But a lady did not expect to hear such a comparison, ever, and in some small, quiet corner of her heart, Matilda still wished she had made a lady’s choices.

“Your wee lad can tag after Jensen and Jessup if he’s bored,” Mrs. Winklebleck said. “They’ll find chores for ’im. He has a quick look to him, and he might even be some help. When he’s a mite older, he can help in the scullery or wash out water buckets in the stable.”

Honest work, but not exactly what Matilda aspired to for her son. The whole business of what to do with Tommie posed a puzzle, one Matilda would take up with Lord Tremont. Little boys left to their own devices invariably got up to mischief, and Matilda had no intention of allowing a lot of foul-mouthed soldiers to become a bad influence on her son.

She began mentally fashioning a means of explaining to Tommie that he would have to be a good influence upon the men, but she never got very far with that exercise. By the time Lord Tremont had arrived, Tommie had been missing for an hour, and Matilda was as close to hysterics as she’d ever come.

“If you’d axed me,” Amos Tucker thundered from Tremont’s left, “I’da told ye I already searched the attic!”

“If you’da told me,”—Benjamin Bentley returned fire from Tremont’s right—“I’da not wasted me time and sneezed meself half to smithereens a-lookin’ fer the boy up there!”

Jessup and Jensen joined the crowd in the library, their mobcaps less than pristine. “We’ve searched the attics, my lord. No sign of the boy.”

A beat of silence went by, and then the arguments resumed, redoubled, and became a roar of orders, insults, and profanity. By the window, Mrs. Merridew stood with her back to the assembled household, her posture redolent of nerves on a very strained leash.

“Atten-SHUN!” Tremont snapped out the order in the tradition of infantry sergeants the world over. Chairs scraped back, chests and chins were thrust out, and silence rang though the library.

“Thank you,” Tremont said. “While your efforts thus far are much appreciated, we have yet to find the boy. Some organization will doubtless yield more satisfying results. The attics having been thoroughly searched, I want Jessup and Jensen to take the pantries, kitchen, and larder. Mrs. Winklebleck, will you search your own quarters and the servants’ hall? Biggs and Bentley take the first-floor bedrooms. Dantry and Davis, you will take the second. Mind the closets and wardrobes, look under every bed. MacIvey and MacPherson, the garden and alley, and don’t forget to look up. Small boys can get stuck in trees, as I have reason to know from personal experience.”