“I am being rude,” Abigail said. “I know I ought not to eat so much, and that I’m supposed to make polite conversation while I clean my plate—my plates—but I don’t take you for a high stickler.”
“I can be a high stickler,” his lordship replied, slouching lower against the cushions without opening his eyes. “I take very firm exception to marquesses who threaten my favorite inquiry agent, for example. Such fellows could end up facing me over pistols on the field of honor, whereupon their odds of survival are abysmal. Have another tart.”
She should decline, but the tarts were magnificent. Warm, sweet, rich, and spiced with cinnamon in addition to the raspberry drizzle.
“Will you share one with me?”
He opened his eyes. “You are trying to cozen me. Pretending we’re friendly enough to share a tart before you toss my hospitality back in my face without giving me a scintilla of the information I request. Then you will make your way through the dangerous streets of London to some poky little lodging house run by a grouchy widow. She will overcharge you for a thin mattress on a short cot and demand your attendance at morning prayers. Have the second tart, Miss Abbott.”
On principle, Abigail could not capitulate. “Only if you share it with me.”
“Then serve me one quarter, and pour me half a glass of cider.”
He sat up, pain flitting across his features. Lord Stephen spent so much effort being naughty and disagreeable that his looks probably went unnoticed, but they were interesting looks. Like his siblings, he had dark hair and blue eyes. His build was leaner than that of the other Wentworths, though his shoulders were powerful and his air more self-possessed.
The Wentworth siblings had been born to direst poverty, with an abusive gin-drunk for a father. That much was common knowledge. The oldest sibling—Quinton, now His Grace of Walden—had finagled and scrapped his way into the banking business, where he’d made a fortune.
And that was before an ancient title had meandered and staggered down familial lines of inheritance to add old consequence to new wealth.
Lord Stephen, the duke’s only brother, was heir to the title and to at least some of the wealth. Their Graces had four daughters, and Lady Constance maintained that the duke and duchess were unwilling to add to the nursery population when Her Grace’s last two confinements had been difficult.
Lord Stephen limped badly, often using two canes to get about. The limp ought not to slow the matchmakers down at all—in fact, it made their quarry easier to stalk—but the naughtiness and sour humor were doubtless more difficult to overlook even in a ducal heir.
All of which made Lord Stephen the perfect accomplice to a murder of convenience. Nobody would trifle with him, if indeed anybody ever suspected him of the crime.
Abigail served him a quarter of the second tart—a largish quarter—which seemed to amuse him.
“You will accept my hospitality for the night,” he said, “and I will brook no argument. The staff seldom has an opportunity to spoil anybody but me, and they have grown bored with my crotchets. The laundry is heating your bathwater, the kitchen will make you up a posset, and before I go out I will select a few lurid novels to entertain you as you rest from your travels.”
“And if I’d rather stay with the grouchy widow at the poky lodging house?” She would not. Self-indulgence was Abigail’s besetting sin.
Lord Stephen took a bite of tart, which drew her attention to his mouth. Had she ever seen him smile? She’d seen him happy. He’d taken the time to explain to her the mechanism in his sword cane, conveying a child’s delight with a new toy over an elegant spring lock set into a sturdy mahogany fashion accessory.
Not the cane he was using now.
“If you’d rather stay with the grouchy widow, then London’s footpads could well render your death a truth rather than a fiction. Times are hard for John Bull, Miss Abbott, and thanks to the Corsican menace, an unprecedented number of humbly born Englishmen have grown comfortable with deadly weapons. Such a pity for the civilian populace who can offer no employment to the former soldier.”
Abigail had occasionally spent time in London, but she was nowhere as familiar with the capital as she was with the cities of the Midlands and the north. Besides, London was growing so quickly that even somebody who’d known the metropolis well five years ago would be confused by its rapid expansion.
“I will stay one night, my lord, because I am too tired to argue with you.” And because she longed for a hot bath, clean sheets, and a comfy bed rather than a thin mattress in a chilly garret.
