Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“Rachel is missing?” Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, thin and strained. “She can’t be missing. She was preparing for her wedding this morning. I saw her.”
Alice stared at her father. The word gone hung between them like a blade, and she could feel its edge against her skin.
Her father dragged a hand down his face. “I know what I saw, Alice. She asked for a moment alone in her chamber before we departed. I granted it. When the carriage was brought around, she was not in her room. Not in the house. Not anywhere I could find her.”
“Did you check the garden? The glasshouse? She used to sit there when she was—”
“Everywhere,” he cut her off sharply. “The footmen have searched the grounds. The maids have turned her chambers inside out. There is no sign of her.”
The cobblestones beneath Alice’s feet seemed to shift. She pressed a palm against her chest, feeling her heart race underneath it. Rachel would not run. Not without reason. Not without telling her.
Unless she had a reason Alice could not begin to imagine.
“You need to send someone to find her,” Alice said, the words tumbling out faster than she could arrange them. “She could have gotten hurt! Perhaps she was on her way to the wedding. Perhaps… If she took—”
“She took nothing,” her father said. “Her wedding dress is still laid out on the bed. Her jewel case is untouched.”
The Duke of Bearmoor had been silent throughout this exchange, a silence that carried its own distinct temperature. Alice could feel it like a change in the air, the quality of stillness that preceded lightning.
“Your daughter,” he said coldly, “has publicly humiliated me. This requires immediate repair.”
“Your Grace, I understand your distress…”
“No.” The single syllable landed with the weight of a closing door. “You do not understand. I will not be made a fool of twice by this family.”
The Duke turned. His gaze, when it settled on Alice, carried an intensity that made the service yard contract around her. She was acutely aware of the travel bag still clutched in her hand, the absurdity of standing in her father’s yard with her escape plotted and ruined in the span of minutes.
“You will be my bride,” he declared.
The world stopped. Not figuratively. Alice felt the actual cessation of sound, of breath, of the ordinary operations of thought.
The Duke of Bearmoor had just proposed marriage to her with all the romantic flourish of a man ordering a cut of meat.
“I…” She cleared her throat. “Your Grace, you cannot possibly…”
“I can,” he said. “And I will. I obtained one special license. I can obtain another. I require a bride. The substitution is… efficient.”
Efficient. The word lodged in Alice’s chest like something cold and hard.
“Lord Peltbury.” The Duke did not look at her father as he spoke. His eyes remained fixed on her, as though she were a document he was reading for inconsistencies. “You will not object. Your family’s standing cannot withstand another scandal today.”
Her father opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.
The Duke ignored it and continued speaking as though her father were a mere portrait. “Lady Alice will accompany me to Bearmoor House. Today. The wedding will take place within the week.”
“That… that is improper,” Lord Peltbury stammered out, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head.
The Duke gave him a cursory glance. “Lord Peltbury.” His voice was cold. “If you do not mind my directness, I have lost one bride already. I am not willing to lose a second. Lady Alice will accompany me so that I can be certain that this wedding will take place.”
“I will not go.” The words left Alice’s mouth before she could recall them. She heard them with the distant surprise of a woman listening to someone else speak. “Not until we find Rachel. She is my sister. She would not disappear without cause.”
The Duke’s expression did not change, but something shifted behind his eyes—a recalculation, as though she had introduced a variable he had not accounted for.
“Your sister is no longer my concern,” he said. “She made her choice. I am making mine.”
“She is missing.” Alice took a step toward him, her travel bag forgotten at her feet. “A woman does not vanish from her own wedding without reason. Something has happened to her. We must find her.”
“Alice.” Her father’s voice carried a warning she had heard all her life, the tone that preceded reminders of her place, her duty, her unfortunate tendency to speak when silence was preferable.
“Mind your tone. His Grace has more pressing concerns than your sister’s whereabouts.
And it is my responsibility to find Rachel, not yours. ”
“Then find her.” Alice did not turn to look at her father. Her eyes remained on the Duke’s face, on the controlled set of his jaw, the dark intensity of his gaze. “Find my sister. Ensure she is safe. And then… then we may discuss whatever arrangement you believe is necessary.”
