Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon (39 page)

Every step he took, his heart
constricted just a little more, his lungs felt a bit smaller, his
world seemed a bit dimmer.

What if it wasn’t that she’d gotten
lost? What if she had intentionally gone off alone
somewhere?

Off to hurt herself again.

He shouldn’t think that. He shouldn’t
let his thoughts travel that trail, but there was no stopping
them.

Even though it had been well over two
years since she’d last attempted to take her own life, the idea
that it could happen again made him feel as though he were
attempting to single-handedly carry an elephant through the
woods.

She could have been fooling them all
along, pretending she was happy and ready to live. She could have
tricked them all into believing she was of sound mind.

And they had bloody well allowed Emma
to teach that damned dog to aid her. For what? So she could escape
their notice and hurt herself again? He’d let himself be distracted
by Emma, and now Morgan might suffer the consequences of his
lust.

Devil take it.

Aidan crashed through a bramble,
ignoring the cuts and scrapes on his hands and face. They were
minor. He wouldn’t die from them.

“
Slow down,” David called
from a distance behind him. “We won’t be any good to her if we
can’t get ourselves out of here.”

But he couldn’t slow down. If he did,
then all of the rambling emotions—both for Morgan and for
Emma—would catch up to him, and he’d drown beneath them.

That couldn’t
happen.
Please, God, let Morgan be all
right
. He’d never forgive himself
if…

Aidan shrugged the thought aside and
kept going, breaking off tree branches as they got in his way and
ignoring the orange tint of the sky.

His lungs were on fire, and he
couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such an ache in his
thighs.

Something snapped off to the left, a
twig or a branch, and he stopped so fast he nearly fell over. Aidan
swung his head to find her. But it was only David.

He cursed beneath his breath and kept
going.

They had to find Morgan
tonight.

The men had been out on their search
for more than an hour. Emma paced before the bay window in the
drawing room, fidgeting constantly with her skirts for lack of
anything better to do with her hands.

She couldn’t stand this.
She couldn’t bear to sit idly by, chatting over tea and crumpets
and having inane conversation about ribbons while her friend was
out
there
somewhere. Alone. Probably scared. Maybe hurt.

It was enough to send Emma to an early
grave, waiting and unable to do anything about it.

A man’s form came out of the woods.
She stood still and strained her eyes to make out who it was. It
was the first sign of anyone since the men had gone in.

But once the figure was out on the
lawn and free from the tree line, Emma realized it was only Lord
Muldaire. Alone.

She started to pace again as the
marquess met up with a maid on the lawn, drank something, and then
went back into the woods.

“
You’re going to pace a
hole in my new Aubusson carpet,” Vanessa said lightly behind
her.

Emma spun on her sister.

“
I know.” Vanessa held her
hands up in surrender. “I know you’re worried. But there’s nothing
you can do, and pacing isn’t going to help anything.”

“
Sitting here isn’t going
to help, either!”

Every head in the drawing room turned
to stare at her, as though she’d grown multiple heads like
Cerberus.

She hadn’t meant to cause a scene, but
the longer she just sat here doing nothing, the more she
worried—about Morgan, and about what she was going to do about
Aidan.

Really, the true problem had been to
allow her thoughts to wander to Aidan. The more she thought about
him, the more she was left to ponder his reaction to Sir Henry’s
arrival earlier and what it could mean. It couldn’t have anything
to do with love—he was merely trying to fool her into believing he
loved her. How else would he have switched so easily to glaring at
her with such hatred again?

Emma looked helplessly
across at the other ladies in the drawing room, hoping to find
someone to aid in her cause. “I can’t just sit here and wait.
I
can’t
. I’m going
to help them look.”

Her pronouncement was met with a
handful of scandalized gawks, but she didn’t care.

Vanessa tried to take her hand, but
Emma pulled hers free.

“
It isn’t a good idea, Em,”
Vanessa said. “What if something happens to you, too? Then they’ll
have to help both you and Morgan.”

“
Something could happen to
any of the men who are out there right now just as easily as
something could happen to me.”

“
It’s getting dark! The sun
is already starting to set, and it won’t take long for it to be as
dark as pitch out there. It’s too dangerous.” Once more, Vanessa
tried to take her hand. “The men will be on their way back soon,
anyway. We can’t search for her in the woods at night.”

“
I can’t leave her out
there without at least searching.” Emma stalked across the drawing
room to the door then turned around to face her sister once more. “
Morgan lives in the dark, all the time. If she can live like that,
I can look for her in the dark at least tonight. I don’t know that
it’ll do any good for me to go out there, but at least I’ll be
doing
something
.”

“
And you won’t be alone,”
Serena said, standing.

