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She couldn’t try anymore, hope anymore, give anymore. She couldn’t want him when he didn’t need her love. She couldn’t need him when he didn’t love her in return.
She walked and then stopped, fighting tears. How magical it all was, the woods dusted in white, snow piling on branches, frosting the ground.
Everything about Langley Park was a fairytale, except for the part where you get your heart broken. She held out a bare hand, caught snow and watched it cling to her fingertips before it began to melt.
Ella blinked back tears. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She wasn’t going to cry. There was no point in crying. It was time to let go. No more hoping and wishing. It was just too painful. She walked toward the cottage, brushing snow from her face. Instead of stopping at the cottage, she kept going, walking on to the dairy, which had been turned into an event venue. It hadn’t been booked out for New Year’s Eve but would be booked next Saturday for a wedding. Ella circled the dairy, and then walked back to the cottage, cold. Frozen.
Don’t think.
Don’t think.
Don’t feel.
*
Baird was angrywhen Ella walked out. He was angry and raging on the inside because she didn’t know him. She didn’t know who he was or what he wanted and for her to think her wildly arrogant lecture was a sign of maturity, well, she was wrong.
So wrong.
But Baird hadn’t even made it up a flight of stairs before he felt remorse and guilty. She’d been the one to turn everything upside down and inside out, but he cared about her enough not to want her returning to the cottage so hurt and upset. He wasn’t rejecting her. He wasn’t punishing her, and he didn’t like to think of her being alone in the cottage, crying. Normally, tears didn’t move him, but it was different when Ella cried.
When her eyes welled up, they looked even more like the sea, and she was the Ella at the reception, the one he hadn’t met, the one who reminded him of a woodland fairy—beautiful and bright and impossibly alive.
Suppressing a groan, he turned on the staircase and went back down. He didn’t chase jobs, he didn’t chase people, he didn’t chase women, but he was going after Ella. Not to have the last word, but to make sure she was okay and not crying her eyes out.
Stepping outside though, he discovered it was snowing and the snow was a huge surprise.
The wind was blowing, too, making the snow swirl and vision difficult. Baird had been coming here for years so he knew his way, but there were moments he had to pause and make sure he was still heading the right way.
Baird reached the cottage and knocked the snow off his shoes before opening the door and going inside. But the downstairs was dark, and there were no lights on anywhere. He climbed the stairs and checked her room. It was empty, the bed made. She wasn’t here.
He stood in the upstairs hall, trying to figure out his next move. He’d go check the dairy. Perhaps she’d gotten lost and ended up there. It would have been easier if there had been footsteps to follow but the snow had already covered them up.
Baird returned outside, walked down the white road, his footsteps the only ones he could see. The dairy doors were locked. He walked all the way around the brick building. No sign of Ella.
Baird checked his watch. It was midnight and cold. He tried to picture where Ella might have gone, but he was coming up blank. Had Ella maybe returned to the house? But wouldn’t Baird have seen her?
Baird didn’t want to alarm Cara, but Alec needed to know. It was freezing outside, and Ella couldn’t be out wandering around on her own, not in a snowstorm, not anytime. She had to be found, and she had to be found now.
Alec answered Baird’s call immediately.
Baird wasted no time. “Ella left the house tonight upset, I went to check on her, but she isn’t in the cabin and it’s snowing. I can’t find her.”
“Where are you now? Alec asked.
“Back up at the house, outside, going around to check all the doors. Just in case.”
“I’ll meet you downstairs.”
They spent the next thirty minutes walking, searching, shining flashlights across the woods, the vast front lawn, and down toward the cottages where they checked every door and front steps.
“She wouldn’t have gone to Bakewell,” Alec said. “She’s got to be at the house. Maybe we just missed her somehow.”
Baird nodded but said nothing. He felt sick, heartsick. He didn’t know if this was his fault, but he did know he was afraid for her, and he’d never felt fear like this for anyone before.
He didn’t know why she’d take off in the snow. It made no sense to him, and even if she was a hothead, she wasn’t irresponsible, and she’d never risk her safety to prove a point. She was missing because something had happened, and that something filled him with fear.
At the house, they checked all the downstairs rooms, from the green drawing room to Alec’s personal study. While Alec checked the family wing, Baird went back to the kitchen, the walk-in pantry, and Uncle Frederick’s suite.
