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Tearing off her gloves, she found his hand. It was ice cold. A sob rose in her throat, and she slid closer, moving her fingers up his sleeve until they rested on his thin neck. She leaned forward, frantically searching for a pulse.

“Asher,” she sobbed, and then she heard the faint whisper of a breath.

He was alive. Hope sparked new energy within her. She had no way of knowing how badly he was injured, but the one thing she did know was that if she did not warm his small body, he would not survive the night.

She pushed back the bush and gently rolled him onto his side. The front of his shirt and his face were stained, but whether it was mud or blood she could not tell. She braced herself, then slid one arm beneath his neck and the other beneath his knees and lifted him, drawing him up against her chest. He was so light she had little difficulty holding him as she squirmed into a sitting position beside the bush.

Keeping him pressed against her, she tugged on her cloak until he was fully cocooned in the fabric. Then she laid her cheek upon the top of his head and listened to him slowly inhale and exhale. She had done what she could. All that was left for her now was to pray that someone would see her lantern and rescue them before it was too late.

One of the footmen came running from the pond’s edge. “We’ve spotted something in the water, my lord. Two of the grooms are going out there now.”

Alexander swung his stallion around and crossed the short distance to the pond at a canter. Three more men on horseback were converging on the spot where several men were gathered.

“What have they found?” Mr. Hadford’s voice was strained. He and one of the grooms rode up beside Alexander. They’d been combing the other side of the pond whilst Alexander had been nearer the woods.

“I don’t know.” Alexander swung out of the saddle and hurried to the water’s edge.

By the light of the lanterns the footmen held on the shore, he could make out the shadowy forms of two men wading through thigh-deep water. They stopped and bent over something. All around him the men fell silent, and Alexander strained to see through the darkness.

“It’s a log!”

The shout was met by sighs of relief from the men beside him. Alexander released a tense breath. As much as they all wished to find the boy, no one wanted it to be that way.

“Keep searching,” Alexander said. “Half of you continue patrolling the pond. I need four men to start sweeping the south meadow. Be especially mindful of the hedgerows or anywhere else where the child could be hidden from view. The rest of you, join the men already scouring the woods.”

Alexander remounted his horse. “I’m returning to the woods,” he told Mr. Hadford. “There’s a field beyond the trees, and then it’s the Hadford orchard. If Asher came that way and has not yet reached the pond, he is most likely somewhere in that vicinity.”

“I will join you,” Mr. Hadford said, already wheeling his mount around.

“Lord Bloxley!” This shout came from one of the men who had started toward the woods. “There’s a horse coming from the woods, my lord.”

The sound of thudding hooves reached him, and Alexander looked to his left to see a riderless horse appear out of the darkness.

“Do you recognize it, Bloxley?” Mr. Hadford asked.

Alexander approached the nervous animal cautiously. It had to be fully bridled; he could hear the soft chink of metal. The faint light suggested it was a gray, but there were no grays in his stable. Where had this horse come from?

“Great heavens.” Mr. Hadford drew closer. “That’s Phoebe’s horse, Aria.”

“She’s wearing a side saddle,” Alexander said.

“It makes no sense. Surely Phoebe would not think to ride out at night . . . and on her own,” Mr. Hadford said.

“Perhaps not,” Alexander said, his eyes raking the tree line in the distance as his first suspicions quickly became conviction. “But Jane would.”

“Jane has not ridden in over five years.”

“Until now,” Alexander said, touching his heels to his stallion’s side and breaking into a gallop.

With his heart pounding in time to his horse’s hooves, Alexander raced across the grass to the woods. He had known this day would come—that something in Jane’s life would make the battle to ride again worth the fight—but he hated that he had not been there when she’d faced her demon. That she’d been alone when she’d first mounted a horse again alarmed him. That the same horse was now wandering loose and riderless terrified him.

He reached the tree line and slowed his horse. The thunder of hooves coming from behind suggested that Mr. Hadford had followed.

“Take the left,” he shouted. “I shall go right.”

Plunging in through the trees, Alexander kept his head low as branches snagged his cloak.

“Jane!” he shouted. “Asher!”