A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(65)

“What is going on?” he asked Sarah, who was attempting to usher a visibly distraught Frances into the sitting room.
Sarah gave him an impatient glance. “It is Miss Wynter. She has disappeared.”
Daniel’s heart stopped. “What? When? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah snapped. “I’m hardly privy to her intentions.” She gave him an irritated glance before turning back to Frances, who was crying so hard she could barely breathe.
“She was gone before lessons this morning,” Frances sobbed.
Daniel looked down at his young cousin. Frances’s eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, her cheeks were streaked with tears, and her little body was shaking uncontrollably. She looked, he realized, like he felt. Forcing down his terror, he crouched next to her so that he could look her in the eye. “What time do you begin lessons?” he asked.
Frances gasped for air, then got out, “Half nine.”
Daniel spun furiously back to Sarah. “She has been gone almost two hours and no one has informed me?”
“Frances, please,” Sarah begged, “you must try to stop crying. And no,” she said angrily, whipping her head back around to face Daniel, “no one informed you. Why, pray tell, would we have done?”
“Don’t play games with me, Sarah,” he warned.
“Do I look like I’m playing games?” she snapped, before softening her voice for her sister. “Frances, please, darling, try to take a deep breath.”
“I should have been told,” Daniel said sharply. He was losing patience. For all any of them knew, Anne’s enemy—and he was now certain she had one—had snatched her from her bed. He needed answers, not sanctimonious scoldings from Sarah. “She’s been gone at least ninety minutes,” he said to her. “You should have—”
“What?” Sarah cut in. “What should we have done? Wasted valuable time notifying you? You, who have no connection or claim to her? You, whose intentions are—”
“I’m going to marry her,” he interrupted.
Frances stopped crying, her face lifting up toward his, eyes shining with hope. Even the maids, still three abreast on the bench, went silent.
“What did you say?” Sarah whispered.
“I love her,” he said, realizing the truth of it as the words left his lips. “I want to marry her.”
“Oh, Daniel,” Frances cried, leaving Sarah’s side and throwing her arms around him. “You must find her. You must!”
“What happened?” he asked Sarah, who was still staring at him slackjawed. “Tell me everything. Did she leave a note?”
She nodded. “Mother has it. It did not say much, though. Just that she was sorry but she had to leave.”
“She said she sent me a hug,” Frances said, her words muffling into his coat.
Daniel patted her on her back even as he kept his eyes firmly on Sarah. “Did she give any indication that she might not have left of her own volition?”
Sarah gaped at him. “You don’t think someone kidnapped her?”
“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.
“Nothing was out of place in her room,” Sarah told him. “All of her belongings were gone, but nothing else was amiss. Her bed was neatly made.”
“She always makes her bed,” Frances sniffled.
“Does anyone know when she left?” Daniel asked.
Sarah shook her head. “She did not take breakfast. So it must have been before that.”
Daniel swore under his breath, then carefully disentangled himself from Frances’s grasp. He had no idea how to search for Anne; he didn’t even know where to start. She had left so few clues as to her background. It would have been laughable if he weren’t so terrified. He knew . . . what? The color of her parents’ eyes? Well, now, there was something that was going to help him find her.
He had nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“My lord?”
He looked up. It was Granby, the long-standing Pleinsworth butler, and he looked uncharacteristically distraught.
“Might I have a word with you, sir?” Granby asked.
“Of course.” Daniel stepped away from Sarah, who was watching the two men with curiosity and confusion, and motioned to Granby to follow him into the sitting room.
“I heard you speaking with Lady Sarah,” Granby said uncomfortably. “I did not intend to eavesdrop.”
“Of course,” Daniel said briskly. “Go on.”
“You . . . care for Miss Wynter?”
Daniel regarded the butler carefully, then nodded.
“A man came yesterday,” Granby said. “I should have said something to Lady Pleinsworth, but I wasn’t sure, and I did not want to tell tales about Miss Wynter if it turned out to be nothing. But now that it seems to be certain that she is gone . . .”
“What happened?” Daniel asked instantly.
The butler swallowed nervously. “A man came asking for a Miss Annelise Shawcross. I sent him away instantly; there is no one here by that name. But he was insistent, and he said Miss Shawcross might be using a different name. I did not like him, my lord, I can tell you that. He was . . .” Granby shook his head a little, almost as if trying to dislodge a bad memory. “I did not like him,” he said again.
“What did he say?”
“He described her. This Miss Shawcross. He said she had dark hair, and blue eyes, and that she was quite beautiful.”
“Miss Wynter,” Daniel said quietly. Or rather—Annelise Shawcross. Was that her real name? Why had she changed it?