Chapter Seven
Florence’s Wisdom
The walk back from The Horse and Hound should have taken ten minutes.
Eva managed to stretch it to twenty, partly because she kept stopping to peer into shop windows (closed, but prettily lit), and partly because she wasn’t quite ready to face the empty room at the inn.
The conversation with Aidan had left her feeling unsettled, like she’d accidentally picked up someone else’s coat—it fit, but it wasn’t quite right.
York at night was a different creature than its daytime self.
The tourist crowds had thinned to nothing, leaving only locals hurrying home and the occasional ghost tour group huddled around their guide’s lantern.
The narrow streets created wind tunnels that sent her scarf flapping like a banner, and the cobblestones gleamed wet under the streetlights despite no recent rain.
She paused at a corner where three streets met at impossible angles—the kind of intersection that only made sense in a city that had grown organically over two millennia.
A brass plaque on the wall caught her eye, barely visible in the amber light.
She stepped closer, using her phone’s flashlight to read it.
The plaque itself was unremarkable—something about a merchant’s house from 1487. But tucked behind it, wedged between the brass and the stone, was a folded piece of paper.
Eva’s heart quickened. Another of Margaret’s notes?
She carefully extracted the paper, her cold fingers fumbling with the folds. But instead of a note, something small and metallic tumbled out, hitting the cobbles with a bright ping.
A key.
Eva crouched, searching in the dim light until she spotted it—a small brass key, ornate and old-fashioned, the kind that belonged to a music box or a diary. She picked it up, feeling its surprising weight in her palm.
The paper, when unfolded, revealed not a cheerful note but what appeared to be a page torn from a manuscript. The handwriting was definitely Margaret’s—Eva recognised it from the green book—but the tone was entirely different:
We tell ourselves that duty is noble, that sacrifice is beautiful. But what if duty is just fear dressed in respectable clothing? What if the greatest betrayal is not of others, but of our own hearts?
I chose what was expected. I chose what was safe. I chose everyone’s happiness but my own, and now I sit in this room full of other people’s love stories, wondering if the heroine of my own story simply gave up too soon.
The cruellest lies are the ones we tell ourselves in the early hours, when the house is quiet and our hearts are loud.
Eva read it twice, then a third time. This wasn’t the Margaret Wells who left hopeful notes for strangers. This was someone wrestling with regret, with choices that couldn’t be undone.
She tucked the key and paper carefully into her bag and hurried the rest of the way to the inn, suddenly eager for its warmth and light.
Back in her room, Eva sat on the bed and pulled out her phone. Seventeen unread messages from her mother. She’d been ignoring them all day, but Sandy Coleman was nothing if not persistent.
Mom: Eva, this is getting ridiculous.
Mom: You can’t just disappear to England without a plan.
Mom: Your father thinks I should give you space but this is INSANE.
Mom: What about your job? What about Christmas?
Mom: Call me. NOW.
The messages grew increasingly capitalised as they progressed. Eva could practically hear her mother’s voice rising with each text.
She pulled up Courtney’s messages instead—a palate cleanser of friendship:
Courtney: How’s the British adventure? Meet any Mr Darcys yet?
Courtney: Your mom called me FOUR TIMES today
Courtney: I told her you joined a convent
Courtney: She didn’t find that as funny as I did
Eva smiled despite herself and typed back:
Eva: No Darcys. Did meet two guys who hate each other though. Very Shakespearean.
Eva: Also I’m extending my time in York.
Courtney’s response was immediate:
Courtney: DO IT
Courtney: Your mom will literally explode but DO IT
Courtney: Also guys??? SPILL …
Eva: One’s charming and wants to develop real estate. The other makes maps and scowls a lot.
Courtney: Let me guess which one you like
Eva: I don’t like either of them. I’m here for self-discovery, remember?
Courtney: Sure
Courtney: It’s the scowly map guy isn’t it
Courtney: You always had a thing for the difficult ones
Eva was composing a defensive response when another text from her mother arrived:
Mom: If you don’t call me in the next hour I’m flying to London myself.
Eva sighed. She couldn’t put it off any longer. But she could control the medium. She typed carefully:
Eva: Mom, I’m safe and I’m okay. I’m extending my trip by another week. I still have vacation time and this is important to me. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.
