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She ran into something solid, and the breath was jolted from her body. She would’ve fallen if hard hands hadn’t grabbed her. She looked up into a nightmare.
Mr. Wiggins leaned down so close that all she could smell was the stink of his smelly breath. “Boo!”
She jerked, humiliated that she’d let him frighten her, but she was frightened. Then she looked beyond him, and her eyes widened in shock. The Duke of Lister stood not three paces away, watching them without any expression on his face at all.
* * *
ALISTAIR CAREFULLY FOLDED the letter to Vale. The way the mail carriages ran around here, he was likely to arrive in London before the letter, but it’d seemed a good idea to try and alert Vale, anyway. He’d decided. He would leave Castle Greaves, make the journey to London, and speak to Etienne when the other man’s ship docked. Alistair might be gone for a fortnight or more, but Helen could take care of the castle in his absence. He hated travel, hated encountering staring idiots, but he needed to know the truth about Spinner’s Falls enough to endure the discomfort.
Alistair was dripping sealing wax on the letter when he heard footsteps on the tower stairs. At first he thought it was the call for luncheon, but the footsteps were louder and quicker. Whoever was on the stairs was running.
As a result, he was already rising with a feeling of vague alarm when Helen burst through the doorway. Her hair was coming down from her pins, her blue eyes were wide and round, and her cheeks had gone quite white. She tried to say something but only bent, gasping, her hand at her waist.
“What is it?” he asked sharply.
“The children.”
“Are they hurt?” He started past her, visions of drowned, scalded, or broken little bodies filling his maddened brain, but she caught his arm with a surprisingly strong grip.
“They’re gone.”
He stopped and looked at her blankly. “Gone?”
“I can’t find them,” she said. “I’ve looked everywhere—the stables, the kitchen, the library, the dining room, and the sitting room. I’ve had the servants searching the entire castle this last hour, and I just can’t find them.”
He remembered the words he’d yelled at Abigail, and guilt swept through them. “Abigail and I had an argument this morning. She’s probably hiding with her brother and the puppy. If we—”
“No!” She shook his arm. “No. The puppy wandered into the kitchen alone two hours ago. I thought at first that the children had neglected him, and I was annoyed with them. I went looking to scold them, but I couldn’t find them. Oh, Alistair.” Her voice broke. “I was going to scold Abigail—she’s the eldest. I was thinking of the words, angry words, I was going to say to her, and now I can’t find her!”
Her anguish made him want to pound down walls. If Abigail was merely hiding, he’d have to punish her for the grief she’d caused her mother, whether or not it destroyed any relationship he might have had with the child. Right now, though, he had to do something, anything, to end Helen’s pain. “Where did you last see Abigail and Jamie? How long ago?”
He’d turned to the door, intending to go down and handle the search himself, when one of the maids rounded into sight on the stairs, panting heavily.
“Oh, sir!” she panted. “Oh, Mrs. Halifax. The children…”
“Have you found them?” Helen demanded. “Where are they, Meg? Have you found my babies?”
“No, ma’am. Oh, I’m that sorry, ma’am, but we haven’t found them.”
“Then what is it?” Alistair asked quietly.
“Tom the footman said he remembered seeing Mr. Wiggins in the village last night.”
Alistair scowled. “I thought he’d left the area.”
“That’s what everyone thought, sir,” Meg said. “That’s why Tom was so surprised to see Mr. Wiggins, although he was daft enough not to say so until now.”
“We’ll go to Glenlargo,” Alistair said. “Wiggins is probably somewhere about.”
He didn’t say that if Wiggins had taken off in another direction, their chances of finding him soon were slim. The knowledge that the manservant might have the children sent ice sliding down his spine. What if Wiggins was bent on some kind of revenge?
Alistair strode to a chest of drawers and opened the bottom one. “Tell Tom and the other footman that they’ll be going with me.” He found what he was looking for—a pair of pistols—and turned to the door.
Meg eyed the pistols. “He wasn’t alone, Tom said.”
Alistair stopped. “What?”
“Tom said that he saw Mr. Wiggins talking to another man. The man was very tall and finely dressed, and he carried an ivory cane with a gold—”
