The boy fled over the crumbled wall and into the neighbour’s backyard, little legs pumping hard for the rear gate. Amazing how such a small child could race like the wind.
But so could he.
Colin grabbed him up under one arm, and tucking his chin lest anyone peer out a window, he lugged the boy back to the safety of his own yard. The small body trembled in his grip.
“You have nothing to fear from me, boy,” he soothed while he tromped to the house. Or at least he hoped he soothed. What did he know of pacifying children?
He stopped at the back stairs yet did not release the child. “I will not force you to go anywhere other than this stoop, for I should dearly like to finish our conversation. What you do after that is your own business. Are we agreed?”
Though he couldn’t see the boy’s face, the child’s head bobbed.
“Good lad.” Colin set him down on one end of the step, then eased his big frame onto the other. The boy immediately scooted as far as possible to the edge, but he kept his word and didn’t run.
“So.” Colin shifted towards him, quite the feat on such a narrow stair. “How long have you been living here?”
“Some time a’fore you and the pretty lady came.”
Of course. With the skeletal staff since his father’s demise, it made perfect sense the child had gone undetected…or had he? Were the servants, perhaps, feeding the little mite? “Does Mrs. Kirwin know of you?”
“No, sir.” He shook his head, adding to his denial. “Only you, sir.”
“How have you evaded detection?”
The boy merely blinked.
Colin tried again. “How is it no one has seen you?”
“Nobody but me uses the secret ways.”
“Secret ways?”
He nodded, then shoved back the hank of hair that flopped into his eyes.
The boy seemed in earnest, and it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that an old residence might possess a priest hole or a hidden passageway, but Balfour House? He glanced over his shoulder at the three-story building. “Will you show me?”
“I dunno…”
He gazed down at the boy. How to persuade a rabbity child? “Look”—he splayed his hands—“if you and I are ever to play a game of seek and find, it is an unfair advantage if you know all the best hiding spots.”
The boy’s lips twitched one way, then the other, until finally he stood and reached for Colin’s hand. “All right. Come along, sir.”
With impossibly small fingers wrapped around his, the child led him to the shrubbery, then loosened his grip and dropped to his knees. Colin did as well, trying to shove his bulk into the tangle of leaves and branches, but his shoulders would not cram through the tight weave of greenery.
Ahead, eyes peered at him from the darkness. “You coming?”
“I’m afraid I won’t fit, lad.” He backed out, but the boy apparently had enough space to turn around, for moments later, his dark head appeared.
Colin sank back on his haunches. “Thank you for showing me. Where does that tunnel through the shrubs lead?”
“To a hole, sir, one what opens into a passage inside. Stairs run from floor to floor on this outside wall.” He flailed his little hand at the house. “In a few spots, it opens into rooms, all hid nice-like in the panels.”
“So that’s how you come and go. But how did you find that tunnel in the first place?”
“I were playing with a ball, sir. One I found, not stole.” He lifted his pointy chin in challenge. “All my playthings be found.”
Colin chuckled at his courage. He could squash the boy with one swipe. “Tell me then, young master, where do you sleep?”
“The ground, mostly. Inside if it rains.”
