“If he’s close by, do you think my sister might be with him? Or near?”

He hated the desperation in her tone. The lilt of hope and terror mixed in one. Especially since he couldn’t give her that answer.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, driven not to lie anymore, even for a good purpose. “But we’re going to look into it. Come, we must return to the estate and let my staff know of the break in. I also must write to my man of affairs, Reynolds, and get him back here.”

“The kind of man who would do this…what if Maitland won’t let my sister go?” she asked, her voice cracking as she bent her head.

He moved to her then and caught her hands, lifting them to his chest so she could feel the steady beat of his heart. “I will not stop searching until we find Anne. I promise you I’ll never stop.”

Her expression softened and she lifted on her tiptoes to brush her lips to his. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Come, we must take care of this duty.”

He took her arm and led her from the outbuilding and the mess made there. But as he took her to the house, he could only pray the promises he made were ones he could keep. For his sake, for hers.

Thomasina was with Jasper in body as they entered the house together, but her mind and her spirit were far away, dragged to terrible places by visions of the horror of what Anne was going through at present.

She blinked, trying to find focus as she watched Jasper bark out orders and jerk out messages across a sheet of vellum that a rider raced to deliver to his man Reynolds, wherever he was. He looked every inch the earl in that moment. Formidable, powerful, unwavering in his every action and word. Perhaps that might have encouraged her. Perhaps she should have sought solace in that face, but she couldn’t.

Because in his eyes she saw fear. It was the same fear she had sensed down at the building when he realized it had been ransacked. It was the fear of a man who had underestimated his enemy and now realized what kind of foe he faced.

Tension lined the corners of his lips and wrinkled his eyes.

At last the servants had scattered to fulfill his every whim and he stared at her. His shoulders rolled forward a fraction, the earl dissolved away and the much more complicated man she called her husband reappeared.

She reached for him, needing to offer comfort as well as receive it. He was as damaged by this as she was now, the only other person who fully understood the thoughts tangling her mind.

She squeezed his fingers. “Do you think Maitland found what he was looking for when he ransacked the outbuilding?”

He sucked in a breath. “He tore at items that could hide nothing within. He kicked trunks until there were holes in them. He destroyed where there needn’t be destruction. To me that says frustration. Desperation.”