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Shoes. Why hadn’t she thought to dress and put shoes on?

Ivy’s feet ached with cold as she ran down the hall, her thin nightgown twisting and wrapping around her legs. Though she didn’t know where she was going, a vague map took shape in her head. This was the east wing, and there was an armory, a second-story gallery somewhere. But more importantly, there was someone she was supposed to find, someone in trouble. But who? A gold band on her finger flashed in the lamplight as she ran. No, not Arthur. She had to avoid her husband at all costs. There was someone else.

By now there were servants running with buckets of water and a constant alarm of “Fire! Fire!” rang down the halls. No one noticed as she rushed in the other direction, down the main stairs and into the great hall.

She stopped when she reached the library. Animal instinct told her to stay far away, but she desperately wanted that astronomy book, the last piece to solving the manuscript. Smoke was curling down the stairs, and it was only a matter of time before the flames followed. There was no time for second thoughts; she pushed the doors open and plunged inside.

The books danced and shimmered around her, a maze of shelves that stretched endlessly into the murky dark. Blindly, Ivy began pulling books down. Smoke was spreading, and she had to bury her nose in her elbow as she searched. Shouts rang out from the hall, growing closer. She couldn’t risk it; she had to leave off her search. With only the faintest notion of where she was going, she fled down the servants’ stairway.

The kitchen was deserted, everything tidy and unused. Above her rang the pounding of footsteps and muffled shouts. As her gaze swept over the bare wooden table and the white china lining the wall, flashes of memories came back to her: a broad-shouldered man with haunted eyes sitting at the table, trying to protect her from an attack. Blood spreading across the tiles. A heart she hadn’t realized capable of breaking any further, tightening in on itself and threatening to implode.

Ralph.

They had bludgeoned Ralph and taken him somewhere, along with Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt. How long ago had that been? Days? Weeks? Months? Everything was lost, floating in a shapeless fog. Perhaps Ralph and the rest of them were long dead. Perhaps she had attended their funerals, Arthur with a tight grip on her arm as the vicar read the final rites. But those were just dark anxieties, not memories, and so she had no choice but to believe that they were somewhere, alive.

Ivy’s head was pounding, her lungs filling with smoke. Desperately, she ran down the hall, passing empty servants’ rooms until she came to a locked door. She threw her weight against it; pain shot up her shoulder, but it remained unbudging. She tried the next one and the next one, until, straining to hear over the commotion from upstairs, she could make out a rustle of movement. Her heart beat faster.

“Ralph, are you there? The door is locked, can you open it?”

“If I could fucking open it, the bloody thing wouldn’t be locked, now would it?”

She could have wept with relief. Ivy dropped to her knees in front of the lock and reached to fish a pin out of her hair before remembering that Arthur had confiscated them.

“Stay there, I’ll be right back,” she shouted through the door as she scrambled up.

“Not sure where you think I’d be going,” came the dark mutter from the other side.

She raced back to the kitchen where she found a small knife and then stumbled back down the hall. Fingers made clumsy with adrenaline, Ivy pried the knife in the lock until there was a click. Her slick hands grappled with the doorknob, and then the door swung open.

The stench hit her first, a stomach-turning combination of stale sweat and despair. There was a small, ground-level window which might have let in some light, had someone not pasted newspaper over it. A washstand with an empty basin stood in the corner next to a bucket draped with coarse cloth, and on the cot sat a very disheveled Ralph, his hands bound together and loosely tied to the metal bed frame. Even with a finger’s-length of beard, the sharpness of his jaw was pronounced, and his clothes hung loose, ill-fitting.

At her widening eyes, Ralph quickly cut his gaze away, a touch of color on his gaunt cheeks. “Don’t just stand there staring,” he said gruffly. “Cut these, will you?”

Ivy sprang into action and obliged. “How long have you been in here?” she asked as she worked to sever the ropes.

“Seventeen days.”

Over two weeks! That meant she had been captive for that long as well. No sooner had the ropes fallen away, than his arms came around her with surprising force. She stiffened in surprise, but then found herself dissolving into him, her body responding to some memory that her mind had forgotten.

“Ivy, thank God,” he murmured into her neck. Rough fingers ran through her hair, excruciatingly tender and intimate. “Did they hurt you?”

