Page 33 of Duke of Sapphire

“Your Grace.” She had her shawl pulled tight, and her cap slightly off-center. “I am sorry to come at this hour. But one of the housemaids saw Lady Charlotte walking toward the stables. Three hours ago.”

Henry set down his pen. “Three hours.”

“Aye. She hasnae come back. It’s gone midnight, Your Grace.”

He had assumed—he had allowed himself to assume—that Charlotte had simply gone to her chambers after she left the library. He told himself that she needed air and quiet and she would reappear at breakfast with her chin set and her composure entirely restored, which would be entirely in character. He had not considered the stables. He had not considered three hours.

He was already on his feet and reaching for his coat. “Get the butler. And the footmen. Tell them to bring lanterns.” He paused at the door. “All of them.”

Mrs. Wick went.

Henry crossed the entrance hall at a pace that was not quite running and told himself there was no cause for alarm. This was a small problem. Lady Charlotte had gone out in the dark and had not returned and that required locating her, which was a logistical problem, and he was particularly good at that.

The stables were dark. He took the lantern from the hook by the stable door and pushed inside, moving past the stalls until he found the small room off the far end where the stable boy slept. He rapped on the door.

No answer.

He rapped again, harder.

A shuffling sound. The door opened. The boy stood in the gap, blinking against the light, hair standing at an angle that suggested serious sleep had been interrupted.

“Lady Charlotte,” Henry said. “Has she been here tonight?”

The boy rubbed his face. “No, Yer Grace. Nobody’s been here. I’d have heard.”

Henry studied him. He looked entirely genuine, which meant Charlotte had never made it to the stables at all. She had been walking in this direction and had gone somewhere else instead.

The woods.

He felt the cold of it settle in his chest.

Redmont’s men. Her father’s inquiry. Three hours.

“Get your coat,” he said.

The boy blinked. “Yer Grace?”

“Your coat. Now.” Henry was already moving toward the tack room. He had spotted the rifle on his first day—it was the sort of thing he noted automatically, an inventory item, a detail filed away. He took it down from the wall, checked it, and came back out to find the butler and four footmen moving into the stable yard with lanterns, Mrs. Wick behind them.

He spoke quickly. “Lady Charlotte is missing in the grounds. She was last seen heading this way three hours ago. She has not arrived here. She is somewhere in the woods to the east.” He looked at the butler. “Take the footmen in pairs. Cover the eastern path first, then the tree line south. If you find her, call out once.” He thought about it for half a second. “Once. No more.”

The butler nodded. If he had opinions about the hour or this hastily conceived plan, he kept them entirely to himself.

Henry took the east path himself, a footman at his heels with a lantern.

The woods were birch and oak, old growth, the kind that made noise in the dark—branches shifting, something small moving in the undergrowth to the left. He kept the lantern low. Kept his pace steady. He did not think about the things he could not control. He thought about the path in front of him and the darkness beyond the light.

He nearly missed the shawl.

It was snagged on a shrub at knee height, a strip of pale wool caught on a thorn and left there. He crouched and took it in his hand.

He recognized it. The household shawl, deep cream wool, the one she had pulled from the chair by the fire before she left the library. She had been wearing it when she walked past him in the hallway. He had not registered it at the time. He registered it now.

She has been through here.

He straightened. His jaw was tight. The footman held the lantern up.

They had stopped beneath an oak. Wide trunk. Ancient. The kind of tree with branches that started low.