Chapter 17
Alexandra was sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark.
Not fully dark. The lamp on the nightstand was on, casting a warm circle of light that reached the rumpled duvet and the book she'd been trying to read and the glass of water she hadn't touched.
But the room beyond the lamp's reach was in shadow, and the shadows felt appropriate, and she hadn't bothered to turn on the overhead light because she didn't want to see the room clearly.
She didn't want to see Erin's side of the bed, still made from this morning, the pillow undented.
She didn't want to see the wardrobe where Erin's clothes hung beside hers, or the framed photograph on the chest of drawers: the two of them on their wedding day, Alexandra in a cream silk wedding dress and Erin in a suit, both of them laughing at something Vic had said from somewhere off-camera.
The photograph had been taken a lifetime ago and the women in it looked young and certain and invulnerable, and Alexandra could not bear to look at them tonight.
She was in her nightdress. She'd brushed her teeth.
She'd washed her face. She'd done all the mechanical, automatic things that constituted preparing for bed, and now she was sitting on the edge of it and she could not bring herself to lie down because lying down meant giving up the day, and giving up the day meant accepting that another twenty-four hours had passed without Florence.
Six days. Six days since the bridle path.
Six days since the world had cracked open and swallowed her daughter whole.
And today had been the worst of them: worse than the first day's shock, worse than the television broadcast's performance, worse than Cecilia's gaslit smile.
Today she had let herself hope, and hope had been taken from her in the space of a phone call, and the absence of it was heavier than the fear had ever been.
Erin hadn't come home.
That was the thing that kept circling, the thought she couldn't outrun no matter how many times she tried to redirect it.
Erin hadn't come home and she hadn't called and the last thing she'd said was I have to go in a voice that sounded like a door closing.
She was at the command post, or at Latimer Hall, or in a car somewhere between the two, doing what she did best: investigating, pursuing, driving forward with the relentless focus that had made her brilliant at her job and that was now, slowly and terribly, building a wall between them.
The same quality that Alexandra had loved in her for so long, the fierce, unbreakable determination, was now the thing that was keeping her away, and the irony of it was so painful that Alexandra couldn't think about it without her eyes burning.
She picked up the glass of water. Drank. Set it down. The water tasted of nothing and the glass was cold and the act of drinking was mechanical, another automatic thing that her body did while her mind circled the same dark orbit it had been circling all day.
The castle was quiet around her, the thick stone walls absorbing sound the way they absorbed heat, holding the silence the way they held the cold.
She could hear the wind outside, pressing against the windows in soft gusts that carried the scent of rain.
Somewhere below her, the security team would be awake.
The control room would be staffed. The machine of the search would be running, because it never stopped, because Erin wouldn't let it stop.
She'd put the children to bed an hour ago.
Frank had been subdued. Not his usual riot of energy and resistance, but a quiet, compliant boy who'd cleaned his teeth without being asked and climbed into bed without demanding another chapter of his book.
He'd looked at her with big blue eyes and said, "Mummy Erin's going to find Flo.
She promised." And Alexandra had nodded and kissed his forehead and said, "She did promise," and the certainty in Frank's voice had been more painful than doubt because it was the certainty of a child who believed that promises could not be broken, and Alexandra no longer had that luxury.
Matilda had wanted to talk. Not about Florence.
About the stars, about whether they moved or stayed still, about whether an astronaut could wave to someone on Earth.
The questions had seemed random until the pattern emerged: Matilda was asking, in her oblique way, whether someone who was far away could still be connected to the people who loved them.
"Yes," Alexandra had said, her voice steady, her heart fracturing.
"The stars don't move. They're always there. Even when you can't see them."
A knock at the door. Not Erin's knock. Erin didn't knock, she opened doors with the assumption that she belonged on whatever side she was heading toward. This was a formal knock. Two raps, evenly spaced.
"Come in."
