Lakeside Cottage was a few miles beyond the village of Quainton. It was late afternoon as they drove up the graveled drive The house was much bigger than George had expected; it wasn’t anything she’d call a cottage. Dukes had a different standard of cottageness, it seemed.
It was a large brick, double-story building with several chimneys and a line of dormer windows set into the attic. To one side stood several substantial outbuildings, one of which George presumed would be the stables.
The house stood in a large—she wouldn’t call it a garden so much as a plain expanse of lawn. There were no flowers or shrubs or trees, and to her eyes it looked quite bare. George preferred a proper garden, with trees and flowers. But it was well maintained, all very neat and tidy with a high, well-clipped hedge on three sides.
Finn leapt down first and went off to sniff for rabbits and other intruders and claim his territory. George paused in the doorway of the carriage and scanned the surrounding area visible over the top of the hedge. It was quite anisolated location, with only a few scattered cottages in the distance—her kind of cottage, not the duke’s. A small lake lay a short distance away, fringed on one side with willows.
She could see what Hart meant byWhere would Phillip go?
A groom came around from the side of the house and a middle-aged couple emerged from the front door and hurried down the steps.
“Your grace?” the woman said. “Oh, we’re so glad you’ve come. We don’t know what to do. I’m sorry, so sorry—” She broke off, sobbing.
“There’s news?” Hart asked sharply. By his tone of voice he feared the worst.
“Nope,” the man said. “Bin no sight nor sound of the lad at all.” He went around to the back of the carriage to help unload the luggage. Finn sniffed him interestedly.
“No ransom demand received yet?” Hart asked.
The woman—who turned out to be Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper—shook her head. “Nothing of that sort at all, your grace.”
Wiping her face with her apron Mrs. Harris led them inside. Hart asked to speak to the tutor, but he was out searching for Phillip. Apparently he’d gone out searching every day since Phillip went missing.
Hart then assembled all the servants in the sitting room and questioned them closely about the last time they’d seen Phillip and where they thought he might be. Had they searched the house and outbuildings thoroughly? Even the attics? The cellars?
Yes, of course, but there was no sign of him.
Had anything upsetting or out-of-the-way occurred before he went missing?
No, everything had been quite normal. Which made it all so very worrying.
George sat, watching and listening and trying to understand what had happened. They all seemed quite distressed about Phillip, and every single one of the servants stressedover and over, what a good, quiet, well-behaved little boy Phillip was.
George distrusted “good, quiet and well-behaved.” In her opinion, it wasn’t a natural state for a small boy.
Hart then instituted a search of his own and, aided by George and the servants, he personally examined every nook and cranny of the big house and every corner of the outbuildings.
George was most unimpressed with the stables. Oh, they were clean and well-kept, but there was only an elderly horse and a gig. Where was the pony for Phillip? A growing boy needed a horse. Apart from Finn, there were no dogs to be seen either.
“Well, that’s that,” Hart said when the search was concluded. He sent the servants back to their duties. “No sign of him. He can’t be hiding.”
“You don’t know that yet,” George said. “You’ve only searched the buildings.”
Seeing his confusion, she explained. “He could be hiding beneath a haystack, or in the hedgerows—there are all kinds of nooks outside where people can hide. In all weathers.” She smiled at his amazement. “Finn and I will look for them in the morning.”
“How do you know to look in these kinds of places?”
“You had a big house with attics and storerooms and hidden closets. I didn’t. Where do you think I disappeared to when I needed to be alone?”
“Alone?” He raised a brow.
“With my dog, of course, and sometimes my horse, though Sultan wasn’t as easy to hide.”
He looked shocked. “By yourself, outside? In all weathers?”
She gave a huff of amusement. “I’m no delicate flower, you know.”
“I’m beginning to see that. And appreciate it.”
