Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (34 page)

I
n the few hours Heather had slept, she’d dreamed the haunting dream of her youth, wandering the ruins of an overgrown garden, holding the hand of a woman with copper hair and a pale-blue dress. But when she woke, all she could think about was Christopher.

For too many years, she’d been afraid he would reject Ella, like she thought he’d rejected her, but if Brie and Mrs. Westcott were telling her the truth, he hadn’t rejected her at all.

When she finally talked to her daughter, Ella had cried over the phone. Instead of being angry, Ella thanked her for her honesty. Then she’d told her to get herself to Oxford ASAP and have tea with the professor.

She was done keeping this secret. Someone else could restore the cottage, but no one else could restore her relationships for her.

Christopher had invited her to meet him for lunch in Oxford, so she drove east even though everything within her screamed to turn south, back to the airport and Portland, to stability and the safe shell she’d constructed around her heart.

But this was no longer about just her. It was about Christopher and Ella as well.

He met her at a car park near the edge of town, dressed in jeans, a brown tweed jacket with a tie, and sunglasses. Confidence, kindness even, replaced the frustration she’d seen in his face when she’d surprised him at his mother’s house.

“Did my mum tell you about Libby?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Seems like we have a lot to talk about.”

He led her past massive stone buildings and formidable iron gates, crowded tearooms and quaint bookshops, fields of bluebells in ancient churchyards. It was a town of fairy tales, he said, of hobbits and wizards, of talking lions and one brave mouse. Stories where good always conquered evil.

As they walked, she almost asked about Adrienne, but his current relationships weren’t any of her business. The truth was her business, and she’d withheld it for way too long.

Jeffery had known she was pregnant before they married—and he’d known the baby wasn’t his—but he was a gambling man and decided to take a shot at becoming a father and husband at the same time. She’d gambled as well, hoping she could succeed at marriage for the sake of her child, even when her heart belonged to another.

Unfortunately, they both lost their gamble.

She’d justified what she was doing—after all, Christopher had been with another woman—but she had wronged Ella, Jeffery, and Christopher in the process.

As she walked alongside Christopher, better memories flooded back to her. The years that he had been her confidante when she returned from school each summer. He’d loved her and supported her and asked her to marry him so they would never be apart. She remembered being afraid back then that it was all a lie. That he didn’t really love her as he said he did. Her mum’s deception about seeing him with Britney was simply confirmation.

She prayed it wasn’t too late to repair some of the rips and stains in her past after all. With honesty and humility instead of wheat paste and bleach. She prayed Christopher would forgive her like Ella had done.

He directed her through the gates of one of the colleges, past the perfectly trimmed lawn and stone academic buildings, back into a quiet park with periwinkle clematis climbing a medieval wall. In the middle of the lawn was a pool of water with a small fountain, surrounded by tall grasses and creamy coral-tipped tulips.

They sat on a wooden bench, her handbag between them, both of them watching the statue of a boy in the fountain, water trickling over the book in his hands.

“Did you tell Adrienne we were meeting today?”

“No—”

“I don’t want to come between you and her.”

He crossed his arms. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Christopher.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “Adrienne and I were never meant to be anything more than friends. According to her, I’m terribly dull.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said with a laugh.

“My wife used to tell me that too when I refused to come out of my study.”

“I read you were married.”

His eyebrows slid up above his sunglasses. “You read it?”

“I—” She stuffed her phone into her handbag. “I looked up your profile on the Oxford website.”

He smiled.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” She fidgeted with the strap of her handbag. “Something I should have told you a long time ago.”

He lifted his sunglasses, and the blue in his eyes seemed to swallow her. “We both have a lot to say.”

She looked back out at the pool. “I knew you came to visit me once in London, but I couldn’t see you.”

“Why not?”

She looped the strap around her hand, her eyes on her lap. “I was five months’ pregnant.”

When she glanced back at him, his eyes were wide. “Jeffery’s baby?”

“No.” She paused, breathing in courage before she spoke again. “I was pregnant with your daughter.”

His mouth dropped open.

She hadn’t known what to expect when she looked back up at him. Anger, perhaps. Dismay. Ridicule. Instead there were tears in his eyes.

“Her name is Ella.”

He slipped his sunglasses back on, shifting his focus toward the fountain. “I have a daughter?”

“I should have told you both before—”

“Did Jeffery know?”

“He did, and he thought it would be grand to be a father. We married in London, not long after I told him, and he tried to be a good dad. But we were both so young, and he hadn’t bargained on having a child with colic and a wife who wasn’t nearly as fond of riding motorcycles as he’d hoped.” She paused. “And a wife who’d left part of her heart on the other side of the pond.”

Christopher looked at her, but she kept talking before he could respond.

“Ella was six when he filed for divorce, and the moment it was final, he disappeared from our lives.” She leaned back against the bench. “I should have told her about you when she was a teenager. . . .”

Two mallards landed on the water, and she and Christopher sat in silence, watching them paddle across the pond. She didn’t want to pressure Christopher into becoming a father now, only wanted him to know what happened. Still, she had no doubt that Ella would love Christopher, and if he was willing to meet her, he would love her as well.

