Wynne knew something was wrong before they reached the long drive leading to the Abbey. Groups of men moved along in lines across the fields and the golf links, searching every inch, kicking at patches of gorse and long grass. He could see others by the ponds poking into the water with their sticks. They were looking for something.

“What do you think has happened?” Jo asked.

“I don’t know.” He paused and motioned toward the carriage and grooms waiting by the door to the annex. “But we have visitors.”

There was no point in guessing what was amiss. They’d know soon enough. But as their own carriage stopped by the door, Dermot dashed out the building and climbed in before they could step out.

“Driver, go out beyond the grove of chestnuts and stop there,” he called out, and the carriage immediately lurched into motion.

“My apologies, Lady Josephine,” he said, bowing his head in greeting. “But it would be better if you were not to arrive at the Abbey just now.”

“What’s wrong?” Wynne demanded.

Dermot turned to him. “Graham and Mrs. Barton stormed in here some time ago, angry as a pair of wasps. They want to take her son and deliver him to the lunatic asylum in Aberdeen. They claim all the arrangements have been made. I tried to reason with them, but they’re not having any of it. They’re demanding that we release him to them immediately.”

Jo grew pale and her dark eyes fixed on Wynne. “Is there a way to stop them?”

Dermot’s face showed his doubts. “They know about the attack last week. They also know Barton went into the fish pond. She’s claiming we’ve been negligent in caring for him, and as his mother, it’s her duty to take him. I managed to keep your name out of any discussion of the events, m’lady. It was obvious to me your arrival and influence on Charles’s improvement distressed them.”

“Did they ask about Lady Jo?”

“Mrs. Barton did, as soon as we found that Charles was missing.”

“What did you say?”

“That she traveled north yesterday.”

True enough, Wynne thought.

“What is the asylum in Aberdeen like?” she asked with a quaver in her voice.

“Dreadful.” The doctor shook his head. “He won’t survive there for very long.”

Wynne quickly considered their options. “Where are the Bartons?”

Dermot glanced out the carriage window like a man expecting an ambush. “Right now, they should be in the east wing with my uncle and aunt. I’m guessing the Squire is talking ceaselessly about golf while my aunt buries them with refreshments. But I don’t know how much longer they’ll stay put.”

“And Charles Barton?” Wynne asked.

“That’s the other issue facing us at the moment. He’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Where?” Jo asked, upset. “Is that why you’re searching the fields? Who took him? What happened to his attendant?”

“We found his attendant in one of the barns, tied and gagged with a bag over his head. He was quite unharmed, really. But there’s no sign of the patient.”

“Let me understand this,” Wynne said, visualizing how the events unfolded this morning. Or rather, how Dermot presented it to the Bartons. “Charles wandered off on foot. Since he cannot have gotten far, he must still be close by. And you’re not using the dogs because you don’t intend to upset him or cause him to injure himself.”

“You understand the situation perfectly.” Dermot’s look spoke volumes. “Once Graham learned his nephew was missing, he was ready to go to the village and fetch the constable and put a search party together himself. But I assured him that no carriage or horses had been taken, and we were confident about finding Charles very quickly. In fact, they assume you’re leading the search.”

“He was satisfied with that?” Wynne asked.

“For the moment anyway, but yes. Particularly when I mentioned Charles was last seen by the fish ponds.”

Jo stared at Dermot and then looked at Wynne. Her expression told him she understood the hinted accusations. After what they’d learned in Garloch, he was beginning to think Graham was capable of anything.

“Where is Cuffe?” she asked.

“He is . . .” The doctor paused with a meaningful look at Wynne. “He’s out and around somewhere, but I don’t know exactly where. But actually, when I think of it, the lad might have gone missing quite soon after the Bartons arrived and made their intentions known.”

“Buy us some time.” Wynne leaned over and opened the carriage door. “Read them one of your dissertations on the migration of cuckoos or the structure of the salamander brain. Just hold them. I’ll get word to you how we’ll proceed next.”

* * *

The carriage pulled up into the overgrown courtyard at Knockburn Hall. No sooner had they stepped out when, to her relief, Cuffe’s face appeared in an upstairs window.

“While you go up, I need to speak to my son.”

Jo studied Wynne’s grave expression and his purposeful steps as he strode to the house. Before he reached the entrance, Cuffe pulled open the door.

Time stood still. Jo was unable to move, watching as the two faced each other. Finally, Cuffe’s chin rose a notch.

“I did the right thing,” he said. “Didn’t I?”

“Indeed, you did. You’ve made me proud.” He closed the distance between them and took his son into his arms, lifting him up and hugging him tightly.

Cuffe’s arms wrapped around his father’s shoulders. As Wynne put him down and they walked off a few steps in the direction of the pond, Jo could hear little of what they said. But she knew these two had overcome a great barrier. Father and son were firmly connected. And she was looking at her future. At the men she loved. They were her dreams realized.

Jo turned her attention to the house and hurried inside. She found Charles upstairs where they’d seen Cuffe in the window.

He sat on the floor beneath a window, his legs crossed tailor-fashion. His attention was fixed on a beam of afternoon light at the base of a far wall. Jo studied the lean, angular planes of his face, the narrow shoulders. He had a slight build. Medium height. She tried to imagine him as a young man.

