Chapter 14 #3
The Duke of Aragon stormed to his feet. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Your Grace, my apologies,” the tall footman sounded ready to cry. “He shoved past and—”
With a quiet gesture of the hand, the Duke and Duchess eased the young man’s worries and excused the servant.
The footman backed hastily out and drew the doors closed behind them like he feared his employers would rescind their magnanimity.
Such quiet and calm greeted Kerr that, for a moment, he thought he had worked himself into a panic for nothing based on Abington’s foolish words alone. He prayed he was making an utter arse of himself, rather than facing the alternative.
Lady Abington found her voice. “Lord Kerr, if you would, we are—?”
“No.”
The McQuoid matriarch shook her head in bemusement, with the detached grace of a noblewoman who had never heard the word ‘no’.
His pulse thudded against his ribs. “Where is she?”
His question was met with continued silence. The Duke and Duchess of Aragon sat at the head of the ducal satinwood partner’s desk, while more than a dozen McQuoids and Smiths and their respective spouses stared back at him. Hell, even Culross, at his wife’s side, narrowed his eyes on Kerr.
They could all hang.
“Andromena?” More blank stares. Good God, what was wrong with them? “The youngest Miss Smith?”
Culross’s brows shot up. He looked at his wife.
“We do not have time for this.” The Duke of Hartwell ordered Mr. Smith, Andromena’s older brother, and Captain Arran McQuoid around like servants. “Show him out.”
The hell they would.
Hartwell’s wife saved her husband and his two trick monkeys from the beating of all beatings.
“Stop it, my love,” she said.
“Lord Kerr?”
Half-crazed, he looked at Andromena’s elder sister, Lady Linnie Tremaine.
The terror in her eyes sucked the air from him.
“Do you know any information about my sister—?” she begged.
Captain Tremaine settled a hand at his wife’s thickening waist. “How would he, Linnie?”
Lady Tremaine ignored him. “I asked you a question, Lord Kerr.”
Pain stabbed at his heart.
Her resolve was so much Andromena’s; pain scissored at his chest.
From his place by the hearth, next to the Duchess of Hartwell, the Duke of Hartwell made the mistake of inserting his unwanted opinion. “We agreed family only.”
Kerr ground his teeth. This is what they’d squabble over?
“What did you fools do?” he hissed. I did this. “You lost her? Again.”
I am to blame.
Not that Kerr deserved it, but Culross spoke to Kerr’s right to be present.
“Lord and Lady Abington have entrusted Kerr with complete access to their residence: their family, their staff, their children, their grandchildren. Will you question their judgment and his honor? We have enough to worry about?”
Kerr clamped his fingers onto Culross’s arm, digging in hard. He needed confirmation. “She’s gone?” His voice shook.
Culross nodded.
Kerr let go of his friend’s arm and lost his fragile anchor. A fresh rush of dread twisted inside him.
Lady Linnie Tremaine lifted her tear-filled gaze. “Several of the children were unable to sleep. They were sitting at the window seat and caught Andromena leaving through the back gate.”
“We aren’t saying anything to Aunt Leslie, as she will worry too much,” someone explained.
A loud humming filled his ears.
Hang, Aunt Leslie—Andromena’s mother.
Kerr couldn’t make sense of what was being said or what was happening. Not completely. The chit could be anywhere. The ducal townhouse and properties were decades deep.
He scraped an unsteady hand through his hair.
Think, man. Think.
“Lord Archdale is sailing in the morn, is he not?” Lady Cassia put forward an idea—a bad one. “I sneaked off once, and we know Andromena has run off before. Perhaps she also wants to travel?”
The room of lackwits nodded and murmured.
“She doesn’t,” Kerr snapped.
“How would you know?” Captain Arran McQuoid called over.
“How do you not know she does?” Kerr taunted.
“I’m her brother.”
“The same brother who’s lost her more than once.”
And you—you are the one who drove her away. He silenced that voice. He would spend his life making it up to her.
“She wouldn’t board a ship,” Kerr said. “She…”
He went motionless.
“…it looked like a fairytale castle, draped in thick ivy and blossoming roses… There was this one tree beside Bishop’s Pond. Every day, and sometimes night, I would climb its big branches and draw…”
“Kerr?”
…I know where she is…
One of the stupider-than-rocks cousins pulled Kerr back to the conversation. “She’s a romantic and a McQuoid. Elopement makes the most sense.”
A muscle twitched in Kerr’s cheek. “The hell it does.”
“How do you know that, Lord Kerr?” Lady Tremaine asked softly.
Kerr’s jaw worked. “Because if she were eloping with anyone, it would be me.”
Startled gasps, happy ones, knowing ones went up.
Lady Culross cried out, victorious. “I told everyone!”
“Kerr,” Culross called when Kerr reached the door handle. “Do you know where she is?”
“I have an idea.”
On that, Kerr set off to drag the troublesome minx back, vowing to keep her at his side—and never let go.