Present day
The Church of St. Michaels
Framlingham, England
Worshippers didn’t take kindly to being interrupted in the pew on Sunday. But on a weekday morning in a quiet country chapel, it could be downright heathenistic.
“She’s the one,” Emory whispered when he rejoined Keira at the back of the aisle, pointing out the petite Englishwoman as if she wore a bull’s-eye instead of a violet gabardine blazer and a delicate string of pearls. She sat alone, her ivory pixie cut bowed as the sun’s golden glow began to dwindle and the sky rumbled with the distant threat of rain.
“You’re sure she’ll talk to us?”
He nodded. “Why not? She comes in here every day, apparently. And knows more about the history of this town than the castle itself. The volunteers say if we want to ask questions, we’re lucky she’s here to answer them.”
Keira was getting used to Emory’s moods by now—his tells and ticks—the way he remained quiet but shifted from one foot to the other when deep in thought. His tone meant he was going to insist upon answers, whether the woman was inclined to produce them or not. And the stubborn streak that said he’d bend over backward where the cottage was concerned fairly guaranteed he wouldn’t leave their jaunt to town without some sort of forward progress.
“Right. Let’s go talk to her then.”
Keira led the way, and they traversed the aisle together, the country cathedral stealing her breath with each step.
It felt like a tucked-away legacy the town would have been most eager to share had more tourists ventured far enough down the lane to discover it. But the stone walls were quiet. Rows of polished walnut pews, each with backs straight as a spade and carved in a cross design at the anchors, lay near empty, except for the woman. Keira looked up to the gold chandelier hanging low over the altar and stepped through refracted light that stained glass cast against the stone floor in myriad rainbows.
What had these walls seen, and heard, and lived through? Armistice Day ceremonies, no doubt, as evidenced by leftover poppy garlands strung about stone columns like bowers of remembrance along the wings. Sonorous melodies from the organ swelling against burnished stone walls. And the legacy of war that had not quieted in the many decades since—a plaque dedicated to the fighting men stationed at an airfield that had been nearby.
Might it all help untwine the tangled history of Parham Hill?
The woman turned at Keira’s pause beside her, a smile sneaking out from the corners of her lips with lines that hinted she laughed well, and often.
“Excuse me, Ms. Addams?”
“If you’re looking for a tour, dear, the volunteers are at an information desk out at the front. Just there.” Prim and proper, she whispered, directing the lost pair with a knobby finger to venture back down the center aisle and leave her to her prayers.
“I’m sorry, but we’re not here for a tour, though we may have to take one now after standing here even for a moment. It’s so beautiful. I hate to disturb you, but we were told you might be able to speak with us. You’re Ms. Evelyn Addams?”
“I am,” she confirmed, but seemed like she thought better of it as she looked up—way up—at all of Emory’s height standing just behind. “Unless you’re the taxman come for a small business owner. If that’s the case, we’re closed.”
Hmm. Cheeky.
Emory stood like a statue, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and waited with a glance that said he was quite as interested as she to disturb the woman’s morning worship if it netted a few answers, but he might be a little less inclined toward polite conversation.
Keira slid him a little hold your horses side glance and slipped into the pew next to the woman, carefully, so as not to assume they were at liberty to join where they’d not been invited, and sat. “No. We’re actually looking for information about the manor past Framlingham Castle—Parham Hill. The volunteers suggested you might be able to help us. Is it true you’ve lived in Framlingham your entire life?”
She blinked at Emory and folded her hands in her lap as if praying for his poor soul. “Who’s he? The new owner? I hope not.”
And Keira honestly had to stifle a laugh. It seemed they’d managed to locate the one person from the four corners of England who apparently wasn’t wooed by their charismatic employer, even if she hadn’t met him outright. Emory bristled under his leather jacket and shifted his weight to the opposite foot.
Please? Keira mouthed and flitted her gaze to the pew, asking him to sit.
Emory rolled his eyes but gave her a smile. He dropped his bag in the corner of the pew and slipped in beside her.
“Uh . . . no. This is Emory Scott and I’m Keira Foley. We’re not the estate owners, but we do work for him, as advisers for a restoration project he’s undertaken.”
“That viscount? Pssh.” Ms. Addams flicked her wrist and adjusted her collar, as if mention of him would make one woefully untidy.
“Mr. Wilmont has uncovered some interesting history at the manor, and we would like to ask a few questions to try to sort it out. If you don’t mind, that is.”
