Emma blinked back tears and tried to focus. All around her, the men were gathering into groups, preparing to go out into the wood. She wanted to with them, but Aidan would never allow her to. Not with as angry as he was.
Besides, he’d already moved away from her, with David and Lord Trenowyth on each side of him. Vanessa came over and put her hands on Emma’s shoulders, trying to urge her inside with the other ladies, and Serena took one of Emma’s hands in her own.
“Come inside,” Serena said. “They’ll find her. I know they will.”
But she couldn’t just sit and wait while Morgan was missing. What if she was in trouble? What if she was hurt and needed help? Wouldn’t more people searching be better?
Emma never should have let Morgan go out hawking without her. Sir Henry and Lord Trenowyth were sure to try to help her more than Morgan would have wanted, and so she was bound to try to go off on her own, to prove herself capable as long as she had Kingley by her side.
“Kingley!” The word came out of Emma’s mouth so suddenly, it startled even her. She spun around, breaking free from Serena and Vanessa’s grips, and raced to where Sir Henry was still standing alongside Mr. Deering.
“Where is Kingley?” she asked frantically. “He would never have left her. He would never have let anyone hurt her.” Not even herself. The bond between the two had grown immeasurably in a very short amount of time. That dog would do anything for Morgan. He wouldn’t ever leave her side.
Sir Henry shook his head, his eyes downcast. “We haven’t seen him, either. They’re both missing. That was what I was going to tell you.”
What he would have told her, had Aidan not attempted to cosh in his face.
Emma blinked back her tears. This was no time for tears. She needed to be level-headed and calm, or she’d never sort out this mess.
Finally, she nodded. “Find him, Sir Henry. Find Kingley, and he’ll help you find Morgan.”
“I’ll do everything I can,” he assured her.
Then Serena took Emma’s hand again and turned her around. The two of them followed the rest of the women into the main house. To sit. And wait. And feel utterly, completely useless.
Morgan wouldn’t try to hurt herself again, would she? It couldn’t have all been feigned.
No matter how much Emma tried to convince herself of this, the fear wouldn’t go away. Worst of all, she’d been off with Aidan, and they’d been oblivious to whatever Morgan’s needs might have been.
His feet felt heavy, like he was wearing stones upon them instead of boots. But he couldn’t slow down. He couldn’t stop.
Aidan had long ago broken off the main path, with David at his side. If Morgan had somehow gone this way, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the trail. And if she’d been on the main path, there was no explanation for how she would have been separated from the rest of the party. For how she would have gotten lost.
Every step he took, his heart constricted just a little more, his lungs felt a bit smaller, his world seemed a bit dimmer.
What if it wasn’t that she’d gotten lost? What if she had intentionally gone off alone somewhere?
Off to hurt herself again.
He shouldn’t think that. He shouldn’t let his thoughts travel that trail, but there was no stopping them.
Even though it had been well over two years since she’d last attempted to take her own life, the idea that it could happen again made him feel as though he were attempting to single-handedly carry an elephant through the woods.
She could have been fooling them all along, pretending she was happy and ready to live. She could have tricked them all into believing she was of sound mind.
And they had bloody well allowed Emma to teach that damned dog to aid her. For what? So she could escape their notice and hurt herself again? He’d let himself be distracted by Emma, and now Morgan might suffer the consequences of his lust.
Devil take it.
Aidan crashed through a bramble, ignoring the cuts and scrapes on his hands and face. They were minor. He wouldn’t die from them.
“Slow down,” David called from a distance behind him. “We won’t be any good to her if we can’t get ourselves out of here.”
But he couldn’t slow down. If he did, then all of the rambling emotions—both for Morgan and for Emma—would catch up to him, and he’d drown beneath them.
That couldn’t happen. Please, God, let Morgan be all right. He’d never forgive himself if…
Aidan shrugged the thought aside and kept going, breaking off tree branches as they got in his way and ignoring the orange tint of the sky.
His lungs were on fire, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such an ache in his thighs.
Something snapped off to the left, a twig or a branch, and he stopped so fast he nearly fell over. Aidan swung his head to find her. But it was only David.
He cursed beneath his breath and kept going.
They had to find Morgan tonight.
The men had been out on their search for more than an hour. Emma paced before the bay window in the drawing room, fidgeting constantly with her skirts for lack of anything better to do with her hands.
She couldn’t stand this. She couldn’t bear to sit idly by, chatting over tea and crumpets and having inane conversation about ribbons while her friend was out there somewhere. Alone. Probably scared. Maybe hurt.
It was enough to send Emma to an early grave, waiting and unable to do anything about it.
A man’s form came out of the woods. She stood still and strained her eyes to make out who it was. It was the first sign of anyone since the men had gone in.
But once the figure was out on the lawn and free from the tree line, Emma realized it was only Lord Muldaire. Alone.
She started to pace again as the marquess met up with a maid on the lawn, drank something, and then went back into the woods.
