Present day
The Castle House
Framlingham, England
Keira breezed through the front door of the Castle House and fell into the scarred wood booth at their vintage pub table, in a complete but wonderful daze.
Emory didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. They’d fallen into a rhythm since London that said they were past the awkward first things—how to make small talk or what to say so you didn’t sound like a dolt to the person across the table. Since they’d shared their messy backstories and were working side by side, there wasn’t much by way of discomfort to worry over.
Emory took a hearty bite of a blueberry-lemon scone, then dropped it back to the porcelain while he chewed and began flipping through photos on his phone, comparing something to words on the page of a notebook he held.
Keira stared at him—a creature content in his element, too focused to notice she hadn’t said a word since she’d rejoined him.
“Here. I ordered you a latte the way you take it.” He slid a cup and saucer over in front of her, still without glancing up. “Like a hopelessly sugared-up New Yorker. Should have seen the glare the waitress gave me when I had to explain the details.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any.”
“No coffee? That’s new. Turning back into an actual Brit by switching over to tea, are ya?”
Keira twisted her blonde waves into a loose knot at her nape and wrapped her fisherman’s sweater around her middle. The fire crackled behind them. It was more than enough to keep her warm. But tugging at the cable weave was more of a distraction than anything. To absorb what she’d just heard on the phone, her hands needed to think too.
“I managed to sweet-talk the waitress into bringing the owner over while you were gone. May have promised to leave her an exorbitant tip, but . . .” Emory turned his laptop at an angle so she could see it better. “It’d be worth it. The owner of this pub is something like an eighth-generation innkeeper and confirmed what I’ve been hoping to hear. Says his grandfather apparently knew the estate owners back in the late 1930s—a Viscount Huxley and his wife. Same title Carter now lays claim to. So the last couple who stayed on at the estate before it was boarded up— Hang on. I have their names . . . Here. An Arthur and Amelia Woods. And you’re not going to believe what I found in the library this morning that ties it all together.”
Emory finally connected his glance with hers, victory in his smile. But it faded fast behind the napkin he brushed over it. “What’s wrong?”
“I just received a call I did not expect,” Keira whispered. She bit her bottom lip with her front tooth, trying not to cry.
“What—about Victoria?” Emory asked, his attention so arrested that he froze with the scone in midair.
“No. Not that. This is personal, actually.”
“Personal. Alright.” Emory tossed the scone back to its plate, then pushed the laptop out of the way and folded his hands out in front of him. “Not bad news, I hope.” He hesitated again, this time as if choosing his words very, very carefully. “From London . . . or New York?”
Thank heavens the call had nothing to do with Alton. Or his pearl-strung socialite mother. Or the fact that Keira hadn’t listened to one word the woman pushed on her in London and, instead, stepped in league with the art world’s enemy numero uno.
“No. This is good news. The best. My brother Quinn—you know, the one you haven’t met?”
“I submit that I haven’t actually met the other one. Not officially. Cormac just tried to stare me through the wall of your father’s pub. But if that’s being introduced to one of the Foley men, I guess, yeah. We’ve met.”
Classic Cormac.
“He did do that, didn’t he? Sorry.” She squinted, the apology subtle but sheepish at the same time.
“I’m not convinced you really mean that. By your expression, I’d say you’re remembering it much more fondly than I do. I still believe I had a bull’s-eye on my back halfway down O’Connell Street after I left that place. But what’s this good news? I could use some right now.”
“Well, we’ve been waiting for this prognosis for a while and today we got it. Ellie, my sister-in-law, has been battling breast cancer for the last year, and they’ve just learned she’s in remission. Cancer-free. Quinn said the oncologist told them she doesn’t need any more treatments. He told her to go live her life.” Keira tried hard not to cry in front of him. “‘Go live your life.’ How many people are aching to hear those words, and they did. They get to. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to face something so precious as your future with your spouse being taken from you, and then it just comes rushing back . . . in a blink. And suddenly you have all your tomorrows again.”
And then the connection hit her, and Keira thought of how he might construe it with his own loss of Elise. “I’m so sorry. I should have remembered how insensitive that would sound . . .”
