Just as well since jealousy and acute hatred of the lucky Mr Turner shot through him in a hot arrow of frustration. He was too late, he let himself mourn silently as the absurdity of being too late for a woman he had not even met an hour ago tried to snap him back to sanity. She obviously did not like him, so that made his feral longing for another man’s wife feel even worse.
‘I am a widow,’ she told him almost defiantly and with no idea she had just freed him from a fire he had never wanted to burn on. He did not have to want another man’s wife so unmercifully he was having trouble keeping hold of the elusive thread of this not quite a conversation as well as his dignity.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he lied.
‘Thank you,’ she said as if that was the last she wanted to hear on the subject. ‘Do not let your tea get cold,’ she advised him. ‘It might not be coffee or chocolate, but it is hot and you look as if you need reviving, my lord.’
‘Well, really, my dear,’ Miss Donne chided, as if personal comments mattered at a time like this, ‘this is not the time for picking at one another with Miss Defford still to find and time a-wasting.’
‘No, you are right,’ Mrs Turner admitted. ‘We need to eat and be out and ready for the search as soon as the others are awake,’ she added.
Alaric could only nod his agreement and drink his tea. Both ladies were right, they did need to eat and drink so they would have strength for the resumed search for Juno. His niece was all that mattered and never mind his foolish obsession with a honey-haired widow with dreamy blue eyes and a mouth a man would ride a hundred miles to kiss, if only those eyes were dreamy for him and her mouth half-asleep still after a night of hot and heady loving in his bed.
When Miss Donne’s Bet came downstairs, tying her apron and struggling with her cap, she blurted out the story of Fliss walking off into the hills in the pouring rain last night to look for Miss Defford before she even noticed the travel-worn lord lurking in front of the kitchen fire. So then Miss Donne had to tell His Lordship Marianne’s brother, Darius, had gone after Fliss and neither of them had returned yet. Lord Stratford had tersely demanded directions and marched out of the back door as soon as Bet could gasp them out. By the time Marianne put her damp shoes on and stumbled after him, the viscount was almost out of sight and obviously in a fine temper. She had been forced to pant after him up the winding lane out of town and even then she only just managed to keep him in sight.
She scurried into earshot just in time to hear why he was in such a hurry. Apparently Darius had compromised Fliss before Lord Stratford could marry her himself. From the dreamy way Fliss was looking at Darius, Lord Stratford would not have got his way even if he had got here in time to keep them apart last night. Then the viscount said Fliss had recently inherited a fortune and accused Darius of being a fortune hunter. How ironic when Darius had tried so hard to resist his attraction to Fliss because she was a poor governess and he thought he should marry money. If Juno’s disappearance was not so sharp in all their minds, Marianne might have been amused by the sight of Lord Stratford frustrated of a rich and suitable viscountess.
She did smile now as she recalled the look on Fliss and Darius’s faces while they faced His Lordship on a sodden hillside track. Every look and gesture screamed they were lovers and Fliss did not look in the least bit sorry to turn her back on His Lordship’s flattering offer. Then they all remembered Juno was still missing and never mind who would marry whom.
Lord Stratford was the girl’s guardian and he had said they should all forget worrying about gossip. If the whole world knew she had gone missing, they just needed to find her—so now half the neighbourhood were out looking for the missing girl. Finding waiting for news at Miss Donne’s more wearing than actively looking for Juno, Marianne was glad when Darius asked her to come back to Owlet Manor with his orders for the men today so he could stay in Broadley.
All these hours on, Marianne shook her head at her vivid mental image of Lord Stratford when she should be worrying about the still-missing Juno. In her shoes Marianne knew she would have bolted as well, however worrying it was not to have found the girl so many hours after she set out to walk the last stage of her long journey. Indeed, she had run away to marry Daniel, but that was a glorious adventure with him at the end of it. Marianne felt the bleakness of Daniel’s death at the bloody siege of Badajoz more than two years ago threaten and there was always this hollow in her heart now. No Daniel to tease and quarrel and laugh with or to love with every breath in her body. How fiercely he would argue with her about that empty heart if he could hear her! He would insist she must live life to the full and love again, even if the best part of her was cut away the night he died.
Marianne shook her head at the bereft and gloomy place her tired