His lordship set down his fork, most of his sweet uneaten. “You will stay with me, because I can keep you safe. What I cannot do is keep you company.” He shifted to the front of the couch cushion and, using the arm of the sofa and his cane, pushed to his feet. “I will see you at breakfast, Miss Abbott, when you will present a recitation of all the facts relevant to the marquess’s attempts to discommode you. The house is festooned with bell pulls owing to my limited locomotion. One tug summons a footman, two a tea tray, and you’ve seen the results of a triple bell.”
He moved away from the couch carefully. Cane, good foot, bad foot. Cane, good foot, bad foot.
“Is there nothing to be done?” Abigail asked, gesturing with her cider toward his leg.
He didn’t answer her until he was at the door. “I’ve consulted surgeons, who are loath to amputate what they claim is a healthy limb. The problem is the knee itself, which was both dislocated and broken, apparently. I was young, the bones knit quickly, but they weren’t properly set first. I fall on my face regularly and resort to a Bath chair often.”
Hence, the bell pulls hung a good two feet lower in his house than in any other Abigail had seen.
“And yet, you say you must go out. It’s raining, my lord. Please be careful.” She wanted to rise and assist him with the door, but didn’t dare.
“Enjoy your evening, Miss Abbott, for surely there are no greater pleasures known to the flesh than a soaking bath, a rousing novel, and a good night’s sleep.” He bowed slightly and made his way through the door. Before he pulled the door closed behind him, he poked his head back into the room. “Finish my tart. You know you want to.”
Then he was gone, and Abigail was free to finish his tart—and to smile.
Chapter Two
Babette de Souvigny slurped her tea. “You know how it is with most of the fancy gents, Marie. On your back, poppet, there’s a love. Heigh-ho, righty-o! Three minutes later he’s buttoning up and leaving a few coins on the vanity.”
“What that approach lacks in charm, it makes up for in brevity,” Marie Montpelier replied. “This is wonderful tea.”
“Lord Stephen gave it to me.”
To Stephen, dozing in the bedroom adjacent to this conversation, Babette—given name Betty Smithers—sounded a little perplexed by his latest gift.
“What’s he like?” Marie asked. “His lordship, that is.”
An interesting pause followed, during which Stephen told himself to get the hell out of bed and take himself home. Abigail Abbott expected him to be awake and sentient at breakfast, and only a fool would cross swords with that woman on less than three hours’ sleep.
“Lord Stephen is different,” Babette said. “Take this tea, for example. What lordling brings his light-skirts a tin of excellent tea? How did he know I’d appreciate that more than all the earbobs in Ludgate? The tea merchants don’t trot out the fine blends for the likes of us.”
“The earbobs are mostly paste,” Marie replied. “Did he bring you these biscuits too?”
“Aye. Had his footman deliver me a basket. I never had such glorious pears, Mare. I’m saving the last one to have with the chocolates he sent me. If you’d told me a pear could make right everything ever wrong in an opera dancer’s life, I’d have said you were daft.”
Another slurp.
“A man with glorious pears must be making up for a lack of glory in other regards, Bets.”
Marie h
ad been with the opera five seasons. Stephen had steered away from her practiced smiles and knowing glances. Babette was new to the stage and had retained some generosity of spirit on her recent trek down from the Yorkshire dales.
Stephen had endured the usual round of cards at the Aurora Club, then caught the last act of the evening’s opera. Escorting Babette home had led to an interlude, and now—at three in the morning—Babette was having tea with her neighbor. Very likely, Marie had just bid good night to some wool nabob or beer baron.
“If you mean in bed,” Babette replied, “Lord Stephen is a handful.”
“A mere handful?” Laughter followed, the sort of laughter women shared only with one another. Stephen liked that variety of mirth and was happy to be its inspiration, though he really should be getting dressed.
“Not that sort of handful,” Babette replied. “He’s demanding, inventive, and relentless, is the only way I can describe it. You know how we sometimes flatter the menfolk?”
“Feign pleasure, you mean?”
Stephen felt a twinge of pity for Marie, who mentioned her subterfuge with no rancor whatsoever.
