.
“Just another few miles to Marrowly Grange, my lord.”
Thomas nodded at the coachman and then turned his focus to Georgiana, who sat stolidly ignoring him as she looked over Honey's shoulder at a design the younger girl was drawing on a scrap of paper. The bouncing of the coach made her slow, but from where Thomas sat, he could see a lovely floral design blooming out from under her pencil.
“So, are you ready to tell me yet how you know about this place?”
“I know many things,” was his sister's only answer.
They had spent most of the week racing north close to Yorkshire. That was where the actual duchy of Parrington and the Parrington estate itself lay. The newspapers had supposed that was where Tristan Carrow and his ward had gone, and Georgiana and Thomas made the same supposition. Of course, the papers had far less at stake than Thomas did, and as it turned out, they were entirely wrong. Thomas had arrived at Parrington ready to do physical battle if need be to rescue Blythe, and he had been met by a frigidly polite butler who had told him in no uncertain terms that the duke was not in residence.
For just a few mad moments, Thomas had come close to calling the man a liar and demanding he produce the duke and his ward, but Georgiana had stepped in, pouring endless oil over troubled waters and largely became responsible for Thomas not being held by the magistrates as a lunatic.
They had been in the coach for only a few hours after leaving Parrington when Georgiana stirred, waking Honey who was sleeping next to her on the coach, and breaking Thomas out of his gnawing anxiety over Blythe.
“What is it?”
“We were at the wrong place. We should have been at Marrowly Grange.”
To Thomas’ shock, she'd rapped hard on the roof of the coach, and when the coachman pulled the team to a stop, she leaned out the window. “Turn east and south, as soon as you can. We need to get to Westbury, near Helmsley. That's where they'll be.”
“What the hell are you doing, Georgiana?”
She glared at him. “I am getting you to Tristan and Blythe. I believe that was the entire point of this exercise.”
“But how do you know where they are? What the hell is Marrowly Grange? I've never heard of it.”
Georgiana paused, and Thomas could tell that she was still deciding what she was going to tell him. “Marrowly Grange is an old property on the moors. Its disposition has always been on the complicated side. It belongs to a Carrow cousin these days, an old man who lives in Canada of all places. It's a place that Carrows and Martins have quarreled over in the past, which I find wonderfully apt on today of all days.”
“Georgiana, why do you know all of this?”
“The important thing is that I do.”
That was all she would say, and though Thomas had tried several gambits to get her to talk, she evaded, snapped, or simply ignored him. He finally quit because it seemed to distress Honey when they argued.
Honey's position with Georgiana was at least one thing he could be proud of. The slender girl had bloomed like a flower under Georgiana's direction, and Georgiana was delighted to find in Honey a natural eye for beauty and design. She was Georgiana's sole lady's maid at the moment.
Georgiana had insisted on bringing her along. “At the very least, it may be a comfort to Blythe to see another familiar face, won't it?”
Thomas had to agree, but now as the coach lumbered up the long road to the mysterious Marrowly Grange, all thoughts of anything but Blythe flew out of his mind.
Blythe, I'm coming for you. I will not let Tristan harm you.
As they turned into the estate's drive, a man on horseback galloped past them. Thomas thought nothing of it until they gained the door, and a knock revealed a butler with a slightly crazed look in his eye.
“The duke is in the study ready to hear any reports. Vickerly will escort you.”
A smartly-dressed but no less harried footman appeared to lead them, and bemused, Thomas, Georgiana, and Honey followed him to the study. On the way there, they passed the young man they had seen riding past the cart. He had a sorrowful look on his face and a guinea in his hand, and Thomas wondered all over again what the hell was going on.
The footman opened the door for them and standing behind his desk, his hands braced on the edge as if he were a man at the end of his rope, was Tristan Carrow.
“Well?” he asked without looking up.
“Well, why don't you start with what the hell is going on here and finish with where you put poor Blythe.”
Thomas supposed he was angling to get some sort of reaction out of Tristan, but he was not expecting what he got. With a roar, the Duke of Parrington leaped over his desk—that was actually quite impressive, said a small voice in the back of Thomas’ head—and charged at him.
Thomas barely managed to dodge Tristan's charge, leaning back from a blow that looked as if it wanted to take off his head.
Tristan's growl was nearly bestial. “You! What the hell have you done with her? I know it was you, stinking dog of a Martin!”
“Keep your tongue inside your head unless you want me to break your teeth.” Thomas had had enough, and right then and there, he was more than pleased to beat Tristan to a pulp until he got his answers. He would have done just that, but Georgiana stepped between them as casually as if she were crossing the parlor at home.
To Thomas’ surprise, instead of brushing her aside or simply going through her, Tristan came to a complete stop, and for a moment, the rage dropped from the duke's face entirely. “Georgiana, what are you doing here?”
“I'm here to help my brother get some answers. Now, will you two please, please for the love of Heaven, stop and talk to one another? There is obviously something going on, and no one has all the pieces right now.”
“I have everything I need to know. Last night, Blythe disappeared from Marrowly Grange. I have sent riders to all the places to the south, but damn it, nothing's come back yet. I have riders going east and west, but that will be slower. She may actually make it to a ship before we can find her.”
Thomas could see the fear and exhaustion on Tristan's face. It was almost enough to make him pity the man if Tristan hadn't put him and Blythe through hell.
“She ran away? But there's nothing out there.”
Tristan shrugged. “It's Blythe. She has the most disconcerting habit of making her own way no matter what I try to do.”
Thomas could at least agree with that. “I'm willing to forget the feud for a little while until we get her back... Why, Honey, what's the matter?”
Through all of this, Honey had pressed herself against the far wall, as far away from the men fighting as she could get. Now, though, she was staring at a wool coat that had been tossed carelessly over one of the chairs close by.
Now, Honey approached the coat and lifted it with shaking hands. She looked at something underneath the collar, and with a sharp cry, she dropped it. She backed away from the coat as if it were some kind of cursed thing, moving so quickly she almost tripped over the rug behind her.
In a flash, Georgiana was by her side, throwing her arms around the smaller girl. “Why, my love, whatever is the matter?”
“It's his coat! It's his coat, it's John's coat!”
Thomas stared. “You must be mistaken.”
“No! I am not. Look at the collar. There's a little embroidery there on the patch. I did that...”
Thomas picked up the coat, and sure enough, there were small patches sewn in to help reinforce the shoulder seams. On one of them was a small feather design, now recognizable to Thomas as Honey's work. “John... the man who abused you?”
Honey nodded jerkily. “He was here; he was really here.”
Tristan scowled. “That coat belongs to Lord Cottering. If he hurt you, he shall be brought up on charges.”
Thomas was shaking his head, feeling a deep well of panic open up inside him. “No, no, this is bad. Blythe was the one who took Honey from him. She helped Honey escape from him. What the hell was he doing here?”
“He came to press his suit for Blythe's hand even after I told him no. He was... You're not saying that Blythe went off with him? She barely knows the man.”
“I know her well enough to know she'd be furious with you and looking for any way out. I know she doesn't know Lord Cottering is Honey's John. And if Lord Cottering is the vengeful type, she might have walked right into his arms.”
The sudden panic in Tristan's face made Thomas feel a little better. He nodded grimly.
“All right then, your grace, it's time for you to decide. Do you love your cousin well enough to work with the Martins to get her back?”