He met her gaze. “I wouldn’t say it otherwise.”
“I read it in a book,” she said, tilting her head, clearly not one to relinquish her version without a fight. “It said French.”
“Then the book was wrong.” He said it without malice. “It was a German.”
Her lips parted, possibly for a retort, but he didn’t give her the chance. The strange tightness in his chest hadn’t eased, and he didn’t trust himself to linger any longer than necessary.
“I’ll check on Abigail,” he said, his tone reverting to its usual composed register. “I will have a maid bring you a change of slippers. Those are muddied.”
Without waiting for her reply, he turned and strode off toward the corridor of hedges, feeling her eyes follow him until he disappeared beyond the trellis arch.
CHAPTER TEN
“Your Grace, Abigail is missing!”
It had been two weeks since Cecilia had become the Duchess of Ashbourne. Two long, fluttering, baffling weeks. She had begun to feel, if not settled, then at least no longer a stranger. The servants now curtsied with less stiffness. The housekeeper no longer hovered quite so protectively. But in all that time, she had not once grown used to being addressed as Your Grace. But she figured she was handling it quite well. All she needed was time. Time to get the rhythm right.
What she was still finding difficult to figure out was Abigail.
The child was like fog. There one moment, vanishing the next. Cecilia had tried. She had softened her voice, shortened her questions, offered small, harmless remarks about flowers and window shapes and silly things she knew children often liked. But Abigail gave little in return, only looks that seemed far too old for a girl her size, and silences that stretched a little too long.
For a six-year-old, the child was quite a mystery.
Still, she reminded herself each morning that it was early days. Children needed time. That perhaps she would one day be good at this.
She had just finished reviewing the kitchen’s inventory, something about a dwindling stock of barley and an unfortunate low of eggs, when the door flew open and Miss Flaxman, unusually flushed, appeared like a storm cloud on the horizon.
“What do you mean she’s missing?” Cecilia asked her. “Have you checked all her hiding spots?”
Miss Flaxman pressed a hand to her chest, trying to catch her breath. Her bonnet was askew, and her cheeks were blotched a deep pink. “I have, Your Grace. I looked behind the drawing room drapes, the window seat in the east parlor, and the arbor behind the conservatory. Even the linen cupboard.” She dropped her voice slightly. “Twice.”
Cecilia stared at her, then turned swiftly back to the kitchen maid she had been speaking to. “Gather the others. I need everyone looking for her.”
The kitchen maid gave a wide-eyed nod and disappeared at once. Cecilia turned back to Miss Flaxman. “Split the downstairs staff between the west wing and the gardens. Send two footmen to check the stables, the attics, and anywhere the doors may have been left unlocked. I’ll take the outer grounds.”
Within moments, the household stirred to life. Footsteps rang through the corridors, doors opened with sharp, echoing creaks, and Abigail’s name drifted from room to room, called out in urgent tones that frayed into silence, unanswered.
Cecilia searched the corridors herself, peering into every room and nook she could think of. The music room, the breakfast parlor, In Abigail’s bedroom,the bedclothes rumpled from her mid-morning nap and her shoes still by the hearth. Nothing.
The next logical place was the garden. Abigail loved the gardens. Grabbing her skirts, Cecilia descended the back steps and crossed the terrace, her eyes scanning the trellises and hedgerows as she walked briskly past the rose beds, still no sign of Abigail.
She had just rounded the rose arbor when something in the soil caught her eye. A cluster of small, uneven impressions in the earth. Cecilia knelt slightly, fingers brushing against one of the prints. A child’s step. Her heart gave a quiet jolt. The trail veered off toward the far edge of the garden, where the trimmed order of the garden gave way to wilder growth. Hastily, she followed the path.
She followed the prints through the thinning woods. “Children possess a kind of boundless energy that ought to be studied. Or harnessed. Or bottled,” she mumbled to herself with a faint huff. “Where could she be?”
It wasn’t long before the trees opened to reveal a silver sheet of water, perfectly still save for the ripples spreading from theshore. There, on the edge of the lake, stood Abigail. Her slippers had been abandoned in the grass, and her hands were buried in the folds of her dress as she toed the water’s edge.
“Abigail Price!” Cecilia scolded her in a hushed tone. “You have wandered too far. You should know better than to run off alone like this. You had everyone worried.”
Cecilia approached quietly. Thankfully, she had not run on seeing Cecilia. But from the moment Abigail noticed her presence, the girl turned away from the water, a deep frown pulling at her brow. She didn’t speak. She didn’t run. She merely stood there, glowering.
Cecilia drew in a breath, steady and even. Then she exhaled in relief, the tight coil in her chest loosening just enough to let her breathe again. She hadn’t realized how scared she had been looking for Abigail. Now that she was safe, she could relax.
The lake shimmered beneath the pale stretch of afternoon light, its surface a mirror of shifting blues and soft green reflections from the trees that bowed gently toward it. Wildflowers speckled the banks, violets and daisies precisely. Cecilia paused, momentarily captivated. There was something oddly sacred about the stillness, a hush that calmed the restlessness in her chest. It was a part of the estate that she had not seen before.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said gently, her voice barely louder than the rustle of the leaves above. “Do you like coming to this place?”
Abigail didn’t answer. She merely stepped back from the water’s edge, her hands folded behind her, her gaze distant, fixed somewhere just above the horizon.
