Miss Goldsleigh's Secret (20 page)

Chapter Thirty

“Have you seen Penelope?”

Olivia looked up from her book. “No, not since breakfast.” Reflexively, Olivia looked out the window of the Blue Parlor as if she expected to see Penelope stroll by.

“She was supposed to help me redress a bonnet today.” Cassandra sat her irritated self down in a huff. “I think she’s hiding from me.”

Olivia laughed and placed a ribbon in her book as a marker. “I’ll help you with the bonnet.”

Several hours later, Cassandra and Olivia had refitted the bonnet in question as well as several others and re-trimmed three reticules and a parasol. Wandering out to the family parlor for tea, they discovered Penelope was still nowhere to be found.

“Has anyone asked her maid?” Olivia asked Lady Vivienne, who snapped her lap desk closed with a vicious thunk.

“That girl can’t be found either,” Lady Vivienne said. “I hoped I’d find her with you two. We had an appointment today with the new Ladies Auxiliary Committee. I’ve told her again and again how I want her involved this year.”

Olivia frowned. “How long has she been missing?”

“I found you when I was looking for her about the hat this morning around ten o’clock, I think,” Cassandra offered. “I don’t know about before then.”

“Oh, that girl.” Penelope’s exasperated mother sighed. “I can’t wait around for her any longer. I’ll have to make some excuse for her absence.” Lady Vivienne handed her maid a sheaf of papers for her committee meeting and left in a frustrated lather, her maid trailing along behind murmuring mollifying, if unintelligible, responses.

“Where do you suppose Penny has hidden herself?” Cassie poured them both a cup of tepid tea. “I thought she was hiding from me and my bonnets, but I’ll bet her whole plan was to avoid the Ladies Auxiliary Committee meeting.”

Olivia stared into the tea cup balanced on her lap. “Do you think she’d do that?” Olivia willed Cassie’s answer to be yes. An irresponsible Penny was a much better trade-off than the horrible alternative.

Cassandra nodded and took a bite of vanilla biscuit then brushed crumbs off her bodice with a sweeping gesture. “I suppose it’s possible. Mother has insisted Penny be active in the committee. They’re tremendously dull, you know, those committees.” She took another contemplative bite of biscuit. “She says it’s our duty as members of the peerage to aide those less fortunate. She’ll make me attend, too, if I don’t find a husband this season.” Cassie wrinkled her nose.

“If she was hiding, would she do it in the house or somewhere else?” Olivia asked.

Cassie shrugged. “We used to hide from our governess in the attic sometimes.”

Olivia’s teacup settled with a clatter on the side table. “All right let’s go. Come on. Up. Up.” Olivia pulled on Cassie’s arm to lever her off the upholstered settee.

“Well, I guess I’d better come at that.” Cassie scooped up five more biscuits and shoved them in her dress pocket. “You’ll never find the door.”

Cassandra had been correct. Olivia never would have found the door. It didn’t matter anyway. After an hour of searching around the dusty, crowded attic, they’d decided no one was up there.

“We’re down in time for luncheon. That’s good,” Cassie noted cheerfully.

“Where have you been?” Helen asked, noting their disheveled appearance when they came upon her and Warren on the way to the dining room. The children each held a fistful of charcoal pencils and a sketchbook tucked under their arms.

“We were looking for Penny in the attic,” Olivia absently told them. There were still six days before Reginald’s deadline. Under the circumstances, Olivia had to consider the very real possibility that her cousin was involved.

“Why was Penny in the attic?” Warren asked.

“She wasn’t,” Cassie informed them. “Were you sketching in the garden for nature study?”

“Yes,” Helen told her.

“Did you see Penny?” Olivia looked to the children. They shook their heads in reply and took places at the table, joining the dowager, Aunt Evelyn and middle sister, Daphne.

Olivia stopped listening as the children and Cassie debated their lesson. In fact, Olivia was so far in her head, she didn’t notice Henry had come into the room until he sat next to her at the table.

“Not that you aren’t always a vision of loveliness, turtledove,” Henry’s voice rumbled, breaking her concentration, “but, putting it mildly, you and my sister are a mess.”

