Cloaked in Danger

by Jeannie Ruesch

  “You could go with her.” The words were soft, almost sad.

  “No.” The pain that cut through his words also sliced through Aria’s dimmed awareness with a sharp edge. “I cannot provide the care she needs. I can’t even cut my own bloody meat. I’ll find a way. Somehow I’ll find a way to help her.”

  “I know you will.”

  “You’re a good woman, Emily.”

  “I know that, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I believe the wedding was a rousing success!” Hypatia’s words dotted the air with a note of triumphant pride.

  “And you, my dear, made a beautiful mother of the bride.” Franklin pressed a light kiss against her cheek.

  Adam observed as a warm glow filled his mother’s face, the contented smile and the slight way she leaned toward the man who would become her husband in the near future.

  Any attempt on Adam’s part to shove the man from their lives had proven futile. And the first correspondence from the investigators had returned. Nothing. Perhaps Calebowe was just a man who loved Adam’s mother.

  So far be it from him to be the ass who kept his mother from that love.

  “Adam?”

  Lily stood a few steps away, and Adam reluctantly met her gaze, knowing he would find a similar misery. He patted the seat next to him. “Sit.”

  She sunk down, leaned back. “I am exhausted, and I’m not the one who got married today.”

  Blythe’s wedding had been perfect, everything she had hoped for. She wandered around the house full of guests with a radiant air he’d never seen. She was happy. Fulfilled.

  And Lily’s wedding was scheduled for a much quieter, much more somber affair the following week at their home, Merewood Estate.

  In a few weeks, his sisters would all be married, with the exception of Georgiana, who by God, would get locked up in a closet if she dared to look at a man before she was thirty.

  He was more than ready to return home to Merewood, to return to his quiet country ways. Yet still one small tether clung, a thread of hope he couldn’t seem to shove down.

  She had to come back to visit her father, didn’t she? And maybe after some time, some distance, she’d realize—and he was still an idiot, apparently.

  She didn’t have to realize anything, because she’d never truly been his.

  A smack on the side of his arm yanked him from his thoughts. “What?”

  Lily huffed. “Don’t ignore me. Blythe’s happiness is wonderful, but it has highlighted the utter lack of any for my upcoming nuptials.” Though the expression on her face remained stoic, she never quite turned away from where Melrose stood, drink in hand, looking like the most miserable bastard in the world.

  Adam stood, but Lily wrapped fingers around his forearm. “Please, don’t. He isn’t looking any different than I am. And I assure you, after our wedding next week, we will make the best of things.” A wistful look crossed her brow. “I care for him. Still. Even though I shouldn’t. I will try to build on that, if nothing else.”

  Adam sunk back into the seat. “A fine pair we are, Lily. You are miserable because you’re about to be married, and I am miserable because I am not.”

  “Rather unconventional of us, don’t you think?” She dropped her head back to rest it on the high back, then turned to face him. “I still think you’re an idiot for letting Aria leave. I still don’t understand why, and no, don’t you give me that look. I will ask a thousand times more if I must. After all, with a blissful Blythe married, it’s just going to be you and me residing here soon enough. You will tell me what happened.”

  “No. I won’t.” He stood, and without another word, walked to the sideboard to pour himself a drink.

  Cordelia would be heading to Scotland. Their mother was taking Georgie to America with Franklin. And Aria was gone.

  He poured another.

  Lily followed. “You can drink yourself into oblivion today; I’d like to do the same myself. But you cannot pretend you don’t love her. And if you love her, Adam, how could you walk away from her? After everything you did to find her!”

  “I didn’t walk away!” Realizing the words had come out loud and sharp, he dropped his head slightly and lowered his tone. “She ‘freed’ me from my obligation and told me to leave. The woman I thought she was never existed. She chose her previous life, not the one I offered her.”

  That hurt more than he could say. He had offered her everything he had, and it hadn’t been good enough. “After everything, after adding yet another bloody scandal for this family to keep—” He shut his mouth.

  He’d had enough of secrets and scandals to last a lifetime. His family bore enough of a burden keeping the truth of Thomas’s death; now he’d added to that burden with Wade’s.

  And the woman he’d done it for had left them all behind.

  “You’re angry,” Lily observed brilliantly.

  She leaned over and grabbed a glass of her own. “First of all, your family is fine with the burdens we keep. I, for one, am grateful to have Blythe alive. Second, I’m grateful you saved Aria, because had you lost her to Patrick Wade, you’d be far more miserable to be around than you are now.”

  She splashed a healthy dose of brandy into her glass and tipped her head back to drink it. Delicate coughs erupted, and she gasped. “Oh, my.”

  “Another?” he asked.

  She held a hand to her stomach. “I am beginning to see the merits in this. My insides feel quite cozy at the moment. And lastly—”

  “There is more?” he asked drily, tossing his own glass back until the fiery liquid cleared his throat.

  “Do hush up. I am meddling here. With everyone else in this family leaving, I will make it my sworn duty to meddle until I see you happy.”

