“Uncle Rafe,” Lady Octavia declared, sending him a strained smile as she clearly attempted cheer for the benefit of the twins. “We have been looking for you.”
His instincts told him something was amiss.
He rose to his feet, tension coiling within him.
“Oh? And why is that?” he asked.
Likely, his instincts were all wrong. When was the last time he had stayed up nearly all night just to gaze at the woman in his bed?
Never.
But he had last night, watching Persephone sleep until at last he had forced himself to leave her room, lest he had fallen asleep there and been seen slipping from the chamber by the early morning hours.
“We supposed we would find Miss Wren with you,” Lady Octavia said to him. “Have you seen her this morning?”
Of course he had seen her, sleeping and sated with the glow of the moon in her sunset hair and one rosy nipple peeping from beneath the counterpane.
Do not say that aloud, you bleeding noddy.
He cleared his throat. “No, I have not seen Miss Wren this morning. Why do you ask?”
“She was to begin the girls’ lessons half an hour ago, but she is nowhere to be found.”
Something shifted in Rafe’s gut, twisting. Needling him. Persephone’s absence was troubling and quite unlike her, but then, he had taken her innocence the night before. Perhaps she had overslept.
“Have you checked in her chamber?” he asked, trying to combat the rising sense of worry gnawing at him.
“One of the maids did,” his sister-in-law said, frowning. “She said it was empty, the bed made and not a trace of Miss Wren to be seen.”
Those words made his heart freeze in his chest.
Not a trace of Miss Wren to be seen.
“I want Miss Wren,” Elizabeth said with a pout.
Or was it Anne?
Rafe could not be certain. The twins were dressed in identical gowns this morning, and his mind felt as if it had been inhabited by an impenetrable fog.
“She was going to finish telling us about Daisy the Duck,” the other twin announced. “I want to know if the boat she made leaked, or if it carried her across the lake to the opposite shore.”
“Why the devil would a duck need a boat?” Jasper asked, sounding perplexed.
“You mustn’t use oaths, Papa,” the girls chastised him in unison.
“The duck was afraid to swim,” said the twin on the right, who he was reasonably certain was Anne.
“Miss Wren made the story up herself,” added Elizabeth.
Or at least, he thought it was Elizabeth.
“If she ain’t here, we’ll never know the ending!” Anne’s lower lip trembled, her hazel Sutton eyes welling with tears.
Christ, he hated the sight of a weeping female. He plucked a handkerchief from his waistcoat and offered it to his niece, bending down until he was on her level. “Here now, dry your tears, lass. What makes you think Miss Wren isn’t here?”
She had to be here somewhere. She’d said nothing of leaving the night before. And he refused to believe she would simply disappear on him.
She wouldn’t.