Page 89 of Duke of Sapphire

Charlotte was quiet for a beat. “I know that.”

“Not in four days. Now.” He said it plainly. “He is six years old, and his parents are missing and we have been gone three days and every day we do not return is a day he—” He stopped. His hand pressed flat on his knee. “He needs to see us. That comes before the western road.”

Charlotte looked at him. “You are right,” she said.

“I know I’m right.”

“And I am also right about the western road.”

“You are,” he said. “Which is why I intend to instruct someone else to take it.”

He leaned forward and knocked on the carriage ceiling. The driver opened the hatch above.

“The magistrate’s office,” Henry said. “Before we leave town.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The hatch closed. Charlotte looked at him.

“The magistrate,” Henry said, “will organize the western road search. He will have local knowledge I do not have, connections I cannot use, and authority that a duke’s money alone cannot buy.” He straightened. “I intend to supply the money regardless.”

Charlotte said nothing. But the set of her shoulders had changed.

* * *

The magistrate was a careful man. He received Henry in his office with the wary attention of a local official who has just been presented with a duke and is deciding how much trouble this represents.

“The western road,” Henry said. “From the accident site to the next three parishes north. Every crofting community, every inn, every farmstead within a day’s walk of the road. I want people who know the terrain and know the locals. Not men from Edinburgh. People who live here.”

The magistrate made notes. “And you are looking for⁠—”

“My cousin Nathan Drummond and his wife Eleanor Drummond. They might have been injured.” He paused.

“Very well, Your Grace.” The magistrate set down his pen. “This is a considerable undertaking.”

“I am aware of that.” Henry took the folded notes from his coat and set them on the desk. “The first sum covers the search. The second covers any reward for information that leads directly to the individuals. You will send word to my London address the moment anything is found.”

The magistrate looked at the notes. He did not reach for them immediately.

“You have my full confidence,” Henry said. “And my full backing. Whatever you need.”

The man reached for the notes.

* * *

They were two hours out of town before either of them spoke.

The hills had gone to shadow, the last of the light sitting on the ridgelines and nowhere else. The carriage was warm. Charlotte had her head slightly bowed, her eyes on the dark window, and Henry sat across from her with the folded remnants of his London correspondence and nothing useful to do with any of it.

He looked at the hills.

A woman in fine clothes, walking away from the carriage before it went over.

He turned it over. He had been turning it over since the cottage.

The weight arrived without announcement.

Soft. Real. On his shoulder.