Thinking of what Wynne had said, of the possibility of this man being her father, she searched for similarities. Physically, she’d inherited her appearance from her mother. That fact had been confirmed time and time again since her arrival in the Highlands. But what of her personality? Jo was no gifted artist, but she was quiet and unassuming. She was nurturing and had a giving nature.

She crossed the room to him. He was either her father or simply a kindhearted man who’d never gotten over the loss of a dear cousin. It didn’t matter. She was here to help him. If she could reach him at all, she thought he’d want to hear about her journey to Garloch and what she had discovered.

“Mr. Barton,” she said softly. “May I join you?”

She didn’t expect an answer, so she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him, their knees almost touching. The beam of light was directly in her eyes, but she wanted to be here where he would see her.

Jo didn’t know what Wynne planned to do as far as stopping the family from taking this man to Aberdeen. He’d commended Cuffe for helping Charles disappear. She knew he’d bend the law if necessary, to thwart the Bartons and their foul plans.

Right now, at this moment, to calm her own nervousness, she had to talk.

“Thank you for directing me toward Garloch. Captain Melfort accompanied me there.”

Charles’s fingers were drumming softly on the floor by his knee. He was missing the pencil and paper he was accustomed to draw with. Jo realized her fingers were doing the same thing and she stopped. Reaching over, she took both of his hands in hers. They were cold, like hers.

“We met with the curate there,” she told him. “An agreeable young man who was eager to help us and answer our questions if he could.”

Jo went on and relayed all they’d learned—the dates they’d focused on, the search for baptisms of girls with a first name of Josephine.

She thought he might know many of the people they encountered, possibly even the curate, depending on when he’d last visited the village. She talked about Mrs. Clark in detail, hoping the name of Josephine’s childhood friend might trigger some response.

“Josephine Sellar,” she said again. “For my entire life, I’ve never known my mother’s family name until Mrs. Clark revealed it. I didn’t know where she came from, who her family might be. The grief . . . the grief I felt after . . .”

Her voice shook. She paused, staring at their joined fingers. She studied the contrast of age in them. She touched the calluses and scars on the weathered hand. When she was finally able to speak, Jo shared how broken she’d felt last night. She told him of the tears, the sense of loss. She explained how, for the first time, she knew who her mother was and that only made her suffer so much more.

Her face was in the light and his was in shadow, so she couldn’t see if her words meant anything to him. But if he understood any of what she said or not, it made no difference. Charles Barton and his sketches had been the stimulus, the trigger that had brought her search to the Highlands. He changed everything for her. Finding Wynne again, discovering her mother’s origins, even knowing that this silent man was family—it was all due to him.

“I met Mr. Ezekiel Sellar, a distant cousin and a decent man,” she told him, reminding Charles of who he was. She conveyed the kind words the older gentleman had said about him and his father, Ainsley Barton.

“So now I know how we’re related, the Bartons and Sellars.”

Perhaps it was her imagination, but Jo thought she felt a gentle squeeze of her hand.

“You and Josephine were cousins. You must have seen each other many times while you were growing up. Perhaps you shared the same interests,” Jo suggested, wondering how many times those two had held hands. “And I now know that she moved to Tilmory Castle when she lost her own parents, which explains why you knew her features so well that you can draw her now, nearly forty years later. We never forget those we care about the most, do we?”

The smile, the laughter, the dark eyes dancing with the expression of a woman who knew she was adored. The sketches of Josephine depicted a young woman who was loved.

“I think you two must have cared for each other deeply.”

Jo had no right to assume more than that. She couldn’t speculate wildly and persuade herself there was more between them. Her mother was lost to her. She wouldn’t convince herself that Charles Barton was her father, only to have it come to nothing. She hadn’t come to the Highlands to find him.

“Mr. Sellar showed me my mother’s grave today,” she said sadly. “He didn’t really know her or care for her as you did.”

She pulled her hands away and gathered her knees to her chest.

“I didn’t tell him the truth about the grave. It would have only unsettled him. But you have a right to know. Josephine isn’t buried in the churchyard in Garloch. She didn’t die in the flood. She survived. And then she ran from her people as far as she could go.”

Her thoughts drifted to the image of her mother from the stories she’d collected over the years.

“Josephine Sellar, little more than a girl herself, turned her back on her home and her kin and traveled, heavy with child, like a pauper with other desperate and friendless folk driven out of the Highlands.” The words struggled to get past the fist gripping her throat, but she forced them out all the same. “They said she mentioned no man she was going to, and no husband left behind. She died holding her daughter in one arm and clutching the hand of the kind and loving woman who took me in and raised me.”

She stabbed at a tear that splashed onto her face . . . and then another and then another.

“I believe you thought she died and was buried in Garloch. But someday—when you’re better, I’ll take you to the Borders, to the village of Melrose. There in the kirkyard, I’ll show you where Josephine Sellar, my mother, is buried.”

She heard footsteps downstairs and knew Wynne was coming up. Jo lifted her chin off her knees and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She couldn’t fall apart. Not right now. Not when this man needed her.

The beam of light had shifted with the movement of the sun, and she stared at Charles Barton.

Tears ran unimpeded down his face, and he slowly reached out and took her hand in his.