Julia. She was dressed, which meant she hadn't been to bed. Her dark hair was pulled back and her brown eyes were sharp and her face carried the alert composure of a woman who was about to deliver news.
"The control room. They want you downstairs."
Alexandra's heart lurched. Her hands gripped the edge of the mattress. "Is it—"
"They have a new lead. Another location. Erin's asking for you."
Erin's asking for you. Three words that should have been ordinary and that were, tonight, extraordinary.
Because Erin had not asked for her once since the phone call this morning.
Erin had shut her out, retreated into the operational mode that excluded softness and need and wives who wanted to hold her. And now she was asking.
Alexandra stood. She pulled a cashmere jumper over her nightdress and stepped into shoes and followed Julia down the corridor.
The castle was quiet at this hour, ten forty-five, the staff retired, the lights dimmed to the amber glow that the night security preferred.
Their footsteps echoed softly on the stone floor.
They passed the children's room where Frank and Matilda were sleeping, their door open a crack, the nightlight casting a faint blue wash across the carpet.
Alexandra paused for a fraction of a second, long enough to hear breathing, two sets, slow and even and safe, and moved on.
Past the long gallery where the ancestors watched from their gilt frames with the indifference of people who had survived plagues and wars and would survive this too.
Her father's portrait was here: George, in his naval uniform, looking out with the warm, slightly awkward expression of a man who had never been entirely comfortable with the formality of portraiture.
She'd loved that painting as a child. She'd stand in front of it and talk to him, telling him about her day, and he'd look back at her with those kind blue eyes and she'd feel, for a moment, that the world made sense.
She didn't stop tonight. She couldn't afford to be the girl who talked to paintings.
She had to be the Queen who walked into control rooms.
Down the staircase with its worn stone treads and the iron banister that was always cold under her palm.
The control room was different. Helena's console was dark and empty, stripped of her files, her tablet gone, her chair pushed back.
In her place was a woman Alexandra hadn't met: mid-fifties, short grey hair, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, a face that radiated the no-nonsense competence of someone who had been doing this work for decades.
Deputy Director Mills. She looked up when Alexandra entered and gave a nod that was respectful without being deferential, the nod of a professional acknowledging a sovereign while maintaining her own authority.
Erin was at the central console. She'd changed clothes, a clean jumper, dark trousers, and her hair was loose around her shoulders instead of pulled back, and there was something in her face that hadn't been there this morning.
Not hope. Not quite. But the absence of the terrible blankness that had been there since the phone call.
She looked at Alexandra when she entered, and their eyes met, and the look held.
Too complicated for words. Too raw. But somewhere in it, an apology.
"Alex." Erin's voice was rough. "We've found another location."
"Tell me."
Erin turned to the main screen, where a satellite image showed a country estate larger and more imposing than Latimer Hall.
"The Duke of Ashworth's estate. Twenty miles from Latimer's property.
The van that moved Florence from Latimer's house was tracked through ANPR cameras to this location.
Ashworth is Arthur's cousin. They've been close their entire lives.
Ashworth's estate has thirty rooms, a stable block, a coach house, a gatehouse, and a summer house on the far grounds. "
Alexandra looked at the image. Another country house.
Another Georgian facade. Another beautiful, privileged building hiding something terrible behind its stone walls.
Parkland and trees and a long gravel drive and the tidy geometry of formal gardens, the kind of place that opened to the public on summer weekends and served cream teas in the orangery.
The last time she'd looked at a screen like this, she'd watched Erin drive into the dark and come back empty-handed, and the memory of that phone call, She's not here, was so sharp that her body flinched.
"The Duke of Ashworth," Mills said from her console.
"Edward Ashworth. Seventy-three. Arthur's first cousin on his mother's side.
Arthur spent a lot of time with him as a child.
The estate has been in the family since the eighteenth century.
It's remote, well-staffed, and the grounds extend to over two hundred acres. "
"How do you know she's there?"