She hit send before she could second guess herself, then immediately turned off her phone. She’d deal with the explosion tomorrow.
The next morning, Eva woke to the sound of rain pattering against her window. Real showering rain this time, not just York’s perpetual mist. She dressed in her warmest sweater and made her way downstairs, where Florence was already bustling around the dining room.
“Morning, love,” Florence said, not looking up from where she was arranging fresh flowers in a vase. “Full English again, or are you wanting something lighter? I’ve got some lovely porridge if you’re feeling delicate.”
“I’m actually feeling pretty good,” Eva said, settling at her usual table. “But I need to ask you something. I’m supposed to fly home tomorrow, but I’d like to stay longer. Would that be possible?”
Florence’s hands stilled on the flowers. She turned, studying Eva with those sharp blue eyes. “Found something worth staying for, have you?”
“Maybe,” Eva said. “I’m not sure yet. But I’m not ready to leave.”
Florence nodded slowly. “The room’s yours as long as you need it. You know Eva, York’s full of stories, if you’re willing to read into them a little bit more. They might just help you re-write your own.”
There was something in the way she said it—a weight to the words that suggested she wasn’t just talking about tourist attractions.
“Actually,” Eva said, pulling the brass key from her pocket, “I found this last night. Behind a plaque on Stonegate. With a page from what looks like a manuscript.”
Florence’s reaction was immediate. She set down the flower she was holding and crossed to Eva’s table, her eyes fixed on the key. “May I?”
Eva handed it over. Florence turned it carefully in her fingers, examining it from every angle.
“Where exactly did you find this?” Florence asked, her voice carefully controlled.
“Corner of Stonegate and Little Stonegate. Behind a merchants’ plaque. It was with this.” Eva showed her the manuscript page.
Florence read it, her expression growing more complex with each line. When she finished, she sat down heavily in the chair across from Eva.
“So you’ve been pursuing Margaret Wells,” Florence said. It wasn’t a question.
“Mr Trinkett told me a little about her. How she left notes around York during the war, trying to spread hope.”
“That’s how it started,” Florence agreed. “She worked at the military hospital, saw terrible things. Young men who’d never walk again, who’d lost their friends, their futures. She began leaving notes in library books—little bits of encouragement for the wounded soldiers to find.”
“That’s beautiful,” Eva said.
“It was.” Florence was still turning the key in her fingers. “But some notes became more than that. More personal. There was—” She stopped herself, shaking her head. “Well, that’s not my story to tell.”
“But you know more,” Eva pressed gently.
Florence gave her a long look. “I believe Margaret felt that if she helped enough people find love, maybe she’d forgive herself for giving up her own.”
“What do you mean?”
But Florence was already standing, bustling back to her flowers with renewed energy. “Now then, enough of the past. What you need is some proper Yorkshire company. You can’t understand York by sitting outside our attractions and just reading plaques.”
“I’ve been doing okay on my own,” Eva said, slightly defensive.
“Have you now?” Florence’s tone was sceptical. “Been out to the Dales yet? Seen Haworth where the Brontes lived? Walked the moors that inspired Wuthering Heights?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Charlie will take you,” Florence announced, as if it were already decided.
Eva laughed. “Charlie? The man barely tolerates me, Florence. Something tells me he’s not really my biggest fan.”
“Nonsense. He’s just guarded, careful with people. That’s what happens when you’ve been hurt before.” Florence’s expression softened. “Besides, Tilly likes you, and that dog’s never wrong about people.”
“Florence, really, I can’t ask him to—”
“You’re not asking. I am.” Florence’s tone brooked no argument. “Tomorrow morning, bright and early. Well, maybe not too early. Traditionally, Charlie’s not what you’d call a morning person.”
Eva wanted to protest further, but something in Florence’s expression stopped her. There was the mischief Charlie had warned her about there, certainly, but also genuine concern.
After breakfast, Eva retreated to her room. The rain had intensified, streaming down her window in sheets that blurred the outside world into watercolour impressions. She pulled out her phone, bracing herself for the onslaught.
Twenty-three texts from her mother. Four missed calls. Two voicemails.
She scrolled past them all and opened Courtney’s messages instead:
Courtney: Your mom just called me AGAIN
Courtney: I told her you were taking a vow of silence
Courtney: She didn’t believe me
Courtney: How’s the self-discovery going?
