by Brianna York
Rob thanked them and returned to the place where he had last seen Rosy. He stared at the empty bench for a long moment, trying to think where she might have gone on foot. They had driven down to the fair so she could not have gone far. Feeling more and more concern, Rob began to walk up the lane, calling Rosy’s name.
Perhaps she had gone back to the carriage? He felt some relief at the thought that she might have taken ill again and asked to be driven home. Rob hurried up the lane to where he had asked his coachman to wait for them. He turned a corner in the lane, hoping against hope that his carriage would not be sitting where he had left it.
“Damn,” he said with a sinking heart. The carriage was still there. The young coachman appeared to be drowsing in the sun, his chin cupped in his hand.
“Have you seen the Countess?” Rob asked brusquely as he drew near the carriage.
The coachman started badly and clacked his teeth together as his hand slipped from beneath his chin. “Nay, My Lord,” he said as he recovered his aplomb.
“Bloody hell,” Rob muttered, driving a hand through his hair. He warred with himself about what to do next. “I shall be back in a moment,” Rob said to the coachman. “Be ready to leave when I return.”
“Yes, My Lord,” the young man said promptly.
Rob paced away from the coach, his mind turning over possibilities. He would start by asking all the people currently milling around the tents if they had seen anyone they did not recognize or if they had perhaps seen where his wife had gone off to. If he did not turn up anything from those inquiries, he would have to return to the house to fetch his horse and begin to comb the area more thoroughly.
∞ ∞ ∞
Rosy sipped air slowly into her lungs. She thought she had been alone for about a half an hour now, but she wasn’t truly sure. The man who had abducted her had driven her somewhere in a wagon and then forced her into someplace cold and damp before leaving her. She could tell it was darker than it had been outside despite the bag over her head and the wetness that was seeping into her skirts suggested perhaps she was in a cellar of some kind? She wished that he had removed the bag from her head, but sadly he had left it in place despite her pleas. She was grateful that the air was cooler wherever she currently was since the act of breathing had heated the cloth over her head to a very uncomfortable temperature.
She twisted her wrists a bit, hoping for some form of give in the rope that was wrapped around them. They held firm despite her best efforts. Sighing, she gave up fighting with her restraints and strained her ears to try and pick up any sounds that might help her to orient herself. She knew for sure that she heard running water nearby but there were numerous small waterways and streams in the area of the fair so that was not enough help for her to be sure of her location.
“Hurry up, Rob,” she whispered to herself. She felt a bit faint from hunger and fear and closed her eyes. She almost wished that whoever had abducted her would come back just so that she might find out something about their intentions. She felt the weight of exhaustion pressing against her and tried to struggle against it in vain. As she slipped into a restless sleep she thought about Rob kissing her cheek earlier in the afternoon. She felt momentarily warmed by the memory before drifting off.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Her ladyship?” Charles furrowed his brow in confusion. “No, My Lord. She has not returned to the house.”
“Blast!” Rob swore. He paced across the foyer a few steps and then halted, unsure what to do next.
“My Lord,” Charles said, stepping closer. “Has something happened to her Ladyship?”
Rob raked a hand through his hair again in frustration. “I don’t truly know, Charles. She vanished from the fair a half hour ago. No one at the gathering seems to have seen her leave.”
Charles’ brows drew down at this. “Oh, that is most irregular, My Lord. I shall step over to the stables and make certain that no one has seen her over there.”
“That is a wise idea. Thank you,” Rob replied, his stomach roiling with unease.
“My Lord?” The voice belonged to Cecily who had just emerged from the little sitting room.
Rob glanced up in distraction. “Cecily,” was all he said in reply.
“What is the matter?” she pressed.
“My wife has gone missing,” he said tersely.
Cecily frowned at that. “Missing?” she echoed. “Are you sure that she did not simply wander off somewhere? Perhaps she has already returned to where you parted company and is looking for you?”
Rob stifled his urge to shout at Cecily. “I have already exhausted that possibility. It seems she simply vanished into thin air.”
Cecily leveled a long look at him. “That would be unfortunate,” she said in a flat voice.
Rob startled a bit at her words and looked at her with more intensity. “Indeed,” he said to her. “Pray tell me, Cecily, might you have some idea where my wife has gone off too?”
Her eyes widened at this. “Why should I know anything? I have been here reading all morning!”
Rob scowled at her and turned away. “Longford!” he shouted as he mounted the stairs. He had gained the top step when the Viscount emerged from his room. He was buttoning a very fine coat over his broad shoulders.
“Coulthurst?” he asked, pausing as he caught sight of the look on Rob’s face. “Is something the matter?”
Rob nodded. “My wife seems to have gone missing. I was hoping that you might help me to look for her. Unless you have her hidden in your rooms?”
Longford narrowed his eyes at this last, then brightened a bit when Rob smiled at him. “Ah, a witticism,” he said. “I shall be happy to assist you. Let me just fetch my gloves.”
“Capital!” Rob replied. He trotted down the stairs quickly. He passed by Cecily on his way to the stables.
