Mistress by Midnight (28 page)

She curtseyed. “Certainly, my lord. Good-bye and thank you again. Will I see you at school this year?”

No. It would be like stabbing myself with a rusty knife.
“We’ll see. I may be very tied up with my business interests. I may even have to go abroad again.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. He was grateful for the scrap of her affection.

“Get a good night’s sleep. You’ll be off with Nico at dawn.” His nails bit into the palms of his hands. How far could James have gotten by now? He’d have Aram saddle up his horse so he could ride out.

Bea stepped forward. “I should like to give you a good-bye kiss, my lord.”

Con bent down. Bea stood on tiptoe. She smelled like starch and flowers. The first and last kiss from his daughter, and he was too wild with worry to appreciate it.

When she left, he went to the kitchens. Jacob Carter, Sadie, Nadia and Aram were at the table, finishing the last of their dinner, Sam under the table testing his luck. The usual bantering atmosphere was missing. Two covered plates remained on the sideboard for the boys.

“They’re not back yet?”

“No, my lord.” Aram looked at him keenly.

“I think he’s run away.”

“No!” Sadie breathed, blanching. “He’s a sensible lad. He wouldn’t do anything so foolish.”

“I don’t know, Sadie. He’s been pushed to his limits today. He’s only eleven, for God’s sake.” Con shoved his hair back in agitation.

Jacob Carter was already on his feet. “We’ll find him. There’s a map of the property in my room. We’ll each take an area. There’s plenty of daylight left.”

“When Nico and Tom come home, give them their dinner and send them back out. With lanterns. Find every lamp and candle stub you’ve got,” Con told the women.

“Perhaps we should wait. Find out where they’ve already searched.” Aram sounded calm, but Con saw his hand working at the Greek worry beads in his trouser pocket.

“I can’t just sit here. I’ll go mad. Aram, could you saddle my horse? I’ll ride out on the main road. If he’s walking, I’ll find him.” Unlikely, with the head start James had. And if someone had picked him up along the way—Con suppressed a groan. Why had he waited so long to realize that James was truly missing?

He had to find Laurette. Tell her what he feared. If they didn’t find James tonight, there was no way she’d be leaving here tomorrow. He’d need Nico, and, if it came to it, her and Bea too to help with a search.

If he got his hands on James—he’d hug him instead of cuffing him. Kiss him. If he had finally kissed his daughter, it was past time he kissed his son.

Laurette was alone, her trunk and bandboxes stacked neatly in a corner. Her clothes for tomorrow were laid out on a chair. She sat on the window seat, staring at the misty blue mountains and swath of green and sheep, when Con burst into the room without knocking.

“What is it?” Her voice was sharp. She could have been undressed, ready for bed although the sun was still pale in the sky. Con had seen every freckled inch of her a thousand times anyway. But it had been a long, dreadful day. She had a long dreadful day ahead tomorrow as well and had sent Bea to her room to try to go to sleep.

“James has run away.”

“Surely not. How do you know? Perhaps he’s just
staying
away. To make you suffer a little.”

“Believe me, I’m suffering. He’s been gone the whole damned day. Missed two meals. Something’s wrong.”

“He could be at a neighboring farm.”

Con shook his head in impatience, looking more upset than she had ever seen him. Laurette herself was not convinced.
vinced. James had his share of imp in him, especially at school, but it was not like him to be thoughtless. Even if he had had the shock of his young lifetime today, she thought he would be stoic and steady. Eventually. He had always been old-headed, considering himself the man of his family in his father’s absence.

“I came to tell you I’m going to look for him. Jacob and Aram and the boys too. If we don’t find him tonight, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here until we do.”

Laurette could hardly argue. James’s safety was far more important than her desire to flee from her past. She rose from the window seat. “I’ll come with you.”

“Thank you, but no. I’m riding out, Laurie.”

“I can ride! Astride even, or have you forgotten?”

“I’ve never forgotten a thing. But I think you should stay with Bea. I’ve already told her James and I had an argument. She’ll be worried.”

“She also might know where he went, where his favorite spots are. Let me ask her.”

“Fine. If she says anything useful, tell Jacob and Aram. I’m going up to the main road. Check if anybody’s seen him. Put the word out. If he’s not back by tomorrow—” Laurette watched him swallow the lump in his throat—“we’ll organize a full-fledged search party.” He paused. “They never found my uncle.”

