Julia stared at her face, loving that child with everything she had ever had in her. She was hope, pure and simple. She was the future of everything.
“I would destroy any person who ever said she didn’t deserve everything good,” she whispered.
She stroked the baby’s cheek gently and then passed her back to her father, whose face was also streaked with tears as he rejoined Evie and their little family clustered together.
Julia took Arabella’s arm and together they left them like that, to bond as the unit they would always be. In the main chamber, they hugged and then Julia looked toward the door. “I need a moment, just a moment to gather myself out on the terrace. But then…I must do something. Would you ask Alexander to join me?”
Arabella seemed to understand. “Oh. Yes, of course. I’ll give you a bit of time and then I will. What a night for the Comerford sisters.”
Arabella went toward the parlor as they went down the stairs and Julia went the other. She stepped through a room onto the big terrace that wrapped around the back of house and looked out over the garden. It was so late now, there was nothing to see in the shadows, but she didn’t need moonlight to light the way. Not anymore. Something far brighter had begun in her the moment she held her niece and now she couldn’t wait to share that with Alexander.
She smiled up at the stars that twinkled through a thin cloud cover and then turned slightly to look back and see if Alexander was coming. There was a man there, standing by the door, but she started as she realized it wasn’t her love.
It was a stranger. A very large stranger with a wicked smile on his face as he lunged for her and covered her mouth to erase her screams of terror and warning.
CHAPTER 25
It had been hours since Alexander and Silas had begun their card game. Both of them had somehow maintained an air of nonchalance as they chatted and played, but the mask fell away when Arabella entered the room, her eyes red from tears but her smile bright with joy.
“A baby girl,” she said as the men clambered to their feet to greet her. “Mother and child are both healthy, the new papa is jubilant and the little family is happily ensconced together getting to know each other.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, my love,” Silas said as he embraced Arabella and smoothed her hair. “What did they name her?”
“They hadn’t yet,” Arabella said, gazing up at him. “I’m sure they will soon, as they see who she is.”
“I have suggestions,” Silas teased, and she laughed as she wrapped an arm around him and finally looked past him to Alexander.
“My greatest felicitations on the happy addition to your family,” Alexander said. “I’m so pleased it all went well.”
“Thank you.” Arabella tilted her head. “So you two men spent a great deal of time together tonight. Is there a budding friendship?”
She put the question to Silas and Alexander smothered a laugh. She was not very subtle in her inquiry about his merit so he awaited Windham’s assessment. “He, like Vaughn, is a tolerable fop,” Silas said. “Less so when he bests me at cards, but I’ll learn his tells eventually.”
“I will take a tolerable fop,” Alexander said. “I’d assume that’s high praise.”
“Indeed it is,” Arabella said, and now she looked at him more closely. There was a flutter of a smile that crossed her face. “I note you haven’t asked where Julia is.”
He straightened up. “I assumed with your sister and the baby. Is she well?”
“She is. She took some air on the terrace and she asked me to send you to her,” Arabella said.
There was a meaningful look that passed between them, one that took Alexander’s breath away. “She did?”
“Sometimes things can become very clear in a moment,” Arabella said and rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Run along then, don’t keep her waiting.”
Alexander didn’t need to ask twice. He bolted from the room and down the hall. There was an open door that led to a parlor and beyond that a French door to the outside. He burst through it, expecting to find Julia waiting there but the terrace was empty. He wrinkled his brow.
“Julia?” he called out into the cool night air. “Are you there?”
There was no answer and he peeked around a moment before he began to turn to go back inside. Perhaps there was another parlor or terrace that Arabella and Silas could direct him to. Only before he could do that, he caught a glimpse of a single slipper on the stone parapet floor. His breath caught as he stared at it. And it ceased entirely when he realized there was a smudge of blood along the terrace wall in the shape of fingers. Likesomeone had gripped the edge as they were dragged away and a fingernail had been torn loose.
“Julia,” he whispered, and repeated it on a scream, “Julia!”
But there was no answer. Of course there wouldn’t be. She had been taken. That was immediately and horribly clear. And there was only one person who would do such a dastardly thing.
He rushed into the house and raced down the hall back to the parlor where he’d left Arabella and Silas. They were still there but had been joined by a beaming Lord Blackburn. When he burst into the room, though, all their expressions fell.
“What is it?” Arabella asked.
