Chapter Eleven #2
“Eva.” He moved closer. “I’m here because I want to show you something beautiful. Because despite our … discussion yesterday, I don’t actually think you’re a complete disaster of a tourist anymore. And because Tilly’s been moping since she realised you weren’t on this morning’s walk.”
“Tilly’s been moping?”
“Devastated. Tragic, really. She’s written sad poetry. It’s all very dramatic.”
Despite everything, Eva smiled. “Well, we can’t have Tilly writing sad poetry.”
“How about I let you settle into the morning, get a cuppa down you and some decent food and I’ll be back this afternoon to pick you up?”
“Deal,” Eva smiled to herself.
The drive to Castle Howard took them through countryside that looked like it had been painted every possible shade of green.
Charlie’s Land Rover handled the narrow roads with its usual rattling determination, while Tilly sat between them, occasionally sighing with deep contentment.
Eva leaned her head against the window, looking out to the hills rolling ahead of her.
Closing her eyes for a moment, she thought of the last time she sat in Charlie’s car like this.
The truck all cosy, Tilly’s tail tapping against her leg, the way Charlie reached out and caressed her face …
“So,” Charlie said, pulling her from the daydream as they turned onto a tree-lined drive, “rough morning?”
“Phone call with my mother,” Eva admitted. “She thinks I’m having a breakdown.”
“Well, are you?”
Eva considered this. “Maybe? But it feels more like a … breakthrough? If that makes sense. Jeez I sound like those therapists you see in movies. But honestly, it’s like I’ve been sleepwalking through my life and suddenly I’m awake and have no idea where I am.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It is,” Eva agreed. “But also … freeing? For the first time, I’m not following anyone else’s plan.”
Charlie glanced at her. “Even if that plan involves following mysterious notes through Yorkshire?”
“That’s my choice, though. Mine. Not my mother’s, not Richard’s, not anyone else’s.”
They crested a hill, and Castle Howard spread before them like something from a dream.
The baroque palace rose from manicured grounds, its dome and wings creating a symphony in stone.
But it was the Christmas decorations that stole Eva’s breath—thousands of lights outlining every architectural detail, making the building shimmer like it had been dusted with stars.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“Wait until you see inside,” Charlie said, and there was something in his voice—pride, maybe, in belonging. The kind that came from sharing something beloved. “I know how much you love a fairy tale, this year’s theme is Sleeping Beauty.”
Leaving the car windows down, Charlie promised Tilly they’d be back as soon as the interior wander of the house was done.
Like the good girl she was, Tilly curled up on the passenger seat to take a nap while waiting.
The inside was even more spectacular. Each room had been transformed into scenes from the fairy tale—enchanted forests of silver birch and evergreen, spinning wheels draped with golden thread, and in the great hall, an enormous canopy bed surrounded by thorny roses that climbed towards the painted ceiling.
“It’s beautiful,” Eva said, then caught herself. “Though I suppose you think those fairy tales I dote on are just pretty lies we tell ourselves.”
Charlie was quiet for a moment, studying a display of a hundred spinning wheels, each one holding a single red rose.
“Maybe,” he said finally. “Or maybe they’re warnings.
Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger because she’s curious, because she’s been sheltered from the truth.
Then she sleeps for a hundred years while the world moves on without her. ”
“That’s a dark interpretation. Disney definitely don’t depict it that way, Blackwood.”
“You think?” Charlie moved to the next room, where mirrors reflected infinite versions of them both. “Or is it honest? She wakes up to find everyone she knew is gone. Everything’s changed. The world moved on while she was frozen in time.”
Eva thought of her life in Nashville—the job she’d kept out of obligation, the relationship that had been slowly suffocating her, the careful construction of a life that looked perfect but felt like sleepwalking.
“Maybe she needed that sleep,” Eva said softly. “Maybe sometimes we need to stop, even if it means the world changes while we’re gone. Because the alternative is staying awake in a life that’s slowly killing you.”
Charlie turned to look at her then, something shifting in his expression. “Like my grandmother,” he said quietly. “She stayed ‘awake’ through her whole life, doing whatever she thought was the right thing for others. Never let herself stop long enough to chase what she really wanted.”
They moved into the chapel, where instead of the paper angels, a massive rose bower had been created, with thousands of silk roses in every shade from white to deep crimson. The afternoon light through the stained glass turned them into jewels.
“She brought me here every Christmas,” Charlie said.
“Said fairy tales weren’t about the happy endings—they were about the choices that made the story.
The princess who chose to touch the spindle.
The prince who chose to fight through the thorns.
The castle that chose to sleep alongside her.
” He paused. “She said the real tragedy wasn’t the sleeping—it was all the people who stayed awake but never really lived, they just sort of existed. ”
After a further walk around the inside of the house in contemplative silence, the two retrieved Tilly and ended up outside, wandering through the grounds as the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the frost-touched grass.
They found a bench overlooking the atlas fountain, now still for winter, and sat watching the light change on the palace facade.
“I thought Florence put you up to this,” Eva admitted. “I’m sorry.”
Charlie looked genuinely confused. “Why would you think that?”
