Page 57 of Lost with a Scot
Godric’s wife, Emily, came up to him and swatted him on the arm with her folded fan. “Oh hush, Godric. You know you enjoy dancing.”
“Dancing with you, yes,” Godric grumbled. “Balls are bloody nonsense, full of preening fops and social pests. I much rather like hosting our own gatherings with only the people I enjoy spending time with.”
Emily’s eyes glinted with merriment. “By that you mean your friends and no one else.”
“Andyour friends,” Godric argued diplomatically.
Emily looked to Aiden with a feigned look of wifely suffering. “Still the charmer after all this time together.”
Aiden chuckled. “Where is Anna?” He would have seen her in the ballroom, despite the crush of the crowd. She stood out like a star in a dark sky.
Emily tilted her head. “She and Rosalind went to rest in a retiring room for a few minutes. She looked as though she needed to sit down after she danced with the king. But I would have thought they would be back by now.” Her violet eyes darkened with worry. “Perhaps we should see if they are all right.”
Aiden’s heart suddenly started beating fast. Something didn’t feel right. He’d checked every room of this place, but in the time he’d spent with the king in that private room, it was possible the safety of Lady Eugenia’s home had been breached. “Where?”
Emily pointed the way with her fan. “I’ll fetch them.”
“We’ll come with you,” said Ashton.
Godric discreetly stepped in front of her in a protective manner. “Stay behind me, darling. Aiden seems to think there is reason to be concerned.”
“Oh dear, I hope not...” Emily’s face bled of color. “I never thought anything would happen if they went to a private ladies’ retiring room...”
Aiden, Godric, and Ashton entered the corridor, and Aiden noticed the lack of servants present. There was not one man or woman to be seen.
“Where are the footmen?” he asked Ashton. “There were at least four in this hallway when we came through an hour ago.”
Ashton’s eyes narrowed. “They may have been called to some sort of emergency. But Lady Eugenia wouldn’t leave this hall completely unattended.” They hurried to the door at the end of the hall that Aiden knew to be the retiring room, thanks to his detailed inspection of the house before Anna had arrived this evening.
Aiden crept to the door, which stood slightly ajar. A beam of light from the lamps in the retiring room cut a thin sliver into the darkened hallway. He peered inside, trying his best to go unseen by anyone who may be in there. He thought at first it was empty, until he glimpsed a feminine hand stretched out upon the floor inside the room. Inches from her fingertips lay the diamond-and-pearl diadem that Anna had been wearing. The rest of the woman’s body vanished from view behind a settee. A window that led into the gardens had been forced upward, and the curtains blew into the room, chilling it with a wintry wind.
Without a second thought, Aiden burst into the room, terrified he would find Anna hurt or even dead. The woman lying on the floor didn’t move. But the body on the floor was his sister, not his wife.
“Rose!” Ashton shoved past Aiden and fell to his knees by Rosalind’s limp body. He turned her over onto her back and examined her closely. “She’s breathing,” Ash declared, his shoulders sagging with relief. He cradled Rosalind’s head in his hands and brushed her tangled hair back from her face, revealing a dark bruise forming on her temple.
“Someone attacked my wife,” he growled.
Rosalind moaned as if in pain. Ashton carefully lifted her up into his arms and then sat down on the settee. Aiden bent and retrieved the diadem from the floor. He could feel his heart fracturing into a thousand pieces. He saw Godric in the doorway, his face shadowed with rage.
“Godric? What’s wro—?” Emily appeared in the doorway, and when she saw Rosalind in Ashton’s lap and then the diadem in Aiden’s trembling hand, she stopped and gasped.
“Em, darling.” Godric took her into his arms, trying to comfort her. “It will be all right. We’ll...” But he didn’t have the words to lie to her.
“They took her,” Emily gasped. “They took her...” She repeated it again, as if that would make this awful madness make sense. She met Aiden’s gaze, and he saw that the young duchess understood the grief, fear, and rage swirling inside him, choking him.
Aiden clenched his fingers around the diadem until the jewels dug into his skin. He wanted to throw his head back and roar in rage and fear. But he held back those two dangerous emotions, as he had always done his entire life.
“Ash, where would they take her?” Aiden asked in a quiet voice.
Ashton looked up as he held his wife tenderly in his arms, his usually clear thinking clouded by worry. “I... I don’t know.”
Godric glanced around the room, looking to the window. “There must have been at least two men. Aiden and I examined the garden tonight, and I knew the wall could only be scaled by a single man, not someone carrying a body. That means someone took the princess out another way, and this one might have stayed behind with Rosalind and left out the window to distract us,” he said.
Godric’s theorizing spurred Ashton’s mind into action. He looked to the open window, then around the room, noting its disarray. “More than two, I would say. There was a fight, given the state of the furniture overthrown, and I see dirty boot prints of at least three different sizes on the floor. The window is indeed too small for Anna to have passed through in her court dress, and we see no gown has been abandoned nearby, so they haven’t stripped her of her clothing. They most likely left through a side door, a servants’ entrance, I would guess. The one who stayed behind with Rosalind as a hostage could have possibly done so to ensure Anna didn’t raise an alarm before they escaped. They will take her to the nearest port and try to sail back to Ruritania. It’s what I would do in their position.”
Rosalind moaned, and her dark lashes fluttered. “Ash...” She looked up to see her husband’s pale and anxious face.
“What happened, Rose?” Ashton asked with a gentleness that he reserved only for his wife.
