He was a married man now.
Something he’d sworn he would never become.
And he was over the bloody moon about it.
What he’d felt when he’d first laid his eyes upon Rosemary at the end of the aisle…shrouded in soft light, surrounded by their closest friends and family and forty of Evie’s guests…the words did not exist. Or if they did, he had never heard of them. With every purposeful step Rosemary had taken towards him, his heart had seemed to grow, and grow, until it was fit to burst by the time she put her dainty hand in his.
He continued to be staggered by the trust she had placed in him. To love her. To care for her. To protect her.Him. Sterling. A once-dissolute wastrel who’d been ready to burn it all to the ground until he crossed paths with a shy, awkward wallflower who had fulfilled every dream he never knew that he had.
He passed a vase of yellow roses in the hallway. Then he doubled back to grab the longest one and wipe the stem dry on his jacket before he proceeded to Rosemary’s room. Their belongings would be moved to the guest house during the ball. These few hours were the last ones they’d ever spend living apart.
The door was slightly ajar. Which he did not note as odd until he nudged it open…and was subsequently attacked by a chattering ball of red fur.
“Bollocks!” he cursed, dropping the rose as he tried to grab Sir Reginald. With tiny nails as sharp as miniature daggers, the distraught squirrel streaked up one side of his body and down the other. “Rosemary, call off your bloody guard rat before he bites off something you’d rather I have tonight.”
But there was no response.
Because the room was empty.
“Rosemary?” The chill from her absence sank straight into his bones. And he knew, even without Sir Reginald screeching in his ear, that something was terribly wrong.
In an instant, he found himself brought back to the morning that he’d lost his brother. To the field, damp with dew, where Sebastian had bled out in his arms. He experienced the same choking fear. The same surge of helplessness. The same blinding rage that someone he cared about, someone he loved, had been taken from him.
Goddamnit.
Why hadn’t he taken Kincaid seriously?
The detective had warned him that an unknown threat was still out there, but he hadn’t listened. Hadn’twantedto listen. For how much hell could one person possibly endure?
He’d put his father in the ground.
His mother.
His brother.
He wasn’t going to put Rosemary there.
He refused.
“Up you go, on my shoulder,” he ordered Sir Reginald. “We’ll find her together.”
The squirrel clung to his collar as he bolted out of the room and back down the hallway to his room where he found Higgins laying out his attire for the ball.
“Your Grace,” said the valet, visibly startled. “I apologize. I wasn’t expecting you this–”
“Rosemary’s gone. Someone has taken her. I want you to work with the Earl of Hawkridge’s butler and go door to door. Find every guest, every servant, every fucking mouse if you have to, and send them into the ballroom, then make sure no one leaves.”
Years of training ensured that Higgins did not quaver or question.
“Yes, Your Grace.” He snapped to attention. “Right away, Your Grace.”
Sterling found Weston, Kincaid, and Lachlan in the study where he’d left them surrounded by a haze of expensive cigar smoke. A glance at his expression and all conversation ceased at once.
“What’s happened?” Kincaid said tersely.
“Aye, and why do ye have a rat on yer shoulder?” Lachlan asked in his rolling brogue.
“I think Rosemary has been kidnapped.” Just saying the words out loud caused his heart to race and his palms to turn clammy. “I went to her room just now and she wasn’t there, but Sir Reginald was. She’d never go anywhere without him. Not without seeing that he was properly cared for first.”
