Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor

by Melanie Dobson

  She picked up the paper. “This is perfect.”

  Christopher said his meeting would be finished by one o’clock, but she didn’t wait for him. This was something she needed to do alone.

  Instead of driving, Heather walked two miles to what she hoped was Libby’s flat, tucked away from the busy shopping and academic districts. Tilting her head back, she looked up at the closed curtains on the second floor.

  Was it possible that the woman who’d birthed her lived here in Oxford? If so, what was Heather going to say to her? And what if Libby, like Lord Croft’s grandson, turned her away? She’d learned with Jeffery that there was nothing—at least nothing healthy—she could do to control those around her, but she hoped Libby would at least talk with her.

  She knocked twice on the door of #16. When no one answered the knock, she turned, disappointed, to descend the steps until she saw a woman emerge from a taxi, onto the sidewalk below the landing. It was the woman she’d seen at the memorial service.

  Libby had long, auburn hair that flowed over her shoulders. Instead of blue, she wore an orange sundress today with a floppy straw hat and sandals that laced high up her ankles.

  Heather drummed her fingers together as she waited for her birth mother to climb the stairs.

  When she finally stepped onto the landing, Libby pressed her lips together, quietly studying Heather’s face. “You have Oliver’s eyes,” she said simply.

  “You know who I am?”

  Libby took her keys out of the beaded purse looped over her shoulder. “You’re my sister.”

  Heather nodded.

  “We used to play together in the gardens, when you were little.”

  “I remember,” Heather said.

  “You loved the butterflies.” Libby unlocked the door and waved her inside.

  Heather followed her through a narrow hallway, to an area meant to be a living space except there were no couches or even a chair on the wooden floor. Instead there was a carpet of splattered paint, a dozen milk crates stuffed with art supplies, a cardboard box topped with paintbrushes, and three easels near the window, each one displaying a painting in various stages of production.

  Libby opened up the curtain along the window and natural light poured into the room. Then she picked up a paintbrush and turned toward one of the canvases, staring at the cloth as she spoke. “How did you find me?”

  “Dad’s retirement home gave me your address.”

  “Because of his books?” Libby asked.

  She nodded. “The nurse said she sent them here.”

  Libby mixed several colors together on her palette. “Do you want to read them?”

  “Yes—but I’d like to know more about Oliver first.”

  “I loved Oliver,” Libby said as she began to dab navy-blue specks of paint at the top of her canvas. “With all my heart.”

  As if there was nothing else Heather needed to know.

  “Can you tell me what happened to him?”

  Libby didn’t answer her question. “Walter wanted you and I to meet.”

  “He never told me—” Heather hesitated, not wanting to explain that she’d thought Libby had passed away. “He never told me you lived in Oxford.”

  She rinsed off her brush and began adding a pale-red color to her picture. “I asked him not to.”

  “Why didn’t you want to meet me?”

  When Libby turned toward her, her gaze didn’t quite meet Heather’s, traveling instead over her shoulder. “Do you still like butterflies?”

  Heather blinked. “I suppose.”

  She unclipped one of the paintings from an easel and replaced it with an empty canvas. Then she handed Heather a brush.

  Heather stared at the brush for a moment before dipping it into the paint.

  LIBBY CHANGED FROM HER DRESS into a turquoise satin robe with a thin cord belted around her waist, and the two women spent the afternoon painting. The hours reminded Heather of the times she and Ella used to spend together, immersed in their own schoolwork.

  Heather quickly realized that painting was Libby’s way of keeping herself present in one sense. With her hands busy, Libby’s mind seemed to find clarity, slipping back and forth between fantasy and reality, present and the past.

  Whenever she stopped, Libby struggled to find herself again.

  As they worked together, Heather understood even more why her parents chose to harbor the secret of her birth mother and also why they didn’t encourage her own love of art. They were probably terrified she would lose herself as well.

