“Mrs. Knightley?”
Emma practically leapt out of her slippers, and her heartdidleap up into her throat. Slapping a hand to her chest, she spun around. Seeing their footman, she blew out an exasperated sigh.
“Harry, whatareyou doing?” she exclaimed.
Clad only in breeches, stockings, and a shirt hanging down over his thighs, Harry stood in the entrance to the pantry. He held a lamp in one hand and a plate piled high with food— including a large slice of Serle’s special plum cake and a hefty piece of cheddar—in the other. He gaped at her and Henry as if he’d just seen a ghost.
“Er …” he finally managed to stutter.
Emma eyed the plate in his hand. “Making a late-night raid on the pantry, are we?”
In the lantern light, his expression was comically dismayed. He came out from the pantry and carefully put the plate on the big table in the center of the kitchen.
“Begging your pardon, Mrs. Knightley. I was feeling a mite peckish, so I slipped down for a bite to eat. Mrs. H generally don’t mind if I have a little something, now and again.”
Emma frowned at another item on his pile. “Is that one of the orange scones that Serle sent over from Hartfield?”
He scrunched up his face. “Um … I guess it is.”
“Mrs. Hodgeswillhave your head if she finds out you’ve been filching those. They’re intended for Mr. Knightley’s breakfast.”
His eyes popped with alarm. “They’re seven or eight left, so I was hoping Mrs. H wouldn’t miss one.” He grabbed up the scone. “But I’ll put it back right away.”
Emma finally cracked a smile. “As long as you left the rest, you might as well eat it.”
Besides, Harry’s hands looked slightly grubby at the moment, so best to let the matter rest.
He blew out a relieved breath. “Thank you, ma’am. And you won’t tell Mrs. H, will you?”
“Only if you keep calling her Mrs. H. Harry, how long have you been up?”
He squinted at her and Henry, as if finally registering how odd it was for them to appear in the kitchen in the middle of the night.
“About twenty minutes or so, ma’am. Is something wrong?”
“Henry thought he heard something in the garden, and we both saw lights out there—or, at least, I saw them. They were near the path that leads to Langham.”
He frowned. “Lights? Like lanterns?”
“Yes. I was just going to go out and see if there are footprints in the back garden.”
He shook his head. “You’ll catch your death, Mrs. Knightley. I’ll pop out and look for you.”
Harry hurried over to the door to the stable yard, slipped on a pair of wooden clogs, and then shrugged into a greatcoat that hung on a peg. When he opened the door, Emma moved her nephew away from the blast of cold air that rushed in.
“Should we go out, too?” the lad asked.
“No, Harry will tell us if he saw anything.”
The footman returned a few minutes later, clattering into the mudroom and slamming the door behind him.
“There’s no one out there now, Mrs. Knightley,” he said, coming down into the kitchen after divesting himself of his outerwear. “I walked past the stable and took a good look toward the path, and I didn’t see anything at all.”
That wasn’t entirely unexpected.
“Did you notice any tracks across the garden?” she asked.
Harry shook his head. “No, but I didn’t go round that side of the house. Why would someone be out in the garden at this time of night?”
