Page 91 of Winterset

“Missing?” Anna asked, her voice rising in dismay.

“When I got up this morning, he weren’t anywhere to be found. It’s not like him to stray outside his ring of stones in the day, miss. I was a mite worried, and the longer I waited, the more worried I got. So after a while, I went out lookin’ for him. And I haven’t found him anywhere.” He looked from one of them to the other, as though hoping they would have an answer.

“Oh, Lord,” Kit sighed. “Has this ever happened before?”

Arthur shook his head. “No, sir. Not this long. He don’t like to be outside the ring when it’s light. I’m worried something might have happened to him. I can keep looking, but with just one person…” He shrugged.

“We will help you,” Anna said.

“I’ll get Rankin.” Kit named their gamekeeper, who carried supplies up to Arthur and their uncle. Only he, of all the servants, knew about their uncle’s presence in the woods. “I think you should return to your house, Arthur, in case Uncle Charles should go back there. He would be alarmed to find you gone.”

“Yes, sir, you’re right about that.”

Kit turned to his sister. “You should stay here.”

“Stay here?” Anna echoed, astonished. “I will not. You will need all the help you can get searching the woods.”

“It is not safe, not with everything that has been happening. And you can’t take one of the servants with you, since none of them know about Uncle Charles,” Kit reasoned. He hesitated, then added, “If you must go, come along with me. That will be safer.”

“That takes away the whole point of having an extra person to search,” Anna pointed out. “I will search one section alone, just as you and Rankin do.”

Frankly, she was not much inclined to strike out into the woods on her own, given the recent murders. But she could not simply stand by and do nothing while her uncle was missing.

“I shall be fine,” she assured her brother. “You need not worry about me. I know the woods as well or better than you, and there are few enough of us to search, as it is. Nothing will happen to me. It’s daylight, and the killer has not struck during the day. Besides, it isn’t me he has tried to harm, it is you. If anyone should stay home, it should be you.”

Kit snorted at the absurdity of that suggestion.

“Really, Kit, don’t make a fuss. Nothing is likely to happen, and if I do stumble upon someone suspicious, I shall scream, and you and Rankin can come to my rescue.”

“If we are close enough to hear you,” Kit pointed out. He sighed. “I am sure I should not allow you.”

“Allow me?” Anna’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“But I know you would pay no attention to me if I did forbid it,” he finished, long accustomed to dealing with his older sister. “So we may as well not fight about it.”

“I agree.”

Arthur, relieved to have passed on his burden, returned to the hut by Craydon Tor to await their uncle, and Anna and Kit went back into the house briefly, Kit to locate Rankin and enlist his help, and Anna to put on a sturdier pair of walking boots.

Soon they were making their way through the garden and across the fields behind the house into the woods beyond. The mist had thickened in the past few minutes, and Anna was glad for the bonnet that kept the moisture out of her face.

When they reached the edge of the woods, the three of them fanned out, heading off at different angles. Before long, Anna could no longer hear the sounds of either her brother or Rankin as they moved through the trees. It was, she admitted, a trifle eerie to be walking in the thick woods all alone. Even the slight noise of a squirrel scampering across a branch was enough to make her jump, and when a bird exploded out of the brush in front of her at her approach, she could not suppress a little shriek.

She clapped her hand over her mouth, hoping that her utterance had not been loud enough for either her brother or Rankin to hear. Scolding herself for being such a nervous ninny, she pressed on.

The mist was growing heavier now. In fact, she realized as drops hit the brim of her bonnet, the mist had evolved into rain. As she trudged on, the rain grew harder, and she wished that she had thought to throw on a light cloak over her dress. At least, she thought, her boots would hold up to the rain and mud.

Anna shivered and wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself for warmth. She slipped on the wet leaves and grabbed at a sapling for balance. It was then that fear slammed into her.

She gasped, her knees giving way, and if it had not been for her grasp on the small tree trunk, she would have fallen to the ground. She leaned against the tree, wrapping her arm around it to hold her up, dreading what she knew was coming.

She feared it was her uncle—some horrible vision was going to unroll before her eyes concerning her uncle. But when it came, it was far worse.

First was the insidious fear, pervasive, and so intense it made her ill. Then she saw Reed’s face, just as she had seen it in her dream the other night, pale, eyes closed, looking as if he were dead.

A moan escaped her, and Anna sank down to her knees, unable to stand. Not Reed, she prayed, please, not Reed.

But there was no mistaking his face or the blood trickling from his temple. His face was wet, the rain running down it, and she knew with a certainty that this was no forewarning as last night’s dream must have been. It was no false vision, as she had let herself believe. It was now. It was real.