  When she finished her painting, Heather inched back to look at the gray stone of the manor house before her, overlooking a bed of flowers. Libby stepped up behind her, her brush in hand, and Heather moved away as Libby painted the backs of two girls, hand-in-hand, exploring the flower beds together.

  “Thank you,” she said softly before turning to look at Libby’s canvas. She’d painted a young man, standing beside what looked like the ruins of a castle, his brown hair blowing in the wind. His green eyes seemed to pierce through her.

  Heather touched the edge of the easel. “He’s quite handsome.”

  Libby stepped forward and ripped down the picture. Then she began to tear it into tiny pieces, scattering the memory of Oliver Croft across the floor.

  She looked at Heather, her eyes desperate. “I can’t remember what he looked like.”

  “Perhaps it’s more important to remember what he was like on the inside.”

  Libby sat down on the hardwood, the satin of her robe circling around her. “The lady said he didn’t love me, but I know he did. He loved me as much as I loved him.”

  “Who said Oliver didn’t love you?”

  “His mother.”

  Libby picked up the pieces from the floor, holding them to her chest. Heather wanted to ask again what happened the night Oliver died, but she feared if she pried too much, Libby would retreat into the hollows of her mind.

  Instead Heather sat down on the paint-splattered wood beside her. “I saw your butterfly books at a bookstore in London. It seems as if all the children in Great Britain love them.”

  She looked distressed again. “I can’t make books anymore.”

  “Did Dad—” She stopped herself. “Did Walter write the stories for you?”

  She nodded. “He was worried about me—he wanted me to have money after he was gone.”

  “So he found a publisher for them?”

  Libby nodded.

  “He took good care of you.”

  “I left home, for a long time.” Libby stood up and walked toward the kitchen. She opened a cupboard, but instead of dishes inside, Heather saw the black-and-brown spines of four books. “He found me in London.”

  Libby lifted the journals out one at a time, stacking them up on the granite counter. Then she carried them across the room to Heather, setting them on the floor beside her. “Walter wrote a lot.”

  “Did you read them?” Heather asked.

  “I can’t—” She looked flustered again, and Heather remembered that Mrs. Westcott said Libby sometimes struggled with words.

  “It’s okay,” Heather said, pulling the stack to her chest.

  “I saved them—just for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Libby clipped another piece of canvas onto her easel and hummed quietly as she began painting. Heather opened the first journal, her heart racing again. Her father might be gone, but part of him lived on in his words.

  The papers liked to call it “the storm of the century.”

  A sense of foreboding swept over her as she read the first pages in his journals, the words about his regrets.

  Had she been one of his regrets?

  The story of his life unfolded from the pages, Walter’s journey from the time he began caring for Maggie and her daughter, the child that wasn’t his.

  His words were gut-wrenchingly honest—the struggles he’d had raising a daughter who was so different. Yet once he decided to love her, it was r
elentless. He’d rescued Libby over and over through the years, from the moment on the promenade when Maggie leaned into the storm to when Libby was an adult, living with a man in London who didn’t love her.

  He’d found Libby again after Maggie died, searching for her artwork in studios across London until he located the “butterfly artist” who signed her pictures L.D. The studio didn’t know her full name, but they knew the man who brokered her work, and when Walter found her that time, he’d refused to let her go again.

  Tears slipped out of Heather’s eyes, and she wiped them away before they smeared her dad’s words. Libby wasn’t Walter’s birth daughter and yet he had rescued a broken woman, offering her healing and hope, and in his offering, he poured himself out.

  She’d thought of her father as a man who’d lost his words, but the truth was Walter Doyle was a man of both words and action. In his journals, he focused on his faults more than his successes, but she knew the whole story. He’d sacrificed many of his dreams to care for Maggie and Libby and for her.

  After Heather left for America he had mourned the loss. Deeply. Heather never knew he’d missed her like this. Nor did she know about the conflict in his heart after he found Libby, torn between caring for Libby and loving Heather from afar.

