He reached instinctively for Sera, displeased to discover that he was alone once more in his bed, the sheets cool to the touch.
With a little growl, he looked to the windows, the heavy darkness beyond indicating that he’d been asleep for several hours. He swung his legs to the edge of the bed, wanting to rise for one reason only—to seek her out and drag her back to bed. To make love to her again, and return to sleep with her in his arms until sunup. Sunup a week from now, if he could manage it.
The knocking came again, quick and urgent.
Shrugging into a dressing gown, Mal headed for the door. He’d locked it when they’d entered, unwilling to risk being interrupted, and Sera had likely escaped through the adjoining door to their rooms. He was halfway across the room when the sound began anew.
“Yes. All right!” It came on a near bellow, one he attempted to contain, knowing that his irritation with waking alone and out of time was not the fault of whoever stood on the other side of the door.
And they clearly had urgent business, dammit.
He tore the door open, “What is it?” dying in his throat as he took in the somewhat strange reality in the hallway beyond. The three remaining candidates for his unavailable hand in marriage were fanned out in the dimly lit hallway, each looking more mortified than the next to be there. Not so, their respective mothers, who seemed committed to whatever plan was afoot, which apparently involved Lord Brunswick, two of Lady Bumble’s dogs and—somehow—Sesily’s cat.
As a partially dressed Mal came into view, the assembly offered myriad response: two mothers immediately moving to shield their daughters’ gazes from Mal’s state of undress; daughters in question doing their best to at once feign innocence and get a good look; and the final girl—Lady Felicity Faircloth, of course—watching with unabashed amusement, despite her mother’s clear, “Good heavens, Felicity, look away!”
Felicity did not look away, and Mal noticed she was holding the cat, who blinked at him and offered a low yowl.
They’d never quite become civil, he and that cat.
Baron Brunswick, for his part, appeared to have been sent to do the knocking, but had little interest in whatever was supposed to happen once the door was opened. The other man blinked, took a step back, looked Mal up and down, and then said, “All right then, Haven? Have we disturbed you?”
“You have, rather.”
It occurred to Mal that much of the work done by the aristocracy was in lying to people about how one felt, so much so, that now, when he answered a question directly, no one in the group knew quite what to do about it. Well, nearly no one. After a beat of silence, Lady Lilith and Lady Felicity laughed.
Mal made a note to do his best to get the girls well matched just as soon as they were back in town. He and Sera would host them for dinner. They’d introduce them to every wealthy aristocrat in town.
He was lost for a moment in the domesticity of the thought. The idea of spending the rest of their lives in town and country, building a glorious life of laughter and languish, entertaining their guests before retiring to their bedchamber to make love until dawn.
Which reminded him that he had to be rid of this collection of people.
“Well,” the baron said, as though everything were perfectly in order. “Would you—that is—should you put on some trousers?”
Mal did not move. “As I imagine that anything that would bring a group of houseguests to the door of the master of the house must be terribly important,” he drawled, “I wouldn’t dare postpone whatever this is.”
For a moment, it seemed as though no one would speak to him or acknowledge his words. And then, Felicity’s mother stepped forward, clearly willing to sacrifice her own goodwill for that of her daughter. “Is it over then?”
Mal blinked. “My slumber? Yes.”
The assembly harrumphed, but the Marchioness of Bumble was not cowed. Indeed, it was not difficult to see from whence her frank-tongued daughter came. “The competition. You’ve selected a wife.”
“I have, as a matter of fact.” Not that he could see why the situation was so very urgent. He could only assume that Lilith and Felicity had apprised the rest of the assembly of what had happened between him and Sera at the folly.
Lady Brunswick huffed her displeasure. “You see? I told you it was done,” she snapped at her daughter. “I told you he cooled to you. You could have worked harder.”
Mal did not care for the baroness’s words, nor did he care for the way she seemed to indict Lady Emily in the fact that Mal had chosen to love his wife and forgo finding a replacement altogether. Of course, it was odd that the girl didn’t eat soup, but it wasn’t grounds for cruelty. They would invite her to the dinner with Lilith and Felicity. He could find a man who didn’t care for soup, he was certain.
“I assure you, Lady Emily, it was a pleasure to meet you.”
Lady Brunswick continued on as though he had not spoken. “It’s no wonder that the Soiled S’s all departed so quickly, but you would have thought someone could have told us you’d chosen your replacement, so we were not all left alone at the evening meal, waiting for your decision to be announced.”
He stilled even as she pressed on.
“Instead, you took to your bed in the middle of the day! Good riddance to you and the Dangerous Daughters. Our family deserves better.” She took hold of Emily’s arm. “Come along, Emily.”
Emily looked as though she wanted the ground to swallow her whole, but that was not Haven’s concern. He lifted his hands to stay the conversation. “What did you say? The others departed?”
“Like thieves! Skulking off in the dead of night!” the baroness sniped.
The words unlocked the other mothers. “An hour ago. The Talbot sisters all climbed into their coach and hied off.”
“Sesily left her cat,” Lady Felicity added, as though it mattered.
For a moment, it didn’t. And then Lilith added, soft and serious, as though she understood the implications of her words, “They were in quite a rush.”
They had left.
Surely not Sera. Not after everything they’d experienced that afternoon. Not after promising they’d discuss it. After, she’d said.
He shook his head, looking from Felicity to Lilith and back again. “All of them?”
“Of course all of them!” the baroness squawked. “They got what they wanted, the madwomen!” She turned to her daughter. “Come along, Emily, we must to bed as well, as tomorrow our search begins anew.” She tapped her husband on the shoulder. “You as well, Baron.”
Brunswick grimaced at the summons, but followed it nonetheless; at least, Mal assumed he followed it. He did not linger in the doorway, turning on his heel and heading for the door connecting his rooms to Sera’s.
He burst through it, half expecting her to be there, in the bed, asleep. At the dressing table, fiddling with a button hook. In the chair by the empty fireplace, reading. Laughing with her sisters. Something.
But she was not. The room was dark and empty of her.