Chapter 28
“Lord Ramsbury, please. You are not taking me to the manor. Please, turn us around.”
Selina had known it within minutes of being on the back of the horse. She had hoped she was wrong and that the relentless rain was merely distorting the landscape, but passing the gates and ending up on the country roads had confirmed it.
At least fifty times now, she had begged Lord Ramsbury to return her to Ashbrook. At least fifty times, he had ignored her.
“Please, just take me back,” she urged. “I won’t say a word of what you have done if you just take me back.”
His arm tightened around her waist, squeezing until her lungs struggled to expand.
“You are going to where you should be,” he finally spoke, his voice eerily soft and much too close to her ear. “I knew you felt the same way when I saw you walking alone. It will all be over soon, my dear. I promise.”
“Lord Ramsbury, please…” Tears pricked her eyes. “I do not want to go anywhere with you.”
He made a shushing sound. “Quiet, my darling. I should hate to have to silence you in a different way.”
Fear clamped her lips shut, for if the squeeze of his arm could make her feel like she was suffocating, what could he do if he was actively trying to harm her?
All she could do was stare through the veil of the rain and pray with all of her heart that someone at the manor would notice her absence. Even then, would they know it was the Marquess who took her?
They will think I have run away, as I planned to do.
She cursed herself for not going directly to Philip instead and confronting him about what she had heard. Because of that one mistake, she feared she might have just ruined her life forever, for whatever Lord Ramsbury had planned, it could not be good.
It wasn’t long before the housekeeper dragged a sleepy, bedraggled Mary out to the entrance hall. She wore a nightdress and a housecoat, her eyes bloodshot as if she had been imbibing.
“Are you really going to throw me out in the dark and cold?” Mary asked sourly.
It did not seem that the housekeeper had informed her of why she had been awoken at such an hour.
“What did you do?” Philip couldn’t contain the ire in his voice.
Mary frowned. “What?”
“What did you do to Selina? What have you said to her?”
The maid’s eyes flickered. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Philip knew guilt when he saw it. His former lover wasn’t innocent. Something devious lurked behind her brown eyes, which couldn’t quite look at him.
“I can’t find her, and I have reason to suspect you might have something to do with it,” he shot back.
His grandmother rose shakily from the chaise to put a calming hand on his arm. It would not stop him from throwing Mary out in the dark and cold if she had done something to deserve it.
“I did nothing but tell her the truth,” Mary said, with a defiant tilt of her chin.
“She deserved to know that you are just marrying her out of spite, that you mean to leave her childless, that you will grow bored of her, as you have grown bored of every other woman. What lady would tie herself to that? I gave her a choice, and it would appear she has made it if she can’t be found here. ”
Philip bristled with rage, his mind flooded with images of Selina out there in the driving rain, cold and shivering, stumbling blindly, putting herself in danger.
“Did you see her leave?” he asked, his voice ice-cold.
Mary sniffed. “Perhaps I did.”
“Did. You. See. Her. Leave?” Philip took a step toward her, his fists clenched.
The maid started. “I… Well, yes, I saw her leave. She needed some fresh air. She is probably sheltering somewhere in the gardens, entirely unharmed.”
“She had better be,” Philip spat.
He whirled around and headed for the door, but not before throwing back one parting warning. “Don’t you think about fleeing. I want you to stay here until she is found, and if she is not found, I suggest you start talking about anything you have left out.”
If Mary was attempting to buy Selina time, or to buy herself time, she would not succeed. Philip would not rest until Selina was at his side again, hearing his side of the truth.
There were no gentlemen left in their beds. All had been rudely awoken and summoned out into the rain to search for the missing bride. Selina’s brother, Reuben, had set himself to the task without complaint, while her father had been rather more reluctant.
“If this is a ruse, Ashbrook, I will not be fooled,” the older man had said, before donning his greatcoat and heading out into the downpour.
Lizzy and Melody had been awoken by the ruckus, and once they had heard what was going on, they had tried to insist on joining the search. Philip, however, had relegated them to the drawing room, where they were to wait for news.
“If you know anything and you think you are being loyal by saying nothing, I would urge you to reconsider,” Philip had told them before departing to join the search party.
However, the two young ladies had looked genuinely stricken upon hearing that Selina was missing.
Stricken that she was gone and stricken that they had known nothing about her absence.
It worried Philip, for in the back of his mind, he had hoped that they at least would have an idea of where she was.
Would she really leave without telling her best friends where she was going?
The answer disturbed him more than he cared to admit. Having seen how close the three women were, the same response kept echoing in his head: No. No, she wouldn’t.
