He faced her. "That is not the same thing."
"No, your grace." Her voice held no cruelty, which made the answer harder to dismiss. "A child can have warm rooms, expensive tutors, and every meal prepared for her, yet still believe she is unwanted. Lily needed you to ask what she felt. Instead, everyone around her decided what was best. My position is the reason Lily told me what she was too afraid to tell you."
"You placed yourself between a father and his daughter."
Amelia's expression changed. "No, your grace. The distance was already there."
The truth in her words angered him more than insolence would have. "You will no longer interfere in decisions concerning this family."
Amelia's face lost its color, but she did not plead. "When must I leave?"
"Tomorrow morning."
She lowered her head. "As you command, your grace."
When Amelia returned to her room, Lily was waiting beside the half-packed trunk. "You are leaving because of me."
"No. You stopped the wedding for me."
"I stopped it because it should not have continued."
Lily gripped Amelia's sleeve. "Only because everyone was watching."
Amelia had no easy answer. "Your father has forgotten that love must listen," she said. "But forgetting is not the same as never loving you."
Lily began to cry. Amelia held her until she fell asleep.
Before dawn, Amelia left Ashbourne Hall in a hired carriage. She did not know that Lily stood behind the nursery curtain, watching until the carriage disappeared beyond the gates.
Several hours later, Edward entered his study and found a leather folder beneath a stack of wedding documents. Inside was Lily's completed school application. Rosamond had signed it as the child's future guardian. The departure date was 3 days after the wedding. A second document instructed the school to restrict Lily's letters for 6 months so that unhealthy attachments to her father and domestic servants might be corrected.
Edward read the sentence twice. Then he ran upstairs. Lily's room was empty. The window stood open to the winter air. Her small traveling cloak was gone along with a pair of boots and the purse where she kept several coins. The gold locket lay open on the floor.
A stable boy had seen her before sunrise. She had asked which road led to the railway station. Edward ordered every horse prepared and every road searched. When he confronted Rosamond, she remained disturbingly calm.
"She will return when she realizes a tantrum cannot control you."
Edward looked at the woman he had almost married. For the first time, he did not see an elegant bride or a suitable duchess. He saw the person who had made his daughter believe that disappearing was the only way to be heard.
Edward reached the railway station before noon, but no one had seen Lily board a train. A porter remembered a small girl asking about the road toward the northern platform. Another had watched her turn away after learning that a ticket cost more than the coins in her purse. She had never left the town.
That knowledge should have brought relief. Instead, Edward imagined his 8-year-old daughter wandering alone through the winter cold. Afraid to return to the home where she believed she no longer belonged.
She opened the door wearing the same traveling dress in which she had left the house. Her face changed the moment she saw him.
"What happened?"
"Lily is missing."
The anger Amelia might have felt toward him vanished. "When?"
"Before dawn. She asked a stable boy for directions to the station, but she never boarded a train."
Amelia reached for her cloak. "Did she take anything?"
"A few coins, her traveling bag. Nothing else."
"What about the locket?"
Edward hesitated. "She left it behind."
Amelia stopped fastening her cloak. Lily had clung to that portrait through every fear and lonely night.
"Where would she go?" Edward asked.
Amelia closed her eyes, searching through every conversation the child had trusted her with. Then she remembered. "There is an old cottage by the lake."
Edward frowned. "The summer house."
"Her mother used to take her there before she became ill. Lily once told me it was the last place she remembered the three of you being happy together."
The lake stood several miles beyond the estate's northern boundary. The road was narrow and nearly impassable after winter rain. Edward and Amelia rode there alone. By the time they reached the cottage, rain had soaked through their coats. Edward dismounted before his horse had fully stopped.
"Lily."
There was no answer. He forced open the swollen wooden door. The cottage smelled of damp stone and cold ashes. Edward dropped to his knees. Lily's skin was burning with fever. He lifted her into his arms, calling her name until her eyes slowly opened.
"Papa."
"I am here."
Her fingers tightened weakly against his coat. "Are you angry?"
The question nearly destroyed him. "No."
"I did not mean to make everyone unhappy."
"You did nothing wrong."
Lily looked past him toward Amelia, who was already rebuilding the fire. "Will you still marry Lady Rosamund?"
Edward could have offered comfort immediately. He could have promised anything to stop the fear in her eyes. But Lily had suffered because too many adults spoke without listening.
"No," he said. "I will not marry her."
The child's body relaxed against him. Edward lowered his forehead to her hair. "I should have heard you before you had to run away. I should have asked what frightened you. I am sorry, Lily."
She began to cry silently. For the first time since his wife's death, Edward did not retreat from grief because he feared making it worse. He held his daughter and allowed her tears to soak into his coat.
While searching the cottage for dry blankets, Amelia discovered a narrow wooden box beneath a loose floorboard. Edward recognized his late wife's initials carved into the lid. Inside were several letters, a small book of pressed flowers, and one sealed envelope addressed to Amelia Heart.