The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3) (18 page)

There was only rug—no bodies sprawled out sleeping.

“Mmuh,” Annie tried to call for Mae, wishing desperately she could make the name and not just a mangled
M
sound.

Maybe she’s hiding.

Of course.

She’s hiding. That’s the sound I heard—a door closing.

Annie threw open the door of the wardrobe. All she saw were Mae’s tiny dresses and petticoats hanging from a wooden dowel. Underneath was nothing but two stacks of folded fabric: a stack of white cotton underthings—such small things, barely big enough to fold—and another stack of linens. She pushed aside the carefully folded clothes and linens, knowing no one could possibly hide there.

She pushed them aside anyway.

No Mae.

“Mmuh!” Annie called out again, louder, running toward the hall. She raced from room to room, opening every wardrobe and blanket chest.

Nothing.

No giggling.

No excited yips or panting from the puppy. No scratching noises.

Annie searched everywhere, even places she’d already looked, covering her mouth with her hand, breathing through her fingers.

There was no sign of Mae or the puppy.

Where were they?

Downstairs?

Yes, downstairs. Mae would be hungry after her nap. She always was. She’d want her toast and butter. Mae would’ve wandered straight down, looking for Annie or Ray. When her chores were done, Annie would sometimes sit out on the back porch and draw the horses and whatnot in grainy dirt that she spread over the wood planks. Then she’d sweep it off before anyone saw.

Sometimes Mae would come out to her and sit on the top step, still groggy from her nap.

Sugar would roam around out back, chomping on sticks. Batting dried manure about.

Annie thought of the noise she’d heard earlier: wood on wood. Had it been the back door slamming shut? The creak of springs... Had she heard that too? She couldn’t remember. Maybe such a small noise hadn’t carried up the stairs and through a closed door and walls.

It could have been the door though.

Maybe Jem
was
back like she’d first thought. Maybe Ray had come back early. Or Ben.

Maybe the sounds had woken Mae and she’d gone down?

She was eating toast even now in the kitchen.

Except, Annie didn’t smell toast. She smelled beeswax from cleaning earlier. She smelled the faint scent of wood smoke from the cook stove burning earlier. That was all.

The house breathed silence.

It felt an empty thing, filled only with the racket of her pounding heart. Her body arrested, except for her shaking hands.

Annie climbed down the steps, holding her skirt aside, hurrying but not wanting to fall. That would help nothing—her lying senseless at the bottom of the steps.

“Mmuh?” she called down the steps, running her hand along the smooth balustrade with her free hand for balance. At the bottom, she swung around into the open foyer, hearing nothing. She hurried to the kitchen. There was no one.

The kitchen looked clean, too clean. Every surface wiped it down. She’d helped Ray do it after breakfast, ignoring his grumbles. She secretly thought he’d enjoyed the company—if not
her
company expressly. He’d muttered about the puppy making tracks on his freshly mopped floor, but there’d been a touch of humor behind his words, she’d felt. Mae had stood on a kitchen chair, watching them, singing and stomping her bare feet. Ray had occasionally patted her head as he passed by.

It was just this morning. So full of sound and movement.

Now it was empty.

Like no one even lived there—a house for sale.

Mae would’ve come down and found no one.

She would have looked out back for Annie, most likely, but she hadn’t been there, had she? No, she’d been sneaking around the house, going through Jem’s things.

Annie’s face crumpled. Why? Why had she ignored her conscience and snooped into Jem’s things?

She’d been where she wasn’t supposed to be and now look what had happened—Mae was missing.

She’d come down and found Annie gone.

What would she do then? Wouldn’t she have called out for Annie? Yet she hadn’t. Annie hadn’t heard her anyway, if she had.

Mae wasn’t under the long kitchen table—Annie ducked and checked twice, though her eyes told her immediately that no one was there. Just so many chair legs and the two trestle support posts. A small crumb of biscuit they’d missed.

No Mae.

Annie stomped her foot, part in frustration, part to make noise to get Mae’s attention.

If she was hiding...

If she’d heard Annie and was hiding and not coming out...

Oh, she’d be in trouble.

Annie would find a way to scold her somehow.

She called for Mae again, more coaxingly now, hoping to call the little girl out of thin air. She covered her mouth again, trying to breathe, to calm her racing pulse. Her heart kept hammering away, the swish of blood pumping wildly the only sound in her ears.

Where was she?

She had to find her.

She was just a little girl.

Alone.

Annie knew what it was to be alone and afraid. She wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

And Jem—she’d have to tell Jem.

If it came to that.

If she didn’t find Mae soon.

Annie checked everywhere.

No one was in the pantry. No one was in the sitting room. The front porch was empty. The whole house was empty, just as she’d felt.

She was alone. Mae was gone. Somehow, she was gone and the puppy was gone with her.

As she prowled through the kitchen yet another time, Annie’s gaze fell on the screen door. In her mind’s eye, she could see Sugar pushing through it, like she did—
thwap
—and Mae chasing after her. She looked closer, finding the door open slightly, the wobbly wooden frame resting against the door jamb.

Like it hadn’t closed properly.

Or it had closed and bounced back open again.

