She said she’d come right back up, but I fell asleep, and didn’t realize how much time had passed.”
Hours. Four at least, maybe more, and no sign of her? It seemed an eternity. Gideon fought back the fear clawing at his throat. “The last you knew, then, she was going to the kitchens?” Perhaps Mrs. Briggs had seen her.
“Yes, she…you don’t suppose she ventured out onto the grounds alone again?” Amy looked panicked. “She wouldn’t be so foolish as that, would she?”
“No,” Gideon said, with more conviction than he felt. Cecilia had promised him she wouldn’t leave the castle today, but she had a mind of her own. She wouldn’t hesitate to disregard her promise if she felt it necessary. She’d never risk Isabella’s safety, but God knew she wasn’t nearly as careful of her own.
“I don’t like this.” Amy began pacing in front of the fireplace, her fingers twisted in her apron. “Where could she have got to?”
“It’s all right, Amy. I’ll find her.” If Cecilia had turned up in the kitchens, Mrs. Briggs must have seen her. He’d have to wake his housekeeper, but there was no help for it. “Stay here with Isabella until I return.”
Gideon didn’t wait for Amy’s reply, but strode from the bedchamber into the corridor, every instinct urging him to rush outside and have Haslemere order his men to search the grounds while he and Gideon tore the castle apart, stone by stone, until they found Cecilia.
Four hours. Good Lord, anything could have happened to her in that time. He pounded down the stairs, his head spinning as he examined and then discarded one possible explanation after the next. Had she been trapped in some remote part of the castle? The attics, perhaps? Or had she fallen, and was lying in some out-of-the-way place, unconscious and bleeding? By the time he reached the last stair he’d conjured a dozen nightmare scenarios in his head, all of which included Cecilia’s broken body at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
He ran straight toward the entrance hall, bypassing Mrs. Briggs’s apartments. There was no time to speak to his housekeeper now. No, he’d go to the stables first, and fetch Haslemere. They had ten good, strong men, including Duncan and Fraser. He’d put a half-dozen of them on the grounds—three mounted, and three on foot, while he, Haslemere, Duncan, and Fraser searched the castle.
Surely between them all, they’d make quick work of finding one small woman? She couldn’t have gotten far. Damn it, where was she? Where—
Just as he reached the door, he stopped with his hand on the latch, a noise making him freeze in his tracks. It sounded like…a moan, or gasping breaths? He turned in a circle, his body tensed, but he wasn’t sure where it was coming from.
He waited, ears straining and every muscle twitching until at last he heard it again, a cry so faint he might have believed he’d imagined it. Not a moan this time, but a plea for help coming from the direction of the drive. Gideon sprang forward, throwing the front door open with a crash, but what he found on the other side made him stumble backward in horror.
It was Cecilia—thank God, it was her—but even in this dim light he could see how deathly pale she was, her strange clumsiness and the slow, heavy steps with which she crept up the drive. She was limping, and her arms were thrust out at her sides as if she thought she’d topple over at any moment.
“Cecilia.” Her name left his lips on a strangled breath. “Cecilia.”
Her gaze had been fixed on the gravel beneath her feet as she made her painstaking way up the drive, but at the sound of his voice her head came up, and when she saw him there, her face just…crumpled. “Gideon.”
She swayed where she stood, but Gideon leapt for her, catching her before her knees gave way and she collapsed onto the gravel drive. “Shhh, love. I’ve got you.” He wrapped his arms around her trembling body and swept her up, gathering her tightly against his chest.
“I…I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was doing anything dangerous. I broke my promise—”
“Hush, it’s all right.” Gideon stroked her hair back from her damp forehead. “You’re all right.”
But she wasn’t all right, because his hand came away wet with blood.
Gideon was shaking badly, but he managed to turn her head toward him with a gentle nudge of her chin, and that was when