Chapter Seven
“WHERE IS FIONA?” David asked when they reached the group. He replaced his hat as though just remembering he’d removed it. Dina hoped that no one would comment on her hair now plaited down her back, though they would likely agree it was an improvement on what she’d had before.
“We thought she was with you,” Mary said, her expression worried as she looked at the abbey and surrounding trees.
She met Dina’s eye, and her expression tightened as she raised her eyebrows in accusation.
Without Miss Johansson in their company, she and David had been alone for several minutes.
Dina shook her head to say nothing had happened, offended that Mary would suspect differently.
Did Mary know more about the connection in London than Dina had previously believed?
“She was with us, but she returned for her bonnet,” David said. “We’ve been waiting for her to return.”
They had been alone for some time, nearly half an hour from the time Miss Johansson had left them.
She felt a pit in her stomach for the impropriety of it and moved away from David, nearer to Mary, as though that would make any difference at all.
She could feel Mrs. Macarthur’s hard eyes following her but did not look in her direction.
“Where is Mr. Littlefield?” Mr. Jennings asked, voicing the detail that no one had said out loud. The group went quiet, several of them glancing at David and then away. Dina did not look away, however, and saw the tightening in David’s jaw.
“Mr. Littlefield went that direction several minutes ago,” Mrs. Macarthur said, pointing toward the back of the abbey. “He said he wanted to find a keepsake.”
A grown man wanted a keepsake from a ruined abbey?
“What of Fiona?” David asked in a take-charge voice. “Has anyone seen her?”
“I saw her return for the bonnet while I was smoking my pipe. She went back the direction she’d come.
” He tapped the front pocket of his coat, which bulged with the assumed pipe and drawstring pouch of tobacco many men carried thusly.
He waved toward the hill that David and Dina had just descended to indicate her direction, opposite Mr. Littlefield’s course.
“Perhaps she took the wrong trail in pursuit of us.” David began walking back toward the hill. Dina wanted to follow him but stayed in her place. He began calling out Fiona’s name every few feet as he moved further from the group.
“I shall go after Mr. Littlefield and let him know we are ready to begin the journey back to the house,” Mr. Jennings said in a casual voice, taking the direction Mrs. Macarthur had pointed.
Over his shoulder he added, “Dewberry, search the interior of the abbey, will you? Ladies, please keep to the carriages so that we do not lose anyone else.” He grinned to soften the concern Dina saw in his expression.
Mary wrung her hands but put on a brave smile.
She turned to Dina and spoke with exaggerated interest. “What did you think of the druid circle?”
Dina picked up the lead rope that Mary had thrown and explained the stones to her and Mrs. Macarthur, perhaps exaggerating their grandness so as to extend the distraction.
It was perhaps three minutes before the sound of voices caused all of them to turn toward David, who had found Fiona.
She had his arm and smiled as she waved at the waiting women, her bonnet in her hand rather than on her head.
Mrs. Macarthur let out an audible sigh of relief.
“I am so sorry to have worried you all,” Miss Johansson said brightly when she reached them. “I’ve always had a terrible sense of direction, and I’m afraid I followed the wrong path quite a ways before realizing my mistake.”
Mrs. Macarthur hurried forward and kissed Miss Johansson on both cheeks. “We are just so relieved that you are all right,” she said sincerely before looking at David. “This is why women are not to be unaccompanied, David. You should not have sent her back for her bonnet alone.”
“I see that now,” David said tightly with a nod of acknowledgment. “I shan’t let her out of my sight again, I can assure you.”
Dina saw the glare within the glance he sent to Fiona at his arm, which alerted her to the overall tension of his posture. Anger was only reasonable if he doubted Miss Johansson’s story of having been lost. Dina looked closely at his face—did he suspect something?
He would not meet Dina’s eye.
“Now to find Mr. Littlefield,” Mary said, turning toward the place Mr. Jennings had disappeared into the trees.
“Oh, is Mr. Littlefield also wandering too far?” Miss Johansson asked with wide innocent eyes, her arm still hooked through David’s.
Dina searched her face for insincerity but found no guile there. If not for having seen them disappearing into the woods together on Saturday, would Dina suspect anything other than Mr. Littlefield searching for a keepsake and Miss Johansson finding the wrong path?
“Company ho!”
The group turned together toward the east side of the abbey where Mr. Littlefield strode toward them, one hand outstretched. “I found the most remarkable stone, see here.”
He reached the group and showed them what, to Dina, looked like a rather unremarkable rock.
A dozen just like it were scattered in the weeds at their feet.
“See how the crystals catch the light just so?” He turned the stone, glittering the crystals that were not that stunning.
Dina glanced at David, who still did not meet her eye, then Mary, who was looking among the group with concern and confusion.
Miss Johansson and Mrs. Macarthur fawned over the rock that Dina suspected Mr. Littlefield had picked up to provide himself an alibi.
“We had best go for the men who went looking for Mr. Littlefield,” Dina said, eager for some distance from what was feeling like parts in a play. “I shall find Mr. Dewberry.”
“I shall find Mr. Jennings,” David added and moved that direction without delay.
Mr. Dewberry was nearly to the crumbling doorway of the abbey when Dina encountered him and gave him the news that both wanderers had been found.
“Thank goodness,” he said, putting a hand to his chest. “I had not been looking forward to the bushwhacking that would certainly have been the next phase of searching.” He put out his arm, and Dina took it without any of the hesitation she’d shown when David had been the one offering escort.
When she touched Mr. Dewberry’s arm, she felt none of the energy that had shot through her when David had steadied her near the druid circle.
But of course, she wouldn’t. David was the only man who had ever made her feel so physically aware.
Mr. Jennings and David were coming toward them by the time they reached the group.
Mr. Littlefield’s stone had been adequately praised and was now out of view, and Mrs. Macarthur was talking about her brother who’d had an extensive rock collection when he was younger.
To Dina it sounded like a forced and tinny justification for a situation that did not look or feel right to any of them.
“Well, shall we configure the carriages, then?” Miss Johansson said in that bright voice Dina no longer trusted.
“Same carriages,” David said in a sharp enough tone that no one questioned it. He nodded to the group and took Miss Johansson’s hand in order to lead her to the carriage. She had to take quick steps in order to keep pace with him.
“Goodness, David,” she said. “Must you be so rough?”
He leaned in with his reply so that no one could hear what he said to her.
“Excellent,” Mr. Jennings said, sharing a quick look with Mary, who was not schooling her concerned expression as well as a hostess should. “Shall we be off, then?”
A murmur of agreement moved through the group as they stepped into their assigned carriages.
Dina’s carriage had only just begun to move when Mr. Dewberry launched into a rousing retelling of the time he was relegated to play Ophelia in a school production of Hamlet.