She squeezed his hand and smiled him out of the room. Aaron could hardly contain his bouncing step down the stairs and out to the carriage where Octavia, having already said goodbye to Constance, waited. His role as guardian was almost over, and although he hadn’t resented a moment of it and could have cared for her all his life if required, he knew Constance wouldn’t be happy living out her days as a spinster in her brother’s house. She needed freedom and her own household with a man she could respect.
The only downside to the marriage, and one that he would not allow himself to dwell on, was that once it was completed, he would have nothing preventing him from marrying Lady Roberta.
The chapel was a modest affair as requested by Constance—to Octavia’s disappointment—and when they arrived, the few guests that had been invited already mingled there in their finest silks and satins. Aaron spoke to several, making his presence known, including the Earl of Newtown. The Earl was an older gentleman in his thirties, the beginnings of gray peeping down his sideburns. At first, Aaron had been unsure whether his age would be a hindrance, but Constance had not mentioned it, and Newtown was certainly devoted. Aaron had no intention of marrying for love, but his sister deserved a man who adored her: Newtown, if nothing else, fulfilled that.
“Nervous?” Aaron asked with a grin. “I have to say I would be if I were marrying my sister. She has a sharp tongue—but you know that.”
“I fancy there is nothing you could tell me that would persuade me not to marry your sister,” Newtown said gravely. Much of what he said was delivered in the same steady tone. “She is a delight to behold, and of course, I am excited for our families to be united.”
“There are many benefits to marriage, to be sure,” Aaron said, thinking once again about Lady Roberta.Herfamily would no doubt do the proper thing and say how very fortunate they felt to be allied with his family, but as with Lady Roberta, he had no inkling of whether they would mean it.
As for that slip of a girl he met the other night… an unintentional chuckle slipped past his lips. She would no doubt consider it a disgrace to be aligned with his family—or perhaps, more specifically, him. And she wouldn’t mind saying it to his face.
“Is something funny, Your Grace?” Newtown inquired.
“Not at all,” Aaron said, slapping the man on his shoulder. “Shall we go inside? There’s still a while before the ceremony begins, and it’s abominably cold.”
The chapel was both plain and richly adorned; there was nothing gilded, but its ancient stone walls were hung with religious pictures, and the dark wood pews gleamed. Even the lectern had been polished within an inch of its life, and the sunlight streaming in through the stained-glass windows illuminated carvings on the ceiling.
Aaron took his seat and examined the pictures with detached interest. After the ceremony and wedding breakfast, he would bid goodbye to his sister, and after a month or so passed, he would make his own proposal. Then perhaps it would be him standing at the head of the chapel waiting on his bride.
Time passed, and Aaron went outside the chapel to await his sister. The frigid air nipped at his nose and razed his throat, and he took to pacing to keep himself warm. Constance was never the most prompt of ladies, but of all days for her to be late—
He banished the thought that she might not arrive at all.
Yet the minutes ticked by, and his sister made no arrival until eventually a boy came, breathless, running down the street.
“Your Grace,” the child said. “A message from Hexham Manor. Lady Constance is missing.”
Aaron’s heart lurched. “What?”
“That’s all, Your Grace. She’s missing.” The urchin wiped his nose on the back of his hand.
“Very well. Pray give the same message to Lady Octavia Brighton and inform her I have gone to the Manor directly.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Aaron hailed a passing hackney and gave the driver his address. Bitter fear coated his tongue at the prospect of what could have happened to his sister. He’d seen her not two hours ago.
And in hisManor.
Upon arriving at Hexham Manor, he ran inside and ran straight up to her bedchamber. Empty. Every room was empty though he ran between them calling her name, and at last Aaron was forced to conclude she wasn’t here.
“I don’t know, Your Grace,” her lady’s maid said, fighting back tears. She was an older woman, reliable and steady, and Aaron could see little reason for her to lie. “I’d finished doing her hair, and she asked for a moment alone just to think. I never thought—I came downstairs, you know, thinking she would send for me again. But she never did, and considering the time, I thought she must have just left.”
Aaron considered the possibilities grimly. Constance was certainly gone, and it was unlikely that an assailant had entered the house, gone all the way up to her bedchamber, and forcibly taken her from there without anyone having seen anything. This left two alternatives. Either Constance had been snatched on her way to the carriage, she had entered a different carriage posing as his—both unlikely scenarios—or she had left herself of her own volition.
“Thank you, Betsy,” he said to the lady’s maid, who bobbed a curtsy and fled his wrath. When his aunt Octavia arrived, moments later, it was to find Aaron in a state of rage he very rarely found himself.
“She has gone,” he said, his voice clipped. “She has gone, and I suspect under her own steam though that tells me nothing.”
“Everyone will know about this,” Octavia said, her face white. “To leave an Earl at the altar—it will be all over the papers.”
“Never mind that now. Once we find her, we can debate her choices and condemn her for putting our family name through the mud, but first we must find her.”
Octavia placed a hand to her heart and inhaled, closing her eyes for the briefest of moments. When she opened them again, they were clear. “I presume you have already searched the Manor?” At Aaron’s nod, she continued, “Then we shall have to search every place she could be hiding, every friend of hers.”
“If she had been unhappy with the match,” Aaron grated, “she could have expressed her dissatisfaction to me.”