  In hindsight, Heather had rejected him as well when she stopped trying to communicate after Mum died, her own pride and shame keeping her away. He might have been disappointed that she’d become pregnant before she married, but he would have forgiven her, like he had both Maggie and Libby. Dad had loved Libby in spite of all that happened and he’d loved Heather as well. And in his love, he’d tried to protect them both.

  When she looked up again, she realized the sun was beginning to set. In the dimming light, she saw a new butterfly on Libby’s canvas: this one the deep-green color of a stormy sea with silver tints to carry her wings.

  “She’s beautiful,” Heather said. “What’s her name?”

  Libby studied her painting for a moment. “I was thinking Morning Glory—or perhaps—” Libby looked back at her, meeting her gaze this time, apprehension seeded on her face. “What do you think about Emerald Dawn?”

  Heather stood. “I think it’s perfect.”

  Libby turned back to her picture. “She searches for jewels early in the morning.”

  “Emerald Dawn,” Heather repeated as she stepped forward, studying the picture beside her. “I think your princess needs her own book.”

  When Libby looked back, her eyes were sad again. “Walter is gone.”

  Heather paused for only a moment. “We’ll find someone else to write her story.”

  Lady Sarah Croft Wyndham returned the telephone call while Heather and Libby were eating takeaway salad rolls on top of milk crates. Heather explained that she’d found Libby in Oxford and began to ask Sarah about her brother’s death. Sarah politely stopped her, requesting instead that the three of them meet tomorrow at Ladenbrooke.

  Heather glanced over at Libby and readily agreed.

  Libby dug a blanket and two pillows out of a closet, and after texting Christopher about her plans, Heather slept remarkably well on the hardwood floor. The next morning she woke Libby up early and the two of them drove over to Bibury.

  Libby refused to go through Ladenbrooke’s main gate, choosing instead to walk up the pathway from the cottage, so Heather met Lady Wyndham by herself at the front entrance.

  “Welcome to Ladenbrooke,” Lady Wyndham said, holding out her gloved hand to shake Heather’s hand. She was an elegant woman, approaching the age of seventy, and with her proper black-and-white linen dress, a fashionable black hat, and matching handbag, she looked as if she’d stepped away from a royal event for the day.

  Wisteria climbed wild up the gray stone towers before the women. Several of the upper windows were cracked, birds roosting in the eaves above. The house looked rather lonely, as if it longed for the days when its rooms were filled with dances and teas and the feet of young Oliver, perhaps, pounding through the formal rooms while his parents were away.

  When Libby joined them at the front of the house, Lady Wyndham stared at her for a moment, at the bright colors in her flowing, sleeveless dress, her bare feet. Then she extended her hand again.

  Libby shook it.

  Lady Wyndham stepped up to the door, but Libby didn’t move.

  “I’ve always gone through the servants’ door,” she explained.

  “You’re my guest now.”

  Libby hesitated. “I only want to know about Oliver.”

  Lady Wyndham removed a keychain from her handbag and unlocked the front door. “I’ll tell you about him inside.”

  Light filtered through the front windows, casting shadows over the grand staircase that framed the front hall. Lady Wyndham directed them to the right, leading them along a corridor with worn red carpeting plastered with dust. There were bare spaces between the portraits on the wall, empty pedestals.

  They passed a large hall with a piano, preserved under a sheath of white cloth, and Heather imagined the room once filled with clusters of elegant couches and chairs, people singing and dancing and sipping on glasses of champagne.

  “My parents sold most of the furniture in the seventies,” Lady Wyndham explained as they walked. “They didn’t want to return, but they didn’t want to sell the house either.”

  “What is your father planning to do with the property?” Heather asked.

  “He doesn’t want to do anything with it, but after his death, it will pass down to my brother, who will probably sell it.”

  They stepped into a dining room with tall windows and faded blue-and-gold wallpaper. Strips of the ceiling hung in shreds above a long table that was still centered in the room, eighteen upholstered chairs tucked in around it.

