Page 45 of Stolen By the Rakish Duke
Two days had passed since they had found Anna, and Leo had thrown himself into the search for Philip with renewed determination.
The investigation consumed him, leaving little opportunity for the uncomfortable intimacy that had begun to develop betweenhim and Beatrice. He had suggested returning to Stagmore Manor, reasoning that from there, they could go wherever Philip might be with far less risk of detection.
The plan was practical, necessary, and entirely in line with Leo’s methodical approach, yet it also imposed a quiet distance between them, one that Beatrice could not entirely ignore.
Perhaps that was for the best. The strange fluttering in her chest whenever he entered a room, the heat that rose to her cheeks when he addressed her with that peculiar intensity, were complications neither of them had anticipated when they had struck their bargain.
Beatrice set aside the ledger, no longer able to focus on the figures. Her mind kept circling back to Philip.
Where could he have gone?
He was her closest friend, yet now it seemed that knowledge was insufficient to predict his movements in a crisis.
She closed her eyes, remembering conversations they’d shared. Philip had always been easy to talk to, open in a way that most men of his station were not. He had often spoken of Anna, of course, but also of his childhood, his hopes, his?—
Her eyes snapped open.
“Thornfield,” she whispered, the name materializing in her memory with sudden clarity.
Philip had mentioned it once, a small estate in Surrey where he used to summer as a boy. Not his family’s property, but a distant relation’s—a place of happy memories, isolated enough that few would think to look for him there.
Why hadn’t she remembered it before?
The urgency of the recollection propelled her to her feet. She needed to tell Leo immediately.
She marched down the halls of Stagmore Manor, looking for him.
“Has anyone seen His Grace?” she asked a passing footman.
“Not recently, Your Grace. Lord Tillfield departed some twenty minutes ago, but His Grace didn’t join him.”
Beatrice moved through the house with growing impatience, checking the library, the breakfast room, and even the formal drawing room, rarely used when they weren’t entertaining. Each empty chamber increased her frustration.
“His Grace hasn’t left the manor,” the butler assured her when she inquired. “Perhaps he’s in his quarters?”
She hesitated only briefly before climbing the stairs to the ducal chambers. Propriety be damned—this was information that could lead them to Philip before Westbury found him first.
She knocked on his bedroom door but received no answer. His dressing room was similarly empty.
Where could he have disappeared to within his own home?
And then she remembered.
The garden folly. The mysterious structure she had glimpsed during her tour of Stagmore Manor with Mrs. Fairchild. The building that the housekeeper had been so reluctant to discuss.
Pulling on a light shawl, Beatrice ventured into the garden. The afternoon sun cast long shadows over the manicured lawn as she followed the gravel path that wound through carefully tended beds of late-summer blooms. The folly stood partially obscured by a copse of yew trees, its stone walls unadorned by the decorative elements typical of such garden structures.
The door was unlatched. She pushed it open tentatively, unsure what she might find within.
The sight stopped her dead.
At the center of the folly was a bath sunk into the stone floor. In it stood Leo, water cascading from his naked body as he roseto his feet, droplets gleaming on his skin like diamonds in the slanted light that streamed through a high window.
“Duchess?” His voice held surprise rather than anger. “What are you doing here?”
She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t tear her eyes away from the masculine perfection before her. Water streamed down his broad shoulders, tracing the planes of his chest, following the ridges of his abdomen down to?—
She spun around, her cheeks burning so fiercely that she feared they might ignite her hair.