“No, it’s okay. I’m happy for them. Happy for you too.”
“Quinn asked if I can be home by Christmas. The library and the painting have become more of a project than we initially thought, haven’t they? I don’t want to bail out on you before we have answers, but it feels like this is important to them and I need to honor that.”
“We’re working on it, aren’t we? I think being home for Christmas is a definite possibility, if it’s what you want.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I think yeah. It’s time I go home to Ireland because I choose it—not because I have no place else to go. Ellie and Quinn live in France, but they’ve been in the States for treatment. So they’re coming over to Dublin. With Da there, and now Laine and Cormac, they want to spend the holiday together as a family before they go home for good.”
“For good?”
“Yeah. It’s this mad thing. We Foleys seem to have an affection for castles the way you Scotts fancy . . . What is it you Scotts fancy?”
“I still maintain that my father was entirely disappointed that I didn’t end up on Wall Street like him. He still can’t stomach that his son took a liking to fine art instead of getting that old MBA from Harvard. He seemed to think chasing down paintings would ruin my future. He was right at least in some measure.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be. I’m not. You know that. But tell me more. Tell me something good’s come out of this and it’ll make my entire day.”
“It has. The good picks up where they left off. Ellie and Quinn were restoring a château at our grandfather’s home in the Loire Valley. It’s called ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ by locals—this forgotten little castle with a moat and a storybook forest around it. They got married on the grounds last winter. I couldn’t make it over from the States, but Laine says it’s really lovely there. There was an ancient chapel with stained glass windows and candlelight and snow falling all around—girlish fairy-tale stuff I won’t dare bore you with. But they had to set aside the restoration when the shock of the cancer diagnosis happened. And now, well, they want to get back to living. I can’t even believe they want to open the château up to the public in the spring. Imagine that. An old castle will breathe new life again. I really hope I get to see that one day.”
Keira hadn’t even realized how she was rambling, talking about fairy tales and snowy French castles, until she looked up and saw him watching her.
Emory’s gaze had softened in the sunshine that streamed through the windows, studying her as the fire crackled behind them and the chatter of the dining room hummed like a forgotten drumbeat.
Remembering the coffee saved her.
Keira lifted the rim to her lips, the sugar and real cream he’d ordered in it exactly the way she preferred, and drank deep. How could she ignore the ease that came with understanding the quirks of someone else’s presence, enough that he listened when you ran off with your words? And knew how you took your coffee? And ordered it without having to ask? And then sat quiet, content, and smiling in your presence—happy only because you were?
Was that what happy did—made you feel so light it bubbled over without warning? Too fast to stop it, Keira felt her cheeks warm.
“This news is one of those good things, isn’t it?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah. One of the good things you’re always on the hunt for. This is my cottage, I suppose.”
“Then today has been worth it. And tomorrow, we look again.”
“What’s next then? We’re in a holding pattern until we find out more about Victoria. Until then, I’m at your disposal, Mr. Scott. What’s this connection you found in the library this morning?”
“Okay. I said I talked to the owner here and he confirmed a few things I’d been tracking down. The initials A. W. from the tiles? Found out those are the initials of the former viscount who was killed in 1940, an Arthur J. Woods—RAF pilot downed in the war. I tried to match that up by searching through the books—a dead end there, but it wasn’t a half-bad idea for another reason.” Emory reached over to his backpack and grabbed a book from inside. “I sorted through the glass case this morning, did a quick catalog of what’s there.”
Keira stared back, tipped her head a shade. “Wait a minute. When? I got up when you usually do—sunrise. As usual.”
“Told you—I don’t sleep much in new places. Doesn’t matter. The point is, the books are definitely vintage. Some first editions. Mostly classics. Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Austen . . . What you’d expect out of a proper English library. And one vintage children’s book—Curious George. Nice choice. And then . . .” He split the journal, spread-eagled his palm over the binding to keep it flat, and slid it across the rustic grooves of the tabletop in front of her. “There was this.”
