He wore nothing but a loose, light pair of trousers that had been bought for him many years ago by a friend—a gift, all the way from India. The friend had called them ‘mogul’s breeches,’ but Max just called them his sleeping attire.
“Your Grace!” The scream came again, followed by the thud of frantic footsteps in the hallway outside.
Max sprinted the distance between the bed and the door, throwing it open as he burst out. He was greeted by a panicked and wild-eyed Mrs. Bowman, who stood with clasped hands and rain-plastered hair, dripping water onto the floorboards.
“Mrs. Bowman?” Max felt his heart seize in his chest. “What is the matter? Why are you calling for me?”
“I thought you would be in your wife’s room,” she replied between harsh, desperate breaths. “I couldn’t find you. It’s… Her Grace. She’s gone out. I tried to stop her. I followed her out, but I couldn’t see in the dark and the rain, and I… I… She wouldn’t listen to me, Your Grace. I couldn’t get her to come back.”
A sick feeling churned in Max’s stomach as lightning splintered the darkness outside, casting its fierce white light against the side of his face, and highlighting the true terror on Mrs. Bowman’s.
“Did she leave in the carriage? On horseback? On foot?” Max concentrated on keeping his breathing steady, needing his mind clear.
Mrs. Bowman shook her head. “On foot, Your Grace. She was howling about something, but I couldn’t hear her. It’s so… loud out there, Your Grace, and she’ll catch her death. She was only in a nightgown. I don’t think she even had a housecoat with her.”
“Come with me, Mrs. Bowman.” He grasped her by the arm and led her along the shadowed hallway and down the stairs to theentrance hall, which did not look nearly as airy and charming with a storm raging outside.
The door was half open already, a puddle spreading across the ceramic tiles, but Max did not hesitate to pull the poor housekeeper out onto the porticoed porch.
“Which direction?” he demanded to know, his throat tight with worry.
Mrs. Bowman raised a shaky finger. “Toward those trees there. Toward the river, Your Grace.”
“Pardon?” His heart all but stopped.
“It’s not safe when it’s raining like this, Your Grace,” Mrs. Bowman implored, weeping now. “The bank could crumble. The river swallowed up a bunch of trees last winter when it rained like this. And it’s so dark she mightn’t see the water ‘til it’s too late. Oh, Your Grace, what if?—”
Max was running before he could hear what else the housekeeper had to say, his bare feet sinking into the sodden earth, his skin soaked to the bone before he had even made it fifty swift paces. Thunder roared above him and as he sprinted on, he counted the time between that grumble and the next, to let him know just how close the ensuing bolt of lightning would be.
He did not flinch as the lightning flared, turning the entire world a brilliant white for an instant. Instead, he scoured the ground ahead of him, spotting other footprints in the boggy earth. Smaller than his, slower than his, trailed by muddy smears where Caroline’s skirts must have been dragging behind her. Sure enough, they were headed toward a smudge of swaying black shapes in the near distance.
What is she thinking?He cursed under his breath as he raced on, not entirely convinced that he was awake. Surely, this all had to be some terrible dream, tacked on to the end of what had been a very lovely dream about kissing his wife in the warm sunlight of the belvedere.
Breathless and slicked with mud, having slipped at least twice on his way to the trees, Max called out into the torrential downpour. “Caro! Caro, where are you? Caro!”
He prayed with all his might for her to shout back, as he finally reached the trees. He leaned heavily against the slippery bark and squinted into the gloom, his heart in his throat as he saw the frothing, churning menace of the river a short distance ahead of him. It might have been more of a pleasant brook in nicer weather, but it had become a seething mass of fast-moving water, as treacherous as it looked.
“Caro!” he bellowed, panic amplifying his voice.
He could not lose her. He would not; not after they had just agreed to stay at one another’s sides.
“Caro, answer me!”
“Max?” a small, shivery voice answered.
His head whipped this way and that, desperate to find the source of that all-too-familiar voice. But the rain kept running into his eyes and the darkness did not help, made all the more disorienting by the river and the trees.
“Max, is that you?” the voice came again.
Lightning flashed as if the heavens had decided to be generous, and in that brief flare of blinding light, he saw her. Soaked through and trembling with her knees to her chest, her raven hair plastered to her skin, huddled into a deep hollow at the bottom of an oak tree, was Caroline.
And in her arms, a mewling, hissing, deeply disgruntled cat who seemed to be trying to fight her way out of Caroline’s vise-like grip.
“Caro!” He ran to her, skidding to his knees in front of her, using his body as best he could to keep the driving rain off her and Powder Puff.
Caroline peered up at him… and promptly burst into tears. Gripping the cat with one arm, she lifted up and slipped her other arm around him, hugging him so tightly that he could not breathe and did not want to. Instead, he pulled her closer,curving his shoulders and bending his head over hers so she would not have to feel the relentless sting of the rain against her.
“What were you thinking?” he murmured, so relieved that he did not have the strength to be angry.