  “When I did such a lousy job of ensuring yours?”

  “I did that all on my own, brother.” She lifted her glass up, and he poured a delicate sip’s worth.

  “But last lastly, are you such a dolt?” She smacked his arm. “I don’t care what she said to you. After everything she went through, it’s a miracle she was still standing. She was grief-stricken. Anything she said was suspect at best. And you know what I think?”

  “Pray, do tell.”

  “I think if you didn’t love her so much, you wouldn’t have let her convince you to walk away.” She stopped, frowned. “That’s what she did, and you followed along. Go to her house, find out where she’s gone. Follow her. Chase her. Let her know how you feel.”

  Was Lily right? Had he been so afraid that he’d taken her grief as truth that the woman he loved didn’t exist?

  The things she’d said to him that last day had wounded him, triggered the uncertainty he had barely kept shoved down the entire time he’d known her. And Adam realized that he’d never truly believed she would stay, that she would ever be happy in his life.

  That he would ever be enough for her.

  His fear still existed, but what if it had been her grief talking?

  “Now,” Lily said. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to think of something nice to say to my future husband.”

  As she moved back into the crowd, Adam eyed the bottle of spirits.

  Aria had been struck by loss over and over again. The grief at John’s death couldn’t be tempered by the joy at her father’s appearance. The horror of being held by Patrick couldn’t be alleviated by the healthy birth of her brother.

  Or by Adam’s avowal to marry her as planned. A plan that had formed in the midst of chaos, a plan that would have tied her to a place that had caused her nothing but pain. How could she not look at the disaster they had wrought in their lives since they’d met and question it?

  Maybe he would go to her father’s house and ask her direction. Send her a letter.

  But what if she rej
ected him again?

  The sleepless nights manifested like tiny grains of sand grinding into his eyes, and Adam knew he couldn’t revisit the party. He could not pretend to be happy. He didn’t know if he could face her rejection one more time.

  He set his glass down, wound out of the room into the entry and toward the doors.

  And the knock came.

  In moments, Higgins held the door open, and in stepped Gideon Whitney.

  He stood awkwardly, bundled from the cold and rubbing his hand over the arm that ended far above where it should.

  The man looked like hell.

  Adam’s senses came to full alert. “What is it? Is it Aria?”

  Whitney’s chin thrust out. “If you are so concerned about her, why haven’t you been to see her?”

  “And where should I pay my call? Somewhere east of the Sahara?”

  “What are you talking about? We live two goddamn streets over.”

  The words hit with a punch. The buzz of laughter and people milling about behind them grew louder in Adam’s ears. “She told me she was leaving, weeks ago. Are you saying Aria is here? In London?”

  “She hasn’t even left the house.” Whitney added a kick to the punch. “I hoped time was all she needed,” he continued, looking down as if speaking to himself. “But being in London, in that house, is making things worse. She has no distance from everything that happened. She isn’t well.”

  “She told me she wished to forget she ever came here.”

  “Then I am doing the right thing.”

  “And what is that? Why are you here?”

  “She needs to leave London. Frankly, I am worried for her mental faculties if she doesn’t.”

  Adam waited for the sarcasm that had to follow such a statement. Aria, fragile? She was sass, she was fire, she was light.

  She was everything.

  “That’s the second time you’ve suggested something is wrong with her.”

  “She is lost.” Whitney’s shoulders slumped with an unmistakable grief. “Every day she becomes more withdrawn. She isn’t sleeping. She forgets things. She...” His words had thickened, and they trailed off. “She is fading. I know of no other way to say it. And I am afraid if I don’t do something, she will disappear altogether.”

  “May I see her?” Adam asked quietly, though inside he reeled.

  Adam could no more imagine Aria as fragile and losing her senses than he could the floor under his feet turning to dust. But he also wouldn’t have believed that the passionate, impulsive woman he had fallen for could be as cold and unfeeling as she’d been that last day at her home.

  God, he wished he knew who she truly was.

  “I hoped you would do more than that,” Gideon said. “I want you to take her away from here. You are due to return to your estate shortly, correct? Now that your sister has married? Take Aria with you.”

  “Would she go?” was the first thought Adam had.

  “At this point, I don’t know that she’ll notice.” He ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know how else to help her.” The plaintive thread in his voice spoke of his weariness, his sadness. “I’m losing her, Merewood.”

  “Why haven’t you taken her away?”

  Gideon waved his one good arm in his direction. “Look at me. I’m useless. And with Emily and the babe, it’s too much. I think we’re all too much a reminder of everything she has been through. And I doubt I could find a summer home to lease even if I wanted to.”

  “I am also a reminder of these past months.” Adam didn’t know that Aria would welcome his help.

  “Maybe. But she trusted you.”

  “And now she wishes she never met me.”

  “I don’t believe that. Not for a minute. If I did, I wouldn’t be here. She loves you, and you loved her. Is that still true?”

