“Tommie is smart, but you are right—he hasn’t any sense of how wicked the world can be, and he is all…” All I have in the world. Matilda blotted her eyes and fumbled for a more dignified turn of phrase.

“All you have of your husband?” Tremont asked, opening the door to the pony’s stall and retrieving the water bucket. He took a brush down from a hook on the stall door, gave the bucket a thorough scrubbing, and tossed the water onto the cobbles.

“I wasn’t about to say that Tommie is all I have of Harry.”

Tremont set the bucket beneath a pump in the stable yard and worked the pump handle. “I was all my mother had of my father, or so she claimed. I did wonder if Lydia was a gift from the fairies, and I cannot imagine what my sister felt to be so overlooked. She’s married to Captain Dylan Powell now, and I daresay the boot is rather on the other foot. If I lined up a hundred comely, accomplished, fascinating women, Powell would have eyes only for Lydia, and conversely.”

Tremont returned the bucket to the pony’s stall, gave the beast a scratch beneath his hairy chin, and closed the stall door.

“Lady Lydia’s marriage is happy,” Matilda said. “A blessing, that. We should go back to the house, but I will not leave this stable without thanking you for finding my son.”

“Now, Mrs. Merridew, I distinctly heard the boy say he wasn’t lost.” Tremont offered his arm. Despite the gravity of that gesture, something in his gaze suggested he was twitting Matilda.

“Tommie was lost to me,” Matilda said, wrapping her hand into the crook of the earl’s elbow. “And that is more than sufficient to justify my thanks. I must thank the men as well. How does one make such a gesture to a lot of fellows who pride themselves on their toughness?”

“They rather do, don’t they?” Tremont held the garden gate for her. “And yet, the men enjoy a joke probably more than most and were forever pranking one another in camp.”

“Did they prank you?” Even as she asked the question, Matilda realized that Tremont had gently led the conversation away from missing little boys and onto safer footing.

“After a few initial gestures of welcome, they did not. I was considered a very slow top as an officer. I am younger than most of them, and I had no experience on campaign whatsoever. We had an absolute snake for a commanding officer. Dunacre was all smiles and protocol when the generals came around, but delighted in ordering the men flogged or sent on forced marches in blistering heat. I suppose the rank and file pitied me because I was Dunacre’s preferred verbal whipping boy, though he could not order me beaten, in fact.”