Savage Arrow by Cassie Edwards

Author:Cassie Edwards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781428504035
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 2011-12-06T09:48:35+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

As the sun came through the dining-room window, casting light on the empty chair where Jessie normally sat, Reginald frowned and drummed his fingers against the tabletop.

When Jade came into the room carrying a platter piled high with bacon, flapjacks, and fried eggs, Reginald gave her a quick questioning frown.

He slammed a fist on the table just as she set the platter down, causing it to bounce. Some of the eggs slipped from the platter, their yolks breaking and running like orange tears across the white linen tablecloth.

“Where is she?” Reginald shouted, then suddenly began wheezing. “Jade, where is Jessie? She knows she’s supposed to take breakfast with me.”

Jade clasped her hands before her, wringing them as she glanced fearfully at Reginald. “I don’t know where she is, sir,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Are you telling me you haven’t seen her?” Reginald demanded, his eyes narrowing angrily. “You normally help her dress in the morning. You brush her hair. So, where is she?”

Jade lowered her eyes, swallowed hard, then dared to look into Reginald’s angry eyes again. Through the thick lenses of his spectacles his angry eyes seemed ten times larger than normal this morning.

“Nay I have not seen her,” she murmured, still clasping and unclasping her hands.

“Stop that nonsense with your hands!” Reginald shouted. He coughed into his palm. “Stand still. Answer my questions. Do you hear? Tell me where Jessie is.”

“As I said, sir, I have not seen her this morning,” Jade gulped out, her heart pounding like a sledgehammer. “When I went to her room to awaken her, she . . . she . . . was gone.”

“She was gone?” Reginald said, jumping from his chair so quickly it tumbled to the floor behind him. “Are you saying she’s gone from my house?”

“Seems so, sir,” Jade said, swallowing hard as she hid her hands inside her apron pockets.

Reginald threw his white linen napkin on the table, then swirled around and stamped from the room. Wheezing almost uncontrollably, he hurried to Jessie’s bedroom.

He stared at the bed.

Either Jessie had made it upon first arising, which he doubted, or she had not slept in it at all.

His eyes slid slowly over to a window that was open. As he stuck his head out of it, he shouted Jessie’s name at the top of his lungs.

Realizing now that she had run away, he paled. But then another possibility occured to him.

Yes!

No doubt she had risen at dawn and was even now out riding the lovely horse he had given her. He felt stupid for having gotten so alarmed just because Jessie wasn’t at the breakfast table. Yet . . . it did appear that she had not slept at the house. And why was the window open?

The nights were cool, so she wouldn’t have slept with it open.

His mind aswirl with questions, he hurried from the room and went out to the corral, where he found the horse he had given Jessie gone as well. Yes, she was horseback riding and would surely return soon to have breakfast with him.

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