James was pacing before the breakfast room window when Miss Roseberry finally made her appearance.
She stopped near the sideboard, her hands clasped, her chin level as though she was awaiting her executioner. She made for a pitiful sight, honestly. However, under the circumstances, James didn’t have any sympathy for the governess.
"She was in her bed at ten o'clock," Miss Roseberry said. "I checked on her myself. She was asleep, Your Grace."
"I know," James clipped out. "Mrs. Fenwick told me."
She nodded tightly. "I should’ve checked on her again in the night, but I didn’t think it was necessary.”
She said it cleanly and without qualification which was admirable, but her taking accountability for the situation would not help them locate Hannah.
"This isn’t the first time you’ve let her slip through your fingers," James said, sounding more even and steady than he felt.
"No, Your Grace." Her gaze dropped to the floor.
"At Linthorpe House, she was found in the corridor at midnight." He maintained his demeanor even though he wanted to shout. "A sennight ago, she reached the Serpentine before you noticed she had gotten away from you."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"She is five years old, Miss Roseberry." He heard himself, his tone ratcheted up the tiniest bit. "She is five years old and she is somewhere on an estate of four hundred acres and it has been..." he stopped. He frowned at the woman. "How does a child leave her bed in the middle of the night without her governess knowing?"
Miss Roseberry said nothing. There was nothing she could say, and she didn’t try to do so.
"James." Daniel's voice came from the doorway.
James' gaze flicked to the threshold. His brother's expression had the careful stillness it only took on when Daniel was genuinely worried but was keeping himself in check, the same expression James had seen on his brother’s face the morning after the episode in London. Daniel’s presence steadied him.
He looked back at Miss Roseberry, who was still standing with her chin level. He reined himself in. Barely, but he managed it.
"Find me when there is news," he said to his brother and then left to go in search, once again, for his daughter.
Cori found Lord Daniel in the breakfast room, somber and looking as if he’d been sliced in two. “I just heard,” she whispered. “How can I help?”
He released a staggered breath. “Everyone who’s awake is searching a different corner of the castle.”
“His Grace?”
Daniel nodded. “He is beside himself.”
How could he be otherwise? Cori heaved a sigh. “I’ll start searching too,” she said.
She took the library first because she had passed the door twice already and it was on her way. She moved through it quickly, checking behind the larger chairs, behind the curtains, under the reading table. Nothing.
The music room. The small parlor off the east corridor. Back along the main passage, checking every doorway, looking for any sign that a child might recently have passed through. A door left ajar that should be closed. A cushion displaced. Something. Anything.
There was nothing.
Cori took the servants' staircase down to the ground floor and moved through the back passages, where two housemaids were already working their way along the west side. She could hear Turlow's voice somewhere outside, directing men across the kitchen garden. The search for the child was thorough. Everyone was covering ground.
Hannah wasn’t in any of the ground floor rooms. So, where was she?
Cori blew out a breath. Certainly, no one had absconded with the child, had they? No, no, certainly not. Cori pushed that thought away almost as soon as it entered her mind. If someone had taken the little girl in the dead of night, there’d be some evidence of such a thing, wouldn’t there? No, no. Hannah had to be here somewhere. She had to be.
Cori stood at the bottom of the back staircase and mentally went through all the rooms she’d searched so far.
Her mind kept going back to the stables. Turlow had searched there first, Mrs. Fenwick had told her that. Still, the idea kept pulling at Cori. The new foals,
Hannah had spoken of little else since Cori's arrival. Bread and Butter. She’d named the pair upon her arrival at Acklan, apparently, and she’d even dragged Cori to the stables herself within an hour of her settling in. The little girl had visited the pair at every available opportunity.
