“I will thank you to unhand my wife.” George’s voice behind Richard startled him, and letting Isabel go, he swung round to face his brother, fists balled, but George’s larger frame made Richard step back. “Isabel is right,” George confirmed, smoothly, “she ran away. I sent two of my gentlemen to search for her to no avail. Most likely she has gone to find her mother at Beaulieu. There is a horse missing from the stable, and that is all I can tell you.”

Richard was dumbfounded. “What did you do to her to make her run away? It has been a week! Did she take her maidservant? Did no one in the stable hear or see her go?” His voice shook with anger. “This story is preposterous. Why did you not report her disappearance to Edward—or me? You will answer for this, George, as soon as I have found Anne.”

Then shoving George out of his path, Richard ran down the stairs and out into the garden. There he stopped, his heart pounding and his mind a jumble of possible theories. That she had run away by herself he dismissed; Anne was too timid. Besides, surely someone in the house would have noticed Anne taking the horse and carrying her belongings. Everything had gone from her chamber, that seemed certain. She must have had a helper, and that someone might talk—with a little assistance from a rose noble.

It was only on the way back to Baynard’s that Richard was consumed by self-reproach. He had stupidly put his trust in George, which once again George had betrayed. Richard blamed himself for postponing a decision to fight for Anne, and now he had put her in danger.

“A curse on my brother,” he muttered under his breath, “and may he get what he deserves.”

Richard enlisted the help of the newest member of his growing group of adherents, Lord Lovell. After Warwick’s death at Barnet, the young Francis Lovell had been without an overlord, and Richard was happy to have the intelligent seventeen-year-old as part of his inner circle.

“As a newcomer to London, no one will recognize you in the Clarence household. The last time Isabel saw you, you were a boy,” Richard remarked, as he, Rob, and Francis sat discussing Anne’s fate beside a crackling fire in his private office. Duchess Cecily had allowed Richard to adopt her late husband’s treasured sanctuary at Baynard’s while he awaited his move to Crosby Hall. Richard could feel the duke of York’s presence every time he entered the room, making him want to impress his late father.

“We must find Anne, and I am convinced someone in the house knows where she is. Rob and I have a plan for you, Francis. You will go there disguised as a squire come from the duchess of Warwick with a message to her daughter, Isabel, concerning Anne.”

“Then what?” Francis looked perplexed. “Am I going to interrogate every one of the servants—there must be dozens.”