A Wicked Conceit (Lady Darby Mysteries #9) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,97
Gage bent over his desk, scribbling a note in his nearly illegible scrawl. He glanced up and then lowered his head again to his task. “Did you want something?”
“Always,” I replied softly.
His hand halted abruptly, the only indication he’d heard me before he resumed writing.
I inhaled a deep breath that trembled slightly as I stifled my more tender emotions. “But for the moment, it appears we have a visitor.”
When I didn’t elaborate, Gage looked up. I arched my eyebrows toward the window overlooking the garden, and he glanced toward it in confusion before turning back to me.
When comprehension dawned, his head snapped back around so that he glared at the window. “In the stables again?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I saw him out the French doors in the morning room, and I’m anticipating a request for our presence from Jeffers in . . . ah, now,” I finished as our butler paused in the doorway.
“Kincaid is in the garden?” Gage snapped.
If Jeffers was surprised by our already being aware of this, he didn’t show it. “Yes, sir. He requested an audience with Mrs. Gage.”
My lips quirked, having no doubt this phrasing had been chosen by Jeffers and not Bonnie Brock. An audience, indeed.
Gage’s scowl darkened. “Fetch our . . .” He broke off at the sight of my forest green cloak and his dark greatcoat already draped over Jeffers’s arm. “Yes, thank you.”
Once we were appropriately attired against the chill, Gage led me back to the morning room and pushed open the French doors before he offered me his arm to guide me down the steps of the terrace into the garden proper. Sullen, gray clouds scuttled across the sky, blocking much of the sun, while now and then a stray sunbeam pierced through. I would have made light of the downturn in weather after two sunny days without Bonnie Brock’s presence, simply to ease the tension, but I decided Gage didn’t need any more ammunition to use against him.
The stable door swung inward as we approached, revealing Bonnie Brock standing in the shadows. At first glance he appeared as irritable as Gage and spoiling for a fight. But on closer analysis, the muddled swirl of emotions reflected in the depths of his eyes told me it wasn’t simply anger he was feeling, but something more akin to fear.
“Why are you here?” Gage demanded. “I thought I made it clear . . .”
I pressed a hand to his chest, halting his words before speaking to Brock. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Maggie.” He took a step closer. “Have ye seen her?”
I shook my head in surprise. “Why? Is she missing?”
He swallowed. “Aye. When I woke this morning, she was gone.”
Chapter 20
I could hear the panic stretching his voice, see it in the taut stillness of his stance. And so could Gage, who had fallen silent, his anger draining from the muscles of the arm beneath mine that had earlier flexed, ready to lash out.
“I ken it wasna very likely, but I thought . . .” He broke off, shaking his head, unwilling or perhaps unable to finish that thought.
“May-maybe she went for a walk,” I suggested hesitantly.
He nodded. “She does that sometimes.” A vee formed between his brows. “Least she did before.”
Before the threats to him had increased after the publication of The King of Grassmarket and his decision to keep her close for her own protection? Or before she’d run off with a former member of his gang and returned to him hollow-eyed, malnourished, and pregnant, only to lose the baby a few weeks later? I didn’t ask.
“But she kens no’ to go anywhere wi’oot me or Stumps or Locke,” he insisted. “She wouldna disobey me.”
I wasn’t so certain of that. As docile and obedient as Maggie was most of the time, I’d recognized that she had a dogged streak that was just as strong as her brother’s. She’d simply been too beaten down from her experiences in the wilds of Northumberland, betrayed by the man she had believed loved her, to summon her will to resist. But she was seventeen and chafing at the tight control her brother exerted over her life and his failure to acknowledge her needs. It was only a matter of time before she rebelled again.
“What time did you notice she was gone?”
“A little before sunrise.”
I felt a pulse of alarm, for that was almost four hours ago. Even if Maggie had dared to go for a walk alone, she would never have been gone that long.