T
he door of the dining room of the Swan and Stag flew open. Lily, the inn’s maidservant, ran in the room and curtsied. “It’s His Grace, miss! His Grace has come to see you.”
Something clattered. Her knife, Helena saw, for it had deposited a blob of butter on the table. “Greybrooke?” It must be something about Lady Maryanne—
Grey strode through the low door. Lily, clinging to the door handle, bobbed another curtsy.
Helena could see why the girl’s mouth was gaping in an enormous “O” of awe.
Grey’s towering beaver hat, sweeping coat, and broad shoulders made the inn dining room feel the size of a cupboard. Rain had turned his hair into inky black slashes across his forehead. Water streamed off his coat. Mud spattered his boots, his greatcoat, even his cheeks. He’d ridden to her in a downpour?
He whisked off his hat, revealing the raw, desperate hope in his green eyes. “Is she here?” His words came out terse and hard, a crack of a whip breaking shocked silence. He swung toward the maid. “You can go.”
But the poor thing froze and Helena said gently, breaking the frightening spell of his sharp command, “That will be all, Lily. Thank you.”
The girl slipped out and closed the door.
It was like a knife in Helena’s heart to see him so upset. She took a step toward him, before remembering he would certainly reject his touch. “Who? What is it?”
“Maryanne.” His eyes met hers, bleak and desperate. “Did she come here to you? We cannot find her anywhere on the estate. I assumed—I prayed—she’d come to you.”
All those damned, desperate prayers—he’d said a hundred of them on his neck-or-nothing gallop to the inn—were for nothing. Grey saw shock and panic in Helena’s eyes, and knew Maryanne hadn’t come here.
Horror gripped him, weakened him.
Just like it had on that night he’d heard the gunshot in his father’s study and he’d gone in and seen Maryanne picking herself shakily off the floor, her eyes wide with horror as she stared at the smoking pistol in her hand....
Next thing he knew, Helena’s graceful hands pushed down on his shoulders, as if forcing him into the worn wing chair behind him. “Lily,” she called out briskly. “Lily, come at once.”
Grey let his arse touch the chair for a moment, then he shot up. “I don’t have time to sit.”
Helena grasped his forearm. The young servant burst through the door, her eyes wide. Helena said crisply, “Please bring brandy for His Grace. There’s been a shock and he needs a restorative at once.”
The maid bobbed a useless curtsy and ran off.
“For once in my life, I don’t need a drink.” Grey crammed his hat back on his head. “I need to go in pursuit of Maryanne.”
Helena placed herself between him and the door. Why in hell was she in his way?
“Grey, no, we must think. We’ll accomplish nothing if we run about in a mad panic. You are telling me she’s missing. We must take a moment to think logically of where she would go. And how she got there.”
“She’s blind!” He hadn’t been able to save Maryanne from his sick and twisted father. He would save her now, goddamn it. “She could be wandering anywhere, damn it. The longer I stand here, the greater the chance she’s—” God, he couldn’t say it.
Why did Helena look so controlled? He’d always seen her like this with the children. She had been like this in the drawing room when he’d been attacked, and when she’d cleaned his wound. Now her unflappable calm only provoked his rage. “Get out of my way, Helena, or I will make you move.”
She flinched, but instead of stepping aside she clasped his wrist. “Did she take anything with her? Clothes? Her hairbrush?”
She was so blasted stubborn. “Yes, she did,” he snarled. “She took them in a large carpetbag. I was hoping she’d come to you before she did anything rash and foolish.”
“Grey, I don’t think she would take her clothing if she intended to . . . do something rash.”
“You mean, kill herself.” That’s what he feared. That guilt had consumed Maryanne and she’d decided to escape it with death. He could barely breathe. It was his fault. He should have protected her.
“She would not have taken her things if she planned to take her life.” Helena’s hands settled on his upper arms.
Damn it, he wanted her to touch him—he wanted to no longer feel so alone. He was clinging to her words.
“If she’s taken that case,” Helena went on, “she mustn’t be intending to walk far. She has somewhere she intends to go—that’s why she’s taken clothing.”
“She tried it before,” he said dully. “Jacinta caught her packing. But she wouldn’t say a word to us about where she planned to go. She wouldn’t confide in us.”
