“I’ll write to Phillip and the estate manager. He’ll get the wheels rolling. Better Phillip mend walls and roofs than make mischief in the village and the countryside.”
A silence stretched between us, broken only by the hiss of the fire. I could not help thinking Nicholas, for all his easy nature, saw things more clearly than I did. Or maybe it was because of it.
“Stay for supper. I would love to hear how your season has gone.” It’d been too long since we’d truly talked.
“Sadly, I’ll have to decline,” Nicky said, rising to his feet. “I have a prior engagement.”
Something of which I knew nothing, but then we no longer shared everything.
He clapped me lightly on the shoulder as he passed. “Do not spend the rest of the day buried in papers. You will make yourself old before your time.”
“Too late,” I said.
He chuckled as he took his leave.
After the door closed, I sat staring into the fire until it blurred into a red haze. I found myself wondering, too late, where Nicholas was bound, and with whom—what tables he would sit at, what confidences he would trade so easily with others and not with me. The thought settled, unspoken and useless. I couldn’t force him to share such things with me.
Phillip’s face rose in its place—smiling, reckless, too dear to me for all my frustration. Nicholas’s advice rang in my ears: Find him a spark that does not burn down the house.
With the weight of responsibility pressing on me, I turned back to my papers. The factory clauses seemed suddenly thin against the burden of family. Duty tugged me in every direction—Parliament, tenants, brothers. And beyond all of it, Rosalynd.
The memory of our midnight supper rose unbidden—her soft laughter over Petunia’s antics, the warmth of conversation shared without pretense, the quiet moments in which she listened with genuine interest as I spoke of the legislation. For a brief hour, peace—true, unguarded peace—had settled around us. It had been so long since I felt anything of the sort that it startled me.
And frightened me.
Because such peace belonged to a man free to hope for a future, free to marry again, free to believe he might build a life with a woman he admired. I was not that man. I could not be. Not after watching my wife slip from life, not after holding a child who drew but a few breaths. I would not subject another woman to that risk—ever again.
I pressed my pen to the margin and forced myself back to work.
Chapter
Eight
A Father’s Desperation
Two days after my thwarted attempt to talk to Denholm and Weatherby about the workers’ legislation, I was at my desk devising a more effective strategy for my meeting with Redmayne. I had barely gotten into the bones of it when Milford appeared in the doorway, his expression faintly strained.
“Your Grace,” he said, “Lord Greystowe begs an audience. He insists the matter is urgent.”
I set aside my pen. “Show him in.”
Greystowe entered with the bearing of a man stripped of all composure. His coat was hastily buttoned, his hair was a chaotic tangle, standing at all sixes. I rose to greet him, but he waved away ceremony.
“Sit,” I said, motioning him toward the chair opposite my desk. “Would you like a brandy? You look as if you could use a drink.”
He shook his head once, then stopped, as though uncertain what he had meant to refuse. “No—yes. I do not know.” His handcame up, then fell again, fingers flexing uselessly. “It will not help. Or perhaps it might. I have not slept.” He collapsed into the chair, as his elbows dropped to his knees. His head bowed as though the weight of it were suddenly too much to bear. For a moment, he only stared at the carpet, as if the truth lay somewhere in its pattern.
“Tell me what is wrong,” I said. “I cannot help you otherwise.”
He sagged further, shoulders bowed, wrestling with words that would not come. His mouth opened, closed. Then, slowly, he lifted his head.
When his gaze met mine, the torment in his eyes struck like a blow.
“It is Honora,” he said. “She is missing.”
A coldness settled in my chest. “Missing? Since when?”
“Last night.” Greystowe gripped the arms of the chair, knuckles whitening, as though the effort of remaining seated required all his strength. “She left the house without our knowledge. We learned the truth only this morning, when her maid confessed.”