“Because yesterday I found out about your grandmother, we were basically arguing and I could tell you didn’t want to see me after that. Now today you’re being nice to me. You must be able to see how I thought your sudden change in temperament may have been … connected.”
“Eva.” Charlie turned to face her fully. “I’m here because I want to be. Because despite everything—or maybe because of it—I like spending time with you. You’re … unexpected.”
“I thought you didn’t like anyone but Tilly.”
“I don’t, usually.” He ran a hand through his hair, messing it endearingly.
“People are complicated. They want things, they leave, they disappoint you. Dogs are simple. They love you or they don’t, and they’re honest about it either way.
No matter how far I throw that ball for Tilly to fetch, she always finds her way back to me. ”
“That’s a lonely way to live.”
“It’s a safe way to live,” Charlie corrected. “Or it was. Until this American tourist spilled wine on my maps and started asking questions about things I’d spent years not thinking about.”
Eva pulled her coat tighter as the wind picked up. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“My mother asked me who she was without me. And the horrible thing is, I’ve been asking myself the same damn question.
Who am I without her expectations, without Richard’s plans, without the life everyone else mapped out for me?
The one I’ve been blindly going along with because I was scared to rock the applecart. ”
Charlie was quiet for a moment. “Maybe that’s the wrong question.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s not about who you are without those things. Maybe it’s about who you are despite them. Or alongside them. Or … I don’t know. I’m rubbish at metaphors.”
“I think you’re better at them than you give yourself credit for,” Eva said softly.
They sat watching the palace glow in the late afternoon light. Tilly had found a stick and was carrying it around proudly, occasionally bringing it to them for approval. Just like Charlie said she would.
“My parents barely remember I exist,” Charlie said suddenly. “They call on my birthday—usually a day late actually—and send Christmas cards with those awful family newsletters where they detail their humanitarian work and forget to mention they have a son.”
“Charlie …”
“They left me with Gran when I was seven. Said it would just be for a few months while they got settled in their new posting. That was twenty-five years ago, Eva.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but Eva could hear the old hurt underneath.
“Gran raised me. Told me stories, taught me to love this place, gave me roots when my parents were too busy saving the world’s history to save a place at the dinner table for their son. ”
“That must have been so hard.”
“It was. But it was also … not. Gran was brilliant. Difficult and complicated and carrying her own grief, but brilliant. She loved me. That was more than a lot of people get.” He looked at Eva.
“The thing is, I spent so long being angry at my parents for leaving that I almost missed what I had. A grandmother who chose me every day, even when choosing me reminded her of everything she’d lost.”
“Is that why you reacted so strongly when I was researching her?”
Charlie sighed. “Part of it. I’ve spent years trying to reconcile the grandmother I knew with the woman I discovered in her letters.
She was so heartbroken, Eva. So full of regret.
But she was also the person who taught me to ride a bike and make proper Yorkshire puddings and find beauty in old maps. How do you hold all of that at once?”
“Maybe that’s what makes us human,” Eva suggested.
“The ability to be broken and whole at the same time. Have you ever seen the Japanese art kintsugi? It’s this process where they take broken vases or ceramics and fill the cracks with gold.
It’s supposed to stand as a reminder that the broken or damaged is still beautiful. ”
She let the words float between them as they sighed and sunk into one another in the gardens.
As they walked back to the car, Castle Howard glowing behind, Eva felt a shift inside herself. Not a solution to all her problems, not a clear path forward, but something smaller and more important: the beginning of believing she might be worth her own story.
They climbed into the Land Rover, Tilly immediately claiming her spot between them with a satisfied huff. She could get used to this. Charlie started the engine, then paused, reaching behind his seat.
“I got you something,” he said, almost shyly, pulling out a package wrapped in brown paper. “Saw you looking at it at the market the other night.”
Eva unwrapped it carefully, her breath catching when the paper revealed the green leather journal from the craftsman’s stall. It was even more beautiful than she remembered, the leather soft under her fingers, the brass clasp gleaming in the afternoon light filtering through the windscreen.
“Charlie,” she whispered. “I can’t accept this from you—this is too much—”
“It’s not,” he interrupted. “You’re a writer, even if you’ve forgotten. And let’s face it, you’re living a story worth documenting. Gran would have said the same.” He paused, then added quietly, “Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can tell when one deserves to be written in.”
Eva clutched the journal, tears threatening again but for entirely different reasons than this morning.
She thought back to the tattered notebook she’d boarded the plane with, filled with shopping lists and to do tasks.
To the chaotic pages of Inn stationery she’d scribbled across.
Looking down at Charlie’s gift, she saw this as something more than just a journal. “Thank you. This is … it’s perfect.”
“Well,” Charlie said, clearly uncomfortable with the emotion of the moment, “Tilly picked it out really. I was just the one with opposable thumbs and a credit card.”
Eva laughed, the sound bright in the confines of the car. She opened the journal to the first page, running her fingers over the blank paper that seemed full of possibility.
“What will you write?” Charlie asked, pulling out of the car park.
“I don’t know yet,” Eva admitted. “But for the first time in a long time, that thought feels like the beginning of something rather than the end.”