He sank into a seat, his strength gone. Why had she not talked to him and Jacinta? “It’s because I failed her then. She doesn’t trust me to help her now.”
“No,” Helena said. “In many ways, Maryanne is still like a child, for all she is nineteen. It wouldn’t be that. It—” She broke off, her forehead puckered as she thought.
“I know how dearly she loved you, Helena, and I thought she would come for help.” He met her blue eyes. The caring and honesty she always showed in her eyes made him want to give her the truth. He was tired of secrets, tired of lying.
God, he was tired.
“Part of the way here, I realized I wasn’t just coming to find Maryanne—though I hoped to God I’d find her here, having tea with you. I was coming for me. I was coming because you are as special to me as she is, and my sister, my niece, and my nephews. I came because I need your strength and support.”
That was the pain of this. He needed her, but the gut instincts he had honed as a child told him he could not have her, he should not trust her.
Helena looked dumbstruck. Then she quickly became brisk, taking on the subtle mantel of being in charge. “Put yourself in Maryanne’s shoes,” she said. “She is your sister and you were obviously close. What would she do?”
They had all kept their father’s horrible secrets about his perversions; they had kept the secret of their mother’s whippings. They should have bonded together, three conspirators, hiding a secret that would make their family scorned and despised. But Jacinta and Maryanne had bonded. He had been dark, brooding, angry. Jacinta had stood up to him, but when they’d been young, Maryanne had acted as if he was as bad as their father. . . .
“I don’t know.” He raked his hand roughly through his hair. “I just don’t see how she could have gotten far. I don’t see how we couldn’t have easily found her.”
“She must have someone helping her.”
He jerked his head up. “Who, if not you? She’s been kept away from other people—”
“Maryanne was in love with someone.”
Shock speared him. How in Hades had she known that but had said nothing?
Helena quickly shook her head. “I don’t know who the gentleman is—oh!” Her eyes opened wide. “Maryanne might have confided in him. Somehow Blackbriar or Morse learned the truth from this man. But I don’t know who he is. She did not tell me. . . . Is there anyone who would know who he is?” She bumped her fist against her temple as if forcing her wits to work, then looked up sharply. “Maryanne had a lady’s maid. Anna.”
“Jacinta told me that, and I’ve already questioned Anna to the ends of the earth,” Grey said. “The young woman is upset and sobbing and panic stricken, but she’s no help.” A terrifying thought hit him. “Do you think Maryanne has eloped? She might have felt the only way she could be with this man was to run away.”
“I don’t know, Grey. But whoever this man is, he might have helped her. We must find his identity.”
Grey felt as powerless as when his mother had sent her burly servants to drag him to the cellar for punishments. Maryanne was either out in the world alone, thus in danger, or with someone who was helping her run away. What kind of idiot would help a blind and defenseless girl run away from her family—from people who loved her? He didn’t believe this was an elopement. Maryanne had tearfully cried that her secret meant she could never have marriage....
Damn. Why hadn’t he seen this before? Someone was trying to destroy him. Now Maryanne was missing. His instincts screamed she was in mortal peril.
“Perhaps no one helped her,” he said, his voice ice cold. “I don’t believe she has run away. I think she was taken.”
Helena stared after Grey as he ran out of the room. Then she ran in pursuit, through the parlor, the hall, the taproom, and reached the door that let out on the inn’s tiny courtyard in time to see him swing up on his horse despite the downpour and gallop up the narrow cobblestone road.
He couldn’t search wildly through all of the countryside, trying to find Maryanne. He feared someone had taken her to hurt him. Without thought, he was racing into danger.
But if someone had kidnapped Maryanne, why take her belongings? Helena was certain Maryanne had willingly left the house, carrying her bag. What had happened to her after that?
A white, mud-spattered landau rumbled down the lane, pulled by a pair of snow-white horses. A coachman in dripping tricorn hat and greatcoat sat on the box, and a woman with golden hair peered through the window. Lady Winterhaven.
Helena rushed out, forcing the coachman to rein in swiftly. The horses shuddered and pawed in their tracks, and her ladyship leaned out the window, her lovely face stricken with fear. “Miss Winsome, heavens, take care! You could have been run down. You are getting soaked!”
