by Marie Force
She yearned for Aubrey, who had made her feel so safe. Knowing she would never see him again broke her heart, but it was for the best. His mother would never back down, and Maeve loved him too much to deny him the opportunity to run his family’s business. He’d be a brilliant, innovative, forward-looking leader.
Theirs had been a short but beautiful time together that she would carry with her for the rest of her life. She would never forget him, and she would always love him. A sob escaped from her tightly clenched jaw. An intense pain, sharper than the others, bent her in half, and a rush of wetness between her legs brought her to her knees.
“Miss! Whatever is the matter?”
Maeve heard the man’s voice but couldn’t form words or even breathe over the brutal pain that ripped her apart. Darkness swirled around her, dragging her under. Her last conscious thought was of Aubrey’s handsome face and kind eyes.
* * *
Where could she possibly be? Aubrey had personally searched the neighborhood on horseback while the staff had searched every inch of the house. Back at the house, Aubrey paced from one end of the foyer to the other, feeling impotent as he waited for news.
“I need to go back out to look for her myself,” he said to Derek and Simon, who were keeping him company.
“You have people fanned out all over town,” Derek said. “They will find her.”
Aubrey wished he could be so certain.
“I hate to ask . . .”
Aubrey glanced at Simon, who seemed exquisitely uncomfortable. “Ask what?”
“What if she doesn’t want to be found?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Perhaps something happened that sent her into hiding?”
Before Aubrey could respond, his mother, sisters and brothers-in-law returned from the ball, stopping short when they found Aubrey, Derek and Simon in the foyer, still dressed in their formal attire.
“How could you leave so early?” Eliza’s eyes flashed with rage. “Dora Russell was mortified that the duke and duchess left before dinner! She was in tears, the poor dear.”
“We can’t find Maeve.”
“Regardless, you can’t just leave the social event of the Season before dinner.”
Aubrey stared at her, flabbergasted. “Regardless? Did you actually say regardless when I told you my wife is missing?”
“Watch your tone with me, young man.” Her haughty British accent made him want to scream.
“My wife is missing, Mother. Until I find her, you’ll have to pardon me if I don’t give a shit about the social event of the Season.”
Eliza was about to snap back at him, when Alora intervened. “Aubrey is right, Mother. Maeve’s safety is the only thing that matters.”
Eliza made a face that indicated how little she cared about Maeve’s safety.
An uncomfortable suspicion took root deep within him, causing him to take a closer look at his mother. “Have you done something?” he asked, his tone low as his heart rate slowed to a crawl.
“Whatever do you mean?” Eliza asked haughtily.
“I mean—have you said or done something that caused my wife to run away?”
She scowled as her face flushed and her eyes narrowed. “I barely know the woman. What could I possibly say to her?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe something like the things you said to last year’s staff that led them to vandalize the house?”
“That again. You’ve become tedious like your father, Aubrey.”
“Watch yourself, Mother. Your snide comments about Father aren’t welcome with me.” All at once, his father’s warning resurfaced. He’d told Aubrey to be vigilant—and he hadn’t heeded his father’s alarming words. “What did you do to her?” Now, he was certain she’d done something. The only thing was—what was it and how much damage had been done as a result? Aubrey took her by the shoulders and gave her a vicious shake. “Tell me!”
“Aubrey,” Adele said, a note of warning in the way she said his name.
“I swear to God, Mother, I’ll choke the life right out of you if you don’t start talking right now!”
Even as his sisters gasped with shock, his mother’s face went totally white with fright. Good. She ought to be afraid. If she’d done something to drive Maeve away, there wouldn’t be a safe place for her to hide from his rage.
“I merely mentioned that you will become the new chairman of Nelson Industrial when your father passes away, and it will become ever more important for you to have the right wife.”
“ I have the right wife!” Aubrey’s vision went red with fury, and he had to force himself not to make good on his threat to strangle her.
His brothers-in-law pulled him off Eliza.
“Get her out of my sight. Before I actually kill her.”
“Aubrey,” Eliza cried, tearful now. “You don’t understand!”
“I understand perfectly, Mother. But you should understand this—I’ll never spend another day working for Nelson Industrial, and as soon as I locate my wife, I’ll never see you again, either.”
“Don’t say things you don’t mean!”
“I have never said anything I didn’t mean, and you, Mother dearest, are dead to me.” To his sisters, he said, “Please get her out of here before I make good on the overwhelming desire to end her.”
His tearful sisters dragged Eliza, shrieking and flailing, from the room.
Only after she was gone did Aubrey realize his hands were shaking. “I have to find Maeve.”
“We’ll go with you,” Derek said as Simon nodded in agreement.
Plumber went to alert the stables that three fresh horses would be needed immediately, and the men set out ten minutes later—every one of those ten minutes feeling like a year to Aubrey.
“I’m sorry you had to witness such ugliness,” Aubrey said to his friends.
“Oh, please,” Simon said. “Have you heard the stories about my father and what he did?”
“I have.”
“We know ugly,” Derek said. “All too well, unfortunately. Please don’t think a thing of it, Aubrey. Every family has their problems.”
