How to Catch a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  Not entirely false, anyway.

  “His lordship showed up on my doorstep on Monday well before sunrise, and he had two very large footmen with him. The hour was so early that the household should still have been abed.”

  Lord Stephen’s caresses to his walking stick ceased. “As the lot of you might have been if you’d been drugged?”

  “Precisely. Everybody partakes of a Sunday roast in most households that can afford a roast. A dose of somnifera or whatever the offending substance was, and we’d simply be slower to rise the following morning. Sunday is also the day when two maiden ladies are most likely to allow themselves a glass of good wine as a digestive following the weekly feast.”

  The fire had been lit in this room as well, suggesting that cold aggravated Lord Stephen’s injured leg. Abigail found the warmth delicious, particularly after spending days and nights on a crowded, stinking coach.

  Lord Stephen tipped his head to the side, considering Abigail with an owlish look. “Tell me about the letters.”

  He would ask that. “They are predictably personal, between people who ought not to have been corresponding.”

  Abigail was not blushing. She was too angry to blush. She picked up her empty cup, then set it down.

  “Miss Abbott, have you been indiscreet?” His lordship’s tone was merely curious. If he’d made a jest of the situation, Abigail would have coshed him with his expensive cane.

  “I did not write those letters, your lordship. Stop speculating. The marquess wants them, he’s not entitled to them, and he’s apparently willing to go to extreme measures to retrieve them.”

  A little silence bloomed, while Abigail could nearly hear the gears whirring in his lordship’s busy mind.

  “Tell me more about those extreme measures. You said Stapleton has made two attempts to do you mischief. A case can be made for poison, though it’s a weak case and shades more toward drugging you ladies to enable a thorough search. Something more serious inspired you to seek out my assistance.”

  Abigail rose, not to escape Lord Stephen’s scrutiny, of course, but to better organize her thoughts. “I travel about for my clients. It’s part of the job. For one client, I began taking the coach from York to Allerton every Tuesday. Round-trip, that’s often six or eight hours, longer if the roads are bad.”

  “Why subject yourself to such misery?”

  “The case paid well. I attended a weekly meeting of a knitting group, gathering intelligence for an inheritance situation.”

  “I do envy you the variety of challenges your profession entails.”

  Lord Stephen seemed to mean that, though nobody should envy a woman hours and hours on English public conveyances.

  “Coach travel is cheaper for those on top of the coach,” Abigail said, “but outside passengers are rarely female. I dress as a man for the coach rides. I can get the cheaper fare, and I’m less likely to be identified as Miss Abigail Abbott of Cockcrow Lane, York.”

  Lord Stephen’s brows rose. “You wear trousers, waistcoat, boots, the whole bit?”

  “Complete with pocket watch and hat. I put my hair in an old-fashioned queue and wear it under my coat. Because of my size, I pass for a man easily.” A boon, that. Truly, having the dimensions of a plow horse had been a benefit in any number of situations.

  “So there you were,” his lordship murmured, “bouncing along topside, probably sharing a flask with your fellow passengers and discussing the latest racing form, and then what happened?”

  They’d been discussing some pugilist or other. “Highwaymen stopped the coach, your lordship. No less than six armed and masked men on very fine horseflesh, towing a spare mount. They had exquisite firearms—Mantons, if I’m not mistaken—and dressed rather better than highwaymen ought to.”

  “Noticed that, did you?”

  “They also took nothing and spoke like exponents of public school. They simply demanded to see the lady travelers. The passengers were all made to get off the coach while the brigands inspected the parcels on the boot and beneath the seats. Then they let us go on our way. The two female passengers were wearing wedding rings worth a bit of blunt, and one of the inside dandies had a pocket watch well worth stealing.”

  “But the brigands wanted only you.”

  “I believe your blue spectacles saved my life.” The first time Abigail had seen Lord Stephen in disguise, he’d been wearing blue spectacles and impersonating a down-on-his-luck tinker.