She didn’t know. Her body was unbruised, but how could she say for certain what had transpired while she was locked away with the manuscript? When she didn’t say anything, he wrapped her into his embrace even tighter. She could smell woodsmoke and warm stable leather beneath the peppery sweat, the familiar scents tugging at something deep in the recesses of her mind.

“I thought of you, every day. Seeing you again was the only light in the darkness.”

Why was he talking to her like that, like she was his sweetheart, or more? Had his time in isolation addled his mind even more than it had hers? Yet in the refuge of his arms with his breath warm on her neck, Ivy didn’t care. Words choked in her throat, but she didn’t need them. This felt right. More than right: destined. They stood entwined for what felt like hours, the sound of his heart strong and steady under her ear.

But then reality came snaking back. “Is that smoke?” he asked.

“There’s a fire, upstairs.” It must have been spreading rapidly, because already the pounding of footsteps had been replaced by an eerie silence above them. “What about Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt? Where are they?”

He jerked his head in the opposite direction. “Next door,” he said. Gingerly removing her from his embrace, Ralph cursed as he lost his balance and nearly fell into the washstand. Ivy rushed to offer him a hand but he brushed her off. Instead, he staggered out the door, his long legs gradually steadying.

Grimacing, Ralph led her next door. Ivy worked the knife in the lock, feeling more than a little proud when it sprang open under Ralph’s appraising gaze.

“Wait,” he said, stopping Ivy’s hand on the knob. “It might not be...” He trailed off. “I’ll go first. Just in case.”

With her heart in her throat and the smoke curling ever thicker around them, she stood back as Ralph opened the door.

“Christ,” Ralph muttered when it had swung open.

Ivy couldn’t quite conjure memories of the Hewitts’ faces exactly, but she remembered a dignified couple that took pride in their work, distantly polite. The man and woman that sat huddled on the bed together had papery skin, sunken eyes, and looked as if they hadn’t had a proper meal in ages. At their entrance, Hewitt sprang up, putting his thin frame between them and his wife.

“It’s me,” Ralph said gruffly.

The butler stood down, but his wan face darkened as he took in Ralph’s loose clothes and the dried blood in his hair. “Barbarians,” he said, his words heavy with contempt. “Apparently the gentleman’s code goes out the window when the Mabrys are involved.” Turning, he helped Mrs. Hewitt to stand.

A purple bruise bloomed across her left cheekbone, her eye swollen like a boxer’s in a fight.

Ralph’s jaw tightened. “They struck you,” he said.

“I’m fine,” Mrs. Hewitt insisted, brushing off their fussing. “Just a little worse for the wear.” Her gaze turned wary as it passed to Ivy. “How much does she remember?” she asked Ralph.

“I’ve no idea. Haven’t had time to chat.”

“And the manuscript?”

“It’s in my room,” Ivy told her, one eye watching the encroaching smoke at the door. “Or, it was. I believe one of the Mabry servants has it.”

Mrs. Hewitt made an attempt to push into the hall. “We have to go get it before—”

But Ralph stopped her. “They’ll have gotten it by now and taken it somewhere safe. We need to get out of here.”

“You’ll have no argument from me,” Hewitt said, coughing into a soiled handkerchief. “Live to fight another day, that’s what I’ve always said.”

With Mrs. Hewitt’s weight on Ralph’s shoulder, they slowly made their way out of the servants’ hall. Ivy would have liked to have had the security of Ralph beside her, drinking in the warmth of his body, but Mrs. Hewitt needed him more. The electricity had gone out, the corridor cast in smoky shadows. They formed a surreal procession, the old couple, the young man with the limp, and the girl with no memory. But even with both the Hewitts and Ralph accounted for, Ivy had the sense that there was somebody missing, a light step, and a small frame in a blue service dress that should have been beside them.

“Agnes,” Ivy said, coming to a stop. “Where is Agnes?”

“I sent her home the night of the party,” Mrs. Hewitt told her. “And thank God I did.”

Continuing, they emerged out of the servants’ entrance to an artificially purple sky, the smell of damp earth and acrid smoke rising up to greet them. To one side lay the drive, and to the other, a path leading into the gardens. In the gravel drive, a chain of people had formed, water buckets passing down the line to the fire. No one noticed the huddled foursome as they limped past, clinging to the shadows like thieves in the night. From across the lawn, Ivy could hear Arthur yelling instructions as servants scrambled to find more buckets.