The binding was a worn burgundy leather, the paper yellowed and still clinging to the musky-sweet smell of age. Letters were penciled in, some jumbled over the lines, their shape and size consistent with the penmanship of a young child. The historian in her wanted to smack her own hand away from touching it without gloves, but Keira suppressed the urge, somehow needing the touch of running her fingertips over the lines to connect with the past.
German.
It seemed to have no connection whatsoever—not to a cabinet of carefully preserved books by some of the most celebrated authors in history. A child’s journal penned over with German and pages of practice in the English alphabet alongside? “This was in the glass cabinet in the library?”
“On the top shelf.” He spun it back so he could flip through the pages, three-quarters of the way through to the end. “My Deutsch is a little rusty, but you can make out what it is here. Something about planes. And Framlingham Castle.”
It was easier to sit beside him, or they’d be passing the journal back and forth all day. Keira slipped around to the space on his bench and leaned in, shoulder grazing his. “Why in the world would a child’s German study notebook be kept in the cabinet?” she whispered, scanning the pages.
He started a bit, curiosity seeming to have captured him. “You read German too?”
“Add it to my résumé without sounding so surprised, would you?” she countered, running her fingertips over the lines on the page, reading as best as she could translate.
“I think I’ll be surprised when I find something you actually don’t know, Foley.”
“Historical records aren’t all in English. A girl has to have more than one trick up her sleeve if she’s going to make it in this business. You know that.”
“Okay, Professor. We both know I couldn’t read it to save my life. So what does it say?”
“It’s the oddest thing. It’s not really a journal or a diary. This is more of a list—recordkeeping of air raids or some kind of drills. Must have been from the war. See?” She pointed a manicured fingernail up under the date in the corner. “20 März 1945.”
“Thank goodness I can read numbers. The entries are from ’43—those are hard to make sense of. I’d say this kid was really young. Then they go to March of ’45. That’s the last entry.”
“Really?” She flipped a few pages ahead, but they were empty. Only paper yellowed and curled at the corners. No more logs or carefully penciled alphabet lines. No outlets of prose for a child dealing with the gruesome realities of war.
Just . . . lost space.
Her heart squeezed, daring to consider the worst might have happened and there was a reason the child didn’t finish.
“So what do Arthur Woods, who died in 1940, and this journal, which ends five years later, have in common?”
“That’s the question, Foley. There are remnants of WWII all around this town. There’s a plaque at the Church of St. Michaels commemorating the servicemen from the village who lost their lives. The old control tower at the airfield has been turned into a museum. And you can’t go anywhere without the shadow of castle spires behind you. Even in this pub the people seem to know most of the tourists are here because the 390th Bomb Group was stationed at Framlingham Castle. We can dig into that.”
Keira released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding back, for the journal felt like gold in her hands. “So now we have another chapter in this story—one of war.”
“This chapter was always out there; we just had to know to turn to it.”
The journal wasn’t a classic or the musings of a famous author, yet it had been carefully preserved in the highest place of honor at Parham Hill. Tucked away in a library that had been sealed off from the world brick by brick. The only things she could think were that the little book was dear to someone and that someone very likely held it in as high esteem as a portrait of a queen.
But why?
She closed the journal and pressed its cover beneath her palms, almost brought to tears by the beauty of it all. “Emory. This book . . . It’s a treasure.”
“I agree with you. But why would a record of air-raid drills be saved at all? Why would a kid even care? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“There’s no name in it?”
“No. No names.”
“And nothing in the library to indicate a child lived there other than the Curious George storybook?”
He shook his head, his eyes registering something had sparked them back to life. Gathering his things in a flash, he pulled euros from his jeans pocket and dropped them on the table. “You ready to go?”
Keira popped up from the bench, the journal hugged to her side as she followed. “Go where?”
“I hate to be the grim reaper of this operation, but I think we might have an answer that’s been staring us in the face. It may not give us everything, but at least it’s one idea I can tick off as mine.” He smiled and slung the backpack over his shoulder, then held the door so she could walk under his arm. “If we need names, there’s an easy place to find them. And one more piece of the puzzle to slip into place while we wait for Victoria to spill her secrets.”
