Leo had asked rather plaintively when Mr. Duke would take him fishing as he’d promised. Natalie had made an excuse, fearing that Clayton’s interest in the boy only extended to discovering whether or not he was truly Audrey’s son. The duke had never actually intended to escort him down to the river …

The river. Of course! That must be where Leo had gone.

Galvanized, she headed toward the rear of the house and found a door that led out into the garden. As she stepped outside, the air held the tang of freshly turned loam. She loved the smell of spring, the warmth of the sun, the promise of new life. But at the moment her priority was to find Leo.

As she hurried over the paving stones, a grizzled old gardener who was trimming the rosebushes tipped his hat to her. She paused to ask, “Have you by chance seen a little boy out here?”

“Nay, milady,” he said, scratching his brow and leaving a dirty streak on his teak-dark skin. “Can’t say as I have.”

Though tempted to correct that milady, Natalie thanked him and darted past his wheelbarrow, which contained an odorous mound of horse droppings. She clutched her skirts to protect her hem from other suspicious brown piles along the path. Perhaps Leo had departed the house by a different door.

Beyond the garden wall stretched a vast carpet of grass, with green shoots dotting among the dead brownness. The rolling landscape hid the river that had been visible from the upstairs window. But she knew the general direction and headed across the lawn and into a copse of trees. Here, tiny buds of leaves formed a soft green mist on the barren branches.

She tightened the shawl around her shoulders as a chilly breeze whipped a few dark tendrils from her bun. With every breath, she drew in the fecund aroma of fallen leaves from the previous autumn. Sunlight dappled the forest floor and lent a cathedrallike serenity to the scene. Strange how this English woodland could remind her of the American wilderness. At least she needn’t carry a gun here for fear of encountering a bear or a wolf.

Just as her senses detected the burble of water and the glimmer of a stream through the trees, she saw someone standing near the bank. Her eyes widened. No, it wasn’t one person, but two.

A man and a woman who were locked in a fervent kiss.

Natalie stopped in her tracks. Even from a distance, she recognized the woman from her golden curls, the slim figure garbed in a robin’s-egg-blue pelisse. It was Lady Ellen, and she appeared to be fully engaged in the ardent embrace, with her head tilted back to allow the man to nuzzle her throat.

Was that the duke?

Warmth suffused Natalie from head to toe. To think Lady Ellen had professed to dislike him!

Then her lover lifted his head to coo at the object of his affection. Natalie blinked at him in surprise. Those youthful features most definitely did not belong to the Duke of Clayton.