Chapter 23
She stiffened and remained where she was next to him, watching him intently. His gaze was solely focused on the fire, the light flickering across his face. It struck her then how handsome he was and how his face seemed to be permanently etched in sorrow with a hint of despair.
Gabriel turned to her suddenly. “Perhaps you should return to the city. Go back to your uncle—”
“No.” Her tone held a note of finality. “I tried to leave before. The house—Lenore—reacted. She doesn’t want me to leave. And neither does the house. I’m staying here.”
It had crossed her mind to try to leave again, but at what cost?
She would lose more than she’d gain, and her heart rebelled at the idea of leaving Gabriel.
Something, some tug upon her heart, made her want to stay here for him.
And something deep inside her needed to find out why Lenore continued to haunt.
Her gaze searched his, as though looking for the buried answers. Unable to stop herself, she reached for him, took his hand in hers. His fingers had turned cold, even as he stood before the fire.
“If I go…I cannot leave you here alone,” she murmured.
A sardonic smile flickered across his lips before he concealed it. “I’m used to being alone, Victoria. Can’t you see that? Besides, I cannot truly leave this place.” He pulled his hand free and turned away.
“Why not?” she asked, determined to get to the bottom of it. “You followed me to the village that day. You—”
“And I shouldn’t have. It took more out of me than I care to admit.” His expression was pinched as he lifted his hand and rubbed his forehead, frustration edging through him.
“What does…that mean?” she asked. Her face drained as she remembered that bright morning in the village.
He expelled a heated breath. “Don’t you see? I cannot go further than the village because I’m bound to Ravenfell. Just as Lenore is.”
Confusion pulled her brows together. “No, I don’t see. Why? Why are you bound to this place?”
His ire was rising once again, like it had in the kitchen when she questioned him. When she’d tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. He stepped toward her, took her by the arms, his fingers digging into her flesh. Not cruel. Just firm.
“Please, stop this, Victoria. What happened is a blight upon my soul. I have not spoken of it to anyone and I never will.”
“But if I can help you—”
“You cannot! No one can help me. I am cursed to remain here, in these hallowed halls forever. Just as Lenore and—”
He broke off, as though he were about to say another name. The name of the child. Lily.
“Lenore and Lily,” she said, her voice rough in the silence.
Gabriel released her and stepped away. “Do not speak her name to me. It’s too painful to hear.”
In that moment, she understood him. She heard the grief in his words. He had never fully recovered from the death of the girl—his daughter. And that, along with Lenore, still haunted him.
He spun away from her and fled the room, leaving her alone with the sounds of the crackling fire.
Victoria remained in the sitting room for a long time watching the fire turn to embers and listening to the creaking of the old house as she sat alone.
Lord Charles was right about one thing. Houses were not built like this anymore.
Even as she sat there, her legs curled under her, she decided she was no longer afraid. Not of the house. Not of Lenore.
When the fire was nothing more than a red-hot glow, and weariness pressed through her, she rose and moved from the sitting room into the drafty foyer. The house was cold and dark. It was late. Gabriel was nowhere about. Perhaps he had retired to his room for the night, seeking solace and solitude.
The way he looked at her when she’d mentioned the girl’s name was like a knife to the gut. It had pained him hearing it. How much time had passed since he’d spoken her name aloud? How long ago had it been since he’d thought of the little girl who was his daughter?
As she started for the stairs, the memory suddenly exploded through her mind. Halting, her hand on the banister, she let it play out. Let it come to her with such clarity it nearly sent her to her knees.
She was eight years old. She’d wandered out to the garden looking for her mother. She wanted to ask her mother if she could let the little girl in the nursery play with her doll. But she didn’t find her mother.
The path to the hidden graves was shrouded in mist, calling to her, pulling her toward it. As a child, she did not understand the significance of that. She merely wanted to go down that gravel path—then it was not so overgrown as it was now.
And then suddenly, there was a hand on her shoulder. When she looked up, she met Gabriel’s panic-laced gaze. She blinked, tilted her head to the side. The sun seemed to blot out the rest of his features behind his head, but she knew who he was.
You’re the man in the west wing, she’d said.
He said nothing as he knelt before her, as though shielding her. Shielding her from what? Lenore? Was her ghostly presence there that day in the garden? She could not shake the certainty he was there to protect her.
She cast a glance upward to his room. Was his reluctance to reveal the truth now his way of protecting her?
Now more than ever, she needed to find out the answers. She recalled the locked cabinet in the study. Gabriel had never offered the key. Nor had he mentioned it. There was something in that cabinet she needed to see, to find.
She headed up the stairs, entered her room, and scanned the dressing table. There—a hair pin. Slim. Sturdy. She snatched it up with trembling fingers and clutched it in her fist like a weapon. Then she turned and crept back down the stairs, every step creaking underfoot.
The study door loomed before her like a sealed vault.
She slipped inside and closed it softly behind her.