“Con! Don’t think like that! James is probably safe and sound in some farm wife’s kitchen, eating biscuits.”

“I hope so.”

She couldn’t help herself. In seconds she was in his arms, smoothing the lines at his eyes with a shaking hand. “You’ll find him and everything will be all right.”

“Will it?” He looked down at her, his dark eyes unfathomable.

Her lips found his, giving him a fierce quick kiss of promise. If something bad happened to James, she knew Con would not be able to bear it. Nor could she.

She was left alone in her pretty room, counting her heartbeats until they slowed. She smoothed her hair back absently and went to talk to Bea. No matter what Con said, she couldn’t wait around while the others looked for James.

Tomas’s face was incredulous. He and his brother had been shoveling food in their mouths at a breakneck pace so they could continue looking for James after their quick supper, when Laurette made her proposition. Laurette hoped they wouldn’t choke. Their father and Mr. Carter had already left to search the spots Bea had remembered. A map of Stanbury Hill Farm was spread out on the table, anchored with a jam jar and a clean knife. On it someone had drawn a quadrant with a red oil pencil. Other marks and circles indicated where Nico and Tom had already been and where they were to go next. A grouping of lanterns and candlesticks was amassed on the sideboard. Though the sun was still gilding the mountains, the sky was turning from hazy blue to turquoise.

“We’re about the same size, Tom. You’re a bit taller, but I could roll the cuffs up. I can’t go out in my skirts. They’re not practical.”

“My lord won’t want you to go out at all, Miss Laurette,” Nadia scolded. “What if you get lost too? There will be hell to pay. And wearing gentleman’s trousers? No and no and no.”

Sadie winked at Laurette. “It wouldn’t be the first time for her, Nadia. Let her go. We can take care of Bea until the men come back.”

Bea sat in a rocking chair by the cold stove, twisting her long white fingers. She was still in her night rail, having taken to heart Laurette’s suggestion she go to bed early. Her face had lost all the color two weeks in the country had put there. “I could go with you.”

Laurette smiled at her daughter. “No, love. If James comes home on his own, you’ll be here to yell at him for us. I don’t
trust Sadie and Nadia to do a proper job of it. They’ll probably fix him all his favorite foods and hug him senseless.”

Bea gave a wobbly smile back. Laurette’s heart ached for her. When she told Bea that James was missing a half-hour ago, the child looked as if she might faint.

And then Bea had said a most unsettling thing. “All this is about the painting and what he told me, isn’t it?”

Laurette lied to her. Again. “No, not at all. You know how James and his father are always at odds.”

“Oh. I thought he may have quarreled with his father because of the silly story he made up about me.”

Laurette had to ask, although she thought she knew the answer already. “And what was that?”

“He teased me up in the attic. Told me I was a changeling child, that I was his secret sister stolen away by Gypsies and sent to live with evil trolls in Cornwall. He is such a
boy,”
Bea sniffed in disgust.

Laurette could almost hear James now, mixing a joke with the very real suspicion he must have felt seeing his grandmother’s portrait. Piecing together bits of the mosaic, snatches of adult conversation, servants’ gossip. Perhaps James had always known the truth on some level.

Laurette arrested her wayward thoughts. When this night was finally over, she would deal with Beatrix. Gather her up out of the rocking chair or her bed and hold her tight and tell her
something.
But now she followed Tom upstairs to the room he shared with Nico. Taking the first clean shirt and trousers that came to hand, she hurried to her bedchamber to change. Braid her hair so the pins wouldn’t fall, leaving a trail on the ground.

A trail.
Maybe James had left a clue to his whereabouts behind—a handkerchief or something. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what he had worn this morning. He’d looked a proper little gentleman in church.

“Bea! I want you to go to the drive and gather up all the small rocks you can, white or very light ones only.” Tom and Nico looked as if she were mad again. “You two help her. We’ll each leave stones behind so we can find our way back in the dark. Drop stones to the right and left every twenty paces to mark a path.”

Bea’s face lit up. “Like
Hansel and Gretel.
That’s a brilliant idea, Cousin Laurette.” She dashed out the door barefoot.

