The Offer (Baron 2)

Phillip paused at the doorway, then turned back to look at Sabrina. She was lying there stiff as a sapling, her hands fisted at her sides. What the devil would happen to her? And to him, if she didn’t tell him the truth? Or if she did, for that matter?

13

“Your visit is poorly timed, Richard. It would have been better if you’d but come a week ago.”

The marquess was pacing back and forth in front of his chair. The earl found the young man’s energy exhausting.

The marquess whirled about then, saying, “I couldn’t get anything from Elizabeth, my lord. Perhaps you will tell me where Sabrina has gone so that I may go fetch her.”

“Stop staring down at me like Satan himself. Sit down, my boy. I have enough idiots in my own household without adding you to their numbers.”

The marquess curbed his impatience and his rising temper and lowered his lean body into a leather chair facing the earl. He looked closely at the crippled old man and for the first time felt a stab of alarm. He’d aged years since the last time Richard had seen him. His eyes seemed sunken in his face and his shoulders drooped. Something had happened, something awful.

“Very well. I’m seated. Tell me what’s happened to Sabrina.”

“She’s gone, Clarendon, with but a note to me. My men are scouring the area within a twelve-mile circle, but as yet there is no sign of her.”

The marquess waved an elegant hand impatiently. “Yes, I know that. Elizabeth told me of the letter Sabrina wrote to you. The letter said she’d gone to her aunt Barresford in London.”

The earl’s voice was flat, almost emotionless. “Yes, that damned letter. No one of Sabrina’s description has left from the posting house in Borhamwood. She’s well known in the village. No one has seen her.”

“Then she’s staying with friends near here.”

“I’m sorry, Richard, but no.”

The marquess bounded from his chair. He began his pacing again, back and forth in front of the earl. “Of course she’s nearby. The people she’s with are simply protecting her. From what? Well, I can easily imagine Elizabeth and Trevor dishing out more misery than she could endure. She left simply because she couldn’t bear to stay.”

“She would have come to me if that had been the case. She would have told me. She would have known that I’d deal with Trevor and Elizabeth. No, that isn’t what happened.”

“Damnation, this is bloody ridiculous!” The marquess leaned over the earl’s chair and placed a hand on each arm. “Why, sir? Why did she leave?”

“What did Elizabeth tell you?”

“Elizabeth?” The marquess shrugged, then straightened, crossing his arms over his chest. “She told me some nonsense about Sabrina running away because I was coming to see her.”

A travesty of a smile crossed the old earl’s face, quickly to be gone. “It appears that Elizabeth is playing off all her stories. In a way, my boy, I wish I could believe that, but you must know the truth of it—to the best of my knowledge, Sabrina didn’t remember that you were coming. You have been singularly unsuitorlike these past months, Clarendon, for a man who professes to care for my granddaughter.”

Richard drew back, his dark eyes narrowing. “If you will recall, my lord, I agreed to leave Sabrina be until she reached her eighteenth birthday. Her birthday was two weeks ago. It would appear that you have not much encouraged my suit with her.”

To the marquess’s appalled surprise, a long tear fell from the old earl’s eye, falling crookedly down his wizened cheek. He pounded his fist against the arm of his chair. “Don’t you understand what I’ve been telling you? She’s gone. She’s very likely dead by now. Her horse returned, lame, and we have had no sign of her. The blizzard blew hard for nearly three days—no one could have survived it. No one.”

The marquess curbed a shaft of fear that tore through him, then he quashed it. “Sabrina is young, my lord, but she isn’t a fool. She’s safe, somewhere, she must be. Dammit, sir, do you have any idea why she left in the first place?”

The earl forced himself to think about his nephew and heir. Trevor Eversleigh would not make much of an earl, but at least he was an Eversleigh and the line would not die out. He knew that if he told Clarendon the story Elizabeth and Trevor had foisted upon him, the marquess would likely kill Trevor without a second thought.

“I’ll not have you yelling at me, Richard. I’m sorry, but I simply don’t know.”

At the incredulous look on the marquess’s face, the earl added, his voice hard and laced with pain, “The grief is more mine than yours, my boy. I have lost my granddaughter.”

“I don’t accept your answers, old man,” the marquess said, his voice colder than the icicles hanging from the roof. “Sabrina isn’t dead.”

The earl turned his bony hand palm up in a helpless gesture.

The marquess strode quickly to the door. His hand was on the doorknob when he turned back suddenly. “Where is your nephew, my lord? I would like to meet the fellow.”

The earl couldn’t manage to hide a frisson of distaste as he said, “Trevor is in his bedchamber, nursing a chill. He was leading the search when he was overcome by the cold.”

The marquess didn’t try to hide his contempt. “Are you certain this idiot is of your blood?”