“Let him.”
“What if he marries her before you can rescue her?”
“She will refuse,” Johnathan said with conviction.
William stepped forward. “You will be walking into a trap.”
Johnathan’s mouth twisted. “Then I will spring it.”
He turned toward the woods, where his horse waited, still saddled, still ready.
William hesitated. “You will not pull it off on your own.”
Johnathan looked back. “Let him lock her behind a hundred doors. I will break every one.”
Then, to his surprise, William said, “I will come with you.”
Johnathan stared.
“For Frances,” William said. “And for you.”
A long moment passed between them. Not forgiveness. Not absolution. But something.
A beginning.
Johnathan nodded once.
“Then let us get her back.”
They galloped into the night, chasing a trail that had barely cooled. William had learned Cranford’s camp was set in a manor house just north of the border, a hunting lodge used by landed families who cared more for control than sport.
Johnathan remembered it. The place had hosted a gathering once when they were boys—half-drunk lords playing at war in the woods, blind to the violence they imitated.
Now, it would be a cage.
He imagined Frances locked behind its thick oak doors, her spirit compressed into silence, the brightness in her eyes dulled like candlelight suffocated by glass. The thought ignited something inside him—a fury that had nothing to do with duels or scandal, and everything to do with love.
Not the kind sung about in drawing rooms or written into sonnets.
The kind that burned.
That demanded.
That refused to let her be lost.
