Chapter 29

CHAPTER29

“Get off, you wretched beast!” someone cried, followed a moment later by the almighty clatter and smash of a tray falling. Vulgar expletives burst forth, while the volume of Snowy’s barks increased.

Silas was up and on his feet in an instant, stumbling for the door. He lurched out into the hallway, in time to see Mr. Goldsmith lunging this way and that, trying to snatch at Snowy. The puppy, meanwhile, kept darting forward to nip at Mr. Goldsmith’s ankles before diving away again, out of his clumsy reach.

Emma, however, was nowhere to be seen.

“Enough!” Silas roared, swallowing his disappointment. “You will not touch my dog!”

Mr. Goldsmith faltered, hands still outstretched. “He knocked me over, Your Grace. I was carrying a tea tray to your mother and he… he attacked me! He has broken Her Grace’s favorite China!”

“You have broken the China by dropping the tray,” Silas shot back, crouching down with arms out. Snowy ambled up to him, eager to be picked up. “Do not blame it on a puppy, for pity’s sake. Take responsibility, man!”

Mr. Goldsmith’s nostrils flared as he stood to his full height and brushed himself off. He bowed his head. “Apologies, Your Grace. Of course, it is my responsibility. I shall have this cleaned away at once, and will apologize to your mother for the broken China.”

Snowy strained and wriggled in Silas’s arms, barking furiously at the butler, flashing his tiny fangs.

“I daenae think he likes ye, Mr. Goldsmith,” Duncan remarked, appearing beside Silas.

Mr. Goldsmith sniffed. “Well, I do not know what I have done to offend the beast.” He paused, visibly composing himself. “Might I fetch you anything, Your Grace? Mr. MacDean?”

“No, thank you,” Silas shot back, wondering what on earth was the matter with Snowy. The puppy was wild in his arms, dark eyes fixed on the butler, sniffing the air and barking like a maniac.

As Mr. Goldsmith turned and walked back the way he had come, Snowy’s demeanor shifted. The barks faded into pained whimpers, his sniffs more desperate, as if he was losing the scent of something.

“What is wrong, little beastie?” Silas cooed, stroking Snowy’s soft head. “Did the nasty man give you a terrible fright? I have often wished to bark at him and nip at his ankles too, so you are not alone.”

Snowy rested his head on Silas’s shoulder, his mournful whimpers becoming quieter. His tail did not wag, his mood surprisingly human in its obvious melancholy.

“They say dogs can feel emotions,” Duncan said, smiling sadly. “I’d say he’s nae alone in somethin’ else, too.”

Silas concentrated on the puppy. “I do not miss her, Duncan. Do not say it.”

“I dinnae,” he replied. “Ye did.”

Snowy arched back his head and unleashed a pitiful howl that struck Silas right in his heart. It seemed the pup could feel emotion and, at that moment, he was sharing everything that Silas was experiencing. Namely, the gutting, wrenching loss of a love he had never gotten to confess.

“She cannot hear you, little beastie,” he whispered, his voice catching. “Not even your loudest howl will bring her back to us. It is just the two of us now. Perhaps, that is why she left you here—a parting gift, to soothe the sting of her departure.”

Snowy howled again, undeterred.

“I daenae think he believes she’s really gone, either,” Duncan remarked. “Either that, or he kens somethin’ we daenae. That’s a mighty sad howl.”

Silas glared at his friend. “Perhaps, it is a howl to make you all stop. A howl to make you all understand that she has left us both, and is running free at this very moment without us.”

“Silas, I—” Duncan’s gaze snapped toward the shadows at the end of the long hallway.

Footsteps were approaching… and fast.

A figure shot out of the dark, running full-pelt toward Silas and Duncan. Silas recognized him immediately as one of the hostlers—a young man of no more than four-and-ten, whose father was the stablemaster of the Hudson Estate.

Breathless, the boy skidded to a halt, panting through each word as they rattled out of him, “An earl, Your Grace… bleeding… stumbled into the stables… stole a horse… he is looking for… his daughter.”

A lightning bolt splintered up Silas’s spine, straightening his back. “Who? Who is bleeding and looking for their daughter?”

“Take a breath, lad,” Duncan intervened. “Take a few, then tell us more slowly what it is ye’re tryin’ to say.”

