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They would find her. They must.

Unease crawled over his skin like spiders when Whitby led them down the lane marked with posts reading D
ELMORE
. Heath gave way to pastures full of fluffy sheep only weeks away from shearing and horses grazing in their paddocks. Copses of trees, rising hills, and on the horizon a bluff that would tumble into the sea. Salt tinged the air when the breeze whistled by. The land, being so close to Whitby Park, ought to have seemed familiar.

But it didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel peaceful. Didn’t feel lovely and welcoming, as Brook’s home had from the moment he first rode up the drive to see if perhaps she belonged there.

Oscuro either sensed his discomfort or felt the oppression himself—he shied, whinnied, nearly sidestepped into Tempesta. Justin brought him back under control with a firm rein and quick French.

The constable, as they neared the carriage house, nodded toward the copse of trees behind the building and the rickety old carriage that sat in high, dried grass. “I went right round the back last night to find Antony, so I didn’t notice that. But look. Ruts leading to it, and the grass is flattened. Not to mention that
it looks entirely too clean for what must be an unused antique. And what cause, do you think, would he have for taking it out?”

A most excellent question—one that made those invisible spiders race over Justin’s skin again.

She was here, somewhere. She had to be.
Lord, let her know we’re coming. We’re close. We’re going to find her
.

They must have made a fairly impressive picture as they all dismounted and climbed the steps up to the door—the three gentlemen and five officers. The mighty wooden slab opened before they could even ring, and a perplexed butler stood before them.

His gaze locked on Whitby’s face, which he no doubt recognized. “My lord. Do come in. Is something the matter?”

“Something is very much the matter.” Whitby strode past the butler, the rest of them following in his wake. “My daughter is missing. Please fetch Lord Pratt at once, and assemble the staff. We need all available men out looking for her.”

The butler’s alarm seemed genuine, and he certainly wasted no time in showing them into a parlor and going to fetch Pratt. Justin exchanged a glance with Worthing. If Pratt had her at Delmore, surely
someone
on his staff knew it. But if he were any judge, it wasn’t that one.

The purse of Worthing’s mouth bespoke a similar thought.

Silence held until Pratt strode in a moment later, a pale-faced Lady Catherine—Lady Pratt—behind him. “Whitby.” His expression turned to half a sneer when he spotted Justin. “And Stafford and Worthing. I never expected to welcome the two of
you
into my home.”

“We haven’t time for youth’s rivalries just now, Pratt.” Whitby’s spine had gone straight as Stonehenge, and his face as hard. “Brook is missing.”

The lady gripped her husband’s arm, horror on her face. Pratt frowned. “Missing
how
?”

“Missing
missing
. She drove her maid to the train station yesterday and never returned. We found her car pushed off the road, into a copse of trees.”

The constable stepped forward. “My men scoured the area thoroughly. We found no trace of her, precisely, but there
was
a set of carriage tracks leading from the area in question and heading here.”

If Catherine pressed any closer to Pratt’s side, it would require a tool to separate them. “You must be mistaken, sir.”

The constable blinked at her. “Mud doesn’t lie, my lady.”

“Mud.” She blinked too, with an innocence that they surely all knew was feigned. “Oh, you know, I do believe I heard the rain, now that you mention it. Although—” here she rested her head against her husband’s shoulder—“I confess we’ve paid very little attention to the outside world. We were married on Sunday, you know.”

When Pratt smiled down at her, Justin could almost believe, for half a second, that love existed there. But if it did, Pratt wouldn’t have been pursuing Brook so relentlessly, so recently. His expression looked more pragmatic when he looked over to the constable. “A carriage, you say? I haven’t even used one in months. I’ve a new car, and when the roads are impassable for it, I ride.”

The constable folded his hands before him. “I noticed an old one behind the carriage house that has been out recently.”

Something flashed in Pratt’s eyes—a flare, quickly gone. But
there
. “That thing . . . I’ve given the servants use of it—you’ll have to ask them.”

