Chapter One
“Arthur and Philip Lockhart! This game is no longer amusing!” Ambrose Lockhart, the Duke of Welton, hollered up the grand staircase as he leaned against the railing. “Show yourselves this instant! You are driving your uncle mad!” His voice cracked with a tension he could not quell.
Ambrose turned on his heel and strode through the echoing marble foyer of his new Mayfair townhouse toward the drawing room, his black leather boots clicking a frustrated cadence beneath him. The house was full of shadows that swallowed the mischief of his strong-willed wards.
He entered the room and walked to the windows. He shoved aside the heavy velvet curtains with enough force to rattle the brass rings, half-expecting to find a pair of giggling, soft-smudged seven-year-olds huddled behind the fabric. Yet, he found only dust motes dancing lazily in the golden shafts of the late afternoon sun, mocking him as they swirled.
“Your Grace, we have just finished checking the kitchens, the scullery, and the servants’ attics,” his butler, Mr. Jones, said, appearing in the doorway and dabbing his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.
The man, usually a statue of composure, was flushed a worrying shade darker than a beet.
His chest heaved as he continued, “I am afraid they are nowhere to be found. We even checked the flour bins, Your Grace.”
“That explains the state of your trousers,” Ambrose snapped, looking less like a peer of the realm, and more like a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “What about the stables then?”
Ambrose glanced at himself in the mirror as he awaited Mr. Jones’s reply, as time seemed to freeze.
His cravat, usually tied with expert precision, was hopelessly askew. His honey golden hair was rumpled into a wild nest, the result of a dozen bouts of leaning under heavy mahogany sideboards. His brilliant blue eyes had lost their cerulean luster, now a tired gray with soft wrinkles at the sides. These boys were aging him at an expeditious pace.
“Empty, Your Grace. The head groom swears no one has entered nor exited since the carriage was washed at noon. I am at an utter loss, which is most unusual,” Mr. Jones sighed, folding his hands together on top of his pot belly. “I have done all I can, Your Grace. The same can be said for the boys’ governess, whois tearing apart the schoolroom once more… Shall we enlist the authorities?”
A muffled curse escaped Ambrose’s lips then, the kind of sound that would have scandalized his late mother and her delicate sensibilities.
If only she could see him now.
He leaned into the cool stone of a nearby pillar, desperate for the marble to sap the fever of his panic. Since the news of the fire, the premature death of his brother and his wife, the guilt hadn’t just sat on him. It had tightened like a vice, consuming him.
He closed his eyes and saw only charred ruins. The boys had survived the flames as well as the loss of their beloved parents.
Now they must survive my guardianship,he thought to himself.And I am failing them miserably…
Ambrose looked away from his reflection and out the window, down at Presholm House next door, with its perfectly clipped hedges. The hydrangeas bloomed in disciplined rows of purple and blue that had faded in the autumn sun. It was a taunt of pristine order compared to the hollowness and haphazardness of his halls. The silence that echoed was a formal accusation, his failurein loco parentis. But as his gaze traced the rigid line of the stone boundary that separated their estates, his self-loathing snapped into a sharp, sudden clarity.
If they were not in the house, and they weren’t in the stables, there was only one place where two adventurous boys would go.
He cursed his own slowness and set off.
Next door, the world was far quieter…
Until it wasn’t.
Imogen Lewis moved with grace as she went about her work, the straw of her broom swishing against the service hall floorboards. She leaned into the monotony of her work, the quiet, erasing comfort of a lonely life of servitude. There was no other way to get by without going mad.
Imogen’s life had been pared down to work and quiet endurance, any softness worn away long ago. Escape, or even rescue, was a notion for other girls, the kind who could afford to believe in it. She did not pause to imagine it.
She picked up the broom and swept.
Swish. Swish.
A flash of movement near the side entrance caught her eye. Then, a stifled, high-pitched giggle followed.
Am I now imagining things out of thin air to pass the time?Imogen wondered as she froze.
She set the broom against the wall and tiptoed toward the heavy oak door that led to the gardens.
“What…” she mumbled under her breath.
Tucked between a large decorative urn and the stone wall were two small figures. They wore fine wool coats, smudged with dirt, and expressions of wide-eyed mischief as she looked down on them.
