Page 70 of Her Duke Next Door
As they walked through the corridor, they passed Bernie tidying up the playroom. Surely she would tell Mary if this was another game of the girls.
“Bernie, you have not seen Katie, have you?”
“Not since last night, Your Grace,” she answered. “Has she disappeared?”
“It seems so,” Mary said. “It is nothing to worry about. I am sure she is just hiding somewhere, wanting to be found.”
“Mama, I am scared,” Eloise confessed once they were in Mary’s bedroom, checking the closet and the bathroom in case Katie had found it funny to hide in there. Shehadsaid she once checked every room in the house upon her father’s absence in a bid to bring him home to scold her for mischievous behavior.
“It will be fine, dear,” Mary assured her daughter. “We shall write to Dominique, and Katie shall come out from hiding, and we shall be fine.”
Eloise nodded although she did not look convinced.
“In fact,” Mary said, raising her voice higher as if to entice the young girl out with hope. “I shall write to Katie’s papa right now!”
Nothing. No response. No scurrying of victorious feet for achieving what she wished for. Mary’s heart rate increased with worry as she got out a parchment of paper and immediately began to write, trying to cause as little panic as possible. At the end of her letter, she signed with,I promise this is not one of their usual tricks. I miss you, Dominique. Come home to us.
The rest of the day she paced the castle anxiously, not able to settle. Eloise asked if she could take Benson and ride the country lanes to look for Katie but Mary forbade her, not wanting her safety risked. After all, Katie could simply be hiding somewhere excellently, stubborn in her mischievous behavior.
Or it could be something much worse, Mary panicked but quickly pushed those thoughts aside. To her knowledge, Katie usually shut herself in her room during her depressive episodes. But she was nowhere to be found.
“Should I call the constables?” She worried aloud to Geraldine.
But the housekeeper only calmed her down. “Let us wait for now,” she said. “Dominique does not trust the constables a great deal and he will likely want to deal with the situation before they have a chance to. After all, they have gotten things wrong in the past.”
“Did they ever find out who murdered his wife?” Mary couldn’t help but ask. “They released him but did they find the true culprit?”
“They suspected it was one of her other lovers in the end,” she said. “One of the scorned ones who wished her to leave the Duke, or perhaps he was jealous of the Duke and his marriage to the former Duchess. Either way, His Grace almost paid time for a crime he did not commit. He knows the rumors that go around London. They follow him and he shows a great deal of strength to face the Ton, who all let the accusations happen.”
Mary clasped her hands together. “The graze on my cheek… Many of the ladies thought he was hurting me.”
“They will think that,” Geraldine nodded. “The news was shocking, and Marguerite had caused some nasty rumors to circulate in London to make her infidelity look less shameful.”
Mary’s heart broke for her Duke.
“We shall await his return,” Geraldine decided. “And then we shall get the authorities involved.”
She will come out of hiding for her papa, Mary told herself, as the day grew on, with no sign of the young girl.
* * *
“Katie!”
The shout came from deep within the castle walls, deep and booming, frantic. “Mary?”
“Dominique!” Mary cried, fleeing from her bed and running to her husband. It had been more than two weeks and she ached for him. She had missed him—the handsome dark curls that fell into his hazel eyes, his beautiful face, his imposing presence that he commanded a room with without ever speaking one word.
She ran to him, not caring that his boots or clothing were dusty from hard travel.
“I did not stop for a moment,” he said. “What has happened to Katie?Where is my daughter?”
Mary’s eyes welled up. “Dominique, I do not know. I was at the window before breakfast, looking for your arrival and Katie came to me to talk and?—”
“Did you upset her? She is prone to childish upsets, Mary.”
“I know! She was quite upset before we talked. She believed you were not coming back. She struggled to understand how this trip was different from the previous times she watched you leave.”
Dominique’s own frantic panic turned into quickly-triggered anger. She watched his eyes darken, narrowing onto her. “Are you saying that I made my daughter run away?”