  “You recalled my blue spectacles. Miss Abbott, I am touched and impressed, and you, my dear, are being less than forthcoming. Tell me the rest of it.”

  Abigail was not his dear and she had no intention of telling him the whole rest of it, so she served up the morsel she’d saved back for purposes of gratifying his lordship’s vanity.

  “They had a likeness of me,” she said. “About the size of a miniature, maybe a little larger. They compared the two lady travelers to the likeness, and thank heavens neither woman resembled me. They were both also too petite to be me.”

  Abigail sank back into her seat, that last admission not exactly comfortable.

  “Do you know what I think when I consider your fair form, Miss Abbott?”

  “The question of your opinion of my physique has never crossed my mind.” Though it had kept her up for a moment or two last night, and possibly on a few other nights. Abigail sorted men into two categories: tall enough, and the rest. The rest were disappointingly numerous, and she took many precautions not to unduly offend them.

  Lord Stephen, for all his numerous faults and annoying tendencies, was tall enough.

  “When I behold you,” he replied, “I think, ye gods, if only I had the ability to waltz with such a magnificent creature. We would turn every head in the room, and should I stumble, which I am wont to do regularly, she could easily catch me up in her arms and put me right. You could do it too, without a thought. How I adore that about you.”

  Now, when it mattered not at all, Abigail felt heat creep up her neck, suffuse her ears, and fill her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed in years, but less than a day under Lord Stephen’s roof, and she was as pink as a blooming carnation.

  “Quakers eschew dancing, my lord.”

  “I am not a Quaker, Miss Abbott.” No sooner had Stephen spoken than he grasped the significance of her comment. “You are a member of the Society of Friends?” This was bad news. Quakers were an appallingly virtuous lot, much given to probity, reform, and philanthropy.

  “I am not, but my parents were born into the Quaker faith, and my father raised me according to its precepts.”

  “And what would the Friends think of you strutting about the countryside in breeches and top hat?” The image would not leave Stephen’s mind. That lusciously curved backside in trousers, that abundant bosom trussed up in a waistcoat…

  He shifted in his seat, crossing an ankle over a knee. Such pre-occupations always befell him after he’d parted with a chère amie. He became both sentimental and randy, a dangerous combination.

  “My appearance when I am on a case is nobody’s business but my own,” Miss Abbott replied. “When I visit my Quaker relations, I observe the courtesies any lady ought to show her aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins.”

  “You thee-thou them and call everybody by their first names?” Would you call me Stephen if I asked you to?

  “They are family, all the family I have, so of course I use informal address and plain speech. Might we return to the problem at hand, my lord?”

  His own words came back to him from their previous conversation: Sir, might you put your hand on my…

  “You were the one dissembling, Miss Abbott. Tell me more about these letters that have Lord Stapleton attempting to kidnap you.”

  She sat up very straight. “As letters go, they aren’t very remarkable. There are about two dozen.”

  “Somebody fancied himself in love.”

  She glowered at him. “And why do you assume the author was male, my lord? Women fall in lov
e every bit as foolishly as men do.”

  The asperity in her tone so soon after breakfast could not be explained by fatigue or hunger.

  “No, Miss Abbott, women do not typically make asses of themselves on anywhere near the grand scale men achieve in matters of the heart. Ladies are generally sensible creatures compared to the louts who father their children. Women have a care for the next generation, whereas men usually have a care for nothing more pressing than their next pint of ale, though I’ll grant you, exceptions abound. My brother is sensible to a fault, and he’s also a man very much in love.”

  “You see that as a paradox?”

  Stephen shook a finger at her. “None of that. We will not plumb the abyss of philosophy. The letters, if you please. Who wrote them to whom, and why would Stapleton want them?” Why would Stapleton believe they’d been left in your care?

  Stephen had a theory, though he was reluctant to share it with Miss Abbott. She was an inquiry agent, and thus no innocent where human foibles were concerned, but she was a Quaker-raised, lady inquiry agent.

