The words sounded extremely wrong. Probably because of his coldness. Yes. That was it.
She wished he would say something. Anything. But he was just watching her with those inscrutable eyes.
It was upon thishighlyuncomfortable scene that a maid stumbled when she entered the hallway. She darted her eyes between Phoebe and her employer, then seemed to decide that whatever this was, it was none of her business.
Phoebe wished she had even an ounce of the maid’s good sense.
The young woman folded her hands neatly in front of herself, then cleared her throat delicately.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, miss,” she said, bobbing a curtsey. “But Miss Turner—the other Miss Turner—she’s gone.”
CHAPTER 4
“That’s impossible,” Miss Turner said immediately—and completely illogically. It was, of course, possible for people to leave the estate, no matter the woman’s snide comments about chaperonage and his hiding things.
Aaron closed his eyes briefly before giving his maid a brief nod of dismissal. The girl wasn’t paid well enough to deal with the elder Miss Turner’s argumentativeness. Hell, Aaron wasn’t certain that the entire worth of the dukedom was enough recompense for working with Miss Turner’s argumentativeness.
“That’s impossible,” the woman repeated, turning to face him, her brow creased. It was real worry on her face now, not the irritation that had been there before.
She had an extremely expressive face. He had noted it within moments of speaking with her. He made a habit of noticing things—one didn’t survive combat the way he had without keeping stock of every detail of an environment—but therewas something about Miss Phoebe Turner’s face that hekeptnoticing.
Probably the way she put her emotions into everything, he decided. It had been a long time since he’d seen someone who revealed their every thought so openly. It had been just he and the staff here for so long, and they all wore the professional masks of well-trained servants.
Griggs, he thought suddenly, the man’s face flashing through his memory. That was the last person Aaron had known who was like this—smiling, then frowning, then scrunching up his nose. He was dead now, run through by a French bayonet.
Aaron pushed the thought away and refocused on Miss Turner, who was still speaking though she’d gone alarmingly pale in the last moments.
“She just went out for some air,” Miss Turner continued, sounding as though she was trying to convince herself more than anything else. It was the voice that men used before battle when they talked about the certainty that they would survive. Most wouldn’t.
“She just needed some air,” the woman repeated. “I’ll just go find her.”
Aaron just managed to snag her hand before she darted blindly down the hallway. She was a troublemaker. Reckless and unpredictable.
Reckless unpredictability was the thing that got good men killed. Or women… though Aaron was not at all certain that this one fit most conventional definitions ofgood. She was extremelyinteresting, however.
Interestingprobably also got people killed.
“I’ll send the footmen,” he said in response to the way Miss Turner looked pointedly at his hand on hers. “The weather is bad out there and getting worse. You can’t go out.”
She snatched her hand out of his. He fought the urge to flex his fingers—or worse, reach for her again.
“The hell I can’t,” she snapped. “Your staff doesn’t know my sister. I do. I will find her.”
She had been trying to duck past him throughout their conversation, but this time, she justpushedpast. Aaron might have been rough enough around the edges to grab her hand to try to stop her, but he was still a gentleman. He wasn’t going to physically restrain a lady.
He wasn’t going to let her storm off into the night, either, though.
He followed her.
“Miss Turner,” he said sternly. It was a voice that had stopped hardened soldiers in their tracks. Miss Turner didn’t even look at him. “You cannot do this.”
She ignored him. She looked into the breakfast room, saw there was no door leading to the outside, and kept going. The next room was a parlor with a glass door leading out into the veranda. The glass meant that the room was frigid in the winter; nobody had used it for months.
Miss Turner ignored the cloth-covered furniture and yanked the door open. She was immediately blasted by a gust of wind, which made her stagger back a step, but the stubborn little thing just hunched against the blow and continued forward.
“Miss Turner!” he called again. This voice was the one that had made subordinates practically faint.
The little harridan just took one labored step further into the maelstrom.
