Rosalie sat next to him on the cold wooden bench. “Now, will you finally tell me whatever it is that’s so important that you called me away from my marriage bed?”
Lucian awoke to find bright sunlight peeking around the corners of the curtains.
He rolled over, reaching for Rosalie, but her side of the bed was empty.
He closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow. She had probably repaired to the viscountess’s chambers next door to relieve herself, which she seemed to prefer to using the chamber pot behind the screen in the corner.
He didn’t fall back asleep right away. After a few minutes, he called out, “Rosalie? Darling? Are you almost done?”
There was no reply from behind the connecting door.
He stretched lazily. After a minute, he called, “I miss you.”
His arm strayed across her pillow. It was cold to the touch.
He sat up in bed, then climbed out. “Rosalie?” he called, reaching for his banyan. “Where are you?”
He did not hear any sounds from the viscountess’s bedchamber as he crossed the room. He rapped on the door. “Rosalie?”
When he received no answer, he opened the door and peered inside. The room was dark and empty.
Well. It wasn’t a problem. Rosalie was his wife. Naturally, she had the run of the house. Perhaps she had grown bored of waiting for him to awaken and had gone down to the library in search of a book.
He opened the door and found a footman stationed in the corridor. “Ah, Hamish. Good morning. Where is my wife?”
Hamish looked startled. “Is she nae with ye?”
Lucian’s gut clenched. Where the devil was she?
He drew in a slow breath. Nothing was wrong! No doubt she had slipped out before Hamish had come on duty.
He kept his voice cool. “I suspect she went downstairs in search of a book or some such. I’m sure Collins knows where she is.”
But Collins was as bewildered as Lucian, as were the rest of the servants. A cursory search of the most likely rooms revealed nothing, and the footman who had been watching the front door since dawn had not seen anything.
“Search the house,” Lucian said tightly. “Check every room.”
He commenced pacing the foyer while the servants scattered. If this was Rosalie’s idea of a joke, it wasn’t funny.
“My lord!” A middle-aged woman came rushing down the stairs. It took Lucian a beat to place her as Rosalie’s lady’s maid. Bernadette, that was her name.
Bernadette wrung her hands. “I had laid a dress out in the viscountess’s chambers for her ladyship. It’s gone, my lord, along with one of her cloaks.”
A cloak suggested that she had left the house. Why the devil would she do that? It had snowed last night, for Christ’s sake!
“My lord!” Another voice, this one masculine, and accompanied by the pounding of boots on the foyer’s marble tiles.
Lucian wheeled around to see that it was Timmy. “Did you find her?” he demanded without preamble.
“No, my lord.” Timmy bent over, hands on his thighs, his breath heaving. “But out in the garden, there are footprints in the snow.”
“Footprints?” Lucian could scarcely believe his ears. Rosalie had gone outside? In thesnow?
He wracked his brain, trying to figure out what he had done to incense her. He had been on his best behavior, damn it!
He quickly reviewed everything he had done since their wedding. Maybe she was mad that he… spent so much time licking her pussy? It seemed unlikely, but he was hard pressed to think of much else he had done for the past four days. Had she been too sensitive? She hadn’t said anything about it. In fact, she had given every appearance of enjoying it.
“My lord.” Timmy’s expression was fraught, as if he dreaded to deliver his next piece of news.
