“Me da had to go to the farm.”
“When will he return?”
She furrowed her brow. “No tell’n how long he’ll take.”
“Do you know the lady who was here?”
“I just got here meself. I only work during the day and weren’t here at all yesterday.”
Matt stalked off. “Damn the man.”
He strode outside to find his curricle ready and Mac standing next to it. “Did any of the lady’s servants mention where they live?”
“No, my lord. One of the younger men said something about a hall, but the others shut him up right quick.”
Matt clenched his fists. “Hall!Hall does me no good at all. Half the bloody houses in England are called the Hall. How the devil am I to find her?”
Mac closed one eye and stared at Matt. “You sure she weren’t married?”
He glared at his groom. “Yes, quite sure.”
“Jus asking.” Mac shrugged. “Suppose we could stop along the way and ask.”
Matt rubbed his cheek. Why hadn’t he thought of it? “Good idea, Mac, we’ll try finding her that way.”
For the next few hours, they asked at every inn and coaching house along the road home. But by the time they stopped for luncheon, Matt knew no more than he had that morning. No one remembered seeing a coach carrying a golden-haired lady.
Where had she gone, and why did she leave him? The idea that he could just forget her was immediately shrugged off. No, he was the first man to have touched her, and she was his. What if she was with child?His child.
He ground his teeth. By God, somehow he’d find her.
By the middle of the afternoon, he’d driven up to the front door of his home, and was in as foul mood as he’d ever been in. Matt jumped down from the curricle.
“Why do you look so milligrubbed?”
He narrowed his eyes at Theodora, his eight-year-old sister. “What did I tell you about talking cant? If you cannot stop repeating everything the grooms say, I shall have to discover who’s teaching it to you and dismiss him.”
Blue eyes the same color as his widened. “You wouldn’t make Curry leave?”
He stared down at his youngest sister.Probably not. “I will and you shall have it on your conscience. Is that what you want?”
Theodora’s long, dark brown braid flipped around as she shook her head. “No.”
Curry was her personal groom and Theo was very fond of him. “Then see you mind your tongue.”
She nodded her head emphatically. “Yes, Matt. But you haven’t answered my question.”
He picked her up. “And I don’t intend to. Where’s your mother?”
Theo screwed up her face in thought. “She was in the morning room the last time I saw her, but that was a long time ago.”
He stopped and frowned. “Don’t you have lessons?”
She gazed up at the sky and kept her mouth firmly shut.
“I thought so.”
Swinging her up onto his shoulders, he carried her into the house, setting her on the stairs. “Go, now.”