A cursory examination with Olivia’s fingers found that her hair had defied the braids and pins and now curls toppled down. She clucked with her tongue and used her napkin to brush absently at the dust that clung to the material. Being mussed was the least of her worries. Oh dear God, if anything happened to Penny…

“What mischief has Cassie had you doing?” Henry leaned over and plucked a cobweb from her shoulder.

“It wasn’t me,” Cassie assured her brother. “Olivia thought Penny might have been hiding in the attic like we did when we were young.”

Henry quirked an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Penny is missing,” Olivia blurted. She couldn’t quell the panic, the metaphoric storm cloud having now built into an apprehension she could no longer ignore. Reginald had mentioned Penny by name. To dismiss what she’d assumed had been an idle threat was a mistake. It also meant Reginald was crazier than ever.

Henry gave a one-shoulder shrug. “She’ll turn up,” he said, nonchalant, and tucked into his roast beef.

“No.” Olivia shook her head, emphatic. “Something’s wrong.”

Henry stopped chewing and met her gaze.

Olivia continued, “No one has seen her for hours.” Henry set down his fork and knife and turned to face her. “The longer she’s gone, the more I’m afraid she won’t just turn up.”

“What are you telling me?” Everything about her fiancé was serious now.

“No one knows where she is.” How could she ever tell him what she suspected and feared? She should have told him last night. The other conversations in the room had ceased, all attention on Olivia and Henry’s discussion. As frightened as she was to reveal everything, she was much more terrified that she’d allowed something dreadful to happen to her friend.

Henry addressed the rest of the family. “Who saw Penny at breakfast?”

His grandmother spoke first. “I ate with her this morning.”

“Did she mention what she had planned for the day?” Henry asked.

The older woman thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t think so, but she usually goes for a walk through the park first thing in the morning.”

Olivia did know Penny liked to take a constitutional early, before the park got crowded, even when it had been a particularly late night. She paled at the memory of her cousin lurking ominously on the fringes of the path, almost in the wooded glen, watching her. How easy it would be for Reginald and his thugs to snatch Penny. She covered her mouth with one hand and shook her head.

Henry eyed her reaction, his expression hardened into something just short of accusation. “Pair up, and let’s look through the house,” he ordered, rising from the table. “You, come with me.”

The family removed themselves from the table in confused cooperation, polarized by Olivia’s obvious distress and the fact that Henry now shared her same concerns. As the two of them left the room, the butler was organizing the household servants to join the search.

Henry led her to his study and closed the door. “Where is my sister?”

She rushed to get the words out. “I think Reginald has her.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Olivia’s hands fluttered at her sides, and she didn’t know what to do with them. “Because he told me if I didn’t go with him, he’d take her.”

“What?” Henry yelled, his voice mixed with incredulity and anger. “When the hell did this happen?”

Olivia refused to waver. This was her fault, and she’d take the anger coming at her, but inwardly she cringed. “Yesterday outside the milliner’s.”

“Oh my Lord, Olivia,” He erupted in words and action, whirling and stomping across the room. He spun back around and demanded, “You didn’t think that bit of information should reach my ears right away? You failed to tell me, me, the one man who has repeatedly tried to protect you from that ass of a cousin of yours. But now it’s not just about you.”

“I know,” she whispered. She covered her mouth, afraid she’d start weeping—tears of fear for her dear friend, tears she had no right to shed. Not right now. Not while Penny was still missing.

Henry’s handsome face was harder than she’d ever seen it. “What did he say exactly? I don’t want to hear any lies or half-truths. We don’t have time.”

“I would never lie to you, Henry.” She reached out to touch his arm, but he withdrew from her fingers. Olivia crossed her arms over her chest instead.

Henry raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Really? Starting when?”

Olivia swallowed. “Not about anything really important.” Except she’d been lying to him one way or another since day one. She thought she’d been protecting him and his family by withholding truths, lies of omission, but she’d managed to do the exact opposite. “I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to Penny.”

“We don’t have time for this right now.” The blue of his eyes settled into crystal blue fervency. “We need to find my sister.”

***

At that moment he was so angry at Olivia and himself he couldn’t be in the same room with her. If he could have figured out how to separate from himself, he would have.

