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She needed to wake Mr. Pershing. As she hurried up the hallway, it belatedly occurred to her that he might have taken the children down to the pond to go fishing, or something. Oh yes. That must be it. Steeling herself, one hand still over her chest to keep her heart from leaping onto the floor, she knocked at the door to his private rooms.
“Come in,” his low voice answered.
“Oh no, you’re here,” she rasped, shoving the door open.
Will, his waistcoat still unbuttoned and his coat across Davis’s arm, lifted an eyebrow. “Beg pardon?”
Capable. That was the immediate thought that struck her. He looked very capable. And not at all like a disheveled, gangly boy. “I’d hoped—that is, I thought you and the children might have—oh, that doesn’t signify. I can’t find them. George or Rose.”
Before she could even finish her sentence, he’d moved past her out his door. “You checked their bedchambers?” he asked, striding down the hallway. “Of course you did. The breakfast room?”
“Hannah’s just been there. No one’s seen them.”
He glanced into each of the children’s rooms as he passed, then without pause headed for the stairs and trotted down to the ground floor. “Rose’s bed is made,” he muttered, “but George’s isn’t. She wasn’t frightened into fleeing, then.”
“Do you think George was? And she followed?”
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t have stopped to make her bed under either scenario.”
That made sense. “Yes. Logic. Logic is good. If they weren’t frightened, it stands to reason that they’re here somewhere. Perhaps exploring.”
“Powell,” Will barked, and the butler skidded into the foyer. “Divide up the staff and search every room. Begin with the attic. If I was a boy, that would most interest me.”
“Or the stables.” Without waiting for him to concur, Emmie pulled open the front door and strode outside. The garden had its lures, as well, and changing her mind, wanting to look everywhere at once, she hurried around the side of the house. Then she remembered the pond, and she broke into a run.
“The pond.” Will’s voice came from behind her. With his longer stride he passed her up, making for the small dock and the punt tied up there.
She didn’t think she’d seen him run since they’d been children, but he ran to the pond, sprinting along the reed-lined shore. It was so tempting to stop, to let him do the searching while she spent her time thinking up every possible disaster that might have occurred. That was both useless and unfair, though, so she gathered up the hems of the cumbersome robe and headed back toward the stables. Five grooms and drivers there meant five more pairs of eyes to help the search.
“Billet!” she yelled, yanking open the smaller door into the building.
The head groom emerged from the tack room. “Mrs. Pershing? What’s am—”
“Have you seen the children? The boy and girl who arrived with us yesterday?”
He frowned, a rag gripped in one hand. “No, ma’am. They’re missing?”
“Yes. We can’t—We don’t know where they’ve gone.”
“The boys and I will saddle up and take a look about the property. They might’ve gone into Birdlip. The bakery smells like God’s own heaven in the mornings.”
“Thank you. Take Topper and Willow if you need them.”
As much as she wanted to supervise that, to make certain they divided up the property into searchable areas, she turned and ran back to the garden. With its central fountain and pair of follies at opposite corners, it had a great many places for small people to hide—though if this was some sort of hide-and-seek game, someone was going to get a spanking.
When she climbed up onto a bench to look over the low wall, she spied her husband in the boat, punting back and forth across the length of the pond. Nothing so far then, thank God. The gardeners joined her search, but she couldn’t come up with a logical reason the children would continue to hide among the roses and shrubberies when they had to have heard everyone calling for them.
If they’d bothered to leave the house at all, it would be for some actual destination, wouldn’t it? Somewhere in particular they meant to go. Birdlip? Perhaps, but Billet would be searching there. What would they want from the village that they couldn’t get at Winnover, anyway? No, that didn’t make sense.
The two of them had never even left London before. Could they have headed back to Town? No, that wouldn’t be it. Mr. Pershing had said that George had asked her several times how far away they would be from London. And they’d sounded so excited at being away from St. Stephen’s.
They certainly wouldn’t be looking for an orphanage. The last place they wanted to be was back at the “stone jug,” as they called it, or any place even resembling it.
Wait a moment. Emmie hopped down from the bench and sat on it instead. The children were presently as far from St. Stephen’s as they’d ever been. Last night they’d been told the plan for her grandfather’s birthday, what they were being asked to take on. They’d already known that at the end of this they would be returned to London and the orphanage, and then she’d piled on dancing and propriety lessons.
They’d run away. Standing again, Emmie returned to the shore of the pond. “Will?”
“I don’t think they’re here at all,” he said, turning the boat with its single pole and heading back to the dock.