“My Lord,” Cecily called as he swept past her.
Rob drew to a reluctant halt and turned back. “Ms. Beaumont?” he asked her, his lack of patience evident in every line of his body.
“Might I help search? I am quite a good rider. I shall not slow you down. Mayhap I can provide a woman’s intuition?”
Rob opened his mouth to reply but was forestalled by Longford’s voice from the top of the stairs.
“The Countess has offered her assistance in the search as well,” the Viscount called out. Rob saw that the Countess of Pleasant was indeed hurrying down the stairs alongside Longford.
“We shall be sure to find her with so many of us searching,” the Countess assured him.
Rob nodded. “That would be my fondest wish. My thanks to you.” He swiveled back to Cecily and regarded her for a moment. “Ms. Beaumont will be coming with us as well,” Rob told the others after considering whether or not he would allow her to join them. He saw a flash of emotion in her blue eyes but was not sure what it was.
“Charles!” Rob shouted as he made for the front door.
“My Lord?” Charles emerged a bit breathlessly from the hallway.
“We are all going to ride out looking for the Countess. Please be sure to send someone out to find us if she returns home in the meanwhile.”
“Of course, My Lord,” Charles said quickly.
“Come along,” Rob called to the others in the foyer. “We shall need to have two more horses saddled for the ladies. I wonder if we have enough sidesaddles.”
“Sidesaddles?” The Countess scoffed. “Nonsense. I shall be riding astride and Cecily shall do the same. The last thing that we need to worry about is having help getting on and off our horses or getting caught in the stirrup and drug through the woods.”
Rob held up a hand in acquiescence. “I surrender to your logic. You are quite right.”
It took only a few minutes to saddle horses for Cecily and the Countess of Pleasant. Once they were all mounted, they held a quick conference to determine how best to search for Rosy. Rob knew that he had last seen her near the village fair but he had not obtained any further inform
ation from fair goers that might suggest that she had remained in the direct vicinity of the event. Finally, it was decided that they should all ride in the general direction of the fair and then diverge along the various country lanes in the area to search.
“Seems very odd that Her Ladyship would have vanished in so irresponsible a fashion,” Longford stated as he posted smoothly to the trot of the light boned bay hunter that he had borrowed from Rob.
Rob eyed the other man’s technique sidelong, trying to match his rhythm and position in the saddle. “I have no idea why she would have done such a thing,” Rob agreed, shifting his weight a bit in the saddle and again reviewing the equitation of the man riding alongside him. “I have a terrible feeling that she did not leave by choice.”
“You think that some foul play befell the Countess?” Cecily called forward from her position slightly behind and to the left of the men.
“I am not certain but I cannot imagine she would take herself off into the woods on a fool’s errand so shortly after fearing she might lose the babe. She was not feeling totally herself as of yet. In fact, I was separated from her because she felt the need to rest and had gone to sit on a bench just behind the farthest tent at the fair.” Rob shook his head a bit. “I have a premonition that something is not right.”
The Countess had been riding silently near Cecily, but she now joined the conversation. “The gypsy performers that were scheduled to perform for us might be to blame. They have been known to ransom young women for money before.”
Longford scoffed a bit at this. “In our parent’s day perhaps,” he said in reply. “They do quite well for themselves performing at fairs like this one and selling fortunes to the naive who believe that they can see the future.”
Rob nodded. “I admit that I was not totally pleased to hear that a gypsy camp was going to be staying on my property for a few days to perform at the fair, but I trust my wife not to wander off with unsavory characters.”
“Perhaps she had no choice,” Cecily said.
The tone of her voice caused Rob to glance over his shoulder at her. She appeared serene and guiltless but he did not trust something about how she treated Rosy. He knew that she had held a tendre for him. Perhaps she had not let go of her feelings and had wished to cause trouble? He drew his horse to a halt and the others followed suit.
“Cecily,” Rob said carefully. “Please tell me that you do not have anything to do with the disappearance of my wife.”
Cecily’s blue eyes widened in disbelief. “I?” she responded, her voice tinged with outrage. “How should I know where she has gotten herself off to? I am not her keeper, nor do I have any penchant for kidnapping.”
“Cecily,” Longford cut in before Rob could say anything else. “I feel that you should be totally honest with us now.”
Cecily’s face began to cloud with fury. “Honest about what, pray tell?”
Longford quirked a brow at her. “I saw the note that you planned to send to Rosy prior to the end of the Season. You were all but demanding that she invite you to any house party she might attend. I confiscated the note because it was simply too forward. You should have known better than to be so gauche. Why ever should I not now worry that you are not holding out on us?”
Rob shot a surprised glance at Longford, then turned back to scowl at Cecily. “Cecily, please do be honest with us now. I know that you hoped to become the Countess of Coulthurst. I shall not be angry at you for wishing such a thing. I only want to find my wife safe and sound as soon as possible.”
“Cecily my dear,” the Countess of Pleasant said gently as she joined the conversation. “It might be best if you told us the truth now.”