“You’re going to pace a hole in my new Aubusson carpet,” Vanessa said lightly behind her.
Emma spun on her sister.
“I know.” Vanessa held her hands up in surrender. “I know you’re worried. But there’s nothing you can do, and pacing isn’t going to help anything.”
“Sitting here isn’t going to help, either!”
Every head in the drawing room turned to stare at her, as though she’d grown multiple heads like Cerberus.
She hadn’t meant to cause a scene, but the longer she just sat here doing nothing, the more she worried—about Morgan, and about what she was going to do about Aidan.
Really, the true problem had been to allow her thoughts to wander to Aidan. The more she thought about him, the more she was left to ponder his reaction to Sir Henry’s arrival earlier and what it could mean. It couldn’t have anything to do with love—he was merely trying to fool her into believing he loved her. How else would he have switched so easily to glaring at her with such hatred again?
Emma looked helplessly across at the other ladies in the drawing room, hoping to find someone to aid in her cause. “I can’t just sit here and wait. I can’t. I’m going to help them look.”
Her pronouncement was met with a handful of scandalized gawks, but she didn’t care.
Vanessa tried to take her hand, but Emma pulled hers free.
“It isn’t a good idea, Em,” Vanessa said. “What if something happens to you, too? Then they’ll have to help both you and Morgan.”
“Something could happen to any of the men who are out there right now just as easily as something could happen to me.”
“It’s getting dark! The sun is already starting to set, and it won’t take long for it to be as dark as pitch out there. It’s too dangerous.” Once more, Vanessa tried to take her hand. “The men will be on their way back soon, anyway. We can’t search for her in the woods at night.”
“I can’t leave her out there without at least searching.” Emma stalked across the drawing room to the door then turned around to face her sister once more. “ Morgan lives in the
dark, all the time. If she can live like that, I can look for her in the dark at least tonight. I don’t know that it’ll do any good for me to go out there, but at least I’ll be doing something.”
“And you won’t be alone,” Serena said, standing.
Then several other ladies stood as well: Miss Selwyn, Miss Goderich, and even Lady Portia, who had been so rude to Morgan early on during the house party.
Serena moved to stand beside Emma and linked their arms together. “We’re coming with you. The more people we have searching for Morgan, the better.”
Their show of support nearly moved Emma to tears, but since she’d already established earlier that tears had no place here at the moment, she suppressed them.
“Right. Well, we should be off. The sun will be setting before long.”
The five of them went, as a group, out into the corridor and out the side exit, then marched across the lawn.
What if they couldn’t find Morgan before the sun set fully? What would happen to her if she was out there alone all night? Emma swallowed the lump of fear that kept trying to rise with the thought.
Fear would have to attack her another day. She refused to give in to it today.
“We can’t stay out here much longer, Aidan.” David’s voice sounded thin, like he was far away.
Aidan spun around and squinted into the shadowy wood surrounding him. A few streams of light were still coming through the branches overhead, but they grew dimmer by the moment. What had been orange and pink only minutes before was now near pitch darkness, and they still had to return to the main trail.
But how could he turn back without finding Morgan? No one had shouted that they’d found her. All he could hear around him were masculine voices calling her name as they searched.
Even those voices had become fewer and farther between, however.
Most of the others had probably already turned back, relenting to nightfall.
David caught up with him where he had stopped. Worry had left a crease in his forehead. “I know you don’t want—”
“You know what could happen to her if she’s out all night,” Aidan snapped.
“I know. What good will you be to her if you hurt yourself trying to find her because you can’t see the ground beneath your feet?”
Aidan ground his teetj together, clenched his fists. There was nothing he wanted less than to concede David’s point. But he was not a fool.
Well, not entirely. He had been a fool where Emma was concerned, it seemed, trusting her to be in Morgan’s presence again. Convincing himself he loved her. How could he love someone who would treat his sister with such disregard?
And now, he would have to go back to the house—back to where Emma was—without Morgan.
He wasn’t certain he could face Emma yet. Facing her would force him to likewise face his own demons, the fault which may lie with him and no one else.
“Let’s go back,” he finally said, though he nearly choked on the words. It felt like he was giving up on Morgan, like he was leaving her to her fate.
He’d never quit on her before. In fact, he’d sworn when they were children that he never would. Yet now, he was.
They returned to the main path, trudging over above-ground roots and broken tree limbs, ducking beneath low-hanging branches. When they’d covered about half the distance back, a dog barked in the distance.
Aidan’s heart stopped. It didn’t sound like one of the hounds from the hunt. It was a deeper bark, lower and fuller—like Kingley’s.
David stopped moving and turned, his eyes wide in the dim light. “Kingley? Kingley, is that you?”
The barks increased and drew closer. It had to be him.
“Kingley, come here,” Aidan shouted as he took off running toward the sound. “Where is she? Where’s Morgan?”
“Cardiff?” someone called from the direction of Kingley’s barks. In his panic, Aidan couldn’t place it.
He kept running like a madman, despite the brambles and treacherous ground.
