Phoebe did not miss the tease. She lifted her eyes to the Marquess as he hid his laughter in his newspaper.
“Josiah,” Lady Dodge said with a warning tone. “You are making my friend ill at ease.”
“Nonsense,” he said with a chuckle. “I have seen them together enough this last week or so to be able to see what is happening.”
“Do ignore him,” Lady Dodge said, waving a hand in dismissal toward him. “He is quite convinced that you have fallen in love with my brother, and he cannot resist teasing you about the idea.”
“In love!?” Phoebe asked. The statement struck her so hard that she was not looking where she put her hand as she reached for the teacup. Rather than taking hold of it, she sent it flying, knocking tea everywhere. “Oh, I am so sorry.”
“See, Josiah? That was your fault,” Lady Dodge said, waving a disapproving finger at him as they hurried to mop up the spilt tea with napkins off the table.
“How was that my fault?” Josiah was still laughing. “It was her own shock that someone has figured out her secret.”
“I do not have a secret,” Phoebe said, looking up at him with wet napkins in her hands.
“You have told him you love him then?” the Marquess asked, peering over the newspaper at her.
“What? No. I mean…I am not…” she trailed off and bit her lip, thinking on the words.
“Ignore him,” Lady Dodge said, in clear disapproval of her husband. “He is simply trying to cause mischief.”
Yet the thought lingered. It was true that she had never cared for a man before quite the way she did Hayward, but was it possible that she was in love with him? She didn’t know. She had never been in love before.
Footsteps came closer, signaling there was someone about to enter the dining room. Phoebe turned her head toward it, in hope of it being Hayward, but Carling walked in instead.
“Hoping it was someone else?” the Marquess asked her, to which Lady Dodge tapped her husband’s hand across the table, quieting him.
“I have just spoken to Hayward’s valet and he tells me His Grace did not call for him this morning and ring the bell. Neither did he call for him last night.” The butler’s words made Phoebe stiffen in her seat. “We have just now checked his room, but he is not there, and there is no sign his bed has been slept in.”
There was quiet in the room for a minute as they all looked between each other.
“Now are we allowed to be concerned?” Phoebe asked, being the first to break the silence.
* * *
“Go riding, that will make you feel better,” Phoebe scoffed, repeating the words that the Marquess had said to her. At this moment, she didn’t think anything would make her feel better.
In the last hour, a search of the entire house had been made, looking for Hayward. It had discovered nothing, though one of the footmen had come forward saying that before he retired the night before, he found the front door unlocked and had locked it before he retired for the night.
That had prompted a new search of the gardens, though the Marquess wouldn’t let Phoebe help, insisting that she was already worried enough. He had suggested that she go riding in the woods to relieve her worries, whilst they searched the gardens and asked the groundskeeper if there had been any sign of Hayward in the woods too. The Marquess was also sending messengers to places Hayward liked to visit in town, to see if he had managed to leave the house after all.
“I do not think my heart will be settled, Cantante,” Phoebe whispered to the Andalusian as she stroked his nose.
He snorted in agreement with her before she pulled herself up into the saddle. She took one last longing look into the garden where the search was happening before turning her head toward the woods and urging Cantante toward the trees. She figured at least in her ride she could help with the search, even if most people didn’t seem to think Hayward would have gone wandering in the woods at night.
At first, she rode slowly, but soon the anxiety and fear for Hayward made her ride faster, until she was galloping between the trees, having to leap over roots and dodge low-hanging branches, in the efforts to ride smoothly without stopping. The horse’s ears were pricked in delight, happy at the freedom they had together, as they delved deeper and deeper into the woods.
Soon, they had ridden so far that they were nearing the border of where the trees met the estate wall that backed onto nearby streets in the outskirts of London. She was about to turn Cantante back round when he took on a mind of his own.
He reared his head and whinnied into the air.
“What is it? Cantante?” she called to him. He lowered his nose back down, bringing her to a sharp stop and snorted at the earth. “Move, Cantante,” she urged, digging her heels in, but he flatly refused to go anywhere. She pulled harshly on the reins, tugging his head back up. “What is wrong?” she asked with worry.
Rather than the horse taking the path she had intended for him to take, back down through the woods, he took her further along, parallel to the border wall.
“You have in mind where you would like to go?” she asked with an amused smirk at the horse taking control. A short while later, the horse stopped and whinnied again, drawing Phoebe’s eyes beyond his head and toward the earth up ahead. There was someone lying on the earth, half face down on their side, with blood on their head. It only took a moment for Phoebe to realize who it was.
The Duke!
