Page 98 of Temptations of a Wallflower
A decision Sarah had to consider.
Chapter 29
“You’ve stolen my heart, ma’am,” Jacob said. “I find myself unable to exist without you.” He stood, gathering his clothing. “Run away with me . . .”
The Highwayman’s Seduction
Jeremy woke suddenly, coming to full consciousness in an instant, as though plunged in a polar sea. He sat upright. Shadows swathed the room around him, painting the chamber in shades of indigo and black. The fire lay silent and dark in the fireplace, its coals barely smoldering. A chill turned the air thin and breakable.
Had he been dreaming? Had a nightmare roused him from his sleep? A cloud enveloped his mind. But a deep, profound sense ofwrongnesspervaded him.
His hand slid across the covers as he reached for Sarah, seeking her warmth, her softness.
But his hand continued to move across the bed finding . . . nothing.
She was gone.
“Sarah?” He peered into the darkness, searching for her. Perhaps, unable to sleep, she’d seated herselfbeside the now-cold fire. Maybe she dozed in one of the wingback chairs. “Sarah?” he called again.
No answer. She wasn’t in the room.
He bolted, naked, from the bed, fear immediately chilling him down to his marrow. Ever since she’d had tea with Lady Marwood and Lady Ashford, she’d been even more withdrawn, more silent and remote, as though her body remained but her spirit was distant.
Jeremy quickly threw on a pair of breeches and a shirt, and stuffed his feet into a pair of shoes. Half-dressed, he lit a candle, then stepped out into the corridor.
Waking the house was a possibility he did not entertain. He didn’t want his parents involved. There wasn’t time for explanations, and he’d no desire to give any. He needed to find his missing wife.
If he raced hither and yon, without any strategy or structure, he’d go mad. Drawing a breath to steady himself, he decided to start at the bottom of the house and systematically work his way upward.
He began with the library. But all hopes for finding her curled up with a book died quickly when he discovered the chamber lay empty. Each parlor and drawing room yielded the same results. Room by room, he went through the house, urgently whispering her name while praying feverishly to find her safe and well.
He refused to think about any other possibility.
The other floors, however, proved just as empty. Hope began to perish, little by little, curling at the edges like burned paper as he found himself yet again in another unoccupied room.
She wasn’t in the old nursery, or his other childhoodrooms. Unless she was in the kitchen or the servants’ quarters, Sarah had left the house.
The kitchen glowed with a banked fire, where a boy slept in front of the spit. The lad stirred a little when Jeremy looked inside the kitchen, but he didn’t awaken. Jeremy considered rousing the boy to ask if he’d seen Sarah, but he didn’t want to raise the house alarm. Not yet.
But there seemed no alternative. He was about to pound on his father’s door, then wake the entire household to look for Sarah, when he remembered one final place in the immense house. He raced up the stairs, hardly bothering to muffle his frantic footfalls as he climbed higher and higher, staircase after staircase. Until he reached the very top of Hutton House, and its cupola.
One of Jeremy’s stargazing ancestors had built the small chamber half a century ago as a way to feed a love of astronomy, when the study of it was nascent and all the rage for the fashionable elite. It was a compact, round room, surrounded on all sides by windows that could be unbolted to accommodate a large Galilean telescope, which continued to stand proudly in the cupola.
Jeremy skidded to a stop at the top of the staircase opening onto the observatory. His heart also slammed to a halt.
Sarah stood in the cupola, trying to work the telescope. She resembled a wraith in her long white night rail, her hair down around her shoulders. But she wasn’t a ghost. She was real, and relief poured through him so aggressively that he nearly staggered with it.
His wife glanced up at his entrance. A look of surprise crossed her face, as if she little expected to find him here. The feeling was mutual.
“Jesus,” he swore, not caring that he took the Lord’s name in vain. He rubbed his knuckles in the center of his chest, trying to calm his thundering heart. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said quietly.
“Better that than have me tearing through the house like a Bedlamite.” He took a tentative step toward her, as though she might take flight through one of the open windows. The chamber was bitterly cold, yet Sarah didn’t seem to notice. “I thought . . . I don’t want to say what I thought.”
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t move toward him but kept space between them. A protective barrier. She glanced out at the dark sky. “I’ve been trying to look at the stars. Sky’s too smoky to see anything.”
He reached a hand out toward her. “It’s fit to freeze Hades in here. Come back to bed.”
