, loving her. He had said he would make a way for them to be together. Forever.

And Oliver never broke his promises.

She rocked back and forth again.

Part of her wanted to die, but she didn’t want to die alone.

WET FLAKES FELL BEHIND THE
cottage, more slush than snow. Maggie stood on the back patio, her heart grieving as she watched the gray slurry from the skies mask her garden. Libby was out there someplace, alone and cold, and all Maggie could do to rescue her daughter this time was pray.

Libby had been gone a month now. She’d packed up a small suitcase one Tuesday night, along with a new sketchbook, and disappeared while Maggie and Walter were sleeping.

When Walter found her room empty, he’d gone straight to the local police. The captain said he would look for her, but Walter wasn’t convinced. Everyone in town knew about Libby and her strange ways. Many thought she’d run away for good.

Perhaps they were right. It wasn’t odd for Libby to leave during the night, but in the past, she’d always come home by morning. Maggie couldn’t bear to think her daughter wanted to stay away from her.

Several days after Walter’s visit to the station, Maggie petitioned the police as well, but they were so condescending she wanted to scream. She canceled her appointments for a week and spent her hours searching around Bibury. Then she expanded her search to the surrounding villages, a picture of Libby in hand, but no one recognized her daughter.

Something was wrong. Maggie knew it deep within, and it terrified her. She’d always been able to fix the wrongs for Libby before—the teachers who thought she was slow, the children who’d mistreated her, even the night she found her daughter with Oliver Croft.

She rubbed her hands together to warm them.

The scaffolding she’d built under her daughter’s feet was collapsing, and if she didn’t know where Libby went, she couldn’t do anything to fix it this time.

Maggie moved back across the path to the wrought-iron gate, as she had done every night since Libby left the house, but it remained locked. Had it been a horrible mistake to keep Libby out of Ladenbrooke while Oliver and his family were gone?

Maggie once hoped the gardens behind their house would renew Libby’s body and mind, but perhaps her time at Ladenbrooke was more than just enjoying the flowers and her butterflies. Perhaps it was her daughter’s only means of feeling free. Independent. While trying to protect her, she and Walter had taken away the one place where she thrived.

Where would Libby go if she couldn’t enter the gardens?

She’d never cross the River Coln, but still Walter had waded across to Ladenbrooke the morning after Libby disappeared and then returned over and over in the evenings, searching for her.

Fear gnawed on Maggie’s insides, gorging itself like a tapeworm on her regrets. Ever since she’d seen Oliver holding Libby’s hand in that folly, more than a year ago now, the memories of her and Elliot haunted her again. She’d been swept off her feet by an older, dashing sailor, but she’d never thought Libby could be swept away like that.

For months Libby seemed to pine for Oliver as Maggie had once done for Elliot, but this past summer, even when Oliver was home, Libby never fought with them about the lock on the gate. She’d thrown herself into her painting, and Maggie was glad she had something to distract her.

Oliver might enjoy Libby’s company, but he didn’t love her any more than Elliot had loved Maggie. If he were like Elliot, he’d want to claim Libby for himself, without offering her a future.

Oliver had seemed to awaken something in Libby’s heart. Part of her might have rejoiced at the maturation in her daughter’s emotions, but Libby was far from ready to be in a relationship with a man—especially one like Oliver who wanted the only thing he couldn’t have.

No one ever talked to Maggie when she was younger about the ways of men and women or how babies were made, but she had told Libby that neither storks nor gypsies delivered them. Libby hadn’t been horrified by the truth as some children might have been nor did she seem curious to learn more. Instead, she only seemed bewildered by Maggie’s explanation.

If her mother had survived the war, Maggie liked to think she would have talked to her about the relationship between men and women. Instead, Elliot had been the one to explain how a man loved a woman. And how a woman was supposed to love a man. Yet their first time together wasn’t as magical as Elliot claimed it would be. Instead it had scared her. She’d known in her heart what she was doing was wrong, but still she met Elliot at the cave, desperate for what she’d thought was love.

Walter had never forgiven her for carrying Elliot’s child or for deceiving him. But how could he really when she had never been able to forgive herself? She wasn’t even certain that God had forgiven her.

She pulled her house robe tighter around her chest.

What happened wasn’t Libby’s fault. It was hers alone. If Walter found out about Libby and Oliver, he would think Libby was just like her mother. And Maggie feared he would stop searching for her.

She scanned the drifts of muddy snow again. Where was her daughter tonight?

She prayed Libby was safe. That no one would harm her. That she had food and a warm, dry place to sleep.

She walked back into the house and started the electric kettle, but she didn’t make herself a cup of tea. She’d hardly eaten anything since Libby left them. How could she savor the warmth of food or tea when her daughter might be hungry tonight?

“Why are you up?” Walter asked from the shadows, slouched in one of the sitting room chairs. He rarely smoked the cigarettes he kept hidden in his church shoes, but an acrid cloud billowed around him now.