Chapter 1
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, who is 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 failure in 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.
“Now, what have we here?” Imogen asked softly with a playful click of her tongue. “Two lost little rabbits?”
She knelt, ignoring the protest of her sore knees on the hard stones, making herself small so as not to frighten them. She offered a gentle, conspiratorial smile and a wink.
The bolder of the two stepped forward, his brown curly locks falling messily just over his impossibly bright green eyes, which still sparkled with defiance.
“We’re explorers. We’ve claimed this territory for the King of France!”
“The King of France might find the Countess of Presholm more formidable than any army in this hemisphere,” Imogen joked, her heart softening at his playful words.
When was the last time I saw a child? Or anyone outside of this cursed cage?
The other boy, smaller and more hesitant, peered out from behind his brother’s shoulder slowly. “And who might you two be then?” She smiled at him encouragingly. “General Tomfoolery and Colonel Calm?”
The bolder boy grinned. “I’m Arthur. He’s Philip. We live next door with the Titan.”
“The Titan?” Imogen echoed as she suppressed a laugh. “Oh my, I do believe you mean His Grace, the Duke of Welton?”
“The one and the same,” Arthur sighed.
“He’s been pacing his terrace, looking quite like a worried bear, not a titan,” Imogen said with a raised eyebrow.
“He’s boring,” Arthur declared.
“He’s rather sad, too,” Philip whispered, his first words barely audible.
Imogen felt a pang of unexpected sympathy. She had only seen glances of His Grace from the confines of Presholm House before today. She could sense how worried he must be for the safety of his nephews. She had to take them back.
She reached out, dusting a cobweb from Philip’s sleeve, an excuse for the caress. “Well, sad bears can be dangerous if they’re startled. And my mistress, the Countess, is even more dangerous if she finds unexpected guests in her hallway. We must get you back over the wall, don’t you think?”
“Oh! But can we come back and visit you?” Arthur asked. “You’re nice.”
“If you are very, very quiet,” Imogen whispered, her green eyes sparkling with a rare trace of her hidden playfulness as she pressed a finger to her lips.
“There is a loose stone near the ivy trellis. If you sneak through there, the Titan won’t see you coming from the main road.
Be quick now! It’ll be as if you were never missing! ”
Suddenly, the heavy thud of heels echoed from the grand staircase. The air in the hallway turned cold, like the rush of a blizzard breeze, as Imogen brought her hands to her cheeks.
“Imogen! Incompetent little wretch, where in the devil are you now?”
“Hide,” she pleaded with the boys as her blood ran cold, pointing toward the deep shadows behind a mahogany sideboard and the heavy drapes of the morning room. “Be quick!”
The boys vanished with the speed of startled rabbits just as Julia Terrell, the Countess of Presholm, swept into the hall like a tempest. Her face was pinched, her silk gown a frustrated rustle against her thin frame.
“I checked the silver in the breakfast parlor, Imogen,” Julia said snippily, stepping close enough that Imogen could smell her heavy floral perfume and nearly choke on it. “There is a smudge on the large platter. A smudge! That platter was my great-grandmother’s!”
“I can explain, and I am most sorry for the mistake, my lady. It will not—”
“Do you think I keep you here out of the goodness of my heart?” Julia interrupted. “You are here to be useful, not to daydream like the common brat your mother was!”
Imogen bowed her head, her gaze fixed low on Julia’s hem. The insult stung, just as it always did.
It should bother her that she was born the illegitimate daughter of a Viscount and a young dancer with whom he’d had a brief and reckless affair, but it was all that she knew.
Her poor mother died within days of the birth, and she was taken in by her father, Viscount Marden and his wife, Julia.
The Viscount never acknowledged Imogen publicly but instead allowed his wife to treat her with cruelty and disdain.
After Lord Marden passed away, Imogen dared to dream she might finally be free from her stepmother’s punishments, but fortune was not in her favor.
Lord Marden was barely cold in his grave before Julia wed another, the Earl of Presholm, and pressed Imogen into working as her maid.
“I apologize, My Lady. I will attend to it immediately,” she replied, her voice a flat, respectful monotone.
“Well, yes,” Julia huffed, clearly upset that she had not gotten more of a rise out of Imogen. “See that you do. And the hearth in the study is a disgrace. If my husband sees it, I shall have you sleeping in the cellar. Honestly, the waste of money your father insisted upon bequeathing you…”
She continued her tirade as she walked away, her voice fading as she ascended the grand marble stairs to her quarters.
Imogen let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She waited for a beat, making sure the Countess was truly gone, then rushed back to the sideboard to find the lost boys.
“Arthur? Philip?” she whispered. “The coast is clear!”
Silence.
She pulled back the curtain. Empty. She checked behind the sideboard again to be sure. Nothing.
“Boys?” she called, her voice rising in panic.
She looked toward the garden gate, but it was latched. They hadn’t gone back outside.
Where are you?
Imogen knew they were somewhere inside Presholm House, a place where children were not welcome, a place where secrets were never safe.
“Oh, no,” Imogen whispered, realization setting in, clutching her apron in tight fists. “Please, not there. Anywhere but there…”