Page 60 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

The fire crackled. A carriage moved across the square.

Lord Peltbury looked at his daughter. Alice looked back at him steadily, waiting to see which version of him would answer.

He reached for his hat. “Well,” he muttered, “I should not have come unannounced.”

“No,” Kenneth agreed. “You should not have.”

Silence ensued, brief and absolute.

Lord Peltbury rose, sketched a bow, and left. His footsteps crossed the entrance hall, and the front door closed with a sound that carried a finality Alice had not expected and did not know what to do with.

She sat very still.

Kenneth remained at the mantel. She could feel him looking at her, yet she kept her eyes on the empty fireplace.

“Alice.”

“I am quite all right.”

“I know you are.”

She turned. He was watching her openly and attentively.

“He has always been like that,” she explained.

“Yes,” Kenneth said. “But you don’t have to suffer ‘like that’ anymore. Not with me.”

She nodded, smoothing the front of her gown. “Thank you.”

Silence fell between them. It was not the silence of avoidance, but something she did not yet have a word for.

The man’s name was Carver. He was square and weathered, and he wore the unremarkable coat of a man whose profession required him to be forgettable. He sat in Kenneth’s study at three in the afternoon.

Alice stood near the window because Kenneth had sent for her, which meant there was news.

“A posting inn,” Carver said, “forty miles east of Bath. The landlord recalls a woman matching the description, blonde, traveling with a gentleman, three weeks ago, perhaps four. They stayed a night. Separate rooms.” He laid a folded paper on the desk. “The landlord’s wife noted that the woman seemed anxious, as though she were waiting to hear something.”

Alice’s hands were folded against her waist. She pressed them there and kept her breathing even.

“Name?” Kenneth asked.

“Mrs. Whitmore. The gentleman signed as Mr. Whitmore.”

“That is not her name.”

“No, Your Grace.”

“But you believe it is her.”

“The description is specific. The hair, the age, the manner of speaking. The landlord’s wife says that she played the pianoforte in the private parlor for an hour one evening and played very well. The woman said she was on her way to visit relations in Wiltshire.”

Alice looked at the sycamores beyond the window, green and steady in the afternoon light. “The lead is an inn forty miles from Bath that a woman matching Rachel’s description left three or four weeks ago.” Her voice came out even, and she was grateful for it. “Heading for Wiltshire, or claiming to be heading for Wiltshire, which is not the same thing.”

“No, Your Grace,” Carver said. “It is not.”

“And there is nothing since.”

“Not yet. I have a man asking in Wiltshire. Well, two men, as of this morning.”