Ms. Addams peered over the top rim of her spectacles. She inspected the two of them, her internal deliberations cranking gears that could almost be seen on the surface.
“Miss Foley. I’m sure you mean well, dear, but that whippersnapper inherited an estate he has no business managing. That’s what happens when London boys think they can come out to the countryside and know a thing or two about the locals without actually staying on. All he’s been about is whizzing off in that sporty set of wheels and bringing in trucks to chew up our country roads and create a heap of noise.”
Keira shot a glance to Emory, asking what in the world she was going on about. Chickens squawking in a barnyard came to mind for how ruffled her sensibilities. And for what? A few trucks and a skeleton crew?
He sat without comment, apparently as confused as she.
“. . . That estate owner of yours is causing so much ruckus that it drives good tourist money away. You two best tell your employer there he’s not popular in the village. I would not suggest he run for mayor anytime soon or he’ll get a right proper thrashing from the people of this town.”
Do something, Keira. Turn the tides of this conversation or you’ll hit another dead end.
“Um—you said you own a small business.” She brightened, sending the woman her best and, hopefully, sweetest smile. “A shop perhaps?”
Ms. Addams righted herself, the question apparently demanding a prim posture and she’d give her best effort at it. “Bertie’s.” She smiled. That must have been the sweet spot to ask after because her demeanor softened to one as amiable as the violet she wore. “It’s a lovely little dress shop just out on Bridge Street. Have you seen it, dear?”
Keira looked down at her distressed jeans, time-scuffed boots, and dependable fisherman’s sweater—the ensemble worked for the unpredictable East Suffolk weather but didn’t do much for the girlish whims of dress buying. Even in London, thumbing through racks of gowns at Harrods and poking through vintage shops in Notting Hill had been more out of M. J.’s pushing than true excitement on Keira’s part.
She allowed a smile to cover the surface. “No, ma’am. Not much call for dresses these days.”
Ms. Addams paused, her shock indicating the mere idea was a tragedy.
“Well, Bertie’s Dress Shop has been a fixture in Framlingham since my grandmother first opened its doors in ’26. Even during the war she kept the women as fashionable as though they were stepping out to a Mayfair ball—rations or no rations, she made do. I remember the stories. My grandmother was a prestigious lady herself, and she dressed them all. Even up to the most distinguished lady of this entire village. So if you want to learn about the people of Parham Hill, you might start with who dressed them.”
Intriguing. Keira brushed her shoulder against Emory’s, making certain he caught what she did. “Which distinguished lady do you speak of?”
“Why, the viscount’s bride during the war. But all the way back, they say, to the nineteenth century that manor has stood as a pillar of pride in this fair part of the country. It’s grown over the years—added a wing here. A cottage there. That’s due to the appreciation for the arts by the most famous viscount—Keaton James. You’ve not heard of him?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“How could you work there and not know the viscount who started the honey making?”
“We found a list of the title owners but didn’t know the significance of their contributions.” Emory nodded, taking the lead on questions for the first time. He took out his phone and started scrolling through notes as Ms. Addams eyed him. “Here. The viscount you’re talking about brought the honey-making venture to the estate and built the beekeeper’s cottage by the road, didn’t he?”
“He did, young man. The cottage is special, isn’t it? Any eye can see that.”
Emory leaned in closer at Keira’s side, absorbed when the research overlapped the one spot that had won his affections. He eased over and rested his hand on hers in a silent bid to ask more questions.
Keira sat silent, hoping Ms. Addams and her firebrand wit wouldn’t notice the hitch in her breathing or the added color that surely painted her cheeks when his fingertips grazed—and stayed over—hers.
“Ms. Addams, why isn’t that viscount in the cemetery? We just looked through all the names. A Keaton James wasn’t accounted for on any of the gravestones.”
“Wouldn’t be. The family keeps a private cemetery. Somewhere on the grounds of the estate.”
“Where?” he asked, his thumb brushing over Keira’s like an electrical current.
“I wouldn’t know. That’d be a mighty fine question to take up with your employer, if he’s not too busy to get his trousers involved in duties to properly manage his affairs.”
“But why would Arthur Woods be buried here then—wasn’t he one of the family too? He was viscount at the estate from 1936 until 1940, according to the list I found.”
“Ah. Of course you’d ask that. But everyone who lives here knows the answer.”
