Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor

by Melanie Dobson

  Still, Walter hadn’t left her, even after all she’d done, and she was grateful for that. If only he would step up and care for Libby as he had done in those first months of her life. Libby needed someone to protect her from the kids—and adults—who belittled her for her differences, almost as if it were a sport they were guaranteed to win.

  But teasing her daughter wasn’t the same as cricket or croquet.

  When Maggie returned, carrying two cups of hot tea, Libby had fallen asleep in Daphne’s lap. “She doesn’t take to many people.”

  Daphne’s dark-brown hair lay straight over her shoulders, and the dimples on her cheeks deepened with her smile. “We’ve been friends at church since she was three.”

  “Thank you for reading to her,” Maggie whispered as she set down the cups.

  “I like her.” Daphne gently pushed the hair out of Libby’s eyes. “She sees things that other people miss.”

  Maggie wanted to hug her. “That’s true.”

  “And she doesn’t seem to care what anyone else thinks of her.” Her smile faded. “She reminds me of one of my cousins.”

  “Where is your cousin?”

  “He’s ill,” Daphne said, her eyes sad. “His parents had to send him away to a special home when I was younger.”

  “My brother was sent away too, when he was a baby.”

  “Was he sick?”

  “No.” Maggie swallowed hard, contemplating whether or not she should share a bit of her story. She decided to take a risk. “We were both orphans and—the people who cared for me didn’t want to care for him as well.”

  Libby squirmed and then rested her head back on Daphne’s leg.

  “I want to be a nurse one day,” Daphne said. “So I can help people who are hurting.”

  “You would make a fine nurse.” Maggie reached over and gently lifted Libby in her arms. “I’m going to tuck her in for the night.”

  Daphne stood and slipped her arms into the long sleeves of her overcoat. “Perhaps I shall stop by tomorrow.”

  Maggie nodded, her heart lifting. Daphne was almost ten years younger than she was, but age shouldn’t matter one bit between friends.

  Instead of the classical music Ella deemed stuffy, Heather listened to light rock on the British station as she drove back through the Cotswolds. The rock music seemed more appropriate anyway. When she was growing up here, it was the only music she’d liked.

  She cruised around the winding, narrow lanes and then up and down grassy hills dotted with sheep of all sizes, some as big as cows. In a caffeine-accelerated state, she’d driven Ella to the airport long before the sun rose, then waited in the lobby until her daughter’s flight departed to Dulles.

  On their drive into Heathrow, Ella had urged her one last time to contact Christopher Westcott. She informed her daughter that such inquiries rarely ended well, but Ella claimed she couldn’t possibly know if that was true. Still, she would never call Christopher. A long time ago, she’d rehearsed a conversation between them—repeatedly—but she wasn’t certain what she’d say to him now.

  When she was about fourteen, she’d ridden on this same winding road after a day trip to London. She and Christopher had been friends for as long as she could remember, and on that particular drive, she told her mum that she was starting to like him beyond their friendship and thought Christopher might like her too. At the time, she’d thought her mum would be pleased since she and Christopher’s mother were friends. Instead, she surprised Heather with a harsh rebuke, saying she needed to wait until she was much older to go steady with any boy.

  She and Christopher didn’t officially begin dating for two more years, but they spent most of their summers together. Heather learned she could tell him just about anything, and not only did he listen, he understood her.

  That car ride had been the last time she’d talked to her mum about the passion stirring in her heart. She didn’t even talk about Christopher again until he invited her to a church social one weekend, the summer after she turned sixteen. When she asked her mum if she could attend, she’d said no, stating Heather was still too young to go without a chaperone. But she hadn’t felt young anymore. She’d met Christopher at the church that night, and that one event marked them as a “couple” in the eyes of their friends, if not their families, for months to come.

  The sign for Bibury popped her back into her current reality.

  She must focus on finishing the task in front of her. The estate agent her solicitor recommended—a woman named Brie Reynolds—was scheduled to come look at the house in two days.

  She needed to stop reflecting on the past and put the cottage on the market as soon as possible so someone else could call this place home.

  “HE’S NOT MARRIED!”

  Heather rubbed her eyes and took a quick glance at the clock beside her bed. It was one in the morning, and though the pounding music from Ella’s ring had startled her, she still wasn’t fully awake. “Did you land at Dulles?”

  “Two hours ago,” Ella said. “I decided to do some digging while I had Wi-Fi.”

  Heather was afraid to ask—

  “Professor Westcott was married,” Ella told her, “but his wife passed away eight years ago from cancer.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  Ella kept talking. “I tried to find information about Aunt Libby as well, but no luck. I did find an article about your Oliver Croft.”

  She elbowed herself up on her pillows. “My Oliver Croft?”

  “The reporter said the police suspected foul play.”

  “Where did you read that?”

  “I’ll text it to you right now.” Ella clicked her tongue against her teeth. “There could still be a murderer on the loose in Bibury.”

  Heather looked through the glass at the spattering of stars across the sky. “We don’t know that anyone killed Oliver.”

  “That’s the problem—we don’t know what happened to him or to my aunt Libby.”

  “My sister was ill.”