  “The letters, as you can imagine, my lord, shade in the direction of billets-doux. They are not recent, and they were not written by Stapleton himself or by anybody with whom Stapleton or his late marchioness might have been entangled, from what I can gather.”

  Whenever Miss Abigail Abbott folded her hands in her lap and pretended demure fascination with the carpet, she was hiding information. The carpet was currently on the receiving end of a thorough inspection.

  “You are doubtless protecting a client as you prevaricate,” Stephen said, “but let me share what I know of the situation, and you might feel free to be more forthcoming. Stapleton’s late son was a charming bounder, but let it not be said that the Earl of Champlain was a difficult husband. He and the fair Harmonia had a thoroughly civilized marriage.”

  Miss Abbott turned her inspection on Stephen. “What does that mean?”

  “To put it in the parlance of my youth, they comported themselves like a pair of minks. Lord Champlain indulged his amorous impulses wherever he pleased, and her ladyship had a number of gallants. I’m sure Champlain and his countess also gave the matter of securing the succession due attention from time to time—I believe he left a son behind, after all. Champlain and his wife were certainly cordial when they encountered one another socially.”

  Stephen had reason to know the friendliness between the earl and countess had been genuine. They hadn’t been a love match, but they’d reconciled themselves to their parents’ machinations with good grace, good humor, and the occasional shared good time.

  All very civilized.

  Miss Abbott looked like she needed to pace again, and how Stephen envied her that habit.

  “How do people live like that?” she asked. “How do they cavort from bed to bed, behaving—as you say—like beasts in rut? I have seen too much evidence of this nonsense to doubt your recitation, and such goings-on are not limited to the high and mighty. Nonetheless, I am unable to reconcile myself to the notion that something so precious and intimate can be undertaken as casually as sharing a glass of punch.”

  Beneath the predictable distaste of a gently reared lady lay a hint of true bewilderment at marital infidelity. Perhaps that was the Quaker upbringing peeking through the inquiry agent’s pragmatism?

  “Miss Abbott, the earl and his lady were very likely betrothed while still in leading strings. Champlain was heir to an ancient title and a vast fortune. He was not in the habit of denying himself.”

  “You knew him?”

  Stephen set his cane aside, though still within reach. “We were acquainted. He was no worse than many of his ilk, and that he and the countess were not possessive of each other was hardly unusual among the peerage. Lord and Lady Champlain considered themselves forward-thinking.”

  Miss Abbott rose and struck off across the carpet, and as much as Stephen liked watching her move, he wasn’t as comfortable with her poking about his private domain.

  “This is not a variety of forward-thinking of which I can approve.” She leaned over his worktable. “What are these?”

  “Plans for a firing mechanism that will be less susceptible to heat and humidity.”

  She picked up a diagram and held it about a foot from her nose. “You design guns?”

  Did she but know it, she’d brought up an abyss into which Stephen could fall for days on end. “I design them, manufacture them, distribute them, and sell them. Britain cannot seem to enlarge its empire without doing so at gunpoint.”

  “Hence the impropriety of that enlargement.” She put down the schematic and stalked around the table, bootheels rapping even through the thickness of the carpet. “I disapprove of the munitions trade.”

  Stephen pushed to his feet, though his knee screamed in protest. “I disapprove of people who raise perfectly healthy children and forbid them to dance. We can debate that topic later, when we’ve figured out why Stapleton would need those letters so desperately, though I’m fairly certain I know.”

  Finely arched brows drew down. “You do?”

  “One of Lady Champlain’s lovers was apparently of a literary bent. Some fool mentioned her ladyship’s indiscretion to Stapleton, and now, having no wife to talk sense to him, the marquess is darting about like a March hare. He is determined to retrieve the evidence of his daughter-in-law’s peccadillo, even to the point of kidnapping you. We will need a list of the gentlemen who have employed you since Lady Champlain spoke her vows.”

