She turned away, grabbed the trunk, and went to the door.
“I love you,” she whispered, not turning around to face her sister. She wasn’t sure she could bear it. Her tears were threatening to spill over. “I love you more than life itself.”
She didn’t turn back. Instead, she walked out of the room, down the staircase, across the hall, and out the door into the cold, blustery day, and then across the street to the waiting carriage.
“Your Grace?” the driver said as he opened the door for her.
She nodded, and he helped her inside. She looked at the man waiting to escort her to where her father was, and where she would marry Lord Redfield, and for the life of her, she couldn’t feel an ounce of surprise.
It was Mr. Cain. He sat across from her, his face a mask of cold indifference.
She turned away from him as the carriage began to move, watching as the Duke of Attorton’s home—the only home she’d ever loved—disappeared from view.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Where is she?” James demanded as he threw open the front door of his townhouse less than ten minutes after he’d sprinted out of his club and then rode his horse across town, with Nathan galloping in his wake. “Where is my wife?”
A voice rang out from the top of the stairs. “There you are!”
James looked up to see his sister-in-law, Rosalie, sitting on the top step. Tears were streaming down her face, and she looked paler than was normal for a girl who rarely left the house, always preferring to keep her nose buried in a book.
“Where’s Violet?” James demanded.
His long legs carried him across the hall in seconds, and then he climbed up the stairs. Urgency quickened his steps, and Rosalie had just stood up by the time he joined her on the landing.
“Is she still here?”
“No, she left about twenty minutes ago.”
“Blast!” His panic and fear were so great that the word came out harsher than he had intended. Rosalie shrank back.
“Don’t be afraid,” Nathan said, coming up the stairs behind James.
He reached into his pocket and produced a kerchief, which he handed to her.
She nodded in thanks and then dabbed at the tears on her cheeks.
“Twenty minutes isn’t long, James,” Nathan continued. “We can still stop her. Where did she go, Miss Rosalie? Did she say?”
“She said she was going to our cousin’s,” Rosalie said, sniffling as she dabbed at her eyes. “But there was something so mysterious in the way she left that I’m not sure what to believe.”
“Yes, there is something mysterious about it all,” James agreed darkly. “She told me she was going to Eavestone’s townhouse, that he and your sister had returned tonight.”
Rosalie’s eyes went wide. “I have not heard anything about that.”
“I believe she was lying to me, which means it’s likely she was lying to you as well.”
“We don’t know that,” Nathan said. “We need to go to Lord Carfield’s house at once.”
“Fine.” James was so worried and scared that he didn’t have time to try and be polite. “We can go. But if she’s not there, what do we do next?”
Nathan’s eyebrows knitted together, and he shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll go to my mother’s house,” Rosalie offered. She had stopped crying, and she had a look of steely determination on her face that strongly reminded James of Violet. “If she isn’t with Niles, then she might be at our mother’s.”
“You shouldn’t go by yourself, Miss Rosalie,” Nathan advised. “It can be dangerous.”
“This is my sister, and I’m going to look for her,” she insisted, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Just as she would have looked for me.”