“He doesn’t put up with that, Mare. He has a way of insisting that there be no faking, no pretending, and that’s unnerving, it is. Goes along with the scrumptious pears and the rich chocolates. Lord Stephen deals in a kind of blunt honesty that wears me out as much as his swiving does.”
Women spoke a dialect Stephen didn’t entirely understand, though he sensed Babette was not offering a compliment to his sexual prowess. She wasn’t insulting him either, but she was blundering perilously close to an insight.
Should have left fifteen minutes ago.
“I hate it when a man lacks consideration,” Marie said. Porcelain clinked, suggesting she was serving herself more tea. “Some of them have more care for their horses and lapdogs than they do their women.”
A sad truth.
“Lord Stephen is frightfully considerate. He holds doors for me, holds my chair, as best he can with his canes and all. He never hurries me into the bedroom, and he never rushes away as if a hand of cards matters more than a fond farewell.”
“Betty, you know better.” Marie’s tone was pitying rather than chiding. “You let a man have your heart, you’re doomed. Look at poor Clare. A babe in her belly, naught but another few weeks of dancing left to her, and where’s her lordling? Off shooting grouse in Scotland. She’ll be lucky to survive the winter, and he promised he would marry her.”
Clare Trouveniers had been under the dubious protection of Lord Alvin Dunstable, known as Dunderhead to his friends. Stephen made a note to send Dunstable a pointed epistle and to slip Clare some coin.
“Lord Stephen doesn’t have my heart, not yet,” Babette replied. “It’s a near thing, though. You know what he does that just unravels me, Mare?”
“Pays well?”
“Of course he pays well, and he puts the money in my hand, and tells me how to invest it. His brother owns a bank, you know.”
“His brother owns half the City. Does Lord Stephen bring you flowers?”
“Flowers are predictable. Lord Stephen isn’t predictable.”
That observation was inordinately gratifying.
“He’ll be predictably married before too long,” Marie observed. “His brother’s wife was just delivered of yet another girl child. That’s four girls, Bets. I do love it when Providence refuses to bend to the will of the Quality.”
That observation—about Stephen having to marry—was inordinately disquieting.
“He doesn’t do what you think he’ll do,” Babette replied. “Take the last biscuit. We have rehearsal in the morning. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”
That Babette continued to dance when Stephen paid her well enough that she could put away her ballet slippers bothered him even as it earned his admiration. Men were fickle, fate was a mercurial old beldame, and bad luck was inevitable. To wit, Jane’s fourth child was indeed yet another girl.
Though Stephen was helpless to do anything but adore his nieces.
“You are perilously fond of your lordling,” Marie said, sounding as though her mouth were full of biscuit. “He doesn’t strike me as a man to inspire fondness. Cold eyes, never a wrinkle on his Bond Street finery. His canes are worth more than my poor papa’s life savings, God rest his soul. Have you ever heard Lord Stephen laugh? Does he snore? Does he forget where he put his sleeve buttons?”
“He smiles.”
What had laughing or snoring to do with anything, and who in his right mind would misplace gold sleeve buttons?
“He smiles like I smile at this butter biscuit, Bets, like he’s about to demolish something or someone and relishes the prospect. He’s fought duels, you know.”
“Men do. They don’t typically linger after an encounter with an opera dancer, don’t cuddle up with her like she’s a warm hearth and he’s a weary soldier.”
A cup hit a saucer with a definite plink. “Betty Smithers, what have I told you about cuddling?”
There were rules about cuddling?
“You break it off with Lord Stephen,” Marie went on. “The sooner the better. If you crooked your finger at Framley Powers, he’d be sniffing at your skirts in an instant. Powers is rich.”
“He’s nearly twice my age and silly.”
“You’re barely twenty. No cuddling, Bets. No cuddling, no pet names, no foolish notes that can be used to blackmail you if you ever turn decent. You show up for rehearsals and keep dancing until you’ve enough put by to open a shop. Those are the rules.”