Courtney: Any news with the two guys?
Courtney: This is better than Netflix
Courtney: PLEASE tell me you’re writing this down
Eva glanced at the desk where sheets of Riddle & Quill stationery lay scattered, already filled with her observations and fragments of Margaret Wells’ story.
Eva: Actually, I am. First time in years.
Courtney:
Courtney: What about the grumpy map guy?
Eva considered how to answer. Something about Charlie felt familiar, like a book she’d read before but couldn’t quite place. The way he’d shown her the hidden corners of the Minster, how he’d tensed when she’d mentioned Margaret, the unexpected vulnerability when he’d talked about people leaving …
Eva: He’s complicated. Apparently taking me on a road trip to the moors tomorrow. Don’t get excited though, it’ll be out of obligation to Florence.
Courtney: Or maybe he likes you
Eva: He literally told me I was basically destroying British heritage with my tourist ways
Courtney: That’s probably flirting in British
Eva was saved from responding by a knock at her door. “Come in,” she called.
Florence peered around the door. “Charlie’s agreed to tomorrow. Nine o’clock. Wear something warm and waterproof—Yorkshire weather doesn’t care about cutesy matching ensembles.”
After she left, Eva sat at the desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of the inn’s stationery.
The cream-coloured paper felt substantial under her fingers, the embossed logo at the top lending weight to whatever words she might write.
She thought about Margaret Wells, leaving notes for wounded soldiers, trying to heal others when she couldn’t heal herself.
She began to write:
There are women who write love stories for everyone but themselves.
They leave trails of happy endings in their wake—matchmaking friends, penning perfect proposals for tongue-tied suitors, crafting the words others cannot find.
They become cartographers of the heart, mapping routes to joy they never take themselves.
Margaret Wells was one of these women.
I think I might be one too.
We are the architects of other people’s happiness, building beautiful structures we never inhabit. We choose duty’s grey uniform over passion’s red dress. We tell ourselves that sacrifice is noble, that putting others first is love’s highest form.
But what if we’re wrong?
What if the greatest betrayal isn’t breaking someone else’s heart, but ignoring our own? What if all our careful kindnesses are just elaborate ways to avoid the terrifying possibility of our own joy?
Margaret wrote: ‘The cruellest lies are the ones we tell ourselves in the early hours, when the house is quiet and our hearts are loud.’
I’m beginning to understand what she meant.
In the daylight, we can pretend our choices were noble.
But at night, when the world strips away its pretenses, we know the truth: we were afraid.
Afraid to want. Afraid to reach. Afraid to fail at our own happiness after succeeding so brilliantly at arranging everyone else’s.
Tomorrow, I’ll follow her footsteps to the moors. Not to solve her mystery, but to understand my own. Because maybe—just maybe—it’s not too late to stop writing other people’s happy endings and start writing my own.
She set down the pen and picked up the brass key, looking over it beneath the lamplight. Whatever it opened, Margaret had wanted it found. But not easily, not by just anyone. By someone willing to look behind things, to see past the surface.
Through her rain-blurred window, York continued its ancient business of existing, indifferent to the mysteries it harboured.
Somewhere out there, Charlie was probably bent over his maps, adding careful details to streets that had been walked for centuries.
Florence was downstairs, creating her own small kingdom of warmth and belonging.
Eva sat with the brass key, turning it over and over in her hands. The more she did so the more soothing it became. Deep in her chest she felt a growing certainty that she was exactly where she needed to be, even if she couldn’t say why.
Tomorrow, the moors. Tonight, the surprisingly comfortable unknown of a story still being written.
She placed the key carefully in the desk drawer, next to the green book that had started it all, and the growing stack of stationery pages that had become something more than a journal—perhaps the beginning of the book she’d always meant to write.
Whatever door the key opened could wait.
She was learning, slowly, that not every mystery needed to be solved immediately.
This wasn’t just one of the methodical to do lists she was so good at clearing through quickly.
Some stories were better for the waiting.
Outside, the rain continued, turning York’s streets into rivers of reflected Christmas lights. And somewhere in the city, the rest of Margaret Wells’ story waited patiently, as it had for decades, for someone ready to understand not just what happened, but why it still mattered.