Chapter Twenty-Four
Everyone had gathered in the main room, talking over each other.
I grabbed the nearest free chair and stepped up on it so I could see everyone at once.
“Okay. Listen. We need to be practical. We split into teams. No one wanders off alone. If you find anything, or see anything, you come straight back to the terrace.”
Izzy stood up with her arms crossed, coffee in hand, looking at me like she’d been waiting for someone to take charge.
Lucas raised a hand. “What can I do?”
“You,” I said, pointing, “are with Sophie. You take the front gardens and carpark and driveway.”
He perked up, then immediately tripped over a chair leg. Sophie grabbed his arm before he face-planted into a platter of croissants.
Izzy took a sip of coffee. “That’s the spirit. Start the search with a concussion.”
Before I could go on, Izzy lifted her chin. “Put me with them. If a car’s gone or someone’s fiddled with the locks, I’ll notice it faster than these two…” she gestured vaguely at Lucas and Sophie.
“Fine,” I said. “Izzy, go.”
She gave me a quick, efficient nod, already halfway to the door, already in get-it-done mode.
I pointed at one of the security staff. “You take two people and sweep the property border and side access roads.”
“Noah, you and I will check the vineyards and walking paths behind the guest wing.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw him nod, jaw tight. He was watching James.
Everyone was watching James.
He stood in the middle of the room like someone had unplugged him. His eyes were unfocused, his phone limp in his hand like he’d forgotten what it did.
“James,” I said gently. “You should come with us.”
He blinked, like he was coming back from somewhere very far away. “Right. Yes. Of course. I should help. I need to help.”
Behind him, Margaret was spiralling while her husband tried to hold on to her elbow.
“Caroline would never do this to me,” she cried. “To us. To our family. Do you think she has been taken? Do you think she fell? Do you think she was pushed?”
Lady Victoria Beaumont regarded her daughter with the calm of someone observing an irritating stage performance.
“Margaret, lower your voice.”
“Lower my voice?” Margaret shrieked. “My daughter is missing, and you are concerned about my volume?”
“These young people are the only ones behaving sensibly,” Lady Victoria replied. “Perhaps take notes.”
I jumped down from the chair. “Right. Staff, please stay in common spaces, keep an eye on the doors, and if Caroline returns on her own, no one crowds her or asks questions. You come and get me or Noah.”
Noah moved to James’s side, his clapped James’s shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “We will start with the back path. She likes the view there.”
James gave a jerky nod.
We stepped out into the pale morning light, the air cool and damp from the ocean breeze that rolled in across the vines. My heels clicked on the flagstones as we crossed the terrace. Behind us, the estate broke into scattered motion, like someone had knocked over a very expensive anthill.
Lucas jogged out across the lawn at full speed, one arm in the air.
“Caroline?” he shouted. “If you can hear me, give us a sign.”
Sophie caught up to him, tugging at his sleeve. “Lucas, can you not shout? You’re… startling things.” She glanced up at the trees as if expecting something to fall out of them.
Izzy strode past them carrying a walkie-talkie she had absolutely commandeered from security.
“Lucas,” she said, not even looking at him, “if Caroline was hiding from anything, it would be that.”
She gestured vaguely at his entire existence.
We left them behind and followed the stone path that led around the back of the house, skirting the guest wing. Noah walked on my left, James on my right, shoulders hunched in on themselves.
For a few moments, none of us spoke. The only sound was the crunch of gravel and the distant hum of staff radios.
“James,” I said gently, “start from last night. Tell me what happened.”
He drew in a tight breath and let it out slowly, his whole posture sagging with the weight of it.
“It started with Ethan,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That awful speech. It seems he’d… never really gotten over her.”
I blinked. “They dated?”
“It was years ago. Uni stuff. Old history. She told me everything when we first got together.” He shook his head. “But hearing Ethan say it like it was still real… like he’d just been waiting…” His voice faltered.
“I shouldn’t have let it get to me,” he said. “But I did.”