The gardens loomed ahead of them as sharp gravel bit into Ivy’s bare feet. “What will become of the abbey?” She had stopped, awestruck at the sight of black smoke pouring out of the windows of what had been both her prison and her home.

Mrs. Hewitt gave a weary sigh as she paused to catch her breath. “It will survive this. It has weathered greater storms before. And knowing the Mabrys, they will have protected the library. As for the manuscript, it will protect itself.”

They came upon a cottage, set safely away from the abbey toward the back of the grounds. In the darkness, Ivy could just make out a thatched roof and brambly rose garden. Hewitt opened the door and ushered them inside. Despite the stale, unused smell that greeted them, it was neat as a pin, homey, and a cat jumped down to greet them with loud, indignant meows.

Mrs. Hewitt caught Ivy’s wandering gaze and nodded. “This is our cottage. They’ll be too busy with the fire to spare us a thought. We should be safe here, for now.”

“How long do you think we have before they start looking for us?” Ivy asked. It all still seemed more like a strange dream than reality, time blurring into an endless string of moments.

Hewitt moved around the small drawing room, closing the curtains and lighting dim lamps. “Not long,” he said grimly.

Ivy sank into the worn sofa, leaning back and letting her eyes drift closed. She’d been awake for who knew how long, and keeping herself from slipping into exhaustion was becoming a losing battle.

“Oi!” Ralph was leaning over her, patting her cheek. “No sleeping, d’you hear me?”

Her eyes flew open. She hadn’t even been aware that she’d shut them. The next time that happened, she could awaken with no memory of where she was or how she’d gotten there, never mind anything about the manuscript.

With the doors bolted and Hewitt armed with an ancient hunting rifle, Mrs. Hewitt hobbled to the kitchen to put on tea before Ralph stopped her and took over. Outside, the shouts and clanging of bells drifted through the night, a surreal backdrop to an even more surreal situation.

“We need to secure the manuscript. This might be our only chance to take it back,” Hewitt said. He was standing beside the couch, one hand braced on the armrest as he swayed slightly, the other gripping the rifle.

“Won’t you sit down?” Ivy asked, concerned that the older man might faint away at any moment.

He bristled. “No, my lady. Not in your presence.”

“Harold,” Mrs. Hewitt admonished, “I do believe we are past that. Sit down.”

With obvious reluctance, the butler lowered himself to the couch, his hindside barely perching on the edge of the cushion.

“They’ll have found it by now,” Ivy said. “I’m sure of it.” She darted a glance at Ralph, trying to discern by his expression if he was disappointed that she had chosen to save her own skin at the cost of risking the manuscript. But he was busy carefully pouring and handing out mugs of tea, his expression blank and miles away from their discussion.

“We have the advantage of chaos on our side. The house will be in disarray, and the library will be unguarded,” Mrs. Hewitt said, raising her cup to her lips with shaky hands. “They’ll assume that we are dead, locked in our rooms and killed by smoke or fire. Lady Hayworth is the only one who is at risk right now.”

Hewitt shook his head. “I doubt the fire would have done much damage down in the servants’ quarters. It’s only a matter of time before they realize we aren’t where we’re supposed to be.”

Staring into her tea, Ivy willed her eyes to stay open. It was dark and cozy in the little cottage, and it would be so easy to give in to exhaustion, closing her eyes and letting sleep take her. A giant weight had been lifted off her shoulders now that she had escaped her imprisonment; didn’t she deserve to rest? But that was just her body trying to persuade her to sleep; her mind knew better. “I deciphered it.”

All heads swung toward her, Ralph finally coming out of his daze.

“That is, I cracked the code. I didn’t have time to actually set the translation into work, but I think I could.”

“My God,” Mrs. Hewitt whispered. Hewitt crossed himself. “All these years, these centuries, and no one has been able to get close to it, let alone figure out how to read it.”

There was little time—or point—in celebrating Ivy’s success. It was a hollow victory, won of desperation. She hadn’t found an astronomy book, so the translation wasn’t complete anyway.

Ivy sat bolt upright. “My notes! I left my notes in my room.” Closing her eyes, she slumped back against the sofa. Out of all the things to forget, how could she have let herself leave her precious research to the fire? She couldn’t even rightly blame the library or her lost memories, she had just plain forgotten in the heat of the moment. Her tongue darted over her dry lips as the full weight of her realization settled on her. “What would happen if Arthur were to find them and decipher it himself?”

