Natalie bristled. “Leo isn’t a brat! He’s a very dear boy with a prodigious curiosity.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Whatever his personal proclivities, when he runs off without telling you, he becomes a brat.”

“Well, then! Good day, sir. You needn’t trouble yourself a moment longer on my behalf.”

Incensed, she turned on her heel and charged out of the stable. The heat of her aggravation warded off the frosty nip in the air. Devil take that arrogant man! She hadn’t asked for his assistance. He had bullied his way into her affairs without her consent. Let him go on his merry way.

If she felt a twinge of guilt at her harsh judgment, it quickly dissipated under the need to concentrate on her search. She was too anxious to waste time over trifles.

The inn was situated at the outskirts of a village. If Leo had gone exploring, then he couldn’t have ventured very far in the twenty minutes or so that he’d been missing. Perhaps he’d taken a notion to look at the local shops.

Avoiding the muddy ruts down the center of the road, Natalie headed into the village. She hastened past a stone roundhouse and several thatch-roofed cottages, keeping her eyes peeled for his towheaded form. Smoke puffed from chimneys, but no one was outdoors in the damp morning chill, convenient to be asked if a little boy had passed by. She had reached the village green, where a flock of ducks huddled beside an ice-covered pond, when the scrape of footsteps came behind her.

“Miss!”

That male voice held a familiar ring of command. She turned in a swirl of skirts to see the stranger from the inn coming toward her, his strides long and swift. He had left without a hat, and the breeze stirred his light-brown hair into an attractive tousle. The autocratic fellow had no right to look so arrestingly handsome. What could he want now?

Hope sent her heart catapulting to her throat. She rushed to meet him halfway. “Did you find Leo, after all?”

He shook his head. “Regrettably not. I merely wanted to apologize for my rudeness. Pray forgive me for offending you.”

Natalie regarded him with caution. Her anger, she knew, had been rooted in worry over the lost boy. It wasn’t like her to lash out at someone who was trying to help, and in all fairness, she could not withhold clemency.

“Apology accepted,” she said. “I suppose Leo does misbehave at times. It’s just that I don’t care to hear about it from a stranger.”

“Then it seems introductions are in order if we are to work together to find him. Given the unusual circumstances, we shall disregard the rules of propriety. I am Clayton. And you?”

“Miss Fanshawe. Natalie Fanshawe. But you really needn’t have followed me, Mr. Clayton. I’m quite capable of finding Leo on my own.”

She started down the high street, though not before noticing Mr. Clayton had parted his lips as if to say something. He fell into step beside her, taking the outside even though it required him to tramp through the mud in his polished black boots. When he finally spoke, she had the strange sense that it wasn’t what he’d first intended to say.