Chapter 4 #2
Not where might she go, but where would she go. A five-year-old who loved animals above all other things, who had arrived at this castle and gone straight to the stables, who had spent every waking hour since talking about foals and naming them and planning future visits.
Where would a child like that go in the middle of the night when she could not sleep?
The stables had been searched.
But the stalls were many, and it was dark in the night and a small child might not be immediately visible to a man with a lantern moving quickly through a stable block at half past seven in the morning.
Cori moved toward the stables at a clip.
James found Daniel in the east corridor, coming from the direction of the library.
"Anything?" James asked.
"Nothing." His brother shook his head. "You?"
"Nothing."
They stood in the corridor for one torturous moment, staring at each other.
"James," Daniel began slowly, looking away as he said it.
"Don't say it."
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to."
Daniel was quiet for a moment. Then, very quietly he said, "The moors."
There it was. The word James had been refusing to let fully form since seven o'clock. He’d known Daniel was going to say it.
He’d known it the moment he saw his brother's face in the corridor. He’d been waiting for it and dreading it with equal measure, because the moment someone said the word aloud, it stopped being a thing James was managing and became a thing he had to act on.
"She's inside Acklan," James said. "She has to be in the castle grounds. Somewhere."
"Turlow's men have been through the kitchen garden and the orchard," Daniel said. "The housemaids have done every room on the nursery floor twice." His voice was quiet and steady, the voice he used when he was frightened and didn’t want James to know it. "She's not inside."
James looked at the corridor wall and felt, for a moment, like he might crumble to ash.
"I'm going to take a horse," he said.
"I'll come."
"You don't have to."
"I'm coming," Daniel insisted. “Let me tell Cait where we’re headed."
"I'm not waiting." James started for the garden door. He’d foolishly waited too long as it was.
"James!" Daniel called after him.
But James was already heading for the stables and he did not slow his pace.
Cori pushed open the stable door.
The smell of horse and warm hay met her entrance. The horses turned their heads. Bread and Butter's mothers shifted in their stalls, and the foals looked at her with mild, unconcerned interest, blinking slowly in the lamplight.
Cori moved along the stalls slowly.
In the last stall, behind the larger of the two mares, in a nest of hay that had been arranged with great deliberation, lay little Lady Hannah Westham. Fast asleep.
Oh, thank heavens!
Cori sagged with relief.
In her nightrail and with her cloak pulled over her like a blanket, Hannah looked like the most peaceful of cherubs. Her blonde hair was tangled in the hay and she smiled in her sleep as though her dreams were pleasant. Curled against her stomach, Marmalade purred like the happiest of kittens.
Cori crouched down beside the child.
She gently pressed the back of her fingers to Hannah's cheek. Then she brushed the hair back from the girl's face. Hannah was breathing steadily, her color was good, and she was deeply, peacefully asleep. She had no idea she'd sent an entire castle full of people to the edges of their sanity.
The relief came out of Cori in one long breath.
She pushed back to her feet, and started for the exit. Everyone else at Acklan deserved to take the same relieved breath that Cori had done. She turned toward the stable door to go for the duke, and very nearly walked straight into him.
James pushed open the stable door.
He began immediately scanning the stalls for the nearest horse, calculating which animal was fastest, how long it would take to saddle and how much ground he could cover if he rode north toward the high moor while Turlow's men went east and Daniel came from the west...
Then Corinna Beckett came around the end of the last stall and nearly walked straight into him.
She stopped. He stopped. For a moment neither of them moved.
"She’s in the last stall," Miss Corinna said. "Behind the mare. She’s perfectly safe. She must’ve been asleep for hours."
James moved past her into the stall in question, the tightness in his chest lessening only once he saw his daughter.
Mother of God. He’d never been so scared in his life. He closed his eyes in silent thanks.
Then he started toward his daughter and the little orange kitten at her side. His movement must have alerted the cat because Marmalade opened one amber eye, but determined James was not his concern so he sleepily closed it again.
James crouched beside Hannah and put his hand against her cheek to make certain she was well.
She was warm and safe, and she sighed softly.
James stayed beside her for a moment, aware that Miss Corinna was just behind him. “Thank you for finding her,” he said, barely recognizing the raspiness of his own voice.
"I’m so glad she’s safe,” Miss Corinna said. "When I arrived, the mare was blocking her spot. I think that’s why the first search missed her."
"She wanted to see the foals," James said, closing his eyes with the first bit of relief he’d had all morning. “She’d talked of them before she went to bed.”
"Yes, she did.”
James pushed back to his feet and turned to face Miss Corinna.
She was still in the doorway of the stall, not ruffled by any of it.
Simply calm. The same way she had been in the corridor with the kitten, and at the turret, and at dinner.
How he envied her calm demeanor. He would give anything to experience such calm himself. “I am forever in your debt.”
But she shook her head, her light hair swaying gracefully with the motion. “There is no debt, Your Grace. I am—"
James could hear Daniel calling his name from just inside the stable door.
"We’re here!" he called. “Hannah’s here!”
Less than a moment later, Daniel appeared in the doorway with his coat half-buttoned and his face carrying the weight of the same fear James had been managing all morning. “She’s in here?”
James gestured to Hannah’s bed of hay. “She is,” he said again as he cast a grateful glance in Miss Corinna’s direction before turning his focus on his brother. “No worse for the wear, it seems.”
“Good God,” Daniel breathed out as he stopped at James’ side and looked at Hannah. "The little imp."
James crossed the stall and lifted his daughter from the hay. Hannah stirred in his arms, frowned slightly in her sleep, and then settled against his shoulder.
Marmalade expressed his views on the disruption at some length and then led the way from the stall with considerable poise, as though the whole expedition had been his idea from the start.
With her quiet and calm demeanor, Miss Corinna watched this display and pressed her lips together as though to conceal her amusement.
"That cat has a great deal of dignity, doesn’t he?" Daniel said wryly.
"Entirely unearned," James added.
"But completely convincing,” Miss Corinna agreed.
James laughed at that, not a large laugh, but one of the first genuine laughs he’d experienced in a long time. His soul felt lighter for it.
Daniel fell into step beside him as they came out of the stable block into the grey morning with Miss Corinna following in their wake.