Page 99

God above, had there ever been a more troublesome personage than Lady Featherstone? “Do? Not a blessed thing. The damage has been done.”

Lady Featherstone sucked in a deep breath, but before she could launch into a harangue he turned and left her and her sniveling daughter to do as they pleased.

All he could think about was Stella. It had been hours since he’d last seen her. Had she been locked up in her attic prison that entire time?

He took the stairs two at a time, the thud of his footsteps drowned out by the ragged sound of his breath rushing through his head.

Up, up, up he went, flying past the second-floor landing to the back staircase that led to the servants’ quarters. It was deserted up here, with the castle’s servants scurrying about downstairs for the Christmas Eve ball.

The corridor was silent, not a sound coming from Stella’s bedchamber. If she’d been pounding on the door and calling for her freedom, she’d since given up.

It wasn’t a good sign.

He didn’t pause, nor did he knock. He fitted the key in the door and turned the knob with a wrench. It flew open with a protesting squeal, and he rushed inside. “Stella?”

The word emerged from his lips in a puff of frosty air.

God above, why was it so cold in here? “Stella? Are you here?”

It was a foolish question. The bedchamber was the size of a pocket handkerchief, the only furnishings an iron bed with a miserably thin mattress, and a battered washing stand with a chipped basin on top of it.

Dear God, what a miserable room.

There was no place to hide. If she were here, he’d have seen her at once.

He stood in the middle of the bedchamber, his heart pounding. This didn’t make any sense. Where was she? She couldn’t have gone out the door. It had been locked from the outside when he got here, and there wasn’t any other way out of the bedchamber, so how …

The window. It was wide open, the tattered drapes billowing in the wind.

No, it was impossible. Hawthorne Castle was forty feet high!

But what other explanation was there? His heart rushed into his throat as he strode to the window, visions of her crumpled body far below flashing in his mind.

God, he couldn’t look, but he couldn’t not look, either.

There was no moonlight tonight, but the lanterns in the entryway had been lit for the ball attendees, and the dim glow illuminated the shower of snowflakes swirling in the wind.

He squeezed his eyes closed, braced his hands on the sill and leaned over the edge.

He opened his eyes, his breath leaving his aching lungs in a rush.

There were no twisted bodies lying in the snow below, but there was something there. He couldn’t see it properly from here, but it looked like …

Fresh footprints in the snow.

He turned and flew out the door, into the corridor and back down the stairs, the heels of his evening pumps thundering against the floorboards.

A small throng of servants were scurrying about in the main hallway, but he squeezed past them without a word and flew out the front door into the dark night, droplets of freezing water prickling the back of his neck as he raced around to the western side of the castle.

Good Lord, but it was dark out here. It took him longer than it should have before he was directly underneath her window and up to his ankles in snow, squinting into the darkness far above him.

There was only one way she could have made it from her bedchamber to the ground without breaking her neck.

She’d climbed down the Glastonbury thorn. It was the only explanation.

The branches were more than thick enough to hold such a petite lady, but it must have taken her ages to make her way to the ground from such a distance.

The strength it must have taken, the determination …