  “That’s what your parents said—”

  In the background, Heather heard the final boarding announcement for the flight to Phoenix. “I have to go.” Ella’s voice sounded distorted, as if she was running toward the gate. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Go catch your plane.”

  “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you too.”

  Seconds after Ella disconnected the call, a text message flashed on her phone. She glanced back at her pillow but curiosity won out and she opted to read the story from the Evening Standard before she returned to sleep.

  The article was short.

  SON OF LORD CROFT DROWNS IN BIBURY

  Last Tuesday the body of Oliver Croft, age 17, was found in the river near Ladenbrooke Manor, the family’s country home in Gloucestershire. Croft attended the prestigious Tonbridge School in Kent and was planning to attend Oxford University in September. Local police are investigating for foul play.

  Heather sat up on the pillows and read the story one more time. Three sentences to describe a tragedy that must have ripped through the heart of the Croft family.

  She laid down and closed her eyes again, but sleep evaded her so she pulled her long hair back into a sloppy ponytail and climbed downstairs, into the small basement below the cottage. A solitary lightbulb cast shadows into the corners as she scanned the room. The boxes down here weren’t neatly organized like the boxes in the stable, and there were stacks of old furniture alongside an assortment of plastic tubs. For hours, in the light of the single bulb, she sorted through old dishes, silk flower arrangements, pieces of pottery, and dozens of children’s books.

  In a corner, she found the old light table that Granny Doyle had given her when she was a child. Under it was a flat wooden box that had been painted with bright-pink, yellow, and mint-green stripes. Inside the box Heather found colored pencils in different states of sharpening and a sketchbook bound together by metal rings.

  The title on the front of the sketc
hbook was written in bold cursive: Libby’s Book of Butterflies.

  One of the edges was folded, and she smoothed it with her hand, reverently, to honor the sister she’d never known. Then she stepped back under the light and flipped through the first pages. There were beautiful paintings of butterflies, their wings bright from the watercolors.

  Did her sister create this book or did someone make it for her?

  Mum had loved her gardens, but Heather had never known her to do any kind of artwork. She’d always been busy planting her flowers and working as a hairdresser and caring well for their family.

  Intrigued, Heather slowly turned the pages. The butterflies were unique in their brilliance, each one with a magical name.

  Golden Shimmer. Moonlit Fairy. Lavender Lace.

  Under the butterflies were short descriptions. Like they all had different personalities. Her favorite was the Autumn Dancer, colored a vibrant orange and red with speckles of teal. It reminded her of a leaf, clinging to its branch before the autumn winds blew it away.

  Autumn Dancer flutters among the flowers, chasing the last rays of sunlight until her haven is swallowed up by the night. Her sisters are asleep now, hidden under the fronds, but she doesn’t care. She dances alone in the twilight, embracing the warmth of the golden hour, her wings sweeping past silky petals of the late summer blooms. In the safe cocoon of her garden, she dares believe that no harm will ever enter the gates. This is her world of beauty and peace, of sweet nectar and life, completely unspoiled by the footsteps of danger or the silent mockery of time.

  Heather read the description twice. The cadence of the words was almost as beautiful as the paintings. It was like an entire community of these butterflies lived in the gardens of the artist’s mind.

  She’d never seen her father draw anything other than a map, and while she’d been told her grandfather had been an artist in London, he died in the Blitz, years before Libby was born.

  With all the flourishes and flowers, these pictures seemed to be created by a young woman anyway. At least one who was young at heart.

  Heather turned the page again to a pink butterfly named Rosa Belle, and she smiled as she read the description. Rosa Belle was a very proper butterfly, invited often to take tea with the queen in the gardens behind Buckingham Palace.

  Heather liked to color when she was a child, sometimes for hours at her light table, but as she grew older, her mum discouraged her interest in pursing a career as an artist. Heather enjoyed breathing new life into damaged pieces of artwork, though looking back, it was strange that her mum didn’t encourage her desire to be creative when she’d loved to create her own sort of beauty in the gardens behind their house.

  She flipped through the book of butterflies until she reached the last page. Then she turned again to the front.

  Her eyes refused to stay open any longer, so she climbed back up the steps to her room and turned out the light, pulling the blanket to her chin.

  Later in the morning she’d do a little digging, like Ella had done, to find out who had created the butterflies.

  And perhaps, as she dug, she could find out what happened to her sister as well.

  OCTOBER 1963, LADENBROOKE MANOR

  I’m quite sorry,” Lady Croft told Maggie, though she didn’t sound the least bit sorry. “Libby can no longer stay here while you work.”

  Maggie reached for the polished banister, clutching it tight. A hundred questions collided in her mind, but before she asked a single one of them, she knelt down to speak softly to her nine-year-old daughter on the bottom step. “Why don’t you go read in the library?”

  Libby shook her head, continuing to draw in her sketchbook. “I don’t want to read.”

  “You can look at the picture books if you’d like.”

  Libby glanced up as if to decide whether or not Maggie was telling the truth before she handed over her sketches. Maggie brushed the wrinkles out of her dress as she stood, her gaze trailing Libby as she scurried down the great hall. Her daughter still wasn’t very good at reading, but she loved the artwork and photographs she discovered in books.

