Chapter 5
Victoria couldn’t shake the feeling that crept over her since the moment she stepped into the house. She chewed her lower lip as she and her uncle headed down the stairs and to the front door.
The hearth that seemingly lit itself. The phantom piano playing. The cold drafts. The strange sensations she sensed in that child’s room.
Was it hers when she was little? She didn’t recall. Perhaps it belonged to someone else in the family. Which got her to wondering how long Ravenfell manor had been in the family. Her father had inherited it from his father. But how many generations had lived here?
Her uncle released her arm to open the door for her and step aside. When she was out in the warm morning light, he followed. She headed toward the gardens where the sweet scent of the fully bloomed roses beckoned.
“My dear, are you well?” her uncle asked as he fell in step with her.
She took the footpath from the side of the house through the garden gate, her shoes crunching lightly on the gravel. “Yes.”
“You seem…” He paused, searching for the words.
She stopped at a rosebush with full, pink blooms to sniff them. Their sweet scent made her close her eyes and smile.
“For the state the manor house is in, this garden is certainly well maintained,” her uncle said. He glanced around at the blooming flowers.
“Yes,” she agreed, releasing the flower and glancing up at the foreboding house.
Truthfully, it wasn’t in all that bad of shape. The exterior could use some polishing, of course. The stone was dingy from dirt and moss. Grime crusted the windows. The shutters needed a good coat of paint. And who knew what shape the roof was in?
Her uncle placed a gentle hand on her arm. “Victoria, darling. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.”
Victoria hadn’t shared with him the clause in the codicil that stated she must maintain ownership until her death when it was to be passed to the next of kin, or her child.
“Yes, I do, uncle.”
She turned on the toe of her shoe and headed back up the path, going deeper into the garden. He followed.
“I want you to know, we’d be happy to have you back if you change your mind.”
She suppressed a snort. The last thing she wanted to do was go back and live under the controlling thumb of her aunt.
While the woman meant well, she was overbearing and highly opinionated.
She was determined to see Victoria married off to someone—anyone—who would take her.
Furthermore, she didn’t want that woman scrutinizing her or telling her how to live her life.
“I do appreciate that, Uncle Hubert, but I’m determined to make a go of it here at Ravenfell.”
As she said it, a raven flapped overhead. So close, in fact, she heard the flutter of its wings. It headed past her, disappearing over the stone wall at the back of the garden into the morning.
An omen.
Uncle Hubert matched her stride. She noticed then, with some chagrin, her legs burned from her hurry. She slowed, taking her time to examine the loveliness of the garden.
“I just don’t want you to think you don’t have a choice,” he said.
Her dear uncle. Such a sweet man. He wanted the best for her, she could tell. And he worried about her being here alone with that caretaker. The caretaker who had dark eyes that seemed to watch her every move. Thinking of Gabriel sent a shiver through her.
There was something about him that made her a bit wary. A bit on edge. Something that told her he’d been here in Ravenfell far too long. She searched her childhood memories. Had he been here then? Skulking about the halls and keeping his watchful gaze on everything and everyone?
She couldn’t recall.
Victoria halted at a bunch of lilacs, their scent wafting up toward her. They reminded her of her mother, who always preferred lilacs and lilies. A smile played at the corners of her mouth as she gazed at her uncle with his worried expression.
On impulse, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I thank you for that.”
She started walking again. The morning sun was hot on the top of head and she wished she had a bonnet to shade her face from the bright rays.
“At least let me look over the ledgers with you and that man,” he said.
Ever the banker. She grinned. “That man has a name, uncle.”
“Yes, I know.” He sniffed derision as though he was loathe to speak his name aloud. As though it might conjure the sudden presence of the man.
“I’m sure Gabriel can show me everything I need to know.”
“I’m sure he can. However, I must insist.”
She chuckled at his stern tone and relented. Her uncle was a banker, after all. He’d know if something was amiss in the ledgers. “All right, uncle. If you insist. We’ll look at the ledgers together this afternoon. Perhaps while we have tea. Would that make you feel better?”
“You know it would, my dear.” He paused at a particularly vibrant hydrangea, its petals a delicate shade of pale blue. “Your mother was an excellent gardener.”
It sounded like an offhanded comment, but one that took Victoria by surprise. “My mother planted these?”
“The whole garden,” he said with a fond smile. “Every path, every bloom. She had a gift. Won best in show three years running at the Elderbloom Flower Festival.” He chuckled. “You should’ve seen her with a pair of shears and a sun hat. No one dared interrupt.”
Victoria blinked. Somehow, she had never known. Her mother had always seemed like a ghost. Beautiful, remote, drifting from one social event to the next.
A weathered wooden bench sat several steps away. She resumed walking toward it, needing to sit with this new image of her mother. Her uncle followed and joined her, finding his place while she remained perched at the chair’s edge.
“Tell me more about her,” she said quietly. “Mother and Father traveled so much, I don’t recall much about them.”
Uncle Hubert folded his hands on his knees. His voice gentled.
“She loved the gardens. It was the only place she ever seemed at peace. But she was your father’s wife, and that meant traveling. They were rarely still. He was a man of ambition. Always chasing diplomacy, deals, titles. She followed because she had to. She didn’t always want to leave you behind.”
Victoria’s throat tightened. “Then why did she?”
Hubert hesitated. “Because that’s what was expected.
And because she thought you were safer in the city after they packed up and left Ravenfell.
All the courts, the travel, the endless social engagements.
Dragging you from place to place. She believed it would harden you.
So, she left you with tutors and governesses and thought that was best.”
A breeze stirred the hydrangeas, and for a moment, the garden seemed to sigh around them.
After they packed up and left Ravenfell. The words stuck in her mind.
She recalled with some unexpected clarity they left abruptly one night, never to return.
Her mother had a ghostly look about her face as though she’d witnessed something she never wanted to see again or speak of.
Her father, with his gruff exterior and stoic face, led them from the manor to a carriage that took them to their home in the city.
After that it was nonstop travel for them and seeing very little of her parents.
“She loved you, Victoria,” he added. “But she was raised to keep love at a distance. Like your father. They both were.”
“They may have loved me but I was not enough to keep them home.” She placed her hands in her lap and scooted back, her gaze on the swaying flowers ahead.
It was quiet here in the garden. She quite understood why her mother would prefer it. There was solace in the soil and the blooms.
“Your father had his work.”
“Work,” she scoffed. “Social galas. Political events. Foreign courts. And for what? What did that get them?”
She wondered if her mother had whispered her regrets into the flower beds. If she’d ever looked at the train schedule and considered staying behind, just once.
“Abner lived a prestigious life. Your mother had to attend with him on those social events to show the world he was a man of honor and respect. They were both shaped by duty, not desire. That’s a hard thing to break from even for love.”
Victoria lowered her gaze to her lap, her hands twisting together. “Do you think she was happy, uncle?”
Her uncle didn’t answer right away. When she looked up, he was watching the blooms blow in the faint breeze, as though the flowers might speak before he could.
“I think,” he said slowly, “she was waiting for the day she could stay.”
Victoria nodded, the silence folding in around them once more.
“Then perhaps,” she said quietly, “it’s time someone stayed.”