“Did you not have a maid sitting with her last night?” Gideon demanded.
“Sally Oldcastle, Your Grace. She informed me that when she fell asleep, the Duchess was still there, sleeping in her bed. When Sally woke up this morning, the Duchess was gone.”
“She is gone, too, then,” Gideon snapped.
“Your Grace!” McKay protested.
Gideon rounded on him. “She was sitting with Catherine to watch over her. Not to fall asleep! I take it the Duchess told her nothing of her plans? No, of course not, why would she confide in a maid.”
“Sally is a very approachable young woman and a very good listener. As was the Duchess,” McKay intoned in his customary clipped voice.
Gideon spun. It was the closest he had ever heard the butler come to criticism.
“Meaning thatIam not?”
McKay lifted his chin, straightened his spine, every inch the soldier on the parade ground.
“You are the Duke. The Duchess was... different.”
“She was. Sheis! Damnation, but we are supposed to be dining with the Threnthorpes tonight. Did she leave no note of any kind?”
“Nothing, Your Grace.”
Gideon stormed up the stairs to Catherine’s rooms. He opened her bureau, expecting to find something that might tell him where she had gone. A diary. A letter… something. But it was empty. Gideon slammed the lid closed and heard a woman squeak. He whirled to see a maid entering the room behind McKay.
“This is Sally Oldcastle, Your Grace,” McKay said with patience that sounded thinner than it usually was.
Gideon bristled. “I told you, she is expelled from here. Either she conspired with the Duchess or was too incompetent to do her role.”
Gideon knew his voice was cold and hard, but he couldn’t help it. All his plans were teetering on the verge of disaster. If Catherine was not present, he could not secure the support of the Threnthorpes, and... he realized that the true root of his anger was that Catherine had fled from him. That she was absent.
“How ridiculous!” Aaron crowed from somewhere at his right shoulder, “to be so exposed and vulnerable to a mere woman. She has seen through your lies and yet you still yearn for her? How sweet!”
Gideon growled in his throat, suppressing the mocking voice. How many years had he endured that mockery, endured the constant competition? The need to be constantly vigilant, for at any time of the day or night, he and Aaron might be pitched against each other. Letting down his guard for a moment might be enough for him to lose. And then?
He knew what then.
It had happened.
“Your Grace, I must protest. Sally is one of my finest members of staff,” McKay declared.
Gideon raked his hands through his hair. Even his staff were rebelling. Subduing his ire, he faced the young woman. “Sally, did you speak to Her Grace at all last night?”
Sally shook her head. “She was asleep, and then I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was gone.”
Gideon glared at her, and she ducked her head, staring with wide eyes at the floor.
“Tell the truth, lass,” McKay said gently, “your loyalty to your mistress is commendable, but the Duke is master here.”
“She is lying?” Gideon demanded.
“Only out of loyalty to your wife, who has shown her kindness and compassion. As she has to all of us,” McKay defended.
“All the more reason for her to be out of this house,” Gideon muttered, striding from the room, “I am going to look for my wife at the home of the Earl of Blackmere. They are our closest neighbors. It is conceivable that Catherine passed by there—”
“No, Your Grace!” McKay snapped.
Gideon froze in shock, turning slowly. McKay stood with arms rigidly by his sides, but fists clenched. His face had the same resolve as it probably had when he was a soldier, standing in the thin red line against the French, determined not to take a backward step.