Lady Winterhaven was right. Helena had no coat and her gown already clung to her, heavy and damp. But Grey was soaked to the skin out of worry for Maryanne, and she knew how he felt. Nothing else mattered but ensuring the girl was safe.
“Greybrooke has just left.” Helena rushed to the side of the carriage. “We must find Maryanne, but Grey has gone galloping off with no plan and no idea where to look. He’s wild with fear and guilt and I—I’m afraid.”
Afraid for him. Afraid he was rushing into danger.
Lady Winterhaven threw the door open. “Come with me, Miss Winsome. We can speak on the way back to the house.”
She stepped up into the carriage. The coachman cracked the whip, and the horses took off at a canter. Lady Winterhaven had her hands on her rounded belly, making Helena stiff with fear. Could the worry over Maryanne harm her ladyship or her baby?
The wheels creaked over the cobbles, rattling them. Men working around the old stone buildings that lined the main street tipped their caps as they rolled by. “Damn,” muttered Lady Winterhaven. “I hate having to move so slowly. Once we’re on the wider road, we can make haste. We will return to the house and get dry clothing for you.” The countess’s eyes were filled with glum certainty. “Maryanne didn’t come to you, did she? I told Grey she would not have done so, for you would have stopped her. Grey knew it too, in his heart. I think he came to you because he’s come to trust and rely on you.”
“He said something like that. But he said before he could never trust me—” Helena stopped. “I’m sorry, my lady, that doesn’t matter now. And do not worry about clothing for me.”
“My dear, you can be honest with me. Why are you afraid for my brother? Grey can take care of himself.”
Helena frowned. “Grey is strong and courageous and brave, but he’s also vulnerable.”
At the countess’s startled look, she quickly told Lady Winterhaven about the night Grey had faced the assassins. “He told me he did not care if he lived or died. Now I understand why. He is racked with guilt and pain. Now that Lady Maryanne might be in danger, I’m afraid he may take too many risks or do something reckless. We must rescue Maryanne, but I don’t want Grey to throw himself into danger foolishly.”
“I knew he had been attacked—and I had to learn that from his servants, who had learned of his wound from his valet. I did not know that was how he reacted to it.”
“I think Lady Maryanne must have left the house willingly,” she told Lady Winterhaven, rapidly giving her reasoning.
Lady Winterhaven caught her breath. “I don’t know whether to feel relieved . . . or more afraid.”
Helena nodded. “That is how I feel. But whomever she went with, she trusted that person.”
“Who would she trust more than her own family?” Lady Winterhaven cried.
She—” Helena hesitated. But this was no time to keep secrets. “She has fallen in love. Once I found her in the back garden in London, in tears.” She outlined what Maryanne had said. “I assumed she had a crush on someone. Now I realize she must have been meeting a man. What I don’t understand is how she met with a gentleman. She never went anywhere alone.”
“Of course she didn’t. It wouldn’t have been safe,” Lady Winterhaven declared. “The only thing Maryanne wanted to do was go riding. And that was just one afternoon a week in Hyde Park.”
“Yes,” Helena said. Maryanne would go right after luncheon, while it was quiet, for the
ton
do not go until late afternoon. “Which groom went with her?” she asked quickly.
“Our head groom, Dixon. He is one of our most trusted servants. That is the only reason I would let her go.”
“Is Dixon in London?” Helena hadn’t worked with the family long enough to know their servant arrangements when they left the London house.
“No, he is here. Winterhaven trusts no one else to care for his horses, so Dixon comes with us from the estates to town and returns here with us. But Dixon would not have allowed some man to start up a love affair with her. He was very protective.”
“I think we had best speak to him as quickly as we can,” Helena said. “Perhaps one of the children knows who this man is.”
Lady Winterhaven whipped her head to the side, apprehension in her eyes. “We will speak to Dixon. We will not go to the children unless it is absolutely necessary.” Her voice became determined—as ducal as Grey’s, and with all the fierceness of a protective mother. “I do not want any trauma or fear brought to my children.” Her ladyship rapped the ceiling, urging the carriage on.
Should she reveal that she knew about their family’s secrets? Helena’s heart ached for Lady Winterhaven. If something happened to Grey or to Maryanne, it would put the whole family through terrible pain. It would break the children’s hearts—