The Duke studied her. The silence stretched between them, thin and taut as wire. Alice could hear the distant clatter of the kitchen, the soft whicker of the carriage horses at the front of the house, the sound of her own pulse in her ears.
“You are making demands.” His lips twitched, as though the thought amused him.
“I am stating conditions,” Alice countered. The steadiness in her voice surprised her. “I will accompany you to Bearmoor House. I will wed you. But you need to help my father search for Rachel. She is family. She matters.”
For a long moment, the Duke said nothing. Alice watched his face, the subtle play of calculation behind those dark eyes, the way his jaw worked once, twice.
He closed his eyes, drew in a breath, then released it.
“Fine.” The word emerged clipped and final. “I will instruct my men to assist in the search. Satisfied?”
It was not a question designed to receive an answer. Alice nodded anyway.
The Duke walked to his driver, who had maintained his position beside the carriage with the rigid attentiveness of a man determined to witness nothing. “Bearmoor House. Make sure they both get inside the house and don’t wander away.”
The driver nodded. The Duke opened the carriage door.
Freddie, who had been watching the proceedings from inside the carriage with the fascination of a naturalist observing an unusual species, leaned forward. “Aren’t you coming, Papa?”
“Not yet.” The Duke’s voice softened imperceptibly when he addressed his son.
A shift so subtle Alice might have missed it if she had not been watching his face with the desperate attention of a woman mapping unfamiliar terrain.
“I must inform the guests that there will be no wedding today. And I must collect your brother.”
Freddie considered this with the gravity of a child weighing a serious proposition. “Will you bring cakes?”
The Duke’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Do you honestly believe that you have earned it through your behavior today?”
The boy’s lower lip trembled slightly. For a second, Alice thought she saw the Duke’s eyes soften. However, it did not last.
“Once you learn manners, my boy, you will earn a reward.”
Alice climbed into the carriage. The interior smelled of leather and cedar and the faint trace of a child’s muddy energy. Freddie shifted to make room for her.
The Duke closed the door. Through the window, Alice caught one final glimpse of his face: set, controlled, and carrying something she could not name.
The carriage lurched into motion. The service yard fell away behind them, and with it, the life she had planned to abandon.
Before long, they had arrived at Bearmoor House. Alice was not surprised in the least when Freddie jumped out of the carriage. She followed him silently into the foyer.
Freddie glanced at her with the assessing look of a child deciding whether an adult was worth taking seriously. “Are you still going to run away?”
“I wasn’t…”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t need to lie to me.”
Alice opened her mouth, a retort ready on her lips, but before she could speak, another young boy entered the foyer.
He was Freddie’s twin brother. Alice had heard his name was Charles.
He was thinner than his brother, neater in his bearing, with the same brown hair but much neater than his brother’s.
His eyes found Freddie immediately, and something in his face loosened, a tension Alice recognized from years of watching for her own sister across crowded rooms.
“Freddie!” The name emerged in half-relief, half-reproach. Charles crossed the foyer in quick strides and caught his brother’s arm. “You disappeared. I thought…” He stopped, glanced at Alice, and the sentence died unfinished.
“I was fine, Charlie,” Freddie said, with the breezy nonchalance of a child who had never properly worried about anything in his life. “I followed the lady. Papa’s marrying her now instead.”
The words landed in the foyer with the subtlety of a dropped tray. Alice watched understanding dawn across Charlie’s face in slow, careful increments: confusion giving way to assessment, assessment to a kind of wary curiosity.
He turned to her. His gaze was direct and measuring, devoid of Freddie’s easy enthusiasm but also free of suspicion. He looked at her the way a naturalist might study an unfamiliar plant: with patience and attention, withholding judgment until the evidence had been properly considered.
“Lady Alice Haraway,” Alice said, bobbing a curtsy that felt absurdly formal under the circumstances but which her upbringing refused to abandon. “It is a pleasure to meet you properly, Lord Charles.”
“Charlie,” he corrected. His voice was softer than his brother’s, pitched lower, each word chosen with evident care. “And the pleasure is mine, My Lady.”
The politeness was impeccable, delivered far too formally for a child his age. Alice found it rather endearing, though.