“She did! We were leaving the orangery, and she stuck out her foot and tripped me. I could have been seriously injured.”
“Were you?”
Marie-Claire scowled. And said most grudgingly, “No.”
“Where did she go?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know,” Marie-Claire snipped, “as I was busy making sure I could still walk.”
Richard rubbed his brow. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to find one slip of a girl. “Why were you at the orangery?” he asked.
“Looking for Fle—” Marie-Claire clamped her mouth shut, although Richard couldn’t imagine why. Normally he’d be suspicious. Right now he simply didn’t have the patience.
“What did she want with Fleur?”
Marie-Claire’s mouth clamped firmly into a line.
Richard let out an impatient exhale. Really, he didn’t have time for this nonsense. “Well, if you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.”
“Fleur?”
“Iris.”
“Oh.” Marie-Claire let out an affronted sniff. “Of course.”
Richard nodded curtly and strode out the front door.
“Wait!” Marie-Claire called out.
He didn’t.
“Where are you going?”
He kept walking. “To the orangery.”
“But she’s not there,” Marie-Claire’s voice was a little breathless. He assumed she had to run to keep up with him.
“She’s not in the hall,” he said with a shrug. “I might as well try the orangery.”
“Can I come with you?”
That was enough to stop him. “What? Why?”
Marie-Claire’s mouth opened and closed a few times. “I just . . . Well, I have nothing to do.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You are a terrible liar.”
“That’s not true! I’m a very good liar.”
“Is this really a conversation you wish to have with your elder brother and guardian?”
“No, but—” She gasped. “There’s Fleur!”
“What? Where?” Richard followed her gaze to the left, and sure enough, there was Fleur, flat out sprinting across the field. “What the devil has got into her?” he muttered.
Marie-Claire gasped again, this one a longer, more gossipy sound. Rather like a deflating accordion.
Richard shaded his eyes as he squinted down toward Fleur. She looked upset. He probably should go after her.
“Bye!”
Before Richard could blink, Marie-Claire had taken off at a run after Fleur.
Richard turned back toward the orangery, then thought the better of it. Iris was probably wherever Fleur had just been. Revising his course to the south, he headed down the hill and once again bellowed Iris’s name.
HE DIDN’T FIND her. He checked the strawberry patch he knew Fleur liked down near the stream, doubled back to his mother’s rose briar, which did show signs of recent occupancy, and then finally gave up and headed back to the house. His ridiculous route had leached some of the urgency from his search, and by the time he entered his bedroom and shut the door behind him, he was more exasperated than anything else. He reckoned he’d walked three miles at least, half of it along the same path, and now here he was, back in his bedroom with nothing to—
“Richard?”
He swung around. “Iris?”
She was standing in the doorway that connected their bedrooms, her hand resting nervously on the frame. “Mrs. Hopkins said you were looking for me?”
He almost laughed. Looking for her. Somehow that seemed a monstrous understatement.
Her head tilted as she watched with a mix of curiosity and concern. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” He stared at her, wondering if he’d ever regain his ability to speak in multisyllabic words. It was just that when she stood there, the soft rosy hues of her bedroom like a morning cloud behind her, she was so beautiful.
No, not beautiful. Beautiful didn’t come close.
He didn’t know the word. He didn’t know if there was a word to describe what he felt in that moment, how he saw the lines of his own heart when her eyes met his.
He wet his lips, but he could not seem able even to try to speak. Instead he was gripped by the most disconcerting urge to kneel before her like some medieval knight, to take her hand and pledge his devotion.
She took a step into his room, and then another, but there she paused. “Actually,” she said, the word tumbling quickly from her lips, “I needed to speak with you, too. You won’t believe wh—”
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.
She blinked in surprise, and her voice was tiny and bewildered when she said, “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, choking on the words. “I’m sorry. When I came up with the plan, I didn’t think . . . I didn’t know that . . .” He raked his hand through his hair. Why was this so hard? He’d taken the time to think out his words. The whole time he’d been crisscrossing the fields and bellowing her name he’d been practicing them in his head, testing them out, measuring each syllable. But now, faced with the clear blue eyes of his wife, he was lost.
“Richard,” she said, “I must tell—”
“No, please.” He swallowed. “Let me continue. I beg you.”
She went still, and he could see in her eyes that she was startled to see him so humbled.
He said her name, or at least he thought he did. He had no recollection of crossing the room, but somehow he was there before her, taking her hands in his.