“We’ll need some bags, Ma,” Nico said to Nadia. “Some water jugs and a bit of food too, in case James is thirsty and hungry. For each of us, whoever finds him.”

James could be miles away by now, but somehow Laurette didn’t think so. He was probably in some cave, holding out and waiting until the very last moment to come home. He must know how wild they all were to find him.

Another quarter of an hour passed while the little party was outfitted for their trek. Sadie slung a heavy canvas satchel across Laurette’s chest. Between the stones and the provisions, she might have trouble staying upright. Dusk had fallen and the lanterns were lit. Laurette had pinned her watch on Tom’s shirt pocket, promising to return before midnight.

Con had told them James left him at the lake. The boys had already passed that way today, but they returned to the shore. The water was flat and glassy, reflecting the lavender sky. They kept together on the path until they came to a sloping open field, then split up on their assigned routes.

It wasn’t quite time to start dropping stones, so the bag dug into Laurette’s shoulder and bounced against her hip. “James!” she shouted. She could hear Aram’s boys doing the same in the distance. By the time she crested the hill, she was sore and sweaty. She reached into the bag and dropped two oval rocks, counting twenty long strides before she dropped two more. The grass had been mowed quite recently, and
what the scythe hadn’t caught, the sheep had. Each stone looked like a pearl sewn on emerald velvet.

Counting kept her mind from embracing the worst. She didn’t have to think of James being snatched up by some predator, human or otherwise. She didn’t have to think of his twisted body at the bottom of a ravine. At each point she dropped her rocks, she called his name. She was getting hoarse and tired already. She raised her eyes to the darkening sky and made a wish on the first star she saw.

And then she tripped. Fell down in an ungainly thump, the lumps in her bag digging painfully into her chest. The lantern spluttered out, then flared back to life.

Mercy.
That would teach her to watch her step and depend on children’s fairy tales. Even wearing trousers, there were difficulties walking in the country. She sat up, catching her breath. Her foot was tangled on something soft.

James’s jacket.
“James! Nico! Tomas!” She screeched like a banshee. The boys were probably too far away to hear her, but James might be near. She listened, but heard only the pulse of her own blood rushing in her ears. Should she return home and wait for the others to come back to bring them to this spot? Squinting at her little watch, she saw it was just after ten, the sky still pale gray. She left the jacket where it was, weighting it down with extra stones. If they should come this way, they would know that she’d been here, found it.

She continued on, lured by the hope that James had walked before her. Trying to take the straightest path so she could leave her own stones, she picked her way around the large rocks jutting randomly from the field. They looked as though they were thrown by some unseen hand in a demented dice game. The land was uncompromising, harsh in the twilight. Shadows loomed and the silence was palpable.

She was thirsty herself now. She set her lantern down and
sat, uncorking the water jug to take a swallow. Not too much—James might need it, although there was bound to be a stream out here somewhere. A few stars twinkled feebly in the sky. How she wished for a full moon—any sort of moon at all. The lantern would not last forever, nor would she. Her arm was tingling from holding the light at the proper angle. Laurette estimated she had another half-hour before she needed to head back. It wouldn’t do to have them all hunting for
her
as well.

As she walked through the stone garden, a flash of white caught the corner of her eye. Next to a flat rock, a sad pile of torn daisy petals lay in the grass. Total destruction. James again—she was sure of it. She left a fistful of smaller pebbles and climbed the hill ahead.

She was truly winded now, a piercing stitch in her side. She held the lantern high. Below her was a little valley, too steep for her to navigate unless she slid down on her bottom as if she were on a snow sled. With her luck, it would be
her
twisted body at the bottom of a ravine. The gentle rush of water was the only sound. “James!” she screamed. “James!” Her voice echoed back, lonely.

She sank down, fighting the tears that were threatening to overtake her. She needed to turn around, if she could summon the energy. Instead she sat very still, her aching legs outstretched in Tom’s nankeen trousers.

This was her fault. Every single thing that had caused her so much unhappiness was her fault and hers alone. As a girl, so she was so determined to seduce Con, he never stood a chance. Even when she knew he was to marry, she went to him, night after night. She had given the Berrymans control over Beatrix and her future. She had refused Con’s offer of marriage.