After all of his patience, how could she still not trust him with something as important as Penny’s safety? Intellectually, he knew how terrified Olivia must have been of Reginald’s sneak attacks. The man had been stalking her for months. He imagined what the stress of living like that did to a person. She must have been in a near-constant panic. In her defense, he could begrudgingly understand why she thought she could take care of herself. Granted, she hadn’t done very well at it, but he could see why, after her explanations of the abuses she found at the hands of the inhabitants of London who offered to
help
her, she was reticent in trusting him one hundred percent.

Henry felt totally and pathetically useless. Still, even understanding the reasons why, his feelings were hurt.

When Henry got his hands on the bastard, he was going to kill him.

His long, angry strides ate up the marble floor as he marched back to the foyer. He knew Olivia followed him in the same way he was always aware of her whenever she was near. His senses reached out to her and pulled the essence that was Olivia into him to muddle his mind further. Even when he was furious or fearful as he was now, he longed to drown in the scent of her terminally tousled hair, to run his hands down the length of her petite body, to fit his palm in the curve of her waist or the small of her back where two dimples began the slope of her bottom.

She sniffled, and his heart broke a little bit more, but he was still too angry to drag her to him and swear to her again how he’d never let anything happen to her.

First he had to find Penny.

And, second, find the worthless son of a bitch and kill him with as much relish as possible.

A small gathering of servants and sisters milled about in the foyer when he marched in at precisely the same instant the front door swung open and his missing sister strolled in.

“Where the hell have you been?” Henry thundered. Penelope didn’t have time to be surprised at her reception before Olivia burst past him and enveloped Penny in a desperate hug.

“Omph,” Penny grunted. “Hello.”

“Are you all right?” Olivia asked as soon as she pulled back from the embrace. She stared into Penny’s face and raked her eyes over Penny’s dress and coiffure. She did look disheveled, but not harmed in any way.

“Where have you been,” Henry demanded.

“I met Lady Harrington in the park walking her puppies. We adjourned to her home for tea and to play with them,” Penny looked at Olivia in alarm as she clung to Penny’s hand and unabashedly wept. “What happened?”

“Nothing, duckling,” Henry told her, his voice back to normal. Nothing had happened to her. His sister was safe. Now that he knew the nature of the danger, nothing would.

Since Penny was home and the events surrounding her disappearance turned out to be so mundane, the crowd in the hall grew bored and shuffled off in various directions, leaving just Henry, Olivia and his two oldest sisters in the hall.

“You missed the Ladies Auxiliary Meeting,” Cassie told her, eyes wide in a meaningful way.

“Oh no, I totally forgot.” Penelope grimaced. “Is she home already?”

“No,” Cassie said, and then added unnecessarily, “Though she was really angry.”

“Do you suppose I could race over there and still make it?” Penny asked.

“No!” Henry said with more force than was required. “You’re all staying home.”

“There’s no need to yell, Henry,” Penny glanced at Olivia. The woman was finally getting control of herself. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Olivia smiled and shook her head, which loosened yet another curl. “I was very worried about you. Let’s get you upstairs and out of this mussed dress.”

Henry had forgotten about Lady Francesca’s puppies from hell. They would certainly explain his sister’s roughshod appearance.

“Have you seen those puppies?” Penny asked Olivia and Cassie. “They are so adorable.”

“No,” Henry said firmly.

“No what?” Penny’s expression was innocence and light as if he didn’t know exactly where the conversation was heading.

“You may not have one of those demon dogs. Do not ask.”

Penny looked abashed as if the thought never occurred to her. “I never asked for a puppy, Henry.” His sister turned from him with a haughty twist of her head. “I will tell you all about them,” she told the ladies. “They are perfectly precious.”

“Um-hmmmm.” Henry knew better. He snagged his sister’s arm before she got away and kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you’re all right, petunia.”

His sisters and fiancée turned for the stairs, already chattering away.

“Olivia.” He said her name low. She turned back from the group, the resignation and regret in her eyes almost melting his resolve, but no. He’d had enough of the hiding and half-truths and deception—no matter what the reason. “Not you. Come with me.”