We don’t bother knocking on the door of the Trummers’ grand limestone mansion. No one we’re looking for would be inside.
The girls follow me around back, to the mews where the horses are kept. I knock on the side of the stable, but the door is already open. “Hello?” I whisper. “Anyone in here?”
A stable boy no older than fifteen jumps in surprise out of one of the stalls.
He wipes his dirty hands on his apron. “Miladies.” He offers us a startled little bow.
“We’re looking for Joseph,” I say.
The boy takes off his cap and fidgets with it. “I’m sorry I can’t be of help. He didn’t show up for work this morning. Is he in trouble?”
“Did he leave anything?” I ask.
The boy looks confused. “Just a few of his tools.”
“But not all of them?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so, no.”
“Thank you. That’ll be all.”
“I thought you were going to speak to her parents,” Faith says as we walk back to the palace.
I shake my head. There’s nothing the Trummers could say to me. If I know anything about them, they’re probably inside, mourning not Greer, but the loss of their social standing.
A weak smile spreads across my face. “What if they got out? What if they’re together?”
“Or what if she killed him too?” Marion replies. Faith elbows her.
It’s a possibility as well, one I’ve considered. “But now we have hope. We didn’t have that before.”
I tip my face up to the stars and send a wish to my friend, wherever she may be, that she is safe and whole, in the arms of a boy who loves her. I picture her halfway to Gretna Green by now, in the back of a carriage, in love and free. That is how I’ll choose to remember her.
The guards offer no hint of displeasure as they open the gates to welcome us back to the palace grounds. The rest of the girls go back to the cottage, but I wave them on, too restless to sit inside in front of the fire.
The gravel path is lit with torches that offer only flickering views of the expansive green lawn.
“Ivy?” a voice whispers in the dark.
“Bram?”
He comes striding up the path, smiling that heartrending Bram smile, the one that makes him look lit from within.
“Terrible day,” he says.
“The absolute worst.”
He opens his arms, and I fall into them, burying my head against his chest. For a long while he just holds me. For once, I’m not thinking about making him fall in love with me, I’m just letting myself be held when I need it so badly.
He pulls back and picks up a loose curl that has fallen over my shoulder. “I’d do anything for you, Ivy.”
I can’t help the blush that rises in my cheeks.
We crunch down the gravel path to a copse of trees by the edge of a pond, far enough from the torches that the light doesn’t reach us.
He leans in, and in that split second, all I can think of is Emmett. I’ve been trying desperately not to think about that night at the inn, but I can’t help it. It comes back to me in flashes. His hands in my hair, the hungry pressure of his lips, the solid planes of his body against mine.
Bram’s lips brush mine, and I banish all thoughts of Emmett. Bram is good and kind andwantsme.