  Slowly Maggie turned back toward the woman who had employed her for seven years.

  The Crofts’ nanny was long gone now, but after she left, Lady Croft had permitted Libby to shadow Maggie in the house after school or play in the gardens while Henry, the head gardener, worked outside.

  Maggie lowered her voice so the other staff wouldn’t hear. “Has she done something wrong?”

  “It’s not that . . .” The sternness in Lady Croft’s light-gray eyes flickered. She was several years older than Maggie and usually quite direct in her instructions and her answers.

  Maggie persisted, frustrated at Lady Croft’s refusal to answer. “Have I done something wrong?”

  Lady Croft shook her head, seeming to regain her composure. “Libby is much too old to follow you around.”

  “She doesn’t just follow me. She sits and draws—”

  “She acts like a toddler,” Lady Croft said.

  Her simple activities made people like Lady Croft think she was simpleminded as well, but Libby was very bright and creative. “She doesn’t distract me from my job.”

  Lady Croft drummed her manicured nails on the banister. “Perhaps not, but she is an inerrant distraction for my children.”

  Maggie leaned back, focusing on the gardens through the immense window that mirrored the steps.

  Now she understood what Lady Croft was refusing to say. Sarah, Lady Croft’s teenage daughter, attended a girls’ school in London, but even when she was home, Sarah Croft no longer cared whether or not Libby was in the house. The Croft’s son was much different. From the time Libby could walk, Oliver would trail her around the nursery, trying to make her smile. Even though he was eleven now, Oliver’s interest hadn’t waned.

  His parents had sent him away to a boy’s school last year, but this term he was attending an exclusive school about a half hour from Bibury. When he returned home in the afternoons, he often searched for Libby and tried to pull her out of her make-believe world.

  The nanny had been pleased about Oliver’s fascination with Libby when they were young—it kept him entertained—but as the children grew older, Oliver’s persistence irritated Libby even more than when she’d been in the nursery.

  “Can she play in the gardens after school?” Maggie asked.

  Lady Croft shook her head again.

  “But she won’t hurt any—”

  Lady Croft cut off her words. “I’m sorry, Maggie. You must respect my decision.”

  Nodding, Maggie stepped away from her, and she bid goodnight to her ladyship before tears began to flood her cheeks. Then she walked slowly through the corridor to retrieve Libby from the library.

  She needed this job, but even more than her work, she wanted her daughter to thrive.

  Even though she hadn’t succeeded in her studies, Libby had adjusted to the rhythm of school. Still, Lady Croft’s gardens were her sanctuary. A place where she could dance with the butterflies and savor every color of the season. A place where no one teased her.

  What would she do when Maggie told her she couldn’t return?

  Oliver and Sarah thrived in both their studies and friendships, and Lady Croft thought all children should be as perfect as hers. Maggie was well acquainted with imperfection—in herself and her family. Instead of looking down at Libby or fearing what they didn’t understand, Maggie wished others could see the beauty in her daughter. The bright worlds she created when she was alone. The wonder at all of God’s creation.

  Lady Croft may not respect Libby’s differences, but if she would take the time to get to know her, perhaps even she—like her son—would be fascinated by Libby’s enchantment with all things beautiful.

  THE NEXT DAY, INSTEAD OF eating lunch, Maggie rode a bus over to the Woolworths in Cirencester to purchase two trowels and two bags of tulip bulbs. Then she left her post a few minutes before Libby arrived from school and met h
er daughter by Ladenbrooke’s back gate. Instead of taking her up into the manor, Maggie guided her past Lady Croft’s gardens and into the garden that would become their own.

  Libby had spent most of her childhood at Ladenbrooke, but she didn’t belong there. Instead, Maggie wanted her to appreciate her home, the place where she’d always be welcome.

  Even though Maggie didn’t have much time or money to create an elaborate garden—nor could she and Walter hire a gardener like the Crofts did—she could plant some flowers alongside her plot of vegetables. In time the flowers would grow and then the butterflies would come. And perhaps Libby would be happy roaming in her own world behind their cottage.

  Maggie handed Libby one of the trowels, and the two of them worked side by side for an hour, digging into the soft dirt and planting the bulbs. As she turned the soil, Maggie glanced over at her daughter and pointed down to the small hole Libby had dug. “You’re doing an excellent job.”

  Libby flashed her a smile. “The butterflies need flowers.”

  “Yes, they do, and you’re going to give them the most exquisite display in Bibury.”

  Libby covered her bulb with dirt and patted it. “They will want to play here.”

  “Every day,” Maggie said. “And you can play with them for as long as you’d like.”

  “Forever,” Libby whispered.

  “Forever, it is.”

  Libby rarely expressed emotion, but Maggie knew she felt things, deeply. That’s what most people didn’t understand. Libby’s heart ran as deep as her imagination even though she guarded it with defenses that would make Her Majesty’s Armed Forces proud. Maggie feared an arrow might blaze through Libby’s defenses one day and pierce her heart, the entire fortress caving in upon itself.

  She wished there was more she could do to protect her daughter.