“I’ve always known my mother to be an exacting, difficult, hard-to-please woman who held her children to nearly impossible standards. But I never for the life of me imagined she would deliberately sabotage my marriage.”
“Didn’t you, though?” Derek asked. “Didn’t you know she’d be furious when you married Maeve, and didn’t you do it anyway?”
“Yes.” Aubrey slumped in his saddle. “I knew she’d be furious, and I did it anyway.”
“Which to me is indicative of the depth of your feelings for Maeve,” Simon said.
“I love her to the ends of the earth.” Aubrey spoke nothing less than the truth.
“That is apparent to anyone who has spent even five minutes with the two of you,” Derek said, “including your mother.”
“She knows you truly love Maeve, and that’s why she’s so threatened by her,” Simon said.
“I hate that she’s more concerned about her standing in society than she is about her own son’s happiness,” Aubrey said.
“You can’t understand that because you weren’t raised amid the British aristocracy where your standing in society is everything,” Derek said.
“It’s more important than your own children?” As he rode and talked with his friends, Aubrey scanned every nook and cranny on every street they traversed, eyes peeled for the distinctive color of his wife’s hair. Liquid fire. Recalling her telling him that her mother had called it that made him ache for her.
“At times,” Simon said. “My own father would’ve gladly traded me for the opportunity to be the duke. He would’ve done it without hesitation.”
“Your father has no idea what he missed out on by disregarding you all of your life,” Derek said emphatically.
“That is kind of you to say, dear cousin.”
“I mean it. You know I do. I’d be lost without you, so you can’t
ever let his opinion matter more than mine does.”
“I would never make that mistake,” Simon said, grinning at Derek.
The conversation helped to keep Aubrey from going mad as he prayed for Maeve’s safety. She could be anywhere by now, a thought that had his heart sinking. How could she have let his mother convince her to run? Did she have so little faith in him, in what they’d shared, that she’d think he’d choose the business over her?
“What’re you thinking, Aubrey?” Derek asked.
“That I can’t believe she’d run rather than come to me.”
“Don’t fault her for that. She was probably frightened after her encounter with your mother and acted before she thought it through.”
“Perhaps, but still . . . I wish she’d put more faith in me.” Another thought occurred to him, stealing the breath from his lungs. “What if I never see her again?”
“Don’t think that way,” Simon said.
“We won’t give up until we find her,” Derek added.
“Thank you for being such good friends. I’ve never had better friends than you two and Justin.”
“Likewise,” Derek said as Simon nodded in agreement.
They rode for hours, traversing every street in Newport. Dawn was breaking when they reached the waterfront, which bustled with early-morning activity.
Aubrey asked everyone they encountered if they had seen Maeve. He described her down to the last detail, including the plum-colored gown she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her.
“Plum, you say?” The filthy man had yellowy eyes and three rotten teeth.
Aubrey’s stomach plummeted at the thought of Maeve encountering such a character. “Have you seen her?”
“Possibly.”
“Tell me what you know. Immediately.”
Derek tempered Aubrey’s harsh words with a softer approach. “Please, sir. My friend’s wife is missing, and we are very eager to find her.”
The man took in Derek’s fine clothing and regal bearing. “How eager are you?”
Derek reached into his pocket, removed some bills and pressed them into the man’s hand.
His rheumy eyes lit up with unfettered glee. “Scroogey took her home with him.”
A sharp pain lanced Aubrey’s chest, making him fear he was having a heart episode. “She . . . went home with a strange man?”
“Scroogey ain’t strange. He’s good people. Lives with his sister on Grafton Street.”
Aubrey touched the spurs to the horse’s side and took off toward Grafton, which was off Lower Thames. The pounding of hooves let him know Derek and Simon were behind him. If this Scroogey character had done anything to hurt Maeve, Aubrey wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.
Upon reaching Grafton Street, Aubrey dismounted, tied his horse to an iron rail at the bottom of the street and began knocking on doors with no concern whatsoever for the early hour. “Where is Scroogey’s house?” he asked the first sleep-rumpled woman who answered the door.
“Second house from the top. Left side.”
Aubrey took off running, charging up the hill, his arms pumping and his gaze fixed on the white clapboard house the woman had identified. He ran up the stone steps and pounded on the door with a closed fist. When no one answered, he pounded some more and was about to bust down the door when it finally opened.
The man’s hair stood on end as his blue eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Whatya want?”
“I’m looking for my wife. I was told you brought her home with you.”
“Who’s your wife?”
Aubrey forced himself to remain calm when he wanted to beat the man to a pulp to get him out of the way. “Maeve Nelson. She was wearing a plum ball gown.”
“Your Maeve was quite upset when I came upon her last night. Was that your doing?”
“No.” Aubrey gestured to his friends. “Ask them. They can attest it was most definitely not my doing.”
“I’m Derek Eagan, the Duke of Westwood, and I can assure you that my friend is telling you the truth. He is not to blame for his wife’s distress.”
“She is unwell,” Scroogey said.
Aubrey gasped. “Please let me see her. I love her with all my heart.”
Scroogey took a long measuring look at Aubrey before stepping aside. “Upstairs. First door on the right.”
Aubrey rushed past the man and took the stairs three at a time, bursting into the room to find Maeve being tended to by another woman, who startled at Aubrey’s sudden appearance. “I’m her husband. What is wrong?” The first thing he noticed was how ghostly pale Maeve’s face was.
“I believe she lost the babe she was carrying.”
A knife through the chest wouldn’t have hurt more than that news did. He would never forgive his mother for this.
Aubrey fell to his knees at Maeve’s bedside and reached out to stroke her sweet face. He was alarmed by the heat radiating from her. “Maeve, sweetheart. It’s me, Aubrey. I’m here. I’m right here, and I love you.”
Her low moan went straight to his broken heart.
“She lost a lot of blood,” the other woman said. “It went on most of the night.”
Aubrey noted the crumpled plum gown on the floor and the plain cotton nightgown Maeve wore that must belong to the woman who’d tended to her. He would see that the siblings were well compensated for the aid they’d rendered. “Is she . . . Will she . . .” He couldn’t get the words past the pervasive panic that gripped him.
“She needs a doctor,” Scroogey said from the hallway. “Wouldn’t let us get him last night.”
Aubrey glanced at Derek and Simon in the doorway.
“We’ll find him,” Derek said.
“He’s on Spring Street,” Scroogey said, rattling off the address.
“Hurry.” Aubrey returned his attention to the woman who had changed his life in every possible way. “Please hurry.”
Their pounding footsteps on the stairs echoed through the small house.
While he waited for them to return, Aubrey bathed her face with cool cloths that Scroogey’s sister handed him and prayed for Maeve to open her eyes and talk to him. He would give anything to hear her lovely voice. Every minute he had spent with her raced through his mind, beginning with the day he’d found her in the midst of a nightmare with a giant feather duster in hand. He recalled their first picnic at the shore, catching her when she fell off the ladder, their wedding day, the first time they made love and every beautiful, joyful moment that had made up the best weeks of his life. If he lost her now, he would never survive.
A sob erupted from the deepest part of him. He rested his head on her chest. “Please come back to me, Maeve. Please don’t leave me. I need you more than anything.” He would give up everything he had for one more day with her.
He had no idea how long Derek and Simon had been gone when they returned with a doctor in tow, a white-haired man with wise brown eyes that provided immediate comfort to a distraught Aubrey.
“You have to help her,” he told the doctor. “She’s my whole world.”
“I’ll do everything I can. Please give me a few minutes to examine her.”
Derek took Aubrey by the arm and gave a gentle tug. “Come on, Aubrey. Let the doctor help her.”
Aubrey feared that if he left her, even for a minute, she would leave him and never return.
Only Derek’s insistence got him to move into the hallway.
While Aubrey waited, he felt like a caged animal with no room to pace or rage against the fates that had brought him to the precipice of disaster.
“She’s young and strong and endlessly capable,” Simon said. “It’ll take more than a little blood loss to get the better of our indefatigable Maeve.”
Comforted by his friend’s kind words, Aubrey glommed on to the reminder that his Maeve was indeed indefatigable. She had escaped certain death with Farthington to run for her life to America. She’d survived terrible illness after her journey and found her way to Newport wher
e she’d single-handedly confronted the disaster she found at the Nelson home, proving nothing could defeat her.
He only hoped their luck would hold a little while longer to get her through this latest catastrophe.
“What is taking so long?” Aubrey asked after what seemed like hours.
“It’s only been fifteen minutes,” Derek said.
“How is that possible?” Aubrey ran his hands through his hair again and again until it probably stood on end, not that he cared in the least. He would start pulling it out of his head if he didn’t get word of her condition soon.
“What can we do for you, Aubrey?” Simon asked.
He thought about that for a long moment before he knew exactly what he needed. “I want you to go back to the house and instruct my sisters to remove my mother from the premises. If she puts up any sort of fuss, let her know that you’ll call in the authorities, who will see to it that she’s charged with a crime for what she has done to Maeve. Tell her I’ll stop at nothing to see her ruined if she does not depart immediately. As soon as she is gone, bring the carriage so we can transport Maeve home where she belongs to recover. And if you would, take my horse with you. I’ll ride home with her.”
“Consider it done.” The two men took off to see to his wishes. When all of this was over, he would owe them a debt of gratitude he would never be able to repay. With his father so gravely ill, Aubrey refused to be pushed out of the house. No, his mother was the one who needed to go, and his only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to see her ejected from the property.
She would be enraged. He hoped she would know she had only herself to blame. With his arms propped over his head, he clung to the door frame outside his wife’s room, whispering prayers for her recovery and offering anything and everything God chose to take from him to ensure her survival. He could live without anything except her.
By the time the door opened, he was on the verge of a complete breakdown. “Is she all right?”
“She will be,” the doctor said. “In time.”
Aubrey was so relieved, his legs refused to support him. He fell to his knees and dropped his head into his hands as sobs wracked his body.