Lifting his chin, the constable strode forward. “I’ll go and see if they’ve gathered then, shall I?”

The lady pried herself off Pratt’s side. “I’ll accompany you, sir. I hate to think of my poor cousin being missing!”

Pratt watched her go, his gaze lingering on her hips. “You
know, I wasn’t certain how I would take to it, but I’m finding married life to be most enjoyable.”

“Our felicitations.” Somehow Worthing managed to say it with a smile, yet in a tone that contained only irony. “But I’m afraid we’ve come to ask you to interrupt your honeymoon for a few hours. We need everyone we can muster out looking for her.”

Pratt lifted a brow. “Apparently, if they’ve called you in from London. Can the Season continue without you, Worthing? Or did you come to Yorkshire with amorous intentions?”

Justin had never had cause to see Worthing bristle quite so much. “I came,” he said with cold deliberation, “because my friends needed me. Will you join us or not?”

“This was a bad idea.” Justin stepped forward, unable to stand inactive anymore. “Whitby, I’ll wait outside.”

Justin pushed past and made for the exit.

His host followed. “Stafford, wait.”

He would rather get out of the house. Every moment he spent inside made him more ill at ease. So he didn’t turn. He figured Whitby and Worthing weren’t far behind, but he didn’t verify that either.

He charged for the sunshine, for fresh air. And made it down the front steps before a hand on his arm stopped him.

He shook it off even as he spun. Maybe Pratt thought his expression was one of concern—but it was too dark, too hate-filled. Justin’s fingers curled into his palm. “What?”

Pratt’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll help in the search. I must make sure Kitty is well first—she has been ill every morning this week—but then I’ll join you.”

He’d chased him down to say
that
? “Fine.” Justin turned again.

“Duke!”

A growl formed in his throat as he slowly pivoted back.
“What?”

Pratt had a hand extended. “I know we’ve never liked each other. But we can put it aside for this, can’t we? A truce.”

The last thing he wanted to do was put his hand in Pratt’s. Those hands could well have hurt Brook. But he could hear the constable in his head, telling him not to tip their hand too much, too soon. With monumental effort, he uncurled his fingers and put his palm to Pratt’s. “I will find her.” Perhaps it came out more as a threat than a declaration . . . but if so, so be it.

Pratt held too hard to Justin’s fingers. He had to tug to free them, and then they curled of their own will back into a fist.

Pratt smirked. “I know you’ll not want to hear this from me, but have you considered the possibility that she left of her own volition?”

His fingers dug into his palm. “Excuse me?”

A lifted brow joined the smirk as Pratt shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s no secret the two of you have been at odds. What did you
think
she would do when you followed her here, hounding her steps? She probably ran away just to escape you.”

Before Justin was even aware of giving his arm the command, it had pulled back, flown forward, and his fist connected with the reprobate’s nose. A satisfying
crunch
met his ears, and a pleasant pain scourged his knuckles.

“Stafford!” Worthing cried, and his tone was a cross between warning, outrage, and a laugh.

Pratt staggered back, his eyes glazed. He touched a hand to the blood dripping from his nose. Then his eyes flashed hot fury, and he lunged.

Thirty-One

T
he sound of a gun’s report brought Brook to her feet, sending the open journal to the floor. “What was that?”

Deirdre, sitting at the desk, stood more slowly. “A shot?”

“A shot.” And it struck her right in the heart, bringing to life the fears Maman’s words, and those she had written about Mother, had already ignited. Fire raced through her, and her legs insisted on moving. She went to the door, tried the latch. Flew to the bricked-over windows. Surely one, somewhere, was loose.

“Likely someone hunting.”

“No.” Her fingers bit into brick and crumbling mortar. Gripped, pushed, but they wouldn’t give. “It was a pistol, not a rifle.”

“You can tell that?”