Outside
.

They’d gone outside.

Where the horses were. The oxen.

Wild animals. Places to fall. Danger.

Annie pushed through the screen door, letting it close with an angry slap behind her.

TWENTY-FIVE

“
M
muh!
” Annie didn’t care if any of the men had stayed back—didn’t care if they heard her ugly sounds. In fact, she hoped they did hear her. She hoped someone would come running to help her. Someone to send off to find Jem and the other men.

Unless she found Mae first. Unharmed. Whole. Perfect.

She stood for a moment on the porch steps and looked all around. There were the stables, the paddocks, the tall yellow grasses, and the stony gray mountains in the distance. The land looked too big, full of dangers. Holes to fall into. Snakes?

Were there rattlers on the property?

The grasses on the hilly slopes were tall enough to swallow Mae and Sugar whole.

They could be anywhere. Trampled. Lost.

Annie walked up and down the dirt driveway, spinning around, looking first in one direction then another. There was no one. No men moving about. Just the horses in their fenced-off paddocks. The two oxen grazing in theirs.

There was no little girl in a dress—no flash of pale blue fabric. No black dog darting about.

No Mae. No Sugar.

Where would the puppy have gone?

She was constantly underfoot these days.

Annie tried to imagine what had happened. Mae awoke and came downstairs. Sugar would’ve followed. She could see Mae peeking through the back door to see if Annie was outside. Then...then Sugar had seen a rabbit or something and charged straight out the door. Mae would’ve followed, running after her, desperate to catch Sugar. Frustrated because the pup was faster.

Sugar was still the wily pup, getting loose, enjoying wild spurts of freedom and disobedience. Snatching clothes off the line.

And Mae had gone after her. She must have. They were both gone.

Annie strained to hear the noises of a rambunctious dog and small girl running about as she hurried around the side of the house, to where they hung out the wet laundry. The only sound she heard was the snorting of one of the horses in the distance. Even so, she could almost see Sugar getting into the clothes on the line again, nipping at the hems of her skirts and petticoats. But the puppy wasn’t near the laundry. There were no clothes hung out at all—the thin ropes just drooped lazily from pole to pole, empty. A basket of clothespins lay spilled in the dirt. Annie must have dropped it earlier. She’d folded all the linens before she went up to check on Mae, hadn’t she? So, even if Sugar had wanted to grab something and take off with it, there would’ve been nothing to grab.

Annie wouldn’t care now if the puppy had. She didn’t know what she was feeling...

Terror.

Blame.

She shouldn’t have left them for so long. She shouldn’t have left them alone.

She shouldn’t have gone into Jem’s room at all—she had no right to be in there.

She shouldn’t have snuck around like a thief. Touched his things.

So many
shouldn’ts
.

And now Mae was gone.

Annie gathered a breath and let out a sharp whistle, the one Mrs. Ruskin had taught her, using two fingers in her mouth. It had been their warning alert, a way to communicate across an entire cornfield if necessary. Now, Annie was glad she’d learned. It was loud and sharp, and sounded like someone in trouble who needed help. Or, to a small girl, someone who needed to be listened to. The dog would even come to investigate the sound, surely. The horses lifted their heads and twitched their ears in her direction.

She should have taught Mae her whistle.

She should have trained Sugar to come at the sound.

Annie hadn’t thought of it until now, when she needed it.

She stumbled over a rock and righted herself, heading for the outbuildings now.

Annie searched through the stables, peering over stall doors, looking behind hay bales. She searched every outbuilding and shed within sight of the house. Mae was nowhere to be found. Annie whistled again and again but no one answered.

No one.

Where were all the men? Not a single hand came running out of the stables. No one.

They must’ve all gone to help find the mare.

She gripped the top rail of one of the paddock fences, needing something to hold onto. The sensation of roughhewn wood under her palms anchored her as panic fought to sail her mind away. Somehow she had to stay calm.

O Lord, help me find her. Open my eyes so I can see some sign of where she went.

Annie tasted the coppery sting of blood and realized she must’ve bit the inside of her cheek.

Where was Mae? Where were the men?

Annie looked across the sea of yellow grasses beyond the paddocks. Mae and Sugar could be anywhere. Anywhere.

Were the grasses more flattened there?

She ran to the spot, skirting the edge of the largest paddock. Was it her imagination or had this patch of overturned dirt been made by an animal? It looked freshly dug up. Perhaps Sugar had been digging? The marks certainly wouldn’t have survived the last rain.

She whistled again, louder than ever.

“
Mmuh!
” she cried, panicked.

At the sound of horse’s hooves beating the ground behind her, she spun around.

Jem.

He was practically flying toward her. On the horizon behind him, the bold amber-colored outcroppings called the Garden of the Gods. He appeared in the gap between them, though he was much closer, practically upon her.

“Where’s Mae?”

Annie spread her arms wide, her hands empty.

Jem was off his horse. He faced her, the reins still in his hand. An urgency like she’d never seen tightened his features.

“Where is she? Where’s Mae?”

She shook her head, wishing she could say everything. Wishing she could go back and do everything over again differently.

Wishing Mae was here.