He paced a slow line in front of me, hands on his hips, eyes unfocused.
“I felt blindsided. I went straight to her. Asked if she’d known he still felt that way.” He winced. “She said no. She said she hadn’t even spoken to him one-on-one since our engagement.”
He swallowed hard.
“And instead of believing her, I…” He broke off, jaw clenching. “I asked if there was anything left between them. Anything unresolved. Anything she wasn’t telling me.”
I winced for him.
“She was furious,” he said. “She said she’d been honest with me from the start. That she told me about their Uni relationship precisely so it wouldn’t turn into this.”
He let out a rough exhale.
“And then it all got out of control. We dredged up everything. The guest list. Her mum. My workload. Her stress. My travel. It was like every unspoken worry we’d been holding onto just… erupted.”
His eyes lifted to mine, raw and unguarded.
“She said I wasn’t seeing her. Not really seeing her.” He turned away. “And I told her she was overreacting.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
It was astonishing what some men could overlook when someone was standing right in front of them spelling it out.
He pressed a hand to his face.
“I heard it the moment I said it. I sounded like my father. Patronising. Cold. Exactly what my mum had to put up with before he passed away. Everything I promised myself I’d never be.”
His voice broke a little.
“She walked out. I told myself she just needed space. That she’d go back to her room. That we’d talk in the morning. I didn’t go after her. I didn’t check her room. I just… left.”
He stopped walking. We both did too.
“I should have listened,” he said quietly. “I should have been better. She needed me and I chose my pride instead.”
His usual polished confidence was gone. He looked like a man who had suddenly realised how fragile everything was.
Something in my chest pinched.
“You didn’t make her leave,” I said softly.
He shook his head. “No. But I didn’t make her feel safe either. Not last night.”
I felt Noah shift beside me, his gaze flicking to my face. I did not look at him. I kept my eyes on James.
“You love her, right?” I said.
He gave a short, humourless laugh. “Of course I love her. She is the only person I know who tells me when I am being an idiot and then brings me coffee anyway.”
We picked up the pace again, heading down the gently sloping path that curved behind the house. The vines stretched out on either side, leaves catching the growing light. It should have been beautiful. All I could think about was the unlocked terrace door and the empty bed.
An argument cut across the lawn behind us, sharp enough to slice through the mist.
“This is all your fault, Emma!”
Margaret. Of course.
Emma stiffened, arms folded as she turned. “Please,” she said, sounding tight and emotional. “I was trying to protect her.”
Margaret swept forward, pearls trembling with outrage. “Protect her? You kept secrets from her. She ran off because you couldn’t be honest!”
“Margaret,” Richard said quickly, stepping between them with the exhausted skill of a man who had been refereeing this marriage since 1989. “Shouting at Emma is not going to bring Caroline back.”
“She lied to her, Richard,” Margaret snapped, her words cracking just enough to betray real fear beneath the fury. “And now our daughter is missing!”
Lady Victoria responded, dry as kindling. “We all have secrets at that age.”
Another voice joined in, calm, balanced, and completely out of step with the rising hysteria.
Elaine.
She stepped to Richard’s side, not challenging him, just… supporting the sanity in the room.
“Margaret,” Elaine said firmly, “Emma is doing her best. We all are.” She carried the kind of reassurance that didn’t demand attention but earned it anyway. “Blaming her won’t help Caroline. It won’t help any of us.”
Margaret turned towards her, startled, not used to being addressed so directly by someone outside her social orbit.
Elaine didn’t back down. “She’s strong,” she continued. “And sensible. Until we know more, we need to stay calm. For her, and for James.”
Lady Victoria lifted one eyebrow, faintly impressed. “At last,” she said, “a voice of reason.”
I stopped and turned. They were closer than I’d realised.
Emma stood a few metres up the path, her oversized sunglasses hiding her eyes but not the way her composure had slipped. It was like she’d been holding in far too much for far too long, and it was finally leaking through the cracks.