  “Yes,” Adam answered swiftly, but his mind reeled over what her father had said. She loved him? He recalled Gideon’s quick assessment of his own feelings for Aria, before Adam had even admitted to them openly. Had he seen something in her as well?

  “When do you leave?”

  “Two days hence. But she can’t possibly live at my home. The talk would be—”

  “Gossip won’t matter a farthing if she doesn’t recover. And your entire family will be there to chaperone. Please. Be at my house to fetch her on your way. She’ll be ready.”

  Gideon turned and opened the front door, apparently accepting that he’d done what he’d set out to do. Taking it for granted that Adam would comply.

  Adam stared at the empty space where he’d stood. The cool rush of air hung in the room. His heart thudded with the wildness of a caged bird.

  He hadn’t said no. But he hadn’t said yes. He ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his aching eyes. If he went, he would be offering her his home. Again.

  And what if she rejected him again?

  Who would he find when he arrived at Aria’s?

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” Adam strode past Gideon into the house. “Where did she go?”

  “If I knew that, do you think I’d be standing here?” The dangerous tone in Gideon’s voice said he was near the edge. “When I woke up this morning, she was gone.”

  The nerves he had felt that morning melded into a gaping hole of uncertainty, one that wound like a seductive snake and reminded him that she had rejected him once before. She would do it again.

  “You told her I was coming?” he asked with dread. If she knew of his arrival, then this was a clear answer.

  Gideon shook his head. “No. She didn’t know. I thought it was best.”

  She hadn’t rejected him.

  But that meant she had disappeared.

  “The park.” Adam turned toward the door.

  “I already checked there. We’ve checked everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere, or you would have bloody well found her!”

  “You will not blame this on me!” Gideon thrust his shoulders back. “She was in your care, and you failed her. If you had protected her, Wade never would have abducted her.”

  “If you hadn’t abandoned her to London to fend for herself, she never would have met Wade in the first place! You should have known who he was. You should have been here to protect her.” Adam fired back. He closed the gap between them until he and Gideon stood toe-to-toe. “Do not blame me for this, old man.”

  “Will you two both stop?” cried a female voice. Adam glanced up to see Emily at the top of the stairs, bouncing the baby in her arms. “I will gleefully murder you both at the moment for waking this child up. It took me two hours to get him down.” She moved down the steps, her arm never losing its perfect, soothing rhythm. “And stop being arrogant asses, while you are at it. Put your heads together and figure out where Aria would have gone. She needs you both now.”

  “You checked the entire park? Even the spot behind—”

  “—the pathway? Yes. It was my first stop. The Gardens. Hell, I paced the streets three times before daylight.”

  “What about Mr. Wade’s house?” Emily’s suggestion was soft, lilted up at the end with a touch of fear. “She would not go back there, would she?”

  “Could she?” Gideon looked at Adam. “Does she even know where it is?”

  Adam thought of everything Gideon had said to him.

  Aria was fading. Losing control. Unable to forget.

  What would the woman he knew do? If all of those sides she’d shown—the warmth, the blunt coldness and the fragile uncertainty—were just facets of one glorious, drive-you-to-madness woman, what would that woman do?

  “She would do anything if she thought it might help her recover,” he said slowly, but with a certainty that resona
ted in his very bones.

  Panic stretched Gideon’s mouth over his face. “I don’t have a bloody clue how to find his house.”

  “We found it when we were searching for Wade. It wasn’t where he kept Aria—it was empty. Blythe’s husband is familiar with—”

  “So am I.”

  They both turned to Emily, who had gained equal ground. Her shoulders were pulled in tight against her neck, and her arms wrapped fiercely around her child. Flashes of fear lit like flickering candles in her eyes, but she repeated her words. “I know how to find the house.”

  “No.” Gideon’s hand shot out with finality. “Absolutely not.”

  “It could take hours to find it, and I don’t think I could write it down. But I can take you there. I can direct you down the streets. I remember, Gid.” Her words were thick with memory. “I remember, and if those memories exist solely so I can help your daughter now, then please let me.”

  “We will bring plenty of men with us to keep you secure, Mrs. Whitney,” Adam started.

  “She is not going!” Gideon argued weakly, even as he paced in a conflicted circle.

  “It is a carriage ride, that is all, darling,” she assured him. “Johnny will stay here. We will find Aria and bring her home. Nothing will happen. Wade is dead.”

  “It isn’t that simple, Mrs. Whitney.” Adam knew that Wade’s organization had not faltered. The ranks were warring for position now, as such types of people did—whoever was left standing at the end of the bloody battle would win the day. And whatever Wade had owned would eventually be considered part of the winner’s booty. If Aria had returned to the house, who knows what she had walked in to?

  “We are losing time,” Adam urged.

  “I know!” Gideon grabbed his wife by the shoulders and gave her a firm kiss. “You will listen to everything we say. We say breathe, you breathe. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Let me take Johnny upstairs.”

  She hurried up the stairs, and Adam turned to the door. “How many men do we need?”