The latch clicked shut, muffling the sounds of the sleeping house.
For a long moment, she stood still in the dark, listening.
Her ragged breathing. The soft tick of the grandfather clock down the hall.
The ever-present hush of Ravenfell, as though the manor was holding its breath.
She swallowed her own nerves and lit a candle. Its small golden flame flickered and bent as she crossed the room and knelt before the locked cabinet.
With unsteady hands, she bent the pin into a long, narrow shape, flattened one end, and fit it into the lock. The cabinet’s cold metal resisted, as if it sensed her intent.
She twisted.
Nothing.
Again.
Still nothing.
She gritted her teeth and tried again, more carefully this time, easing the pin deeper, listening to the faintest clicks within the mechanism. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
A soft gust of cold air brushed her neck, and she startled—turning, half expecting to see someone standing behind her. But the room was empty.
Just the house. Watching.
She turned back to the lock, heart hammering now, and tried again. Click. A soft give.
One more turn—
With a final twist and an audible snick, the lock gave way.
She sat back on her heels, breath catching, as the cabinet creaked open. Dust billowed out. The air inside was thick and still. Untouched.
As if it had been waiting.
With a shaking hand, she opened the door to the cabinet and peered inside. It was impossible to see the contents. She rose and grabbed the nearest candlestick, holding it down close enough to cast the pale light inside.
Papers. A leather-bound journal. Steeling her nerves, she reached inside and scooped it all out. The papers fluttered to the floor at her knees. The notebook landed with the thump on its side.
She set aside the journal and started with the papers first. It appeared to be old letters.
Written to her father. She scanned the contents but found nothing of note.
She picked up the notebook next. The cover was leather and tied with a leather cord.
She placed the candlestick on the floor beside her to untie the book and flip open the cover.
It was a journal.
Her father’s.
The first entry was nothing more than a description of their arrival at Ravenfell when she was barely a year old. He mentioned how her mother worried about her falling down the stairs as a toddler.
The second entry discussed the state of the manor. How his father had left it needing repairs. And how he was determined to see the old building renovated while keeping the original charm.
The old chap didn’t see fit to keep up with things, it seemed. Now it falls to me. Eleanor is quite beside herself at the idea of spending money to restore it to its former glory. But I’ve promised she can design the garden however she likes.
She smiled at this, knowing how much her mother loved the garden and her prize-winning flowers. Then another entry several months later.
I sense the place is unsettled. I knew this, of course, going in. The family rumor was that the place was haunted, but I never put too much stock into that. Neither did my father.
She flipped more pages. There seemed to be long spans of time between entries. As though he’d forgotten about the journal and only picked it up when something disturbed him deeply enough to need a record.
I hired an architect to begin renovations on the manor.
A highly respected one, too. And yet it seems the house will not have it.
During our brief visit, doors that opened easily for me would not budge for him.
The west wing was cloaked in darkness and shadow, as though trying to keep us out.
The blueprints he left behind have been on the desk, untouched.
Yet when I looked at it, the ink has run.
I do believe there is a presence here. Perhaps this house does not want to be saved. Perhaps it’s better left to decay in peace.
Victoria paused, staring at the words. A chill rippled down her arms. Her father had felt it too—this constant surveillance, the unseen eyes. He’d brushed it off as superstition…but still, he wrote it down. Her hand skimmed the edge of the page, fingers resting against the ink.
“How right you were, Father,” she whispered.
Turning another page, her breath hitched at the scrawl of a new date months later.
I’ve written to the Chancellor at the Office of Unnatural Matters for more information.
What I found…shocking. I daresay I cannot let Eleanor or Victoria into that area of the manor.
Eleanor is already beside herself and certain the house is alive.
For once, I cannot disagree with her. I’ve seen things. Felt things. Unexplainable things.
Her pulse quickened. A draft curled beneath the cabinet door. The candle flickered.
She leaned closer.
The Parliamentary Committee on Occult Affairs was disbanded years ago, but I feel now it is time to restore it. There might be something to these old family rumors. I truly believe the committee could help with next steps in this situation.
Victoria sat back on her heels, absorbing the weight of his words. Her father had tried. He’d reached out to others. No one had listened.
She flipped to the final entry.
The Chancellor was no help and so it falls to me to find the answers.
And I have. I found the death certificate for both Lenore Blackmore and her daughter, Lily.
Lenore died under mysterious circumstances after the girl drowned in a nearby pond.
Tragic. The man she was married to—Gabriel?
I couldn’t find a marriage license on record—was, apparently, her second husband.
Her first was Lord Hector Blackmore, who was much older than her.
A marriage of convenience. He died a year into their marriage.
After further tracing, I discovered Lenore inherited Ravenfell estate from her parents. She is, in fact, a Ravenwood. I was able to trace—
Her breath caught in her throat. The candle flared as if reacting to the revelation, casting her elongated shadow across the study wall.
Lenore wasn’t just a ghost.
She was part of her blood.