Of course she could—though the sound had been distant. Still, her heart hammered, pressure seizing her head. A cloud of panic swirled around her. She slapped a hand to the brick. “Papa! Are you out there? Help!”

“My lady, if Pratt hears you screaming—”

“I don’t care. Papa! Justin!” They must be out there. Why
else would someone be firing a pistol? They had found her. Or trace of her. They were there.

They were there—and a shot had been fired. By whom? She flew back to the door, pounded upon it. “Help! Let me out! Someone help!” She had to get to them. She must. They were there, so near, and bullets were flying—or one, anyway. Why had there not been a second? Had they killed Pratt? Or . . .

“Help!” She had to get to Papa. She had to tell him what that journal said, the truth of what sent Mother into the night. She
had
to. He needed, finally, those answers.

“My lady!” Deirdre tried to pull her away from the door—Brook shrugged off her hands. They landed again, and gripped her more firmly. “Stop. Please, I beg you.”

“Someone will hear. Someone will come and help.”

“Someone may hear, yes.” Fear drenched Deirdre’s tone. “And when they try to come, Pratt will kill them. And then be so furious with us . . .”

No. No.
She had to get out. She
had
to, that certainty gripped her far more strongly than Deirdre ever could. She broke free and went back to pounding and screaming. She wouldn’t give up . . . though her hand stung. Her throat burned. Evidence that time was passing, though it all seemed frozen to her.

Were they still there? Did they know she was?

The door pushed inward, suddenly and forcefully enough to knock her down. For one glorious second she hoped—then she looked up and saw Pratt towering over her. Blood soaked his shirt, stained his chin. He had a laceration on his cheek. And such bright hatred in his eyes that she recoiled, scrabbling back along the floor until she bumped into the cot. Was that the look that had been in his father’s eyes as he and John Rushworth chased down her mother?

He whipped something at her head. She raised her arm to deflect it but gasped in pain when it hit her arm—though small,
it was solid and heavy and clanged when it skidded across the floor.

“You want your precious duke? That’s all you’ll ever get of him!”

Justin?
Resisting the urge to rub at what would surely become a welt, she pulled herself to her knees. There, glinting in the lamplight—gold. “No.” Shaking too hard to stand, she crawled to it. It couldn’t be—
no
. Justin would never, never take off his signet. He hadn’t since his grandfather’s death. It was there, always there on his right ring finger, where he could twirl it around.

The familiar lion and cross of Stafford rose from the gold. The recessed places were dark and, when she picked it up with shaking fingers, sticky.
Blood
. She closed her fist around it. “What have you done?” Did the words even make it past her dry lips?

They must have, because he laughed. “Exactly what I said I’d do. Except I didn’t have to worry with hiding the body—he attacked
me
. I was defending myself, and the constable was there to see it.”

He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet. “Now you’ll believe me, hmm? Your father’s next, my lady.”

“
Non!
” She kicked him in the shins, slammed her ring-encasing fist into the laceration on his cheek.

He cursed her, but his hand loosed its hold on her curls. The moment it did, she took off for the door. He hadn’t locked it behind him, hadn’t even closed it all the way. She need only reach it, get through it, and then—

He slammed into her, slammed
her
into the door, slammed it closed. “Going somewhere, darling?”

Held there, pinned between the damp wooden door and him, she smelled mold and blood. Justin’s blood? She squeezed her eyes shut tight. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be dead. He
couldn’t
. Wouldn’t her soul know it if he were?

But hadn’t she felt unaccountable fear at that gunshot? A sob balled up in her throat, surging upward but getting caught before it could do more than make her shudder. So much darkness. So much violence, and for what? A couple of diamonds stained red from it all? Had her arms been free, she would have reached up to rip the necklace from her throat. “You fool! You terrible, cruel fool. They’re right here, you can have them. I don’t care anymore! Just let me go to him. Maybe he’s not dead, maybe he can be saved, maybe—”