Page 2 of An Offer By the Beastly Duke

But the study was empty, and no smells lingered from any occupancy.

“Nicholas,” she choked out desperately. “Where are you?”

She turned back on herself, but at the last moment, she caught eye of the painting of Brigrock on the wall, beautiful and endless with its ribbons of water cutting through fields and woodland. Nicholas always gazed at it, and the longer Penelope did too, the longer she truly did fear that was where he had gone.

Returning to the hallway, she found Mrs. Guildbury already making her way to Penelope with a regretful shake of her head. Whirling around, the butler shook his head, too.

“He wasn’t in the parlor,” Mr. Ashton said. “Nor the dining room, just in case he’d wandered back. But I did see a stable hand still working outside. The light’s on out there, so I came to see if you⁠—”

Penelope barely took a moment to thank him before running toward the nearest doorway into the garden. If Nicholas had gone outside, he might have been spotted by one of the stable hands.

“My lady?” The stable hand called out as she entered the stable in a rush of exertion. She didn’t even bother trying to compose her loose hair or calm her breathing. “My lady, is everything all right?”

“My son—I am looking for him,” she gasped out. “You have not seen him out here, have you?”

“I have.” The stable hand nodded into the darkness outside, eyes veering to the left, right to where the creek was. “I stopped to ask why he was unchaperoned, but he said you were right behind him. I was working, so I didn’t have a chance to see. My lady, I should have⁠—”

“It is fine.” She waved off. “Thank you.”

She kept up her grateful smile for as long as she could until her back was turned because the creek… Penelope’s eyes widened as her blood ran cold with fear.

The creek bordered Romwich Hall with…

“With the Duke of Brigrock’s estate,” she whispered.

Her breath hitched, her throat feeling as though it was constricted by an invisible wire.

A burning flare of anger went through her. Anger and guilt that she hadn’t listened closer, that she hadn’t asked, nor entirely dissuaded him or even offered to go with him the following day.

She had lost her own son, and now he had been gone for two hours, and she had no idea if he was safe on the grounds of that estate. Clenching her skirts in her fingers, she bolted through her own gardens. The night air clawed at her hair that was falling free with every frantic step she took.

The darkness was imposing, impenetrable, and she could barely see her own fingers before her, let alone her son’s shadow, wherever he was hiding.

“Nicholas!” she called out, finding her way to the tree line. “Nicholas, please, if you can hear me, shout back to me!”

For several moments, she went quiet, her throat dry. She waited helplessly, not daring to make a single noise of her own. What if he was hurt? What if all he could make the sound of was a mere whimper and she wouldn’t hear it?

Tentatively, she stepped forward after only silence greeted her. Her stomach sank, her fingers clenching and unclenching with her fraying hope.

“Nicholas?” she called out again, eyes straining to see through the darkness. Penelope moved onward again until the bubbling creek sounded in the distance—until lights appeared through the trees.

The lights of the Duke of Brigrock’s house in the distance.

Please, she thought, please let him be safe but for everything Heavenly, please do not let him be in there.

She swallowed thickly, fear making her slow, as she kept her eyes trained on Brigrock Hall. It was far away enough that she had never needed to fear proximity, and she had never met the Duke himself.

Yet she had heard the stories. Penelope had paid enough mind to be aware of not crossing her renowned neighbor, but not enough to remember specifics.

All she knew was that he was feared and scorned in society—and her son might have been with him.

Nicholas was too young to understand that danger was much more than an exciting word, too young to know to be careful not to trespass where he didn’t belong. He weighed no more than a sheaf of wheat. Penelope trembled: he would be an easy target for the Duke.

She was already running before she’d made the decision to even move through the rest of the woodland barrier between the estates

The woods were a tangle of clutching briars. Penelope ignored the thorns that snagged her lace and tore at her skin, her focus locked on the flickering lights ahead. Her lungs burned with every stride, and the cool air seared her throat.

Keep moving. Don’t think. Find him and then think.