Then several other ladies stood as
well: Miss Selwyn, Miss Goderich, and even Lady Portia, who had
been so rude to Morgan early on during the house party.

Serena moved to stand beside Emma and
linked their arms together. “We’re coming with you. The more people
we have searching for Morgan, the better.”

Their show of support nearly moved
Emma to tears, but since she’d already established earlier that
tears had no place here at the moment, she suppressed
them.

“
Right. Well, we should be
off. The sun will be setting before long.”

The five of them went, as a group, out
into the corridor and out the side exit, then marched across the
lawn.

What if they couldn’t find Morgan
before the sun set fully? What would happen to her if she was out
there alone all night? Emma swallowed the lump of fear that kept
trying to rise with the thought.

Fear would have to attack her another
day. She refused to give in to it today.

“
We can’t stay out here
much longer, Aidan.” David’s voice sounded thin, like he was far
away.

Aidan spun around and squinted into
the shadowy wood surrounding him. A few streams of light were still
coming through the branches overhead, but they grew dimmer by the
moment. What had been orange and pink only minutes before was now
near pitch darkness, and they still had to return to the main
trail.

But how could he turn back without
finding Morgan? No one had shouted that they’d found her. All he
could hear around him were masculine voices calling her name as
they searched.

Even those voices had become fewer and
farther between, however.

Most of the others had probably
already turned back, relenting to nightfall.

David caught up with him where he had
stopped. Worry had left a crease in his forehead. “I know you don’t
want—”

“
You know what could happen
to her if she’s out all night,” Aidan snapped.

“
I know. What good will you
be to her if you hurt yourself trying to find her because you can’t
see the ground beneath your feet?”

Aidan ground his teetj together,
clenched his fists. There was nothing he wanted less than to
concede David’s point. But he was not a fool.

Well, not entirely. He had been a fool
where Emma was concerned, it seemed, trusting her to be in Morgan’s
presence again. Convincing himself he loved her. How could he love
someone who would treat his sister with such disregard?

And now, he would have to go back to
the house—back to where Emma was—without Morgan.

He wasn’t certain he could face Emma
yet. Facing her would force him to likewise face his own demons,
the fault which may lie with him and no one else.

“
Let’s go back,” he finally
said, though he nearly choked on the words. It felt like he was
giving up on Morgan, like he was leaving her to her
fate.

He’d never quit on her before. In
fact, he’d sworn when they were children that he never would. Yet
now, he was.

They returned to the main path,
trudging over above-ground roots and broken tree limbs, ducking
beneath low-hanging branches. When they’d covered about half the
distance back, a dog barked in the distance.

Aidan’s heart stopped. It didn’t sound
like one of the hounds from the hunt. It was a deeper bark, lower
and fuller—like Kingley’s.

David stopped moving and turned, his
eyes wide in the dim light. “Kingley? Kingley, is that
you?”

The barks increased and drew closer.
It had to be him.

“
Kingley, come here,” Aidan
shouted as he took off running toward the sound. “Where is she?
Where’s Morgan?”

“
Cardiff?” someone called
from the direction of Kingley’s barks. In his panic, Aidan couldn’t
place it.

He kept running like a madman, despite
the brambles and treacherous ground.

“
I’ve got Kingley over
here,” the man called again. Was that Mr. Deering? It must
be.

“
Where’s Morgan?” Aidan
shouted. “Where’s my sister?”

The dog let out a happy bark just as
Aidan toppled through a break in the trees into an opening. Charles
Deering was on his knees, scratching Kingley behind the ears like
Emma and Morgan so often did…but Morgan wasn’t there.

“
Where is she?” he growled,
desperate for air and answers.

“
I found Kingley off over
there,” Deering answered, pointing deeper into the woods, where
almost no light came in at all. “Haven’t seen any sign of Lady
Morgan, though. He was alone when I found him.”

David came up behind Aidan, gasping
for breath and holding his right hand tightly over his left upper
arm. Something dark glistened in the small amount of light coming
through the canopy above them.

“
You’re hurt?” Deering
asked David. “We should head back. We’ll all end up injured if we
stay out in this much longer. Kingley can help us find her
tomorrow.”

When Deering stood, Aidan reached for
Kingley’s lead…but there was no lead. Good God. The lead had been
on him when they’d all left to go hawking. And the dog seemed fine,
so it hadn’t just accidentally come off of him.

Someone had taken it off. It was a
good quality leather—it wasn’t just going to snap off on a
whim.

If it was Morgan…

Devil take it, this had been her plan
all along. She was trying to hurt herself. Trying to kill herself.
Aidan’s chest grew so tight he thought it might burst, and his
breaths became shallow.