ought to recognize.

Harry came racing back, gleefully informing his aunts that there had indeed been lemonade.

Rutledge, watching him, could see in him the boy that Ian Trevor would be at the same age. It was an unexpected insight, and it touched him.

He took his leave, refusing Miss Teller’s lukewarm invitation to stay for tea. He thought it had been in a way a suggestion that Mary Brittingham should also refuse it in her turn. That she had also out-stayed her welcome.

Miss Teller walked with him through the hedge and around to where he’d left his motorcar, saying as they went, “Will he come back, do you think?”

“Your brother? When he’s ready to be found. If whatever reason he left the clinic is resolved for him, in a fashion he can live with. The problem is, how lucid is he? Is he thinking clearly or still in the throes of his illness, even though the paralysis has apparently disappeared.”

She nodded thoughtfully, and then stood there as he cranked the motorcar. He was on the point of driving away when she came to his side of the vehicle and put her hand on the door.

“Even as a child, Walter would take to something new with almost ferocious enthusiasm. And then he would tire of it and lose interest. Domestic life may have—palled.”

“Are you telling me he’s bored with his marriage?”

“No. That he may have decided to do good works among London’s poor to salve his conscience. Rather than converting the heathen. If he doesn’t come back, this may be of some comfort to Jenny.”

“When you went to Portsmouth, you didn’t actually believe that your brother would take ship without a word to anyone? Such a journey requires an enormous amount of preparation, I should think,” he asked her.

Leticia Teller shrugged eloquently. “In the first shock of his disappearance, anything seemed possible. It was a chance I didn’t feel I could take. And my brothers agreed, even while they disagreed.”

Hamish said, “She’s lying.”

“I’ll keep that in mind as well,” he told her, and let in the clutch. She stepped back and let him go. Over her shoulder, he could see Mary Brittingham standing at the opening in the hedge, watching them.

But then Mary smiled and waved when she saw him looking in her direction.

“Twa women, ye ken, with a child holding them together,” Hamish said as the boy ran up to Mary and clung to her hand. And then he darted forward, to take Leticia’s hand as well and wave good-bye to the man from London who had come unexpectedly.

It was late when Rutledge reached London. He stopped by the Yard to see if there were any developments in the search for the boy he called Billy, or if Hood had been located. But like many of their ilk, they had disappeared into the dark corners of a city that knew how to keep secrets.

Chapter 13

The journey to Kent had been successful, and both Frances and David Trevor were in high spirits, carrying Melinda Crawford’s greeting and best love to Rutledge and telling him about the great pheasant hunt that had left them all exhausted and hurting from laughter.

A stray pheasant had wandered into Melinda’s garden, and the boy had been very taken with it. He had persuaded his grandfather to let him carry it back to Scotland if he could capture it.

That had led to an afternoon of merriment as every scheme they had tried saw the pheasant still at large and mocking them from a safe distance.

In the end it was Ian who had tired first, and after one last glorious chase through the kitchen gardens had ended with the promise of cake for tea, the pheasant had been forgotten.

Listening to them, Rutledge was reminded of another child bribed by the promise of lemonade, unaware that his father was missing and possibly no longer the familiar figure the boy remembered.

He joined in the laughter, despite the day’s frustrations, unwilling to spoil their high spirits, and found the tension in his mind slowly relaxing.

It wasn’t until they were saying good night that Rutledge remembered that his godfather would be leaving on the morrow. The time had gone too quickly, and he’d got his wish—to be too busy to spend much of the day with Trevor and the child.

He regretted that now as he drove back to his flat, but there had been no way to change it. Even if he’d recognized the need in time.

The next morning as Rutledge collected his godfather’s