Soaked to the bone and running out of patience and hope, Philip trudged back to the manor from the lake with a dimming lantern in his hand.
He had searched the gardens and the woodland. He had asked at the stables if Selina had taken a horse or a carriage. He had checked the boathouse, the outbuildings, the pavilion, every possible place of shelter that he could think of.
To no avail.
Judging by the somewhat funereal return of the other gentlemen, moving slowly back to the manor with lanterns and dark coats, they too had had no success.
“Any luck?” Lizzy appeared at the open terrace door, her face pale.
While the gentlemen had been searching, the waiting party of two had grown to five: Lizzy, Melody, the Duchess of Barlow, his grandmother… and Mary. The maid looked rather uncomfortable, twisting her body away from his questioning eyes.
“She is nowhere,” Philip replied, then glanced back at the other gentlemen. “Any sign of her?”
The gentlemen grumbled their gloomy responses.
“What have you done to her, eh?” John stepped forward, smearing water from his eyes. “My daughter would not simply abandon her family in the middle of the night. So, where is she? Why have you got us performing this search, when I have no doubt you already know her whereabouts?”
Philip glowered at the man. “It is no performance, Barlow. She is missing, and I have no notion of where she is.”
“Was this the plan all along? Pretend to want to marry her, then do away with her before the wedding?” John snapped back, his hand reaching for something beneath his coat.
A pistol gleamed slickly, the barrel pointed at Philip.
“Would you put that away, you old fool!” Philip barked as the other gentlemen backed away. “I have done nothing to your daughter! I want to marry her. I adore her more than I can express in words. So, if you want to shoot me, just shoot me, but it will help nothing whatsoever!”
John wavered, and Reuben stepped in, putting himself between the barrel of the pistol and Philip. “I believe him, Father. I do not think he has any part in this.”
“Get out of the way!” John snarled.
“No, Father, I won’t.” Reuben sighed. “If Ashbrook was responsible for my sister’s disappearance, he would not have woken everyone. He would have waited until morning.”
The pistol lowered slightly.
“However, I must ask this,” Reuben continued, his gaze skimming across the search party. “Where is Lord Ramsbury? I would have thought he would be one of the first to help.”
Philip froze. He, too, looked across the gathered gentlemen, who were all, in turn, looking at one another to see if it was true.
Lord Ramsbury was not among them.
“He took a horse,” the stablemaster called from the rear of the group. “Hours ago. Said he was heading home.”
“Heading home?” Philip’s brow furrowed. “Did he inform anyone of this?”
Did Selina go with him?
He shook off the thought. It made no sense for her to run away with her ex-fiancé, whom she claimed was more or less a stranger to her.
The reply of the congregation seemed to suggest it was as much a surprise to them as it was to Philip.
“I saw him,” a quiet voice admitted from behind.
Philip turned to find Mary now standing in the terrace doorway, her face still ashen, her eyes ringed with red as if she had been crying. Gone was the defiance and fury of earlier.
“I saw him riding in the same direction that Lady Selina went earlier this evening,” she added, her gaze dropping to the floor. “I didn’t mean to cause such trouble, Your Grace. I just… I just wanted you to myself. And when the Marquess came to me and offered to help me, I—”
Philip grabbed her roughly by the arm. “You orchestrated this? What has he done to her?”
“I don’t know,” she wheezed. “He wanted her alone. I assumed it was to talk to her, to persuade her to reconsider. I meant it when I said I had grown to like Lady Selina. I thought… I thought she might be convinced and that she would return to the manor to tell you the wedding would not be going ahead, but now… I swear, I don’t know what he has done to her. I was sure she would return.”
An infernal fury burned in Philip’s veins, so hot that Mary flinched at his touch as if his hand scorched her.
He should have known that no gentleman could be so cavalier about losing a bride, particularly one as remarkable as Selina. He should have known that the niceties and pleasantries were false, but he had been out of society for so long that he had not seen the deception.
“You will stay here until she is found,” he growled. “And you had better hope he has not harmed a single hair on her head, or I will have to remember what we did to traitors during war.”
Mary’s lower lip trembled, and as Philip released her, she crumpled to her knees, her head in her hands, and wailed loudly. For herself and her stupidity, no doubt.
“I need my horse!” Philip barked at the stablemaster.
Lord Ramsbury already had a considerable head start, but he would not get away with taking what belonged to Philip.
I am coming for you, you bastard. If you have so much as touched my bride, I will show you how a soldier deals with the enemy.