Chapter 17
R hys pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward away an impending headache, and glared at his mother, who had just fluttered into the breakfast room, resembling nothing so much as an agitated owl.
Evidence of her distress could be seen plainly not just in her distraught expression but in her silver hair, which was loose and unbound from its customary coil. She was also wearing a dressing gown.
Mater never left her rooms without her hair coiffed, and she most certainly never wandered about in dishabille . Perhaps, he thought unkindly and with a hint of disinterest, the old bird had finally gone senile.
“What is the matter, madam?” he asked calmly, watching as she wrung her withered hands and blinked behind her gold-rimmed spectacles.
She exclaimed something unintelligible that he swore sounded like Mignonne casts dreary .
Her dudgeon was so very high, which was also most unlike her.
If she had been the sort of mother that had instilled a deep and abiding sense of love in her children, he might have been more concerned.
As it was, he was rather displeased to have an interruption of breakfast when he had yet to enjoy his bacon.
Rhys stood belatedly, recalling that he was sitting in the presence of a lady, even if said lady was perhaps mad and someone he resented for his unhappy childhood. “Who the devil is Mignonne, Mater?”
“Your sister!” his mother wailed.
“You mean Rhiannon?” He frowned, realizing that his sister wasn’t present at the breakfast table yet this morning.
He hadn’t thought much about it; Rhiannon kept whatever hours she chose, flitting about like a butterfly from one social engagement to the next.
He had arrived in London late in the evening, and after a carriage ride with Miranda that had been spent in delightful distraction, he’d been so tired he had simply gone to bed. No one but the servants had been about.
“Yes,” his mother said unhelpfully, still twisting her hands together and looking as if someone had announced that her prized collection of jewels had been thieved.
Which would have made more sense in this moment than anything to do with his sister.
Because Mater didn’t care about anything other than herself and her collections.
Oh, she wasn’t malevolent. She was always perfectly pleasant to converse with.
However, she simply didn’t care about her children. She never had.
Rhys had long suspected that to her, he and Rhiannon were obligations forced upon her by his father. The heir, although not the spare. Several years of miscarriages and one stillborn son had finally persuaded the former duke to put an end to his quest to secure the Whitby line.
“What about my sister?” he asked, when it seemed Mater was not inclined to elaborate.
“ She’smissing ,” Mater announced, her words rambling together without pause, punctuated by a wail.
This was more emotion than he’d seen from his mother in…well, ever.
Rhys blinked. “Did you say she is missing?”
“Yes,” Mater cried, wringing her hands some more.
And that was when worry hit him, like a fist to the gut. True concern from Mater, and his sister was missing. Just what the devil was going on here?
“What do you mean, Rhiannon is missing?” Rhys hissed at his mother, sure he had misheard.
“P-precisely that,” Mater snuffled. “She’s g-gone.”
He stalked toward his mother, stopping before her. “Details are important at a time like this, madam. When did she go missing? Where did she say she was going last?”
“I…I c-cannot be c-certain.”
“What can you not be certain of?” he demanded, frustration surging along with worry.
He could scarcely make sense of what she was saying.
“I d-don’t know w-when she went missing.”
Rhys sent a silent prayer heavenward for patience. Mater was sobbing now, verging on inconsolable, which only rendered getting lucid answers from her even more difficult.
“I saw her the day I left a week ago,” he said slowly. “Did you see her after that?”
Mater’s face crumpled. “You were gone f-for a w-week? Where w-were you? Did you take h-her with you?”
Dear God. If he weren’t so worried about his sister, he would most definitely be insulted that his mother had failed to note a weeklong absence on his part.
“I went to the country,” he snapped. “To a house party. And no, Rhiannon was not with me. Nor would she have been invited. Do you mean to tell me that you have not seen her this last week at all?”
“I…I couldn’t say.” Mater’s face crumpled even more, and fresh streams of tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “I left her in your charge, madam. You are her mother.”
Not that the title meant a damned thing to Mater. She had never looked more selfish and small to him than she did now, her nose red from weeping tears that were undoubtedly more for herself than for Rhiannon. Likely, she feared how such a scandal as a disappearing daughter would reflect upon her.
