She smoothed Leo’s messy hair. “Well, I daresay you must give him some time. He doesn’t yet know you, but he’ll soon come to see you’re a fine boy.” She hoped so, anyway. He must.

Leo appeared satisfied by the answer. He craned his neck to peer up at Clayton. “Will you let me look in the treasure chest, Mr. Duke?”

Clayton waved his hand. “Pray explore to your heart’s content.”

His face alight, Leo darted to the large trunk and tugged at the clasp. The hinges squeaked as he lifted the lid. “Oh, it’s just old clothes. For ladies.”

His nose wrinkled in disgust, he moved on to another trunk and opened it. This one contained a miscellany of discarded objects. With great enthusiasm, he began digging through the items. “Oh, look, a bag of marbles! And a broken clock!”

“There may be something sharp in there,” Natalie warned, “so mind that you don’t poke yourself.”

“I’ll be careful,” Leo said, his voice muffled as he continued to rummage for treasures.

“You needn’t look so fretful,” the duke murmured, stepping to her side. “He’s only doing what all boys do. And if he dirties his clothes, we’re at the end of our tour, anyway.”

Natalie hadn’t realized she was scowling. The truth was, she found it unsettling that Leo had ignored her edict about not looking in the trunks and had turned to the duke for permission. In the space of less than a day, her authority had been usurped by a man who scarcely even knew Leo.

An English duke, no less.

But when she looked at Clayton and saw one corner of his mouth quirked in a slight smile, her prickly mood evolved into something far more dangerous to her composure. She felt the startling desire to experience the brush of those lips on hers, to feel his arms clasping her close to his hard masculine form. The longing was so powerful that a flush of heat spread through her body and weakened her knees.

Nonplussed, Natalie reminded herself to maintain her distance from him. Not only did he represent the old guard of privilege, but their respective countries had been at war only a scant few months ago. “Thank you for the tour,” she replied. “I must say, the size of your cousin’s house is impressive. It’s much larger than even the presidential mansion in Washington. Before the British burned it, that is.”

“That happened last summer, did it not? I read about it in a dispatch.” He gave her an enigmatic stare. “It was retaliation for the Americans destroying the grain mills at Port Dover in Canada and cutting off bread supplies to the British troops.”

She bristled. “Retaliation? God must have been on our side, then. He sent a huge thunderstorm to put out the fires the enemy set in our capital. It drove them all back to their ships.”

If she’d thought to shame him, the duke frustrated her with a grin. “Our nations have made peace, Miss Fanshawe. So perhaps you and I should call a truce, too.”