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“No,” said Rory. “I don’t think the castle made the list—and where are you going?”
Genny was halfway to the door. “To check the castle.”
“I’ll come!”
“No, stay here. I’ll be fine....”
Rory grumbled that she hated getting stuck at the house, but Genny hardly heard her. Caesar left Rory’s bodyguard by the door and fell in behind her as she ran to her room to change into a pair of jeans and some trainers. She left the house from a side door and took off on foot across open parkland in the quickest, most direct route to the castle. Caesar followed close behind.
She felt terrible about Geoffrey. She’d promised herself she’d make time for him yesterday. But in the last rush to get ready for the wedding, she’d never quite managed it. If she found him at the castle, they’d have a few minutes together. She could apologize for yesterday. And she could try to make him see that running away solved nothing. With a little coaxing, she hoped she could get him to return to school voluntarily.
On foot, at a steady clip, it was a good half hour to the ruins, past Saint Ann’s, through the old cemetery, onto a public footpath that once was a turnpike road. The path cut through the former pleasure grounds of the estate, from back before the construction of Hartmore House, when the DeValerys lived at Hartmore Hall, long since demolished. From the path, she crossed the deer park, and from there she took a heavily wooded trail that wound in upon itself, with the ruined castle at the center.
Before she rounded that last curve in the circular track, she turned to her bodyguard. “I’m hoping Geoffrey is at the castle and I want to speak with him alone. Will you stay out of sight unless I call for you?”
“Of course, ma’am.” The bodyguard stepped off the path and into the trees, vanishing almost instantly from her sight.
She turned again for the castle, emerging a few minutes later into the open space where the crenellated ruin loomed against the sky. The stone hall and courtyard fortress were beautiful in their stark, gray, weather-beaten way. The tower still stood, though the lower wing had been plundered over the centuries to get stone for other buildings. The empty rectangular windows and door arches gaped like dark unseeing eyes.
Genny opened her mouth to call for Geoffrey, and then shut it without a sound. Even on a sunny, almost-June morning, the place had a haunted, otherworldly feel about it. She didn’t want to scare him off.
And surely he wouldn’t go inside. He’d been warned, and sternly, that it wasn’t safe in there. More stones could topple at any time.
The castle was built into the side of a hill. She circled the structure, climbing the steep east slope, crossing around behind it on the tower side, keeping her eye out for Geoffrey along the way.
She found him as she started down the west slope. He was huddled against the outer wall of the castle, his legs drawn up, thin arms wrapped around his knees. He looked unhappy, but unharmed.
Relief, like cool water on a sweltering day, poured through her. “Hello, Geoffrey.”
He had a streak of dirt on his cheek and he glared at her mutinously. “Now you have time for me.”
She went over and dropped to the damp, patchy grass at his side. “Yesterday, it was just one thing after another. I kept meaning to...” She stopped herself. He deserved better than a bunch of lame excuses. “Geoffrey, I messed up. I didn’t make time for you. And I’m so sorry. Sometimes... Well, sometimes even a true friend will mess up.”
He pressed his lips together and looked away. “I’m not going back. I’m running away forever and I’m never going back.”
“I wish you wouldn’t run away. We would all miss you way too much.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. You won’t miss me in the least. You don’t even care about me. Nobody does. My father has new children. He’s forgotten all about me. He lives all the way over there in America and if he never sees me again, it won’t matter in the least to him.”
She wanted to demand in outrage, Who told you that? But she had a very strong feeling that Brooke might have done it. Brooke too often forgot that she was supposed to be a grown-up. “Your father loves you,” she said, for lack of anything better. Geoffrey’s reply was a scoffing sound. She asked, “Do you want to go and live with your father?”
Geoffrey gasped. “No! I want to live here, at Hartmore, with you and Uncle Rafe and Great-Granny Eloise.”
“And you do live at Hartmore. But you go away to school.”
“Because nobody wants me here.”
She braced her arms on her knees and rested her cheek on them. “That’s not true. We want you here and we love you, Geoffrey. I love you. I know I let you down yesterday, but if you think back to all our times together, you’ll remember that I do care about you, that you’re very important to me. And if you left, if you ran away, well, I just couldn’t bear it.”
