Mary Grey's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Mary reached the cottage at dusk. She had ridden hard, the ledger tucked against her side. She left her horse at the stone fence and pushed the door open. "James," she said. No answer came. The room was cold. A dead fire sat in the grate. One chair lay tipped on the floor. She walked through the small rooms. A bed, unmade. A basin with clean water. A crust of bread left on the table, hard as wood. James had been here. Days ago, not today. She touched the ash. It was cold through. Whatever he had done, he had already gone somewhere else. She had ridden all this way to an empty house. Mary stood still and made herself think. A man did not vanish from his own land without a track. She searched for it. On the table she found a paper folded small, pushed under a candle stub. Not James's hand. A short line, hurried: the writer would wait at the chapel until Sunday. No name. The chapel. The grey stone chapel stood at the estate's edge, where the old pastor kept the Grey family graves. If James meant to hide, he would not go to a church. Unless he had gone there not to hide, but to be found by someone he trusted. Mary folded the paper into the ledger. She rode back through the dark. Light burned in the chapel windows. She tied her horse at the low stone wall and went in. The pastor knelt at the front, his worn Bible open on the rail. He rose slowly when the door creaked. He was old, white-bearded, calm as still water. She had shared this man's chapel for years and never once his confidence. "Countess," Reverend Whitfield said. He did not seem surprised. "You have come a long way tonight." "My husband is missing," Mary said. "He was at the cottage. Someone left him word to meet here." She held out the paper. "You know where he is." Whitfield looked at the note but did not take it. His hands stayed folded. "I have prayed for James every morning for eleven years," he said. "He came to me two nights ago. He asked me to tell no one." "I am not no one. I am his wife." "I know what you are," he said gently. "That is why I will not lie to you. He was here. He is not here now." He closed the Bible. "He said he had signed something he could not undo. He said a man was coming who would ruin the Grey name, and he would not let it touch his children. Then he left before dawn." "Where." The old man met her eyes. "He did not say. But he took the London road." Mary's hand tightened on the ledger. James was not hiding on his land. He had run toward the very thing she feared, to face it alone. And now he was a full day ahead of her.