Page 94 of Wicked Designs
The sight he beheld cooled his blood.
Someone—Emily—had lined up pillows beneath the covers, mimicking the presence of a body. She’d pinned a white piece of paper to the pillow. He picked it up with numb fingers, not even feeling the sting of the pin as it pricked his thumb. Godric blinked, opened the paper and read her letter.
Godric,I’m sorry to have left like this, but there was no other way. You must believe me. We are two different people, our lives worlds apart. I love you, but I cannot stay with you. I’m so sorry.
Emily was gone.
Rather than crumple the note in his fist, he set it down on the pillow. It was the last thing he had of hers, the last thing she touched in his world. He couldn’t bear to destroy it and was too weak to remove the painful reminder.
He stumbled, faltering, as reality set in.
“Oh God…Emily!” She couldn’t be gone… She couldn’t have left him…
Cold rage engulfed him in icy flames, returning strength where love had rendered him weak.
Never again.
“Cedric, Charles!” he bellowed, wrath building in him. It crushed the despair that blackened his heart and gave him purpose.
Godric ran from the room and found his friends shooting up the stairs towards him.
“What? What’s happened?” Cedric asked.
“Has anyone seen Emily?” He quivered with rage and, strangely, fear.
Charles shook his head. “No…”
“I haven’t seen Penelope either…” added Cedric. “You don’t think—”
Godric growled. “Find Simkins and Mrs. Downing! Tell them to have the servants search the manor from floor to ceiling. Charles, search the stables and the gardens. Cedric, you’ll search the meadow with me. We’ll take horses and go around the lake as well.”
Charles raised an eyebrow. “And if we find her?”
“Subdue her by whatever means necessary. Cedric, bring the laudanum.”
Charles balked. “But she hates—”
“I know. It was a mistake to grant her even one measure of freedom.”
Godric scowled and neither man dared argue with him, not while fury lit his eyes like the fires of Hell.
Ten minutes later Godric and Cedric galloped across the meadow under a threatening sky. Cedric stopped well ahead of the wall and made to climb it, but Godric dug his heels into his horse’s side. It cleared the wall entirely. He turned his horse to the left abruptly, as he’d seen Emily do, and spared himself another unpleasant dunking.
He didn’t wait for Cedric.
His eyes scanned the ground for any sign of her passage.
Nothing… It was as though she had vanished into thin air.
Cedric studied the meadow. “Has she been planning this for a long while, do you think?”
“I do. I think she was biding her time for this moment, lulling me into a false sense of security.”
“Then she fooled us all.” Cedric’s voice darkened with disappointment.
“What now?”
Godric raked a hand through his hair. “Where would she go?”
