“I presume you’ve checked every nook and cranny here in the nursery?”

Flora vigorously nodded her head. “Even under the beds, miss! And in the cupboards, too. My littlest brother likes to hide in cubbyholes.”

Taking a calming breath, Natalie organized her thoughts. “Flora, go to the stables to see if he might have slipped out to visit his new pony. Tippy, please search the other rooms on this floor and then stay nearby in case he returns. As for myself, I shall go down and check the bedchambers. It’s possible he went looking for me and became lost.”

“It’s growing dark, so best to take a lamp,” Tippy said, her brown eyes worried in her careworn face. “Oh, I do hope our sweet boy isn’t frightened!”

Natalie thought him too inquisitive to be easily frightened. He had to be close, for he liked living at Clayton House and wouldn’t have run away.

Accepting the glass-enclosed candle, she hastened out the door and headed for the stairs. If only she hadn’t been delayed, this would never have happened. She should have been in the nursery with Leo at this hour. Blast that fancy ball and those endless invitations!

Having come straight from the duchess’s suite in the other wing of the house, she had taken a different staircase and so wouldn’t have passed Leo on the one closest to her bedchamber. She went down to her room first and found Hetty turning back the bedcovers. But the maid hadn’t seen him and promised to march him straight up to the nursery should he appear.

Going back out into the shadowy corridor with its ornate moldings and landscape paintings, Natalie eyed the many closed doors on either side. She would take a peek into every bedroom. Starting with the one opposite her own, she knocked first before entering, holding up her lamp. The furniture appeared ghostly, draped in dust covers, and although the room looked too gloomy to interest a little boy, she called out, “Leo! Are you in here?”

Silence answered her, so she proceeded to the next chamber, methodically repeating the process again and again without success. Upon reaching the last door at the end of the passageway, she rapped hard on the panel, then turned the knob and stepped inside.

Instantly, she froze. This bedchamber was much larger and grander than the others. And it was clearly occupied. A branch of candles flickered on a table and a fire blazed in the marble hearth. An enormous bed draped in royal-blue-and-gold hangings dominated one wall.

Before she had even a moment to collect her thoughts, a sour-faced elderly man garbed in funereal black emerged from a doorway to her right. Chumley, the duke’s valet.

“Miss Fanshawe!” he exclaimed, advancing on her. “What do you think you’re about, walking into His Grace’s suite? Manners might be lax in the colonies, but here in England, we wait for our knock to be answered!”

Natalie was too aghast to take offense at his tone. Dear God, this was Hadrian’s bedchamber! She had presumed it to be located in the same wing as his mother’s rooms.