Page 83 of The Forsaken

“Lord Archdale is sailing in the morn, is he not?” Lady Cassia put forward an idea—a bad one. “I sneaked off once, and we know Andromena has run off before. Perhaps she also wants to travel?”

The room of lackwits nodded and murmured.

“She doesn’t,” Kerr snapped.

“How would you know?” Captain Arran McQuoid called over.

“How do you not know she does?” Kerr taunted.

“I’m her brother.”

“The same brother who’s lost her more than once.”

And you—you are the one who drove her away. He silenced that voice. He would spend his life making it up to her.

“She wouldn’t board a ship,” Kerr said. “She…”

He went motionless.

“…it looked like a fairytale castle, draped in thick ivy and blossoming roses… There was this one tree beside Bishop’s Pond. Every day, and sometimes night, I would climb its big branches and draw…”

“Kerr?”

…I know where she is…

One of the stupider-than-rocks cousins pulled Kerr back to the conversation. “She’s a romantic and a McQuoid. Elopement makes the most sense.”

A muscle twitched in Kerr’s cheek. “The hell it does.”

“How do you know that, Lord Kerr?” Lady Tremaine asked softly.

Kerr’s jaw worked. “Because if she were eloping with anyone, it would be me.”

Startled gasps, happy ones, knowing ones went up.

Lady Culross cried out, victorious. “I told everyone!”

“Kerr,” Culross called when Kerr reached the door handle. “Do you know where she is?”

“I have an idea.”

On that, Kerr set off to drag the troublesome minx back, vowing to keep her at his side—and never let go.

Chapter 15

A nearly sixty-minute ride from Myrtle’s Mayfair residence to Hampstead Heath, seated astride the borrowed horse, albeit without permission—a chestnut mare named Charlie, on loan from the Duke of Aragon’s stables—Andromena reached late Aunt Beatrix’s cottage.

Memories, gentle, safer ones of a simpler time came to greet her like an old friend.

How, as a wee lass, Andromena rushed to rise before the sun. For only when the summer shone full in the sky did nature’s playground of heaths and ponds unfurl. It was far enough from London to feel like a fairy land, yet close enough that human pollutants crept into the countryside to spoil the dream. Thick, low clouds seeped past the wooden gate and drifted over the crushed stone path—a fog barrier standing between Andromena and her play. Naturally, as someone who never took “no” for an answer when it mattered most, she fought the fog.

In the absence of a capstan and the actual hemp warp-line Brone had told her was used to haul in ships, Andromena did the next best thing. She fashioned one on her own—in her mind, of course.

So many morns, with Aunt Beatrix’s servants already at work in the kitchens, Andromena raced past, grabbing an oatcake on her way to the flower-lined walkway. With the griddle-baked bread between her teeth, she anchored her tow-line to the white picket fence. Once done, she used all her body power to haul the sun from those dreary cloud covers. She worked until sweat covered her arms and brow, and each breath was a strain.

Until one day, Aunt Beatrix called out, “By jings, lass! What are you doing?”

Andromena lost her hold and tumbled back into the red campion hedgerows. With all the patience she could manage after having her efforts dashed, she explained it all very clearly and patiently. After all, it wasn’t Aunt Beatrix’s fault she didn’t know things only children did.