Chapter 4
Even before arriving in England, Cori had never been one to sleep past dawn.
Back home, the harbor was alive with activity before the sun lit up the horizon, with the sounds of ships and dock workers already filling the sea air.
The hum of commerce had been the backdrop of all her mornings for as long as she could remember.
Although Acklan was quieter on all fronts, old habits did die hard.
She dressed early without the assistance of her maid, eager to explore more of the castle on her own before the others arose.
She had quite decided, almost instantly, that the charm of Acklan was just as lovely at dawn as it was at dusk.
After ambling around for better part of an hour, Cori finally stumbled upon the portrait gallery.
The gallery ran the length of the east wing and was filled with various Westhams from the last four centuries. Cori moved along the gallery slowly, not with any particular purpose, just looking at those who had come before them.
She found him about two thirds of the way down.
Well, not Linthorpe himself, but some long ago ancestor who looked enough like the duke to have been his twin.
Cori paused and stared up at the young man, adorned in the fashion of a previous century, fair-haired and grey-eyed, with the same set to his jaw and that same particular stillness she recognized in his descendant.
The fellow’s nose was slightly different and his mouth was a bit softer, but his eyes…they completely matched Linthorpe’s. A shiver raced through her.
Cori was still standing in front of the portrait when the door at the far end of the gallery opened and the housekeeper, Mrs. Fenwick, bustled in, looking more than harried.
"Oh, Miss Corinna!” the housekeeper breathed out upon spotting Cori. “Have you seen Lady Hannah this morning?" She twisted her hands slightly at her sides as though she didn’t know what to do with them.
“Lady Hannah?” Cori echoed.
"We cannot find her anywhere,” Mrs. Fenwick confided, the words rushing from her mouth in mild panic.
Oh, good heavens! Cori's stomach tightened. "When was the last time anyone saw her?”
"Her governess checked on her at ten o'clock last night, and she was asleep in her bed.
But when Miss Roseberry went to wake her at seven, her bed was empty.
" Apparently satisfied that Hannah was not in the portrait gallery, Mrs. Fenwick started toward the far exit, and Cori followed after her.
"The staff have been searching for half an hour. His Grace is in the breakfast room."
Oh, poor Linthorpe. Cori increased her step to keep up with the housekeeper. “Where have you looked so far?"
"Every room on the nursery floor, the kitchens, the servants' stairs, the garden." She took a breath. "Mr. Turlow even checked the stable block first thing."
The stables. Cori noted it and frowned. That would have been the first place she would have looked. "His Grace is in the breakfast room? "
The housekeeper nodded as she maintained her pace around a corner. “When I last saw him.”
James had been awake since Mrs. Fenwick knocked on his door at seven o'clock. Since that moment, he’d spent every single moment doing what he always did when something was wrong, discovering the shape of the problem and then putting people to every part of it.
Turlow to the stables. Two housemaids to the nursery floor.
His valet, Pritchard, to the kitchen garden and then the orchard.
Daniel had been dispatched to the east wing.
Caitrin Beckett stationed in the entrance hall in case Hannah wandered back on her own, which she might.
The child was being entirely capable of appearing from some unexpected direction and with no sense that anything unusual had occurred in her absence.
James was pacing before the breakfast room window when Miss Roseberry finally made her appearance.
She stopped near the sideboard, her hands clasped, her chin level as though she was awaiting her executioner. She made for a pitiful sight, honestly. However, under the circumstances, James didn’t have any sympathy for the governess.
"She was in her bed at ten o'clock," Miss Roseberry said. "I checked on her myself. She was asleep, Your Grace."
"I know," James clipped out. "Mrs. Fenwick told me."
She nodded tightly. "I should’ve checked on her again in the night, but I didn’t think it was necessary.”
She said it cleanly and without qualification which was admirable, but her taking accountability for the situation would not help them locate Hannah.
"This isn’t the first time you’ve let her slip through your fingers," James said, sounding more even and steady than he felt.
"No, Your Grace." Her gaze dropped to the floor.
