“This.” Lady Hadleigh shoved two slips of paper into Jane’s hand. They’d no doubt been torn from the journal Finn always carried. “After I read them, I searched everywhere. My son is no longer in attendance.” Fear wove through her voice and reflected in her eyes.
Jane glanced over the notes. Her stomach bottomed out at the one addressed to her. “I wish I could have been the man you needed.” As her hand shook, she glanced at Lady Hadleigh. Cold foreboding dripped down her spine. “What does this mean?”
“I can pretend not to discern the direction of his thoughts, but deep down you and I both know what he intends.” Desperation lined her expression, and it fed her own worry. “Did you see where he went after you parted?”
“I’m sorry, but no.” Jane looked at the notes again. A shiver racked her shoulders. The sounds of the string quartet, the laughter and conversation, it all faded while her mind dwelled on the possibility that Finn had left with the intent to put an end to his life. Her chin trembled as she raised her gaze to meet his mother’s. “Perhaps he’s gone home, to collect his thoughts.” Her heart hammered painfully behind her ribcage, for in her soul she knew he hadn’t. When caught up in depression, there was no logic to guide him, and if he’d thought he was alone, that everyone he knew had abandoned him for their own entertainment, that she was going to accept the duke’s hand…
Oh, God, please don’t let him die.
“It’s possible, I suppose,” the countess said, and her frantic tones yanked Jane back into the present. “The footman who helped him into our coach refused to say. I don’t wish to seek out Ballantrae and involve him, but I will if the threat of having the footman sacked loosens his lips.”
Jane frowned. “That’s not advisable.” She’d rather not find herself in the duke’s vicinity again so soon. “Perhaps Finn was fatigued and did indeed seek his bed.” Quickly, she grabbed a flute of champagne and took a deep sip, hoping to stave off the inevitable urge to retch when every muscle in her body told her to run, to find him—to save him because her life would never be the same without him. “Where’s his valet? Surely he wouldn’t have left without Rodgers.”
“He’s still here. I’ve had him summoned.”
“I see.” Jane glanced at the notes again as knots pulled tight in her belly. Oh, Finn, you must try to have faith in us. “I wish he would have asked for help, but I understand why he wouldn’t. The mind is a tricky place.”
The countess’ chin wobbled. “I must go home post haste.”
Jane rested the flute on the table. “I’m coming with you.” She stuffed the notes into her reticule.
For a tiny second, the countess smiled. “I rather thought you might.”
Rodgers ran up to their location, his expression a mix of wariness and dread. “How can I be of service, my ladies?” The fact that he encompassed both of them in his glance spoke volumes.
“My son is missing.”
The valet gawked. “He left without telling me?”
“Apparently.” Jane nodded. “We’re leaving immediately for the Hadleigh townhouse.”
“I’ll make the arrangements at once.” He sprang away, loping through the crowds in the corridor like a man possessed.
The countess sighed. “We must inform Andrew. He’ll want to accompany us.”
*
Though the tripto the Hadleigh townhouse took a quarter of an hour, to Jane, it seemed as if a lifetime had passed. Urgency held her captive but also guided her footsteps as she hitched her skirting and ran up the stairs after the dowager and Finn’s brother, Andrew. The new countess waited for them at the foot of the stairs.
However, Finn’s room was empty. It had an air of not being inhabited for hours. A second Bath chair—slightly different in design that the one he’d used earlier that evening—waited near his bed. Several books rested on his nightstand, and from their titles on the spines, they were all fairy stories. A worn leather notebook lay beside the books. The coverlet hadn’t been disturbed. In the center of the bed, a gray-blue cat watched them with light blue eyes, as if she didn’t trust any of them. When her glance landed on Andrew, she uttered an offended meow, jumped off the bed, and slipped beneath it.
“Ah, that must be Wellington,” Jane murmured, but there was no time to make the feline’s acquaintance.
Rodgers checked a few places in the apartment and the adjoining dressing room. “Nothing is out of place or missing,” he announced when he returned.
The dowager pressed her hands to her cheeks. Anguish shadowed her eyes. “Where would he have gone?”
Jane patted her shoulder in an ineffectual show of support. “Does he have a special place in London where he might hide himself away and reflect?”
“Not that I know of.” Lady Hadleigh shook her head. Defeat lined her expression making her seem older than her years. “That is to say, I have no idea. Ever since he returned from various rehabilitation hospitals, I haven’t truly known him as the man he is now.”
Andrew cleared his throat. For a moment, Jane had forgotten he was there, but his big presence filled the room. When both she and the dowager looked at him, he said, “Finn would go to Hyde Park.”
“Why?” Jane gawked at the earl, the man Finn both respected and loathed.
He landed his stormy gaze on her and she took an involuntary step backward. “Father used to take us fishing as boys whenever we were at the Derbyshire property, but we talked of life instead of doing much fishing.”
“How does that translate to Finn going to Hyde Park?” Perhaps she was dense, but she couldn’t connect the pieces.