And sheaths, Stephen wanted to add. Always make the blighter use a sheath. He’d sent Babette a trove of expensive Italian sheaths in a fancy box, though he knew to always bring his own to any encounter. An enterprising mistress with a sharp needle could easily conceive her way to a generous pension.
A gentleman was honor bound to support his offspring, but he needn’t sprinkle progeny across half of London. Then too, Stephen would not visit bastardy on any child if he could avoid it.
“I will never have a shop,” Babette replied tiredly. “Name me one dancer who’s earned enough to open a shop. Clare will end up sewing herself blind for some modiste, her baby farmed out to a wet nurse who’ll kill the poor thing with the black drop. When Lord Stephen holds me…”
“Babs, don’t.”
“When he holds me, I feel like the most precious, dear, cherished woman in England, Marie. His hands are warm, and he does this thing.…He squeezes my neck, not hard, but firmly, and every ache and pain from rehearsals, every worry and woe, just drains right out of me. He rubs my feet, Mare. My ugly, aching feet. Then he rubs my back, slowly, all the time in the world, like caressing me is his greatest joy. His hands are inspired, and far more than the swiving, I crave that tenderness from him.”
Thundering throne of heaven. No man should hear such a confession. Duncan, Stephen’s cousin and erstwhile tutor, had once mentioned that the ladies liked a bit of petting. Stephen liked a bit of petting, saw no harm in it, and had added a few little gestures to his amatory repertoire.
Abruptly, departing the premises became an urgent necessity. Departing London itself had gained appeal as well, if not England, but then, there was Miss Abbott, tucked up in Stephen’s blue guest suite.
In the next room, a chair scraped. “Betty, we are friends, as much as anybody in this idiot business can be friends. Get free of Lord Stephen before he destroys you. He won’t mean to, you won’t blame him, but he’ll ruin you all the same. He’ll ruin your ability to be happy even if he doesn’t put a babe in your belly. Don’t argue with me, for I must be off to bed if I’m to dance before noon. Thanks for the tea and biscuits. Don’t be late for rehearsal, especially not because you fell back into bed with the likes of him.”
A door closed, none too softly.
Stephen remained stretched on the mattress, eyes shut, when what he wanted was to bolt for the door right behind Marie. Eavesdroppers supposedly heard no good of
themselves, though Babette had had only positive things to say about her lover.
Stephen wished she’d complained instead. He stole all the covers, he never sent smarmy epistles, he had a vile temper, and he insisted on keeping his canes within reach even when making love. Surely those were noteworthy shortcomings?
A weight settled on the bed a few minutes later. Dancers could move silently, but Stephen had sensed Babette’s approach. She was fastidious, and the aroma of the rose soap he’d purchased for her preceded her under the covers.
“There you are,” he muttered, when she tucked up against his side. “Wondered where you disappeared to. I should be getting dressed.”
Her hand drifted down the midline of his belly. “One more before you leave?”
He’d make her oversleep and be late for rehearsal if he lingered, which he was in no mood to do in any case, despite the ever-willing attitude of his male flesh.
“Alas for me, I must away,” he said, trapping her hand in his and kissing her fingers. “You’ve worn me out.”
“You wear yourself out.” Babette stroked his chest. “Did Marie wake you?”
“I thought I smelled her perfume. Was she here?”
Babette withdrew her hand. “How is it you know her perfume?”
“She’s keeping company with the Hormsby pup. He buys cheap Hungary water and pours it into pretty bottles, then claims he has it blended just for his current chère amie.”
“That is awful. Must you rush away?”
“As if I could rush anywhere.” Stephen dredged up a sigh. “Hand me a cane, if you please?”
Babette obliged and helped him dress, all the while chatting about the latest drama among the corps de ballet. She was restful company, and Stephen would miss her. He missed them all, the restful ones and the tempestuous ones, and he hoped they missed him too—but only a little and for only a short while.
“The sky is nowhere near light enough to ride in the park,” Babette said, smoothing her fingers over his cravat. “Do you truly have to leave? I could show you what I know about riding crops.”
How to Catch a Duke Page 2
