Allan looked around to see his butler, Mrs. Long, and Lucy all standing together at the bottom of the stairs. Lucy was pale, Mrs. Long excessively fidgety, and the butler plainly didn’t know where to look.
“Is something wrong?” Allan asked, shrugging off his sudden frock coat.
“No, no, My Lord,” Mrs. Long said hurriedly. “We were just not aware that Frederica would be out this evening. Is she having dinner elsewhere?”
“Wait… she still isn’t back?” Allan stepped forward, looking between the three of them. “The carriage hasn’t returned with her?”
“Neither the carriage nor Lady Padleigh are back, My Lord,” the butler said somberly, clearly keen to avoid any confusion.
“Wait a minute.” Allan had to see the proof for himself.
Unusually, he didn’t care if he was treading damp footprints through the house, and he swept into each room he could possibly find, searching it intently.
He went to her chamber first, but it was empty, then he tried every guest room and every chamber downstairs too. The dining table had been prepped for dinner, but Frederica was not in her seat waiting for it to be served.
Lastly, he went the music room. Disturbed to see his gift to her with the note still attached to the strings, he turned his back on the room fast before halting in the doorway.
What was that?
He turned back and walked into the room, seeing a chunk of red wax hardened on the carpet. He bent down, rubbing the pieces between his forefinger and thumb as he realized what they were — they were pieces from the red wax that sealed an envelope.
“Mrs. Long?” he called as he returned to the entrance hall. “Did Frederica receive a letter today?”
“Yes, My Lord. This morning,” Mrs. Long explained. “She didn’t mention it?”
“No. No, she did not.” Allan couldn’t bear the way they were all looking at him with pity and worry. He turned his back on them, staring down at the pieces of red wax again.
Someone wrote to her; now she has left the house. Perhaps they asked for a meeting with her, but who?
He crumbled the red wax into even smaller pieces in his hand.
* * *
“What is it you have to say?” Lord Wetherington wouldn’t stop staring at Frederica. There was a keenness in his gaze that left her breathless in fear. She clutched even more tightly to the branch in her grasp.
“I…” She hesitated as the rain started to come down harder then remembered the feeling of Allan’s lips on her cheek and on her neck. When there was the possibility of such happiness, how could she not fight for it? “I want you to stop writing letters to me.”
Lord Wetherington raised a single eyebrow, as if her words were as cumbersome as a passing fly.
“You will never call me to your side again. Ever,” she said, growing increasingly confident with her words. “I am married now, married to Allan. I never want to see you again, Lord Wetherington.”
“Morgan. My name is Morgan, Frederica.”
“And I shall never call you that,” she cut in sharply, moving that branch an inch at her side, showing she was very prepared to use it to protect herself if the situation called for it. “You are never to bother me again.”
“Or what?” Lord Wetherington’s eyes narrowed to slits as he took a step forward.
She backed up, her heels even more dangerously close to the stream than before. She glanced back down at the water, and in that time, it allowed him to close the distance between them.
“What are you doing —?”
He caught the branch from her grasp and wrenched it free, then tossed it into the water behind her. She backed up a little more, her feet now in the shallows of the stream in her effort to get away from him.
“You know I cannot stay away from you. Maybe I cannot marry you now.” His eyes slid down to her hand. She curled her hand into a protective fist, knowing that he was looking at the ring upon her finger. “But there’s something more I can ask of you.”
“What is that?” she asked, well aware how preposterous she looked, even as she attempted to raise her chin higher and maintain some dignity when the water was reaching up to her calves.
He held up a single finger between them, moving a few inches nearer to her, she moved along the bank, still trying to escape him, but he just pursued her, his boots muddying the waters.