The stableboy did as Duncan asked, bracing his hands against his ribs as he sucked in deep breath after deep breath. He dragged his forearm across his sweaty forehead as he proceeded.

“A man stumbled into the stables not five minutes ago. Said he was an earl, looking for his daughter. He’s bleeding from his head. Badly, at that. My father is tending to him as best he can, but he’ll be needing a physician.”

“Earl of where?” Silas’s heart was in his mouth.

“Lambton, maybe? Lambley… Lamb… It had something to do with sheep, Your Grace, but I can’t remember. It all happened too quick, and my father told me to get running to inform you, Your Grace, before I could think much,” the stableboy replied nervously.

Silas took a deep breath of his own. “Lambert?”

“Yes, Your Grace!” The stableboy clapped his hands together. “The Earl of Lambert.”

Silas took off, cradling Snowy to his chest as he ran for the stables with Duncan following close behind.

Bursting into the stables, Silas was met with quite the scene. Eliza and Augusta had already arrived, somehow, and had shoved the stablemaster out of the way in order to tend to Emma’s father themselves. They had torn their own petticoats to fashion bandages and were in the midst of wrapping the fabric tightly around James Lambert’s wounded, bleeding head.

James’ glazed eyes sharpened as they fixed on Silas. “There you are,” he wheezed, struggling to sit up straighter. “Thank goodness. Oh… thank goodness.”

Silas fell to his knees in front of the older man, still clutching Snowy to his chest. “What happened to you?”

“Forget me,” James rasped. “It is… Emma we must worry for.”

Silas’s insides flinched at her name. “Has she run away? Did you lose her?” He was about to ask if she had done this to her father, but even he knew that sounded ridiculous.

“What? No, she did not run!” James snapped, staring at him as if he were a madman. “I could not… protect her. I did not see the danger until it… was too late. Your Grace, she was… taken.”

In that instant, Silas’s world darkened and cracked, threatening to crumble around him. He was grateful he was on his knees, or the shock would have felled him.

Catching his breath, he glared down at the straw that littered the stable floor, a ripple of something violent and ungodly coursing through his veins. With that ripple, his world ceased shattering, his blinding rage melting molten fury into the cracks. He could not afford to spend a second in the pit of his guilt, not while she was out there somewhere, captured and afraid.

“Where did they take her?” Silas growled, raising his head. Both Eliza and Augusta gasped at the sight of him, while the horses in their stalls began to kick and whinny, and Snowy unleashed his loudest howl.

James shook his injured head. “I do not know. All I know is where they left me… and where they were heading.”

“Then, let us begin with that,” Silas said, his voice chillingly calm, “for when I find whoever has done this, it shall end with someone’s head on a spike.”

* * *

Emma strained against coarse ropes, bound tightly around her wrists. Her ankles were similarly restrained, and though she had no gag to silence her, she had already learned what screaming would achieve. Her cheek still stung where the young, unfamiliar driver had slapped her many hours ago.

It was night outside the dingy, ramshackle barn where she had been unceremoniously dumped. She did not know where she was, nor how far away from Silas she might be, but there had been no sound of horses or carriages passing—no sounds at all, in truth—so she knew her temporary prison was out of the way, where no one was likely to find her.

The young man sat a short distance away, stirring a pot of something over a fire. Every so often, he would pause and sit back, banging on his chest as a ragged cough gripped him. And once, when he had raised a handkerchief to his mouth, she had seen red flecks spray the white fabric.

He had just suffered another of his coughing fits, when Emma decided she had had enough of trying to wriggle free of too-tight restraints. If he slapped her again for speaking, so be it.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

The young man glanced at her, before returning his gaze to the fire.

“Is it because you are sick? Has someone offered to pay for a physician for you, if you do this?” she pressed, ready to throw every coin of her dowry at this young man if it meant getting back to Silas.

Laughter drifted in from the broken doorway at the far side of the small barn, where a few wisps of smoke could be seen. “Yes,” an unexpected, familiar voice said, “but it is mostly because I asked him to.”

Horror prickled through her as a man stepped through the doorway, puffing out a billowing breath of cigar smoke. She had known there was a second man at the barn. She had assumed it was Mr. Goldsmith, seeing as he had helped in her kidnap. But the man standing in front of her was not Mr. Goldsmith.

“You,” she hissed, eyes wide.

The man smiled and blew a fresh burst of smoke directly at her face. “Yes, Lady Emma. Me.”