Still, where was she?
He climbed out of the gig, helping Lucy down as well. Mrs. Warbler was talking to the Irish actor. She had a sketchbook in her hand. She had been at every production Bran had. She’d sit in a bench off to the side and scribble away, an ink bottle uncapped at her feet. She was “writing,” she told everyone and came to the plays to “study” what the playwright had done. Bran had just assumed it was another eccentricity of the woman.
Lucy spied her friend. “Elizabeth!”
“Don’t make a scene,” Bran said under his breath. “The fewer who know what is going on, the better.”
His sister nodded. Mrs. Warbler came trotting over. “How good to see you, Your Grace. You missed this afternoon’s performance.”
Bran took over. “Where is Miss Addison?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Warbler answered. “She wasn’t at this afternoon’s performance.”
Katenotat a performance?
Lucy brought her hand down on his arm in a death grip of fear, and a reminder that she had warned him.
“There was a good reason,” he assured her, and himself. He left the women to walk to the stage. The Irishman had a group of young belles that included Squire Nelson’s daughter around him. Bran walked past him, jumped up on the stage, and saw Silas in the tent. He walked up to him. “Where is Kate?”
The old man gave him a considering look. “She is around here some place.”
“Wheresome place?” Bran asked, his voice deepening with his frustration.
Silas raised his chin, his mouth curling into a frown. “She is around, sir.”
That wasn’t the answer Bran wanted. He reached for the smaller man, grabbed him by his Aesop costume and practically lifted him from the ground. “When did you see her last?”
“I don’t see why I have to answer you at all,” Silas returned, his own fists doubling.
“Brandon, Brandon,” Lucy said coming up to him. “It istrue, Brandon. What we feared has come true.”
Rage filled him. It couldn’t be true. Not again. Not asecondtime. He couldn’t lose her a second time.He loved her.
She lovedhim. He believed it to his bones... which meant she had been coerced in some manner—or he could be wrong.
He practically threw the old actor away from him. Silas made a loud grunt as he landed against a stack of trunks. Bran had been too rough, but before he could speak, Lucy broke down into loud wailing as if mourning the dead—
“What did you do to Silas?” Kate’s sharp voice broke through the noise.
From the corner of his eye, she came running toward her actor. She reached out to help him. Silas gave another shout of pain as if Bran had done far more than he had.
Bran didn’t care. Here she was. “Where is he? Where is Winderton?”
Kate rounded on him. “What is the matter with you?”
But Bran was too caught up in the moment to answerherquestions. “Is he forcing you? Or did the two of you plan this?” He caught her by the arms, desperate for an answer.
“No one is forcing me to do anything,” Kate started, however Lucy interrupted.
“Where is the duke? Where is my son?”
Bran ignored his sister. Instead he looked into Kate’s eyes. “You are not being forced? You are leaving of your own choice?”
“No one forces me to do anything,” Kate assured him, and it was the wrong thing to say.
The jealousy that had once propelled him halfway around the world to put distance between them reared its ugly head. “You made a mistake then, Kate. You chose the wrong man. Winderton has nothing.”
Beside him his sister gasped her distress.“No.”