And beside her stood Margaret, radiating the kind of disapproval usually reserved for wilted table flowers or subpar Champagne. She seemed personally offended by the entire morning, the landscape, and possibly the concept of feelings.
Cleo hovered near the edge of the group, clutching two untouched coffees, her eyes darting between Emma, Margaret and Elaine with the unmistakable look of someone desperate to understand what on earth was happening.
I walked back towards them all, Noah and James on my heels.
“Emma,” I said carefully. “You said you were trying to protect her. From what?”
She froze. Even behind the dark glasses, you could see the way her whole body stiffened. She glanced at James, then looked away so sharply her ponytail practically snapped in protest.
“Crap,” she muttered. “Look, I didn’t tell her.”
James stepped closer, his tone rigid. “Didn’t tell her what?”
Emma let out a tiny, strangled laugh, the one she used when she was deeply uncomfortable. “You’re going to hate me,” she said, pointing weakly at James. “Possibly forever.”
“Emma,” I said.
She squared her shoulders like she was bracing for paparazzi flashbulbs, then whispered:
“I didn’t tell her, about Ethan. About… how he feels about her.”
The words just… landed. Like a dropped box of crystal.
James went completely still.
Emma rushed on in a panicked tumble. “He is in love with her. Disgustingly, inconveniently, hopelessly in love with her. And before you ask, yes, he talks to me about it. At length. Usually over overpriced rosé.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, dramatic, breathless.
“And Caroline, my Caroline, asked me weeks ago why he was being weird. Why he couldn’t look her in the eye without twitching like some malfunctioning robot.
” Her voice cracked. “And I lied. I told her it was stress. Because I thought if I said the truth out loud, everything would explode. And I didn’t want to cause explosions before the wedding, Holly, I simply couldn’t do it. ”
James didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
Emma kept spiralling, words tripping over themselves.
“Last night after that dreadful toast, I told Ethan he needed to stop. That he had to get over her, that she chose you, end of.”
Her face crumpled.
“He stormed off. But Caroline heard us. Heard enough to look at me like I’d grown horns. And then she left. And I…”
She pressed her fists to her mouth, chest shaking.
“I should have told her.” She choked. “I should have gone after her. I thought she just needed air, not…” She faltered entirely. “I am so, so sorry.”
She seemed utterly undone, mascara trembling, breath hitching, the glossy PR queen cracked straight down the middle.
James’s face had lost what little colour remained. For a second I thought he might snap, or shout, or crumble.
He did none of those things.
Instead he closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, shoulders sagging.
“This is not your fault, Em,” he said.
She stared at him, disbelieving. “But if I had told her sooner, if I had not let it get this far…”
“It is not your job to manage our relationship,” he said. “Or his. I am the one who chose to ignore what was in front of me. I am the one who dismissed her feelings last night. If she ran…” He paused. “If she ran, it is because I did not make her feel like she could stay.”
He stared out past us, towards the vineyards and the faint flash of the ocean beyond.
“Then we fix it,” I said. “We find her, we hear her out, and you show her you are not the man who sends her away when she is scared. You are the man who shows up.”
James nodded slowly, like someone learning how to stand again.
“Where do you suggest we look next then, Sinclair?” he asked, sounding rough but steadier.
I looked back at the guest wing, at the terrace door we could just see from this angle, its glass catching the morning light.
“The paths behind the guest wing first,” I said. “Then the cliff lookout. It’s the only place that worries me.”
Noah moved beside me, expression tense. “You actually think she went there?” he asked.
I blew out a breath. “I think she wasn’t thinking clearly. And when people aren’t thinking clearly, they go somewhere to be alone.”
“That can turn dangerous pretty quickly out here.”
“That’s why we’re going.”
Behind us, Margaret began wailing again.
Lady Victoria sighed. “At this rate,” she said, her words carrying on the breeze, “I shall need a holiday next month just to recover from the wedding.”
I did not bother turning around.
We had a vineyard to search.
“Wait… where’s Ethan?” Lucas said, noticing what everyone else had somehow failed to.