  Outside the windows, Heather could see the terraces of old flower beds and empty pools. The ruined gardens in her dreams.

  When she turned back, Lady Wyndham pointed at a space between two of the windows. “A giant oak sideboard used to stand right here, with an antique sculpted vase displayed on it. My mother loved all her valuables, but this one in particular was one of her favorite pieces.”

  Libby didn’t seem to hear her. Her eyes were focused on a dusty portrait that hung over the vacant space. It was a picture of a young man, dressed in a black suit jacket and tie. His thick hair was parted on the left and combed neatly back, his smile stiff.

  “Why didn’t your parents take Oliver’s portrait with them?” Heather asked.

  “My dad thought Oliver needed to stay right here,” Lady Wyndham replied, her voice sad.

  “It’s not right,” Libby said, touching the edge of the canvas. “Oliver isn’t smiling.”

  “Oliver rarely smiled,” Lady Wyndham said. “Except, perhaps, when he was with you.”

  “He always smiled with me.”

  Lady Wyndham nodded. “That’s because he loved you.”

  Both she and Libby turned toward Lady Wyndham, surprised by her words. Heather hadn’t doubted Libby’s story, but she didn’t realize Oliver’s family had known about their relationship.

  Lady Wyndham opened a window, the fresh air mingling with the dust, and pulled out one of the chairs. She sat down on it, seemingly unconcerned about the dirt ruining her attire as she stared up again at the portrait of her brother.

  “We were all in this room the night Oliver died, eating lemon sole. He had just returned home from school, and he told my parents over dinner that he’d decided not to marry Judith Perdue. My father was irate, telling him that he had no choice . . .” She took a deep breath. “Then my mother dismissed the servants.”

  Heather glanced over at Libby. Her gaze was fixed on the gardens outside the window.

  “I did a foolish thing next, not knowing of course what would transpire.” Lady Wyndham paused again, sorting through her memories of the night. “I dared to ask Oliver whom he intended to marry, and he stopped for a moment, contemplating his words. Then he told my parents he planned t
o marry the girl next door.”

  A noise escaped from Libby’s lips, a messy mixture of a gasp and cry.

  Lady Wyndham was whispering now, and Heather stepped closer to hear her words. “Oliver said they couldn’t stop him from marrying you, Libby, and my mother, she wasn’t thinking—she grabbed the bronze vase from the hutch and said she could stop him. I think she intended to throw the vase, to scare him, but instead she lifted it up and brought it down over his head. The sound . . .” Her whisper trailed into silence as she turned again to look at the painting of her brother.

  “My father should have called for an ambulance right then, but we were all so shocked. My mother was on the floor with Oliver, trying to revive him, and I remember thinking, There’s no blood; he’ll be okay as long as he isn’t bleeding . . . but he wasn’t okay.”

  Lady Wyndham stepped up to the portrait, her fingers grazing the edge of the canvas like Libby had done. “After that night, my parents and I plunged into despair. We all felt guilty for our part in what happened, and my father and I spent decades trying to protect Mother and ourselves, I suppose.”

  Libby moved away from the window. “There was a man that night in the gardens. He left Oliver in the river.”

  “My father took Oliver’s body away that night,” Lady Wyndham said. “I didn’t know where he went at the time, but apparently he tried to make it look like Oliver drowned. I think the local police suspected that my parents were hiding something, because they dropped the case rather quickly. No one wanted to accuse Lord or Lady Croft of killing their son.”

  “All these years—” Libby said. “I thought if I’d tried harder, I could have rescued him from the river.”

  Lady Wyndham shook her head. “He was already gone.”

  The sadness of the room seemed to overcome all of them, the bitter secret that bound their families together.

  “He loved me,” Libby recited softly.

  “Very much.” Lady Wyndham’s gaze wandered one more time to the somber-looking young man in the picture. “And he would have liked knowing you were here remembering him.”

  “I still miss him,” Libby said.