  An hour of sleep at Babette’s, then another hour upon returning home was plenty enough to refresh Stephen’s mind, but he’d been going short of sleep too much lately. His knee protested loudly, and yet he stood, hands braced on a single cane, while Miss Abbott peered at the signature on the landscape behind his desk.

  “Who is Endymion de Beauharnais? Is he related to the late empress?”

  The change of subject was much too welcome. “He’s the same fellow who painted my dragon. Very English.” Also breathtakingly handsome and an absolute dunderhead in matters of the heart. “He’s quite talented, unlike you, who are sadly lacking in the thespian’s ability to dissemble. You know who wrote those letters. You know why Stapleton thinks you have them.”

  Stephen made a careful circumnavigation of the wing chair, and collected his second cane. The rooms in this house were large, which made for safer perambulations when a cane had to be used even indoors. The furniture was bunched in well-spaced groups, and the carpets were tacked down along every edge.

  “I might know,” Miss Abbott said. “I can certainly make the list you describe, but none of this is effecting my demise, which is the reason I sought you out, my lord. If Stapleton thinks I’m dead, he’ll stop trying to drug me and kidnap me.”

  “I refuse to kill a woman who is being unfairly menaced,” Stephen said, “not because I am averse to violence—violence has many uses and justifications—but because a staged death will not solve your problem.”

  Miss Abbott’s chin came up, and Stephen realized he’d blundered across her Quaker upbringing again. Quakers had no patience with violence generally, hence their distaste for the munitions industry. The lot of them hunted game, though, and many a Quaker fortune included arms money from generations past.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Stephen said. “You carry a sword cane.” A man’s sword cane, which she could manage because of her height and the confidence with which she sailed through life.

  “For defensive purposes only.”

  “That cane will not defend you against Stapleton’s next attempt on your person.” Stephen was seized with a sudden curiosity about the fragrance Miss Abbott preferred. She struck him as a lemon verbena sort, all tart and bracing, not that he had any business even wondering about such a thing.

  “Nothing will keep me safe if his lordship is determined to find me, hence the necessity for me to die.”

  “I’ll not have your death on my conscience, or I won’t if I ever locate my conscienc
e. For God’s sake, why are you wearing that execrable rosemary scent? A hedgehog would not be flattered by such an olfactory—”

  Fate, the nemesis of all who aspired to effective insults, intervened as she so often did in Stephen’s life. Her meddling took the form of a wrinkle in the carpet, a cane tip slipping ever so slightly, and Stephen losing his balance.

  Fate, though, had for once shown herself to be a benevolent intercessor, for Stephen went toppling straight into Miss Abbott, and Miss Abbott caught him in a snug and sturdy hold.

  Abigail was surprised to find her arms full of Lord Stephen Wentworth. He was no wraith, and she needed a moment to get a firm hold of him.

  “Steady there, my lord.”

  His face was mashed to the crook of her neck and shoulder, and his cane had gone toppling. In the few moments necessary for him to find his balance, Abigail perceived all manner of curious details.

  He wore a divinely complicated fragrance. Floral and spice aromas intertwined to delight the nose and beguile the curiosity. The scent was doubtless blended exclusively for him, and he’d very likely designed it himself.

  The lace of his cravat was a soft, silky brush against Abigail’s décolletage, an intimate and disturbing sensation. What sort of sybarite used blond lace on a cravat that wasn’t intended to be worn against the skin?

  More disturbing than either of those perceptions was Abigail’s sense that for the merest instant before he began sorting himself out, Lord Stephen had rested against her, lingering on purpose where he should be mortified to be.

  Could he possibly have engineered this mishap, and, if so, why?

  “My apologies,” he said, bracing a hand on the table and standing straight. “And my thanks for your timely support. If you’d please hand me my cane?”

  He was all genial good humor, as if thirteen stone of handsome lord went flying into the arms of unsuspecting ladies every twenty minutes or so. Abigail scooped up his cane, passed it to him, and retrieved the second cane as well.

  “These are not sword canes,” she said, peering more closely at the one she held. “And yet they would make effective weapons.”