“She hasn’t left Miss Lillian’s side since yesterday afternoon, master. I’m certain she’s there still.”
Alistair’s stomach dropped. “What happened to Lily? Has she sickened? I must go to her at once. I must—”
“Miss Lillian is fine, master. The problem was not with her.”
His heart still beating rapidly, Alistair raked a hand through his hair. “Then what?”
His manservant sighed. “I caught Miss Smythe by the kitchen exit with a young boy yesterday. She had a gown and a loaf of bread wrapped up in a mantle. He was raving about coming to rescue her, that they were leaving.”
Alistair’s heart slowed to a stop, then sped up twice as fast as before. She had been planning to leave. Abandon him and Lily both without so much as a fare-thee-well. And if that’s what Violet wished to do, how could he stop her? He’d have to let her go. And never hear her voice or see her face again.
With spreading surprise, he realized it wasn’t the lack of goodbye that had skewered him. It was the realization that he did not want her to leave his side. Ever. She was indelibly a part of his life now. A part of his heart.
Even if that made him a monster.
He let out a slow breath. Why did his undeniable affection for Miss Smythe make him feel so guilty? Was it because he couldn’t reunite his daughter with her birth mother?
He had spent Lily’s entire life telling her she was the child of the most perfect angel that ever walked the earth. And now what? He wanted his skeptical daughter to believe her father had managed to ensnare not one but two angels? Didheeven believe such a thing were possible?
He would have to puzzle it out later. This might be his last chance to find a cure for Lily, and the hourglass was running low.
“I can’t concern myself with Miss Smythe right now,” he said, ignoring the tumult in his brain. “I cannot afford the distraction. I have a roomful of scientists and physicians attempting to put their minds toward a cure, and that is where my focus belongs.”
“But master... if she should try to leave again?”
Ignoring the thundering of his heart, Alistair forced himself to do the right thing. “Then let her.”
Roper’s usually emotionless demeanor was an unfamiliar mixture of surprise and disappointment, as if he, too, felt Miss Smythe’s attempted departure to be a personal betrayal, and had fully expected his master to employ whatever means necessary to get her to stay.
But what was Alistair to do? Drop to his knees and bare his soul? He wasn’t entirely certain of where, precisely, his heart stood, but he did know where his focus needed to be. Until he could give Lily the life she deserved, Alastair did not deserve a life at all, much less a romance. Only a cure could save them. With his guests leaving on the morrow, the hours remaining to devise a reason to hope dwindled fewer and fewer. And he wanted more than mere hope. He neededsuccess.
With a quick nod to dismiss Roper, Alistair sprinted back to the refectory where the intellectual debate still raged at top volume. When he entered the room, however, the voices stalled.
“What?” he demanded, his skin sticky with foreboding. “What happened?”
“We have drawn a conclusion,” Mr. Knightly announced somberly. “But you will not like it.”
His stomach dropped. “There’s no hope? None at all?”
“There is always hope,” Mr. Knightly corrected with a smile. “But there is only one possibility for success.”
Alistair sagged as relief washed over him. “Anything. Anything at all. Just tell me what I must do.”
“Submit yourself to one of our laboratories for examination. We must have a live subject.”
“What? No!” Alistair’s fingers clenched at the thought of his daughter strapped to an examination table. “Not even for a day.”
“We’re not asking for a day,” Mr. Knightly said softly. “But for life. Or until the disease can be cured, whichever comes first. It’s the only way.”
“There is no cure,” Dr. Hughes spoke up from the opposite corner. “Not without extensive research and experimentation.”
Alistair desperately shook his head. “There will be no experimentation.”
Mr. Knightly rose to his feet and donned his hat. “Then there will be no cure.”
Chapter 24
The following day, Jenny and Elsa—the maids who brought each meal to the sanctuary—also carried the news Violet had been waiting for.