“She is th-three and t-twenty,” Mater protested. “How am I meant to w-watch her?”
“You are meant to make certain that she is safe,” he growled. “To ensure that no harm befalls her. You are meant to be chaperoning her, to be at her side. That is the duty a mother owes to her daughter, at the very least, madam.”
“B-but you know how Rhiannon is. She is r-rebellious. She d-doesn’t want my interference.”
That much was likely true, though Rhys doubted very much that Mater had even tried to offer any influence over Rhiannon. Christ knew she hadn’t with him. She was like a dazzling little butterfly, mysteriously flitting about, his flesh and blood and yet almost entirely unknown to him.
“Do the servants have any notion of where she has gone? Have you checked her bedchamber? Did she leave a note?”
He paused, realized that he was biting off every question that occurred to him and that from Mater’s dazed expression, she could not possibly keep up.
“Are you attending me, madam?” he demanded. “Have you nothing to say?”
“Mrs. Hatch said that she l-left a week ago,” Mater said at last. “I’ve no n-notion where she’s g-gone.”
Rhys stared at his mother, aghast. “You mean to suggest that my sister left this house a week ago, and you didn’t notice her absence until today?”
Mater went pale, guilt and a fresh sob crumpling her countenance.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself, striding past his mother, breakfast forgotten.
He needed answers, and it was more than apparent that Mater didn’t have any. Rhiannon had been missing for an entire damned week.
Dear God. He shuddered to think the trouble his hellion sister could have landed herself in during that time. He needed to find Rhiannon.
Posthaste.
The trouble with pretending she had spent the last week visiting her Great-Aunt Bitsy, Lady Rhiannon Northwick thought to herself rather grimly, was that her brother wasn’t stupid. He would have questions. Questions to which she didn’t have suitable answers.
Such unpleasantness could have been easily avoided if not for the interference of one stubborn, maddening man. A man she would not think about now. Nor ever again, if she could help it.
Impossible , said a voice deep within herself.
A voice she promptly ignored. What she couldn’t ignore, unfortunately, was the burning memory of his kisses. His hands on her. His searing eyes that had seemed to see a part of her she hadn’t known existed…
No , she chastised herself inwardly. She must be strong. She must not allow her girlish infatuation with a certain handsome, conscienceless rake to weaken her resolve. He had made his feelings about her more than abundantly clear, dashing her heart to pieces in the process.
And that was why she was presently arriving a day too late back at the home she had left a short week ago. She had set off with such hope in her heart, so hopelessly na?ve. How horridly wrong her plans had gone.
He had left without warning, without a word. Had disappeared. And then she had found him, much to her everlasting regret. Rhiannon squeezed her eyes tightly shut against a painful rush of heartache and betrayal.
His words still echoed in her mind.
You will thank me later, minx.
Minx , he had called her, daring to use the pet name for her that she had once found so endearing. Now, it felt like a dagger plunging into her flesh, glancing off sinew and bone, making her bleed.
Her hired carriage came to a halt before her brother’s town house. Rhiannon didn’t know what awaited her within, nor how she would brazen her way through her explanation. If she even could.
But there was one matter of which Rhiannon was deadly certain.
She would never, as long as she lived, forgive the Duke of Richford for what he had done to her.
As Rhys had promised in his missive, the unmarked carriage he had sent for Miranda was waiting around the corner of the Lenox School of Cookery that evening.
It was discreetly tucked away on a side street where no one would take note.
And yet, as she prepared to enter its confines, she knew a moment of trepidation as she passed a guilty look over her shoulder.
No one watched.
She stepped up and into the conveyance, startled to find that it wasn’t empty.
Rhys was within, dressed in elegant evening finery, looking serious and unfairly beautiful.
Her heart soared at the sight of him. Throughout the course of her busy day, she had done her best to distract herself from thoughts of him.
But diverting herself had been an impossibility.
She’d spent the time since she had seen him last in a haze of longing and desire.
And she couldn’t deny that she had missed him.
Desperately so. Hertfordshire—and Rhys—had quite spoiled her.
“God, I missed you,” he muttered, taking her into his arms and hauling her across his lap as the carriage door closed.