Spill her secrets indeed.
If only Victoria could talk, Keira wasn’t sure it would be with the most supportive words.
She imagined Her Royal Highness had an Austen-esque wit that matched her letters and enough moxie—even at barely five feet tall—to tell the truth to any parliamentary gentleman who dared oppose her. Certainly she had enough confidence to commission the Winterhalter portrait that during the Victorian era was an outright scandalous undertaking in the end.
No doubt Victoria would have said it was painfully obvious Keira was falling, and falling hard, not for the playboy viscount but, heaven help her, for the soft-spoken Yank who jogged them across Bridge Street, oblivious to the deliberations trailing behind him.
What are you doing?
With each step, Keira demanded an answer of herself.
It was too easy to picture Cormac rolling his eyes. Quinn slapping a palm to his forehead. And Da taking a cricket bat to the unsuspecting art thief. Problem was, the tiny flutter that had sprung up in her midsection when Emory looked at her was growing into a nag—and one with growing strength at that. It was Alton Montgomery all over again, just with a prettier smile and less in the bank account.
It would not end well. And she could find her heart broken. Again.
Emory led them down the sidewalk, its cracks growing the last of the season’s flowers, a red phone box standing bright on the corner. They whisked through an iron gate with a hinge that creaked its welcome to the Church of St. Michaels.
No, she wasn’t a besotted schoolgirl. This was research. This was for Victoria, after all.
Keira shook off her thoughts, instead focusing on the lofty stone-and-stained-glass masterpiece of a cathedral before them. But before they headed up the path to the stone steps and arched front doors, she slowed. Then stopped. And a lightbulb flicked on in her mind.
Names.
They were everywhere.
Engraved in chipped limestone markers. Nearly worn down by time on others in rows of crosses and monuments, taking up the grassy space between the brick wall lining Bridge Street and the scattering of trees that had lost nearly all their autumn color to the ground beneath their shoes.
Keira leaned in to read the stone marker in front of her, for a wife and mother laid to rest in the late nineteenth century. It was one of hundreds of names in the cemetery. All stories. All tied to Framlingham, just like Victoria and her library. A web of names and generations intertwined, they were always there. Right in front of them.
“Ever thought you’d spend a morning smiling in a cemetery?” Emory walked up beside her, that laid-back stroll of his becoming unnerving.
“Did you?” She straightened and turned to face him. Emory didn’t need to explain what they were doing. Though it was a brilliant idea—enough to win the smile she sent in his direction. “I’ll take this side.”
“Right.” He nodded and dropped his backpack in the leaves so he could fly through the aisles without being weighed down.
Keira moved between the stones, clutching the journal with a protective squeeze over her core, as her riding boots collected dew and leaves on chocolate-brown leather. She rubbed her fingertips over moss to reveal names, stooped to read every set of dates on the headstones low to the ground. For all the history represented by each stone, none clicked with their story.
She looked far across the cemetery—Emory seemed to be as out of luck as she by how quickly he moved from stone to stone. Until she parted ways with the rows and stepped over to a path that led to a tiny grove of willows, it seemed a fruitless task.
One marker stood out alone, tucked against the brick wall border with iron-spindled benches standing in a semicircle and knobby trees growing in a gangly cover over the top of its ledge. She knelt with her jeans pressed to the ground. Reading. Breath escaping on a fog when she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Emory?” Keira called out over her shoulder. “I think I found one.”
“Me too,” he shouted from behind, his footsteps crunching fallen leaves closer as he came to meet her. He tipped his head toward the far corner of the cemetery. “There’s an Arthur Woods over there by the side entrance. Died April 14, 1940. Has to be him. We should ask questions inside. Why—what have you got?”
“More questions, that’s for sure.” She pointed to the marker. “Look.”
What she had was a stone with a faded apple blossom branch and honeybees carved along the border—a memorial to commemorate those who’d perished in a rogue German attack that bombed the Framlingham countryside on March 20, 1945.
They knew the exact time the sirens began their cries—that much was penciled in the child’s journal.
All they needed were the names of those who’d died.