“I’m sort of living here,” Emory added, his voice soft—so much so that Keira wondered what he wasn’t saying that could be layered under the comment. “Thought it was for the time being, but this place grows on you after a while, doesn’t it? You slip into an appreciation for comfort without having realized it. The pub. The castle spires. Country roads with sunsets that seem to linger a little longer and with more color than in the rest of the world. And the sunrises behind the willows here are unmatched. All of a sudden you look up and you’re standing in a place that starts to whisper, ‘You’re home.’ And what’s funny is, you believe it without question.”
“Very eloquent, young man.” She tilted her head up to gaze at a plaque on the wall. “Everyone who died here during the war was given a place of honor, much as you say. Even the Americans have a plaque honoring their 390th Bomb Group—those who were stationed here through ’45. As an RAF officer shot down in the line of duty . . . well, that’s worth honoring, is it not? The fighting men and women and those townsfolk who died in the war—they’re all together in the same section as his lordship, Arthur Woods. He was the first. But they were one family in loss.”
Keira felt something tug inside. “And how do you know that?”
“Because my grandmother, Florence Bertram, is with them.” Ms. Addams looked back. The lines on her face softened with eyes so blue and words so open Keira felt they could have been friends had she not a suitcase and a home back in Dublin that kept calling her to come back, come back.
What would it have been like to be one of those locals, to buy a dress from Bertie’s, and to know the stories and names and history that mattered so much to them all? Boisterous trucks flogging country roads and noise scaring off tourists aside—Ms. Addams seemed genuinely touched by the little bit of care Keira and Emory had shown toward the town. They’d taken time to inquire about the local tales that had long since been buried. Forgotten. Lost even, like the manor down the hill.
A veil of appreciation fell to disarm what defenses the woman seemed to put up against their employer.
“You’re a nice couple,” she whispered, nodding as if her approval had been won and, if it were, that was quite a feat. “But that employer of yours doesn’t know much ado about his own ancestry, does he? So why is it you two are here asking the questions and not he?”
It was the same question Keira had asked herself. A hundred times, maybe.
Why was she able to step into a story with Emory—to care about Victoria and a crumbling cottage—in a way Carter couldn’t seem to? And why did it feel so right not to correct the woman that they weren’t an actual couple but instead to remain still, loving the warmth of her fingertips cradled in his?
Ms. Addams smiled, patting Keira’s knee in a motherly fashion. “My grandmother dressed every bride who walked down the aisle of this church, from 1926 until 1945. Can you believe that?”
“I can.” Keira’s spine tingled and her cheeks flooded with warmth.
“And would you like to see them?”
“See who? The brides?”
Evelyn Addams, the reluctant interviewee from Framlingham’s most important shop—or so she boasted with a note of authority on the matter—whisked Keira and Emory to the back of the church and a tiny hall leading to the bride’s room, where those dresses of satin and lace had skimmed the stone floor in the same long walk to the cathedral’s center aisle. Where photos were lined, framed stories, one by glorious one . . .
“Here.” Ms. Addams pointed to a black-and-white photo framed in silver with a slight tarnish at the corners. “The viscount and his bride. 1938. Before it all began.”
And there she was. Amelia Woods, Viscountess of Huxley, standing at an altar with a smiling gentleman at her side. Light hair. Eyes that sparkled even through sepia. Cute little posture. And he—tall. Broad. Thin nose, and softer smile than his vivacious girl.
So the couple had faces. Lovely faces with hope-filled smiles, unaware that war was coming and everything would change.
They had a story.
As Keira leaned in to run a fingertip along the bottom edge of the frame, wondering why in the world she’d not understood before then that story held significance, Emory cut the space between them, laced his fingers with hers, and didn’t let go.
* * *
Rain had the power to make romance dodgy.
Every square inch of Keira was drenched, down to jeans and waterlogged cable weave, when they hustled in through Parham Hill’s front door.
Sconces were lit down the great hall, cutting the grayness from the windows with a soft glow against the black-and-white-checked floor. But no music this time. And no lights in the entry. Just an echo as Emory shut the door on the rain and pinged the security code on the wall, then knelt to sort through the inside of his backpack.
A far-off light trailed out the library door into the hall, but all was still from inside.
“Ben and Eli?” Keira asked.
He checked his watch. “Noon. They never work over a meal. Must’ve missed them on their way out.”
Keira turned away, a bundle of nerves as she stripped out of the sweater and let it fall to the floor in a soggy lump, then wrung out the tips of her hair over her tee, like there wasn’t the biggest lump in her throat at the same time. “So it’s just us.”
He didn’t answer.
Why was that? Just slid out of his leather jacket and walked over to hang it on a wall sconce. He ran his hand through his ebony hair, his palm catching at the nape as he shifted his weight to one leg. “Look—I’m not good at this.”
“Not good at what? Slogging through a healthy English rain?” She tossed the hair at her shoulders, fluttering air through it in a bid to get something to dry. “Better get used to it, Yank, if you plan to make a go of it by staying on at the cottage. England invented rain boots for a reason.”
Keira had meant it in cheek, hoping to calm the fluttering in her midsection. But total ignorance turned out to be something she owned in spades, because Emory looked torn to strips. He stood with his arms braced at his sides, like something was trying, and failing miserably, to stay tamped up inside him.
“What Evelyn said is true. Why are we the ones doing this?”
She swallowed hard. “Doing what?”
“Hunting down a story that’s not ours. Finding out about Victoria’s past. Putting up walls in an old cottage—that should be Carter’s job. Why are we still here?”
There were maybe a thousand answers.
He liked research. So did she. Victoria was stunning, whoever’s work she was. They were being paid. It was a gully washer outside, and who wanted to brave the Framlingham roads to trek home through that? There was a manor with free coffee, art that begged to be researched, and enough painted sunsets to last them the rest of their lives, were they keen to stay.
Those answers tried but weren’t nearly good enough.
Keira didn’t know why, except that Parham Hill, Victoria, the cottage, and Emory . . . they’d awakened something in her that she’d been ready to give up. Dublin was home, but it didn’t call her the same way it used to.
Not like a darkened entry with Emory in it did.
“I don’t know.” Keira put herself in the last position she should have—taking a step closer to him that felt more like a leap across a chasm. “Why are you still here?”
“You want the truth, Foley?”
“Yeah. I could use some truth right now.”
Truth turned out to be snogging that stole her breath in the dark . . .
Emory Scott kissed to his own tune, with arms he slipped around her waist like they’d always belonged there, the feel of his heart slamming against her chest, her lips forgetting anything but what it felt like for his to explore them. It was the craziest sense of home she’d ever come back to.
He felt like home.
Then there was a minute of catching their breath and grinning like fools, and he pushing locks of wet hair back from her forehead with the heel of his palm, and she taking the liberty to wipe a smudge of dirt from the side of his nose.
“I couldn’t put that off a second longer. I didn’t think it was right to pull you into all this. But I haven’t done it in a long time—”
“I have a hard time believing you haven’t practiced that a bit.”
“No, Professor. I meant I haven’t been able to trust anyone like this.”
“Trust?” She pecked another kiss on him, lingering a moment. “Look, I’m just about to ask you to spend Christmas in Ireland with my family. I think I should be the one worried right now, especially given that my brothers’ overprotective vibe could mean I’m putting your very life in danger if you agree. And I’m kind of used to having you around by now.”
When he didn’t reply, just took in all she’d said with a blank stare, Keira’s nerves kicked in.
“You need a family to spend Christmas with, right? I’d hate to leave you frozen in that pitiful cottage out there. So . . . you know. Just a holiday. But no strings, of course.”
He stepped off, keeping his fingers laced with hers, and tugged her toward the hall. “Come here.”
“Where are we going?”
The line they’d crossed began to fade as Emory walked her down the hall toward the light spilling out at the end.
The library greeted them, rain still beating the manor walls and lightning creating flashes of white that lit up the room. The scaffolding had been lowered as the wall came down, and aged boards had been nailed up to cover the window that had once been behind it. But other than the reams of books lining all corners and her lovely Victoria holding court on the far wall, it was silent and still.
“What’s going on?”
“You mentioned it a while back, that the fade marks on the wallpaper meant there must have been a window behind the wall.”
“Right. I did. So what?”
“There were at least eight more paintings we haven’t accounted for. And I’ve been looking for them. Behind locked doors. In the cellar. Shut-up rooms. The attic . . . So now I need to know if you meant it,” he whispered, staring through her. “And if you can really trust me.”
“Emory—you’re scaring me. Of course I trust you. Why?”
He nodded. Just once, then turned away.
It wasn’t when he reached for the tarp in the corner and pulled it free to reveal a shipping crate underneath. Or when he muscled a crowbar to peel back nails at each of its four corners. And even though the heart sinking in her chest tried to understand what was happening when he pulled the wood face free and a gold-embossed frame emerged in the center . . . it still didn’t seem real.
Keira shook her head, her breath quickening with shock.
An Empress lay before her, bathed in Klimt’s unmistakable gold—turning Emory into an art thief, with his long-lost Farbton masterpiece that wasn’t lost at all.