Page 60

“You seem very certain of that.”

“I have grown rather good, of late, at recognizing when Hudson is more frightened than he lets on,” Anna claimed, feeling so self-assured, she doubted there was a possibility she was wrong. “And I suspect, when he discovers I am missing, fear will be the whole of what he feels, whatever else it disguises itself as by the time we arrive.”

Cornelius said nothing further, though Anna noticed the way his hands tightened briefly in his lap, the same nervous gesture she recalled Hudson himself making on more than one occasion. Brothers, she thought, however estranged, carried more of each other in them than either would likely care to admit.

“May I ask you something, Anna?” Cornelius questioned eventually, breaking the silence once more.

“Of course.”

“Do you think he can change? Truly change, and not merely perform contrition for as long as it takes to smooth things over?”

Anna considered the question carefully before answering, aware of how much weight it carried for the man asking it.

“I think he has already begun to,” she answered finally. “Not perfectly, and not without setbacks – this past week alone has shown me that clearly enough. But I have watched him hold our children through the night rather than summon their wet nurse, watched him admit faults to me in ways I do not believe he has ever admitted faults to anyone in his life. Change rarely arrives all at once, Cornelius. I think it arrives in exactly this fashion – slowly, imperfectly, one difficult conversation at a time. Tonight might simply be the next one required.”

Cornelius nodded slowly, something in his expression settling, as though her answer had given him permission to hope for an outcome he had not quite dared expect before asking.

“I hope you are right,” he stated quietly. “I have wanted, for longer than I care to admit, to have my brother back. The real one, not the version who hides behind duty and control whenever anything threatens to matter too much to him.”

“I believe that version of him is still in there,” Anna assured him, her voice kind and warm. “I do not think he ever truly left. I think he simply forgot, somewhere along the way, that he was permitted to be more than a protector.”

The carriage rolled on through the dark streets, carrying all three of them steadily back toward whatever reckoning awaited, and Anna found herself, despite everything, hoping rather fiercely that the night might yet end in something other than further heartbreak for the people she had come to love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hudson had resolved, somewhere in the sleepless hours after dinner, that he had been a coward.

He lay awake turning the thought over until it lost all its comfortable edges, until he could no longer pretend that his silence toward Anna these past days had been anything other than exactly what Cornelius had accused him of being – another instance of managing a situation rather than facing it honestly. He had told her to give him time, as though time alone might resolve what required, in truth, nothing more than the courage to speak plainly.

He rose before dawn had fully broken, dressed with more haste than care, and made his way toward her chambers with every intention of apologizing – of telling her, plainly and without his usual careful hedging, what Cornelius had said to him, and what fear it had stirred in him regarding his own capacity to love without also seeking to control.

He had rehearsed the words half the night, discarding one opening after another as either too methodical or too raw, until he had finally settled on nothing more elaborate than the truth: that he had been afraid, that fear had made him distant, and that she deserved better than his silence, whatever the outcome of baring himself to her honestly.

He knocked softly at her door, bracing himself, and received no answer. After a moment, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Her room was empty.

He noted it first with mild puzzlement, assuming she had risen early to see to the twins, and made his way toward the nursery instead, only to find Angelica alone with the children, both infants still sleeping soundly in their cots.

“Have you seen the duchess this morning?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully even despite the first faint stirrings of unease beginning to work through him.

“No, Your Grace. I assumed she was still asleep.”

The unease sharpened into something closer to alarm. Hudson made his way through the house with increasing urgency, questioning every servant he encountered – the housekeeper, the scullery maid polishing silver in the breakfast room, Oliver himself, roused from whatever task had occupied him – and receiving, each time, the same answer.

No one had seen the duchess since the previous evening.

“Her bed has not been slept in,” Miss Hill reported, having gone to check herself, her weathered face drawn tight with concern. “The covers are disturbed, as though she rose from it, but there is no sign of where she went, Your Grace, nor any note left behind.”

Hudson stood very still in the middle of the corridor, feeling something cold and terrible settle over him.

She would not simply leave. Whatever distance had grown between them these past days, whatever hurt he had caused through his own retreat into silence, Anna would not abandon her children without a word – of that much, he was entirely certain. Which meant something else had happened. Something he had not been present to prevent, because he had spent the previous evening sequestered in his own study, too consumed with his own troubles to notice that his wife required him for something far more urgent than he had assumed.

“Search the grounds,” he ordered, his voice tight with barely controlled panic. “Every room, every garden path, the stables. Send word to her brother’s residence and to the Duke of Montford’s as well, in case she went to either of them in the night. I want every available man searching within the quarter hour.”

Oliver, to his credit, did not hesitate, dispatching footmen in every direction with a brisk efficiency that suggested he understood the gravity of the situation as fully as Hudson himself did. Lanterns were fetched, horses saddled, and within minutes the estate had transformed from its usual quiet order into something closer to organized chaos, servants moving with purpose through gardens still dark with the last of the night.

“Your Grace,” Oliver called quietly, catching Hudson’s arm as he made to follow the search himself, “Might I suggest you remain here, in case she returns while the grounds are being searched? Someone ought to be present to receive her immediately, should she come home on her own.”