Chapter 14
The river was impossibly cold.
It wrapped itself around Rosalind's ankles before climbing slowly higher, soaking the hem of her gown until the heavy fabric drifted around her like pale weeds beneath the dark water.
Mist hung low over the surface, blurring everything beyond a few uncertain yards, while voices rose all around her, carried upon the current like leaves.
They spoke over one another.
Some called her name.
Others laughed.
Still others wept.
She understood none of them.
Then, through the confusion, one voice found her.
“Rosalind.”
William.
She turned toward the sound and saw him standing upon the opposite bank, his figure softened by drifting mist, one hand already reaching toward her.
Relief swept through her so suddenly that it almost hurt.
He smiled and stepped into the river.
The water welcomed him without resistance, curling quietly around his boots as he made his way toward her.
She reached for him in return. “William.”
He kept walking.
Yet somehow the farther he came, the farther away he seemed. The river widened between them without warning, stretching until the opposite bank became little more than a shadow. The current deepened, whispering secrets she could almost understand before carrying them away again.
She tried to move toward him.
Instead, the water released her.
Without knowing how, she found herself drifting backward, her feet carrying her over soft grass where moments before there had been only the river. She did not remember leaving the water.
She only knew William was still trying to reach her.
“Rosalind.”
Her father's voice.
It came from somewhere behind her.
She tried to turn, but her body refused.
Again his voice called, gentle and familiar, yet impossibly distant, as though it had crossed an entire ocean before reaching her ears.
“Papa?”
The word disappeared into the wind.
She walked toward him without seeing him, guided only by the sound of his voice until the air itself began to change. The scent came first, sweet and clean, followed by soft white petals drifting lazily around her.
Lilies.
Thousands of them.
They rose before her in a wall of white so vast she could not see where it ended. Their blossoms swayed without breeze, brushing lightly against her arms as though inviting her farther in. Their fragrance surrounded her until breathing felt almost like drowning.
Her father's voice grew fainter.
She strained to hear it.
Only silence answered.
Then warmth touched her cheek.
She looked up.
William stood before her.
His fingers rested lightly against her face, their warmth impossibly real against the cool perfume of the lilies. A stray lock of fair hair stirred across his forehead, though the flowers around them remained perfectly still.
She should have spoken.
She should have asked where her father had gone.
Instead she found herself watching his eyes, impossibly blue beneath a sky that had somehow become morning without ever passing through night.
“You're here,” she whispered.
His smile was quiet. “I've always been coming toward you.”
The words made no sense, yet she understood them perfectly.
His hand slipped gently beneath her chin, and she made no effort to move away. She could not have done so if she wished.
She did not wish.
The lilies bent softly around them, enclosing them in a world of white and fragrance as he lowered his head.
His kiss was feather-light.
Warm. Patient.
It carried the scent of summer and river water and lilies, and for one endless, impossible moment the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.
Someone was calling her.
Faintly at first.
Then louder.
“Lady Rosalind?”
The lilies dissolved into sunlight before the river slipped away.
William's warmth vanished from beneath her fingertips.
Rosalind woke with a sharp breath, her nightdress damp against her skin, the morning sun already spilling through the curtains.
“My lady?”
Nelly stood beside the bed, one hand resting lightly upon the bedpost.
Rosalind blinked, her heart still beating far too quickly. Almost without thinking, her fingers rose to her lips.
They were cool.
Yet for one fleeting, impossible moment, she could still have sworn they remembered the warmth of William's kiss.
She lowered her hand slowly, willing her pulse to steady.
It had only been a dream.
Nothing more.
Dreams borrowed faces from waking life and stitched them together with impossible places and impossible feelings. Rivers became gardens. Lilies became walls. Men who were merely pretending to court a lady somehow found their way into her dreams and kissed her as though they had every right.
She closed her eyes and drew a slow, steadying breath.
This was precisely why she needed to remain sensible.
William Sinclair was not courting her.
Not truly.
Every smile they exchanged, every promenade through Hyde Park, every dance, every carefully chosen compliment existed for one purpose alone: to discover what had become of her father.
Everything else belonged to the performance.
She repeated the thought firmly enough that she almost believed it.
When she opened her eyes again, Nelly was waiting beside the dressing table with a folded note resting upon a silver tray.
“A footman from Aldermere House brought this not a quarter of an hour ago, my lady. He said Lord William wished it placed into your hands the moment you woke.”
Rosalind frowned. “So early?”
“Yes, my lady.”
She accepted the note, recognizing William's hand before she had even broken the seal.
Her fingers suddenly felt strangely clumsy.
She unfolded the paper.
Lady Rosalind,
Meet me in the main square as soon as you wake. There is something we must discuss.
William Sinclair
She read it twice. Then a third time.
The warmth left her almost immediately.
Her gaze lingered on the letter.
Surely it concerned her father.
William would never have sent for her at such an early hour without good reason, and nothing short of the investigation seemed important enough to justify such urgency.
She tried to take comfort in that conclusion.
Instead, uneasiness settled quietly beneath her ribs.
The dream refused to release its hold on her thoughts, while the hurried note in her hand only strengthened the unsettling feeling that something had shifted overnight.
She could not have said what it was, only that the world had felt perfectly ordinary when she closed her eyes, and somehow altogether different when she opened them again.
Folding the letter with deliberate care, she looked up at Nelly. “Would you have the carriage brought around immediately?”
The maid blinked. “Before breakfast, my lady?”
“Yes.” Rosalind was already crossing toward the wardrobe. “And you'll accompany me.”
“Of course.”
