The Vanishing at Loxby Manor by Abigail Wilson (grave mercy .TXT) 📕

been kept, as well as spots for presumably missing rings. Perhaps Seline had come homeand fetched her favorite pieces of jewelry—or she could have been wearing them that night. I bit my lip. Unfortunately therewas no way to know.

I heard a loud pounding beyond the wall and my hand jerked back. The jewelry box slammed closed, sending a puff of dust intothe room. As if struck by lightning I fell back, unable to move or breathe. Was someone in the hallway? On their way to Seline’sbedchamber? My chest felt numb and I wondered if my heart was beating at all.

Footsteps, and they were approaching fast. I held so still I thought my feet might take root to the floor, but Seline’s bedchamber door remained shut. The footsteps drifted on, and like a slow-moving waterfall, the tension in my muscles gradually ebbed away. But I could no longer search in relative calm. Whoever was out there might still interrupt at any moment, and then what? I had no reason for invading Seline’s room. Either way, I had to hurry.

I flew to the wardrobe and ran my hands through her beautiful gowns. If she had taken her jewelry, she might very well havetaken a gown. I pushed past one to the next. Were any missing? How on earth could I even tell? I’d not been privy to her wardrobeover the last five years. And she would have had little room in her valise. It was entirely possible she would have selectedonly one gown to take with her. I threw my hands up, abandoning the wardrobe search, and turned instead to her bedside table.Nothing. Everything. How could I know what was here and what was missing? I’d been a fool to think I might find a clue withinher room.

I flopped onto the bed, taking one final meticulous look over every inch of the apartment in a veiled attempt to discoversomething before I abandoned the idea entirely.

It was in that very moment that I noticed the dresser that held her water urn and wash basin and the small item lying nextto it—Trotter’s Oriental Dentifrice, or Asiatic Tooth Powder.

My mouth dropped open, and I stood before racing across the room and seizing the small, round container. Sure enough, Selinehad left her tooth powder. I spun back to the dressing table. And there was her favorite lotion, Olympian Dew. No way wouldSeline embark on an elopement without her beloved toilet.

I shook my head as the last of my trickling doubts disappeared into a pool of certainty. I’d come to Seline’s bedchamber to find something missing, something to prove she had returned to the house and left on an adventure. But it wasn’t what Seline had taken with her that provided the frightful truth looming ever-present in my mind; it was what she had not.

I set the tooth powder on my dear friend’s dresser, my fingers quivering as I drew them to my side. There was no doubt inmy mind; Seline had not returned to the house. The letter we’d found the night she disappeared had to be a forgery, whichcould only mean one thing. Seline could be in terrible danger.

*  *  *

I’d no intention of sharing my newfound assumptions with Mrs. Cavanagh, but when I arrived in the drawing room later thatday, I found her standing at the bow window, her hand perched on her hip, a look of contemplation on her face.

Though I knew Piers and Avery hoped to spare their mother any undue anxiety, I began to wonder if such a tactic was indeedthe best course, particularly when urgency was most definitely upon us.

Mrs. Cavanagh knew her daughter better than anyone. She might prove useful in our investigation. I stared down at the red-and-yellowAubusson rug and clasped my hands at my waist. It wasn’t my position to disclose the whole of what Piers and I had learned,not when he’d specifically asked me not to, but perhaps I could pose something of a question for Mrs. Cavanagh to ponder,something that might help me understand what happened the night Seline never came home.

I cleared my throat, gaining Mrs. Cavanagh’s attention. “Ah, Miss Halliwell, you startled me.” She motioned for me to joinher on the sofa. “I was lost in thought.”

“It must be difficult . . . as you are forced to wait for news.”

She seemed to move as if in slow motion, every inch of her body exhausted from worry. “Sometimes I believe I might never recover from Seline’s departure, and then other times I imagine her waltzing right through the front door and declaring she never left. My dear Miss Halliwell, it is a strange world that I am forced to live in now—a terrible dreamland I fear I may never awaken from.”

There was a moment of silence as she arranged the folds of her skirt. “Seline was always a headstrong child, and some peopleyou simply cannot save. I suppose she has no one to blame but herself. Yet at the strangest times of the day, I feel”—sheshrugged—“I guess you could call it an inkling of remorse for my part in failing her as a mother.”

I cannot say what came over me in that instant. I’d not felt a connection with Mrs. Cavanagh since I’d arrived, but somewherewithin the creases of her rambling hid an intimation of emotional truth, which Mrs. Cavanagh rarely exposed. Though she hadbeen hurt by Piers and pushed him away and now by Seline, I knew that deep down she loved all of her children. What motherwouldn’t?

I took a seat on the sofa. “I just came from Seline’s room.”

Her eyes widened, and then the muscles in her arms stiffened. “Her bedchamber?”

“Yes. I went there hoping I might make some sense of why she left that day.”

Mrs. Cavanagh cocked an eyebrow as she sucked in a deep breath, but her voice came out steady. “And what did you find, mydear?”

“Nothing of any consequence—not exactly, that is.”

She regarded me as if I were one of her embroidery palettes and she was determining where to place the next stitch. “I’vebeen over that room more than once. If