It Happened One Autumn
Page 96

“Tell me more about the errand she went on.” Marcus stared intently into her round, gingerbread-colored eyes. “What was your conversation prior to her leaving?”
“One of the housemaids came to deliver a message to her this morning, and—”
“At what time?” Marcus interrupted tersely.
“Approximately eight o’clock.”
“Which housemaid?”
“I don’t know, my lord. I could hardly see a thing, as the door was scarcely opened as they spoke. And the maid wore a mobcap, so I can’t even tell you the color of her hair.”
During the conversation, they were joined by Hunt and Annabelle.
“I’ll question the housekeeper and the housemaids,” Hunt said.
“Good.” Filled with an explosive need for action, Marcus muttered, “I’ll start the grounds search.” He would gather a group of servants and a few male guests, including Lillian’s father, to help. Rapidly he calculated the length of time that Lillian had been absent, and the distance she could have traveled on foot across relatively rugged terrain. “We’ll begin with the gardens, and broaden it to a ten-mile radius around the manor.” Catching Hunt’s gaze, he jerked his head toward the doors, and they both made to depart.
“My lord,” came Daisy’s anxious voice, delaying him briefly. “You will find her, won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “And then I’m going to strangle her.”
That drew a tense smile from Daisy, and she watched him as he strode away.
Marcus’s mood progressed from biting frustration to unendurable worry during the lengthening afternoon. Thomas Bowman, grimly convinced that his daughter was up to some bit of mischief making, joined a party of riders who searched the nearby woodland and surrounding meadows, while another group of volunteers went down the bluff to the river. The bachelors’ house, the gatehouse, the caretaker’s house, the icehouse, the chapel, conservatory, wine cellar, stable and stable yard were all meticulously inspected. It seemed that every inch of Stony Cross Park had been covered, with nothing, not so much as a footprint or discarded glove, to indicate what might have happened to Lillian.
While Marcus rode through the wood and fields until Brutus’s sides were wet and his mouth flecked with foam, Simon Hunt remained inside the manor to methodically question the servants. He was the only man Marcus trusted to perform the task with the same ruthless efficiency that he himself would have used. Marcus, for his part, didn’t want to speak patiently with anyone. He wanted to knock heads together and choke the information he wanted from someone’s helpless throat. Knowing that Lillian was somewhere out there, lost or perhaps hurt, filled him with an unfamiliar emotion, hot as lightning, cold as ice …a feeling he gradually identified as fear. Lillian’s safety was too important to him. He could not tolerate the thought that she was in a situation in which he was unable to help her. Unable, even, to find her.
“Will you order the ponds and lake to be dragged, milord?” asked the head footman, William, after a rapid account of the search so far. Marcus looked at him blankly, while a buzzing in his ears grew sharper, more piercing, and the hammer of his own pulse caused his veins to hurt. “Not yet,” he heard himself say in a surprisingly even voice. “I’m going to my study to confer with Mr. Hunt. You will find me there if anything occurs in the next few minutes.”
“Yes, milord.”
Striding to his study, where Hunt had been questioning the servants one at a time, Marcus entered the room without knocking. He saw Hunt seated at the broad mahogany desk, his chair angled to face a housemaid who perched on the other chair. She struggled to her feet at the sight of Marcus, and managed to bob a nervous curtsy. “Sit,” he said tersely, and whether it was his tone, his harsh expression, or merely his presence, she burst into tears. Marcus’s alert gaze shot to Simon Hunt, who was staring at the housemaid with a calm, terrible tenacity.
“My lord,” Hunt said quietly, his gaze unswerving from the maid’s streaming countenance as she wept into her sleeve, “after interviewing this young woman—Gertie— for some minutes, it has become apparent that she may have some useful information to share regarding Miss Bowman’s undisclosed errand this morning, and her subsequent disappearance. However, I believe that a fear of being dismissed may be inducing Gertie to hold her silence. If you, as her employer, might provide some guarantee—”
“You won’t be dismissed,” Marcus said to the maid in a hard voice, “if you tell me your information at this very moment. Otherwise, not only will you find yourself dismissed, I will see to it that you are prosecuted as an accessory to Miss Bowman’s disappearance.”
Gertie stared at him with bulging eyes, her weeping fading rapidly as she answered with a terrified stutter. “M-mi lord…I-I was sent to give Miss Bowman a message this morning, but I weren’t supposed to tell no one…she was to meet in secret, in Butterfly Court…and she said if I was to say a word of it, I would be sacked—”
“Sent by whom?” Marcus demanded, his blood teeming with fury. “To meet with whom? Tell me, damn it!”
“I was sent by the countess,” Gertie whispered, appearing awestruck by whatever it was she saw in his face. “By Lady Westcliff, milord.”
Before the last word had left her lips, Marcus had left the room, charging toward the grand staircase in murderous fury.