Page 114 of Tears of Ink

“No, don’t.”

“I’m coming back.” His tone is firm.

“Okay. I’ve got to get looking.”

“Faith.” He calls me back as I’m about to hang up.

“Yep.”

“I was coming back anyway.”

A small smile creeps along my face. Stick that up your arse, Baroness.

Before I head outside, I pop to the kitchen and track down Jennings who is talking to a guy in a suit I don’t recognise.

“What’s going on?”

“Security for the ball.” Jennings gives me a wink and I motion him forward with my hand.

“Lewis has gone missing, have you seen him?”

He shakes his head and my stomach drops.

“I’m going to go look for him.”

It’s muggy outside, the oppressive heat that’s been building the last few weeks is pooling into threatening dense clouds. I head up the first gravel pathway and tell myself I’m going to take each section of the garden in turn. It’s a bloody big garden though if you include the deer park as well.

Lewis has got to be here somewhere.

It takes me two hours to find him sitting in an abandoned and decrepit building. “Lewis, for God’s sake. I’ve walked half a marathon looking for you.”

I drop, exhausted, onto the floor by his side. His face is pale, his eyes rimmed with red.

“What’s going on?”

His head shakes, and he kicks his feet into the ground, stubbing the toe of his trainer into the dirt.

“I’ve got a search party out looking for you, and you’re totally missing the chance to create the biggest mess with paint the world has ever seen.”

I don’t look at him, keeping my focus turned away. I remember when Dan and I were kids and he used to hate it when I knew he’d been crying.

“What’s on your canvas?” he turns for me a little, and the breakable fragility glaring at me through red-rimmed eyes makes my stomach ache.

“Blue. Lots of it.” I shrug.

“For Elijah?”

I give him another shrug. “Maybe. I don’t think that’s a dream I get to have though, not really.”

“You like him though, right?” Lewis pays close attention to the dirt at his feet.

“Sometimes.” I give a little smile, my cheeks heating. Last night I liked him a lot—a lot. “But it’s not straightforward, you know. It’s complicated. This family here in this house, they might look like they have everything, but I don’t think they do.”

He makes a huffing noise.

“What’s going on with you and Tabitha? You seem to like each other.”

He shrugs, which is one of my favourite forms of communication and I shrug straight back at him.