An hour later, with much laughter, it was agreed that there were two kinds of chess players; one who thought several moves ahead and always had a long-range plan, and the other who reacted in the moment and wasn’t at all interested in thinking ahead for possibilities.

“There is a third kind,” she said after he’d shared this insight with her. “Or possibly it is a subset of the second kind—the chess player who never thinks ahead except to decide that she has absolutely no interest in chess.”

He laughed. “What about cards?” So they played cards the rest of the way.

Chapter Twenty

Prepare yourself for something dreadful.

—JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Lakeside Cottage was a few miles beyond the village of Quainton. It was late afternoon as they drove up the graveled drive The house was much bigger than George had expected; it wasn’t anything she’d call a cottage. Dukes had a different standard of cottageness, it seemed.

It was a large brick, double-story building with several chimneys and a line of dormer windows set into the attic. To one side stood several substantial outbuildings, one of which George presumed would be the stables.

The house stood in a large—she wouldn’t call it a garden so much as a plain expanse of lawn. There were no flowers or shrubs or trees, and to her eyes it looked quite bare. George preferred a proper garden, with trees and flowers. But it was well maintained, all very neat and tidy with a high, well-clipped hedge on three sides.

Finn leapt down first and went off to sniff for rabbits and other intruders and claim his territory. George paused in the doorway of the carriage and scanned the surrounding area visible over the top of the hedge. It was quite an isolated location, with only a few scattered cottages in the distance—her kind of cottage, not the duke’s. A small lake lay a short distance away, fringed on one side with willows.

She could see what Hart meant by Where would Phillip go?

A groom came around from the side of the house and a middle-aged couple emerged from the front door and hurried down the steps.

“Your grace?” the woman said. “Oh, we’re so glad you’ve come. We don’t know what to do. I’m sorry, so sorry—” She broke off, sobbing.

“There’s news?” Hart asked sharply. By his tone of voice he feared the worst.

“Nope,” the man said. “Bin no sight nor sound of the lad at all.” He went around to the back of the carriage to help unload the luggage. Finn sniffed him interestedly.

“No ransom demand received yet?” Hart asked.

The woman—who turned out to be Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper—shook her head. “Nothing of that sort at all, your grace.”