Within minutes she had exchanged her nightdress for a simple morning gown, though she scarcely remembered fastening the buttons. Nelly settled a bonnet over her curls while Rosalind found herself glancing repeatedly toward the folded note resting upon the dressing table.
Each time she looked at it, the same question returned.
What could not wait until afternoon?
She made only the briefest stop in the morning room, where her mother had just been served breakfast.
“You're leaving already?” her mother asked, setting aside her teacup.
“I have had a note from Lord William.”
Understanding softened her mother's features almost at once. “Oh.”
Rosalind recognized that smile immediately. “Mama…”
“I said nothing.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was.”
Despite the knot of unease tightening in her stomach, Rosalind almost smiled.
Her mother reached across the table and gave her hand the gentlest squeeze. “I understand.”
Rosalind hesitated only long enough to return the gesture. “I shall return as soon as I can.”
“I will be here.”
A few moments later, the carriage was already rolling away from the townhouse.
For reasons she could not fully explain, she found herself clutching William's note a little tighter with every turn of the wheels.
The carriage had scarcely turned onto the main road before Nelly leaned forward, lowering her voice despite the privacy of the coach.
“I've spoken with the maids, my lady. It took a fair amount of exchanging news before anyone was willing to offer something useful, but I believe we've found the most reliable account yet.”
Rosalind turned from the window at once, William's note forgotten for the moment in her lap.
“What have they learned?”
“One of the footmen who was serving at White's on the evening your father disappeared remembered seeing His Lordship leave rather late. He spoke with several gentlemen before bidding them goodnight, then stepped into a carriage waiting outside.”
Rosalind frowned thoughtfully. “A hackney?”
Nelly shook her head. “No. Everyone agreed it was a fine carriage. Expensive. Well appointed enough that several servants remarked upon it at the time.”
The wheels rattled over the cobbles as Rosalind considered the new information.
“Did no one recognize the crest?”
“Not yet. They've remembered the carriage, but no one can recall whose it was. They're still asking.”
Rosalind rested her gaze on the bustling streets beyond the window, watching shopkeepers sweep their doorsteps while apprentices hurried about their morning errands.
“That changes everything.”
Nelly waited quietly.
“If Father had intended to disappear of his own accord,” Rosalind said at last, “he would hardly have taken the trouble to bid his friends goodnight as though he expected to see them again.
Nor does it fit the idea that he simply wished to be left alone for a time.
A man seeking solitude does not climb willingly into another gentleman's luxurious carriage.”
“No, my lady.”
“And it explains nothing about the Byron letter.”
She folded her hands together, frustration mounting as every new discovery seemed only to deepen the mystery.
The letter suggested one thing. The carriage suggested another.
Augusta's whispered rumor suggested something else entirely.
Instead of forming a picture, each piece only made the others harder to understand.
“There is something else,” Nelly said after a moment. “I asked as discreetly as I could about the story Her Grace repeated.”
Rosalind looked up immediately. “And?”
“I found nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“The maids know of no such gossip. Neither do the coachmen or the stable boys. No one has heard that your father was seen across London with another woman. If such a story exists, it certainly hasn't found its way into the servants' hall.”
Rosalind felt her brow knit.
That troubled her far more than she expected.
Servants were the keepers of every household's secrets. They noticed who came and went, who quarreled, who lingered too long in drawing rooms, and who returned home smelling of perfume that did not belong to their wives. Rumors spread among them with astonishing speed.
If none of them had heard such a story, where had Augusta heard it?
More importantly, why had she chosen to repeat it?
Rosalind drew a slow breath. Until she knew more, she would say nothing. There had already been too many rumors, too many half-truths masquerading as facts.
Her gaze drifted once more to William's note. “I also want to know whether Lord William has heard about the carriage.”
Nelly looked at her curiously. “You think he may already know?”
Rosalind traced the folded edge of the paper with her thumb. “I cannot say. If he does, I should like to see whether he tells me of it before I mention it myself.”
The thought lingered with her as the carriage rolled steadily through London's morning streets. Perhaps that was the reason for his urgent summons. Perhaps he had uncovered the same lead entirely independently.
Whatever the explanation, she would soon have her answer.
“One more thing, Nelly. Would you continue making inquiries about the auction house? I would like to know everything you can discover about the missing clerk. If anyone has heard where he went, or why he abandoned his position so suddenly, I want to hear of it.”
“Of course, my lady.”
Rosalind smiled. “I sometimes think you accomplish more than half the gentlemen in London.”
Nelly's eyes sparkled with quiet amusement. “I've always found servants rather more observant than gentlemen.”
“So have I.”
The carriage slowed as it entered the square, and Rosalind instinctively glanced through the window.
William was already waiting.
He stood near the center of the square, scanning each arriving carriage with an intensity that immediately unsettled her.
Even from a distance, there was something profoundly different about him.
His shoulders seemed heavier than they had the previous evening, his posture unusually rigid, and his face was so pale that it stood out starkly against his dark coat.
He looked like a man who had not slept.
More than that, he looked like a man carrying a burden too heavy to bear alone.
A knot tightened low in Rosalind's stomach.
Before the footman had fully lowered the steps, she was already gathering her skirts. She acknowledged the few familiar faces strolling through the square with polite smiles, but her attention never truly left William.
He saw her at once.
Ordinarily, he would have smiled. This morning, he only stood waiting.
By the time she reached him, her pulse was beating hard enough that she scarcely trusted her own voice.
“What has happened?”
William looked at her, and for a moment she thought he could not bring himself to speak. His jaw tightened, his hands trembled almost imperceptibly, and whatever words he had prepared seemed to die before they reached his lips.
Rosalind's heart sank.
Whatever had happened during the night, it had changed him.