“I’ve got Kingley over here,” the man called again. Was that Mr. Deering? It must be.
“Where’s Morgan?” Aidan shouted. “Where’s my sister?”
The dog let out a happy bark just as Aidan toppled through a break in the trees into an opening. Charles Deering was on his knees, scratching Kingley behind the ears like Emma and Morgan so often did…but Morgan wasn’t there.
“Where is she?” he growled, desperate for air and answers.
“I found Kingley off over there,” Deering answered, pointing deeper into the woods, where almost no light came in at all. “Haven’t seen any sign of Lady Morgan, though. He was alone when I found him.”
David came up behind Aidan, gasping for breath and holding his right hand tightly over his left upper arm. Something dark glistened in the small amount of light coming through the canopy above them.
“You’re hurt?” Deering asked David. “We should head back. We’ll all end up injured if we stay out in this much longer. Kingley can help us find her tomorrow.”
When Deering stood, Aidan reached for Kingley’s lead…but there was no lead. Good God. The lead had been on him when they’d all left to go hawking. And the dog seemed fine, so it hadn’t just accidentally come off of him.
Someone had taken it off. It was a good quality leather—it wasn’t just going to snap off on a whim.
If it was Morgan…
Devil take it, this had been her plan all along. She was trying to hurt herself. Trying to kill herself. Aidan’s chest grew so tight he thought it might burst, and his breaths became shallow.
Damnation, he couldn’t think like that. He’d only cause himself more problems if he let his thoughts run rampant, not that he had an inkling as to how he would stop that very thing from happening.
There was the possibility, of course, that someone else had taken off Kingley’s lead. This possibility was no less haunting. Why would someone do such a thing?
Standing there in the growing dark wouldn’t do any of them any good, and David needed someone to see to the cut on his arm.
“Let’s head back,” Aidan finally said.
The three of them and Kingley headed out of the trees, making for the main path where they could still hear a lone voice calling out for Morgan on occasion.
They’d almost reached the end of the thickness when he heard something else that set his blood to boiling: none other than Emma Hathaway calling out into the woods.
“Morgan? Please answer me, Morgan.”
And then there were other feminine voices.
“We’re coming for you.”
“Call out if you can hear us.”
Aidan cursed beneath his breath and turned to Deering. “Get Burington and the dog back to the house safely. I’ll take care of the ladies.”
Then he took off in the direction of their voices. They were on the main path, but deeper in the woods. He cut across at an angle, hoping to catch them before they got too much further.
“Keep calling out to her, ladies.” It was Emma again. “She’ll hear us. I know she will.”
“Emma Hathaway, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing out here?” Aidan bellowed. He didn’t care who else was with her. It didn’t matter.
“Morgan!” she cried, willfully ignoring him.
“Emma!” He increased his pace, ready to throttle her as soon as he reached her. “Stop where you are.”
“I think you should listen to Mr. Cardiff,” one of the other ladies said, loudly enough he could make out every word.
He gained ground on them with every step. “She should, if she has any sense of self-preservation.”
“I’m trying to find your sister,” Emma shrieked just as he came through the bushes upon them.
“You were supposed to stay at the house,” he growled. For a moment, he passed his eyes over the rest of them, but his fury at having Emma out here clouded his mind so that he couldn’t decipher who else was with her. “All of you. It’
s dark, and it’s too dangerous even for the men to remain looking for Morgan.”
“You’re quitting?” Emma spluttered. “You can’t give up yet. We could get torches or lanterns—”
“It’s too dangerous.” It took every ounce of restraint he possessed not to take her by the upper arms and shake her until her teeth rattled. It was bad enough he knew he was quitting on Morgan. He didn’t need Emma to remind him of that fact.
“But we can’t leave her alone out here all night.”
“She wouldn’t even be out here if you hadn’t put the idea in her head that she could become more independent.”
Emma blanched at his rebuke. As well she should. Aidan didn’t truly believe that. He was just lashing out at anything he could. It was just his worry for Morgan, but that didn’t mean Emma deserved his treatment of her.
Even in the bit of moonlight shining down over the path, the paleness of her skin seemed to intensify, which only caused Aidan’s pulse to race faster than it already was. Cold sweat covered his skin. What was he doing to Emma? He loved her, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from trying to hurt her.
“Miss Hathaway?” Niall stepped into the path beside Aidan. “Are you ladies all right?”
He hadn’t realized Niall was there.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. But she never took her eyes—her huge, brown, downturned, hurt, heartsick eyes—from Aidan. “We’re just worried about Morgan.”
There was no one to blame for that but Aidan. He’d put that look in them. He’d caused her pain. After all of these years, finally, Aidan had achieved some small amount of the revenge he’d sought ever since that one day.
He wanted to be sick. Bile rose in his throat, and he was sure he would lose the contents of his stomach at any moment. What had he become? What had he done?
“We all are,” Niall assured her. “But we’re going to have to trust that she’ll be all right until morning.”
Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon Page 25