A heavy glance between Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt. “It...would not be good. The manuscript unleashed is one matter, but under the control of a madman is another altogether.”

“I’ll get them,” Ralph said, slowly standing. In the low-ceilinged cottage he was still large, imposing, but there was a frailty about him now, and the way his shirt hung off him made Ivy want to gently sit him back down and wrap him in warm blankets with a proper cup of hot tea.

Mrs. Hewitt shot to her feet. “Absolutely not. You can barely stand.”

“I’ll go,” Ivy said. “It’s my fault I forgot them, and—”

“No,” Ralph said, the force of the single word nearly enough to send her back to her seat.

“But I know where they are, and what they look like. I—”

“And what? You’re going to walk into a burning building and just walk out again? How will you get past Arthur and his servants?”

“The same way you would, I suppose,” she shot back. Ralph’s old querulousness was returning and she felt herself heating at the exchange. The embrace in the servants’ room had been a fluke, a tender moment born out of desperate circumstances. “I’m going,” she ground out.

“No, ye are not, and that’s final.” His Northern accent broadened and deepened, his nostrils flaring. A flash of the old Ralph shone in his eyes, feral and stormy, commanding despite his weakened state. Even with her scattered memories and spotty knowledge of her chauffeur, Ivy knew that there was no dissuading him; it would only serve to further his determination.

Mrs. Hewitt must have sensed this too, because she gave a resigned sigh. “Very well,” she said. “But at least have a proper bite to eat before you go, or you won’t even make it down the garden path.”

Ralph wordlessly obliged, slowly chewing the stale bread and hard cured meat that Mrs. Hewitt had found in the larder. He might as well have been a condemned man eating his last meal before the gallows, and Ivy had no choice but to sit back and watch, knowing that she was the one sending him there.

When he was done, Ralph pushed the plate away and stood up. “What do they look like?” he asked Ivy.

“It’s a red, leather-bound book,” she whispered, hardly able to meet his eye. “They’ll have taken the notes, or else they were destroyed in the fire in my room. I’m so sorry, my mind is so foggy and I didn’t think—”

But Ralph held a hand up and the rest of her words died in her throat. “You did what you had to do.”

It didn’t make her feel any better. “What if Arthur catches him?” Ivy asked Mrs. Hewitt, her worst fear spilling into the silence of the room.

“There is one thing you could tell Sir Arthur,” Mrs. Hewitt said quietly, looking down at her hands in her lap. “Tell him you’re a Hewitt. He won’t touch you if you’re one of us. It’s the agreement between our families.”

If they had explained to Ivy why this was the case before, she had long since forgotten. “He locked you in the basement to rot,” Ivy pointed out, her heart further tightening at the memory of coming upon Ralph caged like a broken feral animal.

“To keep us out of the way,” Hewitt clarified. “They wouldn’t have killed us, not intentionally.”

A small comfort. Ivy helplessly watched as Ralph donned one of Hewitt’s old coats, the sleeves too short, the front too baggy. “I’ll be back. I promise,” he told her, finally meeting her eye. The glint there was hard and determined, and she had no choice but to believe him. He was strong and capable, so why did it feel as if she was sending a piece of her heart into the burning abbey with him?

The door had not been shut behind him for five minutes when Ivy threw herself off the sofa and began pacing. A clock ticked on the mantel, the air grew heavier. Outside chaos still rumbled. “I need to stay awake,” she announced to Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt. “And I need air. I’m going to take a walk.”

“My lady, you can’t possibly think to go out and—”

Ivy stopped Mrs. Hewitt. “I’ll go toward the moors and stay out of sight. If I keep sitting here waiting for Ralph, I’ll surely fall asleep and I can’t lose my memories right now, I just can’t.”

Mrs. Hewitt looked too tired to argue, and nodded.

Ivy left the Hewitts to their rest, and made sure they bolted the door behind her when she left. Smoke hung acrid in the air, the underbelly of dark clouds illuminated in the dying orange flashes of the fire. Cold air bit into her, reviving her flagging spirits. Ivy followed the little path out behind the cottage and onto the restless moors, before throwing a last glance over her shoulder, and then taking a sharp left and doubling back toward the abbey.