"At Linthorpe House, she was found in the corridor at midnight." He maintained his demeanor even though he wanted to shout. "A sennight ago, she reached the Serpentine before you noticed she had gotten away from you."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"She is five years old, Miss Roseberry." He heard himself, his tone ratcheted up the tiniest bit.
"She is five years old and she is somewhere on an estate of four hundred acres and it has been.
.." he stopped. He frowned at the woman.
"How does a child leave her bed in the middle of the night without her governess knowing? "
Miss Roseberry said nothing. There was nothing she could say, and she didn’t try to do so.
"James." Daniel's voice came from the doorway.
James' gaze flicked to the threshold. His brother's expression had the careful stillness it only took on when Daniel was genuinely worried but was keeping himself in check, the same expression James had seen on his brother’s face the morning after the episode in London. Daniel’s presence steadied him.
He looked back at Miss Roseberry, who was still standing with her chin level. He reined himself in. Barely, but he managed it.
"Find me when there is news," he said to his brother and then left to go in search, once again, for his daughter.
Cori found Lord Daniel in the breakfast room, somber and looking as if he’d been sliced in two. “I just heard,” she whispered. “How can I help?”
He released a staggered breath. “Everyone who’s awake is searching a different corner of the castle.”
“His Grace?”
Daniel nodded. “He is beside himself.”
How could he be otherwise? Cori heaved a sigh. “I’ll start searching too,” she said.
She took the library first because she had passed the door twice already and it was on her way. She moved through it quickly, checking behind the larger chairs, behind the curtains, under the reading table. Nothing.
The music room. The small parlor off the east corridor. Back along the main passage, checking every doorway, looking for any sign that a child might recently have passed through. A door left ajar that should be closed. A cushion displaced. Something. Anything.
There was nothing.
Cori took the servants' staircase down to the ground floor and moved through the back passages, where two housemaids were already working their way along the west side.
She could hear Turlow's voice somewhere outside, directing men across the kitchen garden.
The search for the child was thorough. Everyone was covering ground.
Hannah wasn’t in any of the ground floor rooms. So, where was she?
Cori blew out a breath. Certainly, no one had absconded with the child, had they?
No, no, certainly not. Cori pushed that thought away almost as soon as it entered her mind.
If someone had taken the little girl in the dead of night, there’d be some evidence of such a thing, wouldn’t there?
No, no. Hannah had to be here somewhere. She had to be.
Cori stood at the bottom of the back staircase and mentally went through all the rooms she’d searched so far.
Her mind kept going back to the stables. Turlow had searched there first, Mrs. Fenwick had told her that. Still, the idea kept pulling at Cori. The new foals,
Hannah had spoken of little else since Cori's arrival. Bread and Butter. She’d named the pair upon her arrival at Acklan, apparently, and she’d even dragged Cori to the stables herself within an hour of her settling in. The little girl had visited the pair at every available opportunity.
If Hannah was anywhere, she was there.
But the stables had been searched. Turlow had seen to it.
So, Cori turned toward the garden and kept searching.
The east wing was empty.
James moved through it with methodical thoroughness, not allowing his mind to go to the one place he couldn't afford to go.
Every room had been checked. Every wardrobe.
Every corner. They'd been doing this for the better part of an hour, and the castle was running out of rooms, the grounds were running out of outbuildings, and the staff and guests alike were running out of places to search.
A horrible thought had been hovering just out of reach since it began.
It was coming into focus now, and the shape of it stopped his breath.
The moors.
He had grown up on those moors. He knew every drop in the terrain, every stretch of boggy ground, every place where the land looked solid and where it was not. He knew exactly what could happen to a child who wandered out onto open moorland in the early morning before the household was awake.
He shoved the thought aside again and checked a room that had already been checked before.
Empty.
He moved to the next one.
The kitchen garden was empty. The orchard wall had been walked. The glasshouse on the south side of the garden had been checked by one of the housemaids, who reported nothing.
Cori stood in the middle of the kitchen garden in the grey morning light and looked at the castle, wondering where she would go if she was a precocious five-year old.