How to Catch a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  Quinn cradled his daughter with the practiced ease of a father of four. “Wee Mary and her sisters are all the luck I could ask for, Stephen. I will not subject my wife to childbed again. Jane was in agony for the better part of two days. Only her great fortitude and determination brought about a happy result, and even if she is willing to risk another pregnancy for the sake of the succession, I am not.”

  Truly, Quinn had become a duke, for he delivered that blow in the most casual tones, rising easily to tuck his daughter against his shoulder.

  “Jane will change your mind.” A desperate hope.

  “Jane changed my mind last time and this time, and my capitulation nearly killed her. I will not be talked around again, even by Jane.”

  Jane’s fixity of purpose made Toledo steel look like so much crumpled tin. Quinn, however, was the one force of nature whom Jane could not and would not cozen, cajole, or command when he’d settled on a course. Stephen did not understand how marital differences were resolved between two such people, but he did know that trading Jane’s life for a male child was no bargain at all.

  “Is the duchess receiving?” Stephen asked, gathering up his canes. Some women still observed the tradition of forty days lying in. With previous confinements, Jane had begun short excursions from the house in less than half that time.

  “Jane will want to see you,” Quinn said. “Give us half an hour, and join us in our private parlor.”

  “You will allow me to buy that child a pony,” Stephen said, trying for a light tone. “If I can’t teach her to shoot or smoke or drink, I must be permitted at least that boon.”

  “You can teach her all of those things, but it still won’t make her or any of her sisters male, Stephen. Reconcile yourself now to the fact that you will be the next Duke of Walden.” Quinn opened the door, and who should be on the other side but Duncan.

  “Another man seeking to call upon my daughter,” Quinn said. “Alas, her mother has summoned her. You can keep Stephen company as he contemplates his gloomy fate. He’ll be a wealthy and powerful duke one day, poor sod.”

  Quinn left, closing the door quietly in his wake. Stephen remained in the rocking chair and Duncan took the seat Quinn had vacated.

  A silence ensued, broken only by the soft crackling of the fire in the hearth. Jane ordered wood burned in the nursery, declaring that wood fires were better for the children’s lungs than coal. That was only one of the myriad decisions required of her as a parent, and Jane made them with the confidence of an experienced general bivouacking over familiar terrain.

  Duncan had powers of contemplation that rivaled the sagacity of the ancients. He and Matilda had traveled to Town from their Berkshire estate in honor of the nursery’s newest arrival. For years, Duncan had been Stephen’s constant companion, first as a tutor, then as a traveