Chapter Two
Now
Ivy Ashford wanted nothing more than to feel happy on this day, like she used to. Though she was young yet, only twenty-four years old, she felt a deep heaviness in her heart that only came with a stolen youth. It was now eleven years since Phoebe Ashford, her dear mother, ascended to Heaven.
There was a time when she would awaken on the first of December filled with nothing but joy for the season to come. She would spring from bed, ready to run to Mama, who would greet her with open arms, wearing a smile nearly as wide as Ivy’s own.
Ivy longed for that same hopeful, anticipatory warmth in her gut that she had been accustomed to in her youth.
She felt no such thing. It was as if a void lay within her, somehow both heavy and empty all at once.
She couldn’t pretend to understand how that was possible; she only knew it to be true, holding true for over a decade of her life.
As she thought this, it sent a sharp pain into her heart.
Ivy had only gotten thirteen years with her mother, and being such a young child when she passed on, most of those memories were either fuzzy or long gone, fading more with each passing year.
Every year, Ivy hoped and prayed that she would finally feel the childlike wonder that Christmas brought again, but as yet, no such feeling had returned.
Instead, that emptiness inside of her only seemed to grow.
That was part of the trouble, wasn’t it?
As she grew older, Ivy lost more and more memories of her mother.
She closed her eyes, conjuring up the strongest memory she could: a gentle voice filled with love, and green eyes that sparkled with the deepest affection when she saw her daughters.
If she tried her very best, Ivy could smell the light, floral scent that engulfed her when her mother pulled her to her bosom—rosewater and lavender.
Ivy opened her eyes, staring at her reflection in her dressing-table mirror. She had inherited Phoebe’s eyes and hair, and as she grew older, she resembled her mother more and more. It was something she was grateful for, acting as an eternal bond between the two women.
She twirled her wavy auburn hair into the modest chignon she often wore, reaching into one of her drawers for hairpins.
She found none, letting out a soft hmph as she realized.
She let the wavy strands drop back around her shoulders, making a note to get some more the next time she went into town.
She dug around in the other drawers, hoping to find a few stray pins among her other odds and ends.
She froze when she opened the third drawer, where she found a small stack of yellowed papers.
She ran her fingers over them, featherlight and at a snail’s pace, as she reminisced on their origin.
***
November 1886
12 years prior
“I suspect these are the very best poems I’ve read in my whole life,” Celeste stated matter-of-factly. That was just like her older sister. She had unwavering confidence in Ivy’s abilities and was, along with their mother, determined that Ivy never gave up on her passions.
“Oh, you stop that!” Ivy scoffed, crossing her arms and huffing a bit. “You don’t have to tell tales to make me feel good. I know I have a long way to go yet.”
“Oh, you know what I meant. Let me rephrase, then.” Celeste cleared her throat dramatically; that was also just like her.
She had the biggest personality Ivy had ever known.
“I have never known someone so talented as you, Ivy, truly. I have read some of the other girls’ poems in school, and they are dreadful.
Sometimes I wonder if it would do good for us all to hide their ink pots. ”
“Oh, Lessie, don’t say such unkind things!
” Even in her upset, the nickname sounded fond.
It was what Ivy had called her sister since she was young and struggled to pronounce her full name.
She reserved it for the times when it was just the two of them, however, not wanting others to follow suit; it was something special to the sisters alone, and she wanted it to remain that way.
“You don’t need to be such a goody-goody around me. I know you’ve thought the same things, have you not? Don’t you remember last spring when Bridget stood up in front of the class and read that poem all about how beautiful the clouds were?” She punctuated the memory with a laugh.
Ivy’s lip twitched the faintest bit. She did remember the poem, and it was simply awful. Despite Bridget being four years her senior, the same as Celeste, the poem was leagues below the ones Ivy wrote.
“Oh, I have an idea!” Celeste said suddenly. “Why don’t you write some poems for Mama for Christmas this year? You’ve been lamenting what you’ll get her, have you not? And not that you need it, but I’ll even help you until we get them just perfect. She’ll be so proud to show everyone at church.”
***
Mama had never gotten the chance to show everyone at church the poems her girls had written for her.
Two weeks later, Mama suddenly fell ill, and before the end of the month, she was gone.
It was the first December filled with deep sorrow.
Father hadn’t even bothered to bring a tree in, nor was there a yule log; the fireplace was as empty and cold as the three remaining Ashfords felt.
Samuel Ashford was so stricken with grief it was as if he became a different man.
He grew worried about the girls’ safety, steadily becoming stricter and more controlling.
Come next December, not long after her eighteenth birthday, Celeste must’ve snapped, because she disappeared without a word.
One evening she was there, and the next morning, when Ivy woke, her sister was gone.
Ivy was only fourteen then, but that was the moment she ceased to feel like a child.
It was grief atop grief, and Ivy would be lying if she said hadn’t also felt like a different person since.
Ivy nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard knocking on her door. She slammed the drawer shut a bit too harshly, as if she had been doing something wrong.
“Father?” she called out through the closed door, glancing at the clock. It was already past seven. She’d been so engrossed in her thoughts she’d lost track of time entirely.
“Make haste and come to the table,” her father replied in the monotone voice he often adopted. “We have a guest this evening, so do not make us wait. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir. I’m nearly ready. I should be out within five minutes.”
To that, her father said nothing, but Ivy heard his footsteps retreat to the dining room.
They didn’t often have guests, especially not for meals.
She wasn’t sure why, but the notion churned Ivy’s stomach.
She had no reason for concern, but a sense of impending doom flooded through her.
She shook it off, quickly looking through the rest of her drawers until she found enough stray hairpins to secure her hair at the nape of her neck.
Feeling she was styled too plainly to receive guests, Ivy drew a few curls out to frame her face and nestled a jeweled comb in her hair.
She secured her collar with a small gold brooch.
That will have to do for now, she thought as she left her room, smoothing the dark blue satin of her skirts as she stood.
Ivy paused at the top of the stairs to listen for a minute.
There were two voices in the distance; one was her father, the other was another man.
The voice was deep and raspy—displeasing to her ears in a way that made her skin crawl.
It was familiar, but not to the point that she could place it.
She slowly descended the stairs, her heart pounding with her steps.
She rounded the corner into the dining room, and it was then she understood where the unnerving feeling was coming from. Her eyes fell on the form of a man she’d only met a few times, but those few times were plenty; she’d have been content if she never saw the pudgy, balding man again in her life.
“There she is. We’d begun to wonder if you’d run off,” her father said, his voice impatient.
She’d taken slightly longer than five minutes, and she regretted that now, for two reasons—her father’s irritation, and the way the man’s eyes were drawn to the brooch.
Because they didn’t stop at her brooch, slowly drifting down her body. She felt like a slab of mutton.
“My apologies.” Ivy’s voice was polite but tight and stilted; she was exerting a wealth of energy trying to disguise her displeasure. She curtsied stiffly, turning her attention to the unwanted guest. “Good evening, Mr. Wentworth. How do you do?”
“Punctuality is an important virtue for a young lady. It’d do you well to learn it,” Peter Wentworth said in an icy voice.
She clasped her hands in front of her so tightly her knuckles turned white. She wanted to scream, It isn’t my fault Father failed to tell me you would be intruding upon us, you boorish man. Instead, she said, “Again, I sincerely express my apologies.”
“Especially if you expect to make a good wife,” he added.
His inflection sent chills down Ivy’s spine, her eyes darting to her father, who was looking at her strangely.
She felt as if there was some grand secret only she wasn’t privy to.
Perhaps she did know, but she forced herself into a state of denial. Surely, Father wouldn’t be so cruel…
But that breed of comment didn’t stop, not from her father nor from Peter Wentworth. They were subtle at first, just little comments, but as the meal progressed, they became more overt.
“Ivy is quite a skilled seamstress, you know,” Father said, then looking to her for confirmation, his eyes boring into her skull. “Is that not so?”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Ivy mumbled, fixing her eyes down at her plate, praying silently that she was wrong about all of this.