“What’s Ella like?” he asked.

“She’s funny and kind and beautiful both inside and out. She’s terribly persistent and way too curious—like you used to be.”

He flashed a smile. “Still am.”

“She got married in February to a man who adores her.”

He removed his sunglasses. “For so many years, I wondered what happened to us,” he said, his gaze as intense as his voice. “I never cheated on you.”

“I know that now. . . .”

“I came by your house that night to pick you up for the dance, but your mum said you had gone without me. I went to the dance, but couldn’t find you there either and I wondered then if I had done something wrong.

“I don’t know who you saw me with when you came to Oxford, but I wasn’t interested in anyone else except you. It wasn’t until the next weekend that I found out our relationship was over. When I arrived home, my mum gave me back your ring, saying you’d changed your mind. I took the bus to London that afternoon to find out what happened.”

Her stomach rolled as she listened. Without her mum’s story, Heather might have married her high school sweetheart and raised Ella in England near both sets of her grandparents.

Of course, her parents didn’t discover she was pregnant until after she and Jeffery eloped so her mum didn’t know that Christopher was Ella’s father. At least, she didn’t think her mum knew. Either way, she should have been honest with her parents as well.

Christopher shifted his knees, turning toward her. “I would have married you, Heather. Even sooner if I’d known about the baby.”

She’d wondered for years what might have happened if she had told him. “I’m afraid it would have ended badly, just like Jeffery and I. Our mothers may not have handled it well, but they were also right—we weren’t ready for marriage.”

“I guess it’s impossible to say now.”

“Please forgive me,” she said, looking over at him. “I should have told you I was pregnant, and I—I should have given you the opportunity back then to tell me what happened.”

He watched the fountain for another moment before turning back toward her. “I forgive you—on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you forgive me as well.”

A hummingbird flittered above the tulip blossoms, batting tremendous power through its tiny wings. “You didn’t know about Ella.”

He paused. “I should have kept seeking out the truth until I heard you say it was over.”

“It was never over in my heart.”

He studied her so intensely that she felt like a giddy teenager again, all wrapped up in silly emotions. Emotions she still didn’t know how to process.

“Perhaps it’s not too late,” he said simply.

A pang echoed through her heart, and she wished she could subdue it. She regretted what she had done in the past, but she wasn’t certain she wanted to open up her heart again to the man beside her. Her life in Oregon was stable. As subdued as her heart had been until Christopher reappeared in her life.

The look in his eyes reminded her of their times together so long ago, and for a moment, she thought he might kiss her.

She hopped up from the bench, her nerves frayed. They were supposed to eat lunch together, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. “I’m going to London this afternoon.”

When he stood beside her, she could feel the warmth from his skin, so terribly close to her.

“Would you mind if I join you?” he asked.

Reluctantly, she agreed.

CHRISTOPHER DRUMMED THE STEERING WHEEL
of Heather’s rental car as they waited at a stoplight. He’d always wanted to be a father, but most men had eight or nine months to process becoming one. He already had a daughter, alive and well in Arizona, and he wasn’t quite certain what to do about it.

How was he supposed to step in as a father to someone who was already twenty-five?

As they drove south, toward the suburbs on the other side of London, Heather told him all about Ella, and then she told him the little she’d found out about Libby. He was just discovering that he was a father while Heather was discovering that she’d been birthed by a woman she’d never met. A woman who disappeared soon after Heather was born.

Heather was determined to find out what happened to Libby, starting with the Croft family, who lived in Woldingham. On their drive south, she telephoned the number Britney had given her, but no one answered it.

She lowered the phone to her lap before speaking to him again. “How long were you and my father friends?”

“About twenty years,” he said as the traffic slowed. “Your dad and I had a lot in common. We both loved to research and write and talk about the meaning behind Scripture. We both lost our wives, and we shared a common bond that ran deep.”

“What did you share?”

He glanced over. “We both loved you, Heather.”

Her gaze skirted toward the window before looking back at him again. “Did he ever talk to you about Libby?”

He shook his head.

“But he wrote a lot—”

“He wrote incessantly in his journals until he had his stroke. The writing was life-giving to him and without it, he declined rapidly.”

She mulled over his words. “The retirement home mailed me his things, but they never sent me any journals.”

“Perhaps they still have them.”

Drizzle dampened the windshield as they drove into the village of Woldingham, and searched for street signs. They found the Croft residence along a row of stately brick homes, each of them dripping with old money and rain. The entrance was carved out of a lofty hedge, and Christopher drove under the hedge, into the gravel courtyard.

He nodded toward concrete steps that led up to a portico. “Do you want me to go up with you?”

She hesitated before agreeing. “I would like that.”

As they stepped away from the car, he held out his hand, and she took it.

The man who opened the front door had short, brown hair and looked to be about twenty. His eyes piqued with curiosity when she introduced herself as a neighbor, living in the cottage next to Ladenbrooke Manor.