Cecily glanced around the circle of censorious faces, her cheeks red with anger and her chest heaving. “The truth? You wish the truth? I say that I should not have been passed over by the Earl when I would have made a much better Countess than Rosalind Fenton. I am pleasing to look at, have excellent graces and play and sing beautifully. And yet I was passed over for a girl with no social graces other than a love of horses and a father who is rich as Croesus. Of course I am disappointed!” She stared around the circle accusingly, her eyes snapping with emotion. “I ask you this, however. Why should I ride out to help search for the silly girl if I was not sincere in wishing her safe?”
Longford rode forward. “Cecily, I think that you have said quite enough.”
Cecily drew back on the reins and skillfully whirled her horse away from her cousin’s. “Indeed, Cousin,” she snarled at him. “There is no more that I might say in the face of so much prejudice against me. If you all wish to stand around and talk about why I am not a fit rescuer for the Countess, that is fine. I will just go find her myself.” With that, she gigged her horse into a gallop and rode away down the lane.
Longford made to ride after her, but Rob held up a hand to stop him. “Let her go, Longford,” he said. “For one I believe she is sincere and for another, we need to get back to the business of tracking down my wife.”
“Let’s ride this way then,” Longford agreed, throwing a last glance at the retreating form of his cousin as she galloped down the lane in a billow of flying skirts and dust.
Chapter Thirty
Cecily slowed her horse to a walk. She was grateful that Rob kept such lovely horses in the stable as it had taken her longer than she expected to locate the gypsy camp. The Romany would know more about the lay of the land in this area than Rob would. She hoped they might be able to suggest some places to look for someone who had been kidnapped. She did not for a second think that Rosy had wandered off and gotten lost. She was not sure who might have kidnapped Rosy, but it did seem that some foul play had come to pass.
“Hello there!” she called as she neared the small circle of wagons. “Hello?” She drew her horse to a halt and scanned the margins of the camp, realizing that it seemed as if no one were there. She cursed inwardly when she remembered that the Romany were staging a performance of some kind at the village fair. She might have ridden all the way to the camp for no reason.
“Damnation,” she muttered, turning her horse to ride back toward the fair. Maybe she could find someone there who would know where else she might look.
“Did you call for me, Miss?”
Cecily turned back toward the sound. A tiny, elderly woman was walking toward her. She was draped in an assortment of shawls and scarves and she leaned on a cane as she made her way closer. The hand that grasped the cane was weathered with the sun and age, but the knobby fingers seemed to grasp the walking stick with authority.
“I did call out, yes,” Cecily said, feeling a small surge of hope.
“Might you be lost then?” the old woman asked as she drew near, her dark eyes very bright in her wizened face as she looked up at Cecily.
Cecily shook her head firmly. “Not at all. I came looking for your camp.”
The small woman cocked her head to one side like a little bird. “Oh indeed? Did you perhaps need a fortune read for you?”
Cecily smiled briefly. “No, I don’t need to be told of the future. I do need some help regarding a friend of mine.”
The woman clasped her hands together over the cane and leaned on them as she looked at Cecily thoughtfully. “You must be a very good friend if you have come all this way.”
Cecily felt a spike of shame lance through her at this. She had not been a good friend to Rosy. Even her intentions in coming to the house party had not been pure. She ruthlessly shoved the regrets aside. She would have time for that later.
“Or perhaps you have some unfinished business with this person?” the old lady guessed slyly. “A debt to pay?”
Cecily narrowed her eyes at the elderly lady. A frisson of awareness coursed over her skin. “That is one way of stating it, yes. You see, my friend has been kidnapped. I do not think that she has been taken far from here. I thought you or your kin would know the area well enough to suggest places that I might look for someone who has been hidden.”
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The old woman pursed her lips in thought for a moment. Then she closed the gap between Cecily and herself. “Give me your hand,” she ordered, her own small, brown palm extended demandingly.
Cecily hesitated. “Why?”
The old woman sighed loudly, then gestured at her impatiently. “Do not ask foolish questions, Miss. Your friend has not the time to waste on such nonsense.”
Cecily frowned but held out her hand and the old woman clasped it with hers. She let go of her cane and placed her other hand on top of their clasped palms, closing her eyes. She began to murmur and hum to herself and Cecily felt her fingers tingling a bit whether from nerves or some other force.
“It is cold, and wet. She is alone,” the old woman said softly, her voice sounding dreamy.
“It is England,” Cecily snapped. “Most places that are not in the sun will be cold and also wet.” She began to tug her hand free but the old woman held onto it with surprising force.
“Hold!” she snapped. “Leave off your fidgeting. I am not done telling you what I know.”
Cecily stopped trying to free her hand and stared down at the little gypsy woman. She felt a tingle of apprehension crawl across her skin. Something about the trancelike murmuring of the other woman suddenly felt both adept and prophetic.
“It is not true that she is not alone,” the old woman murmured. She smiled suddenly. “Ah she is with child. That explains it.”
Cecily felt a shock of fear course through her. It was not common knowledge that Rosy was with child. The chances that such knowledge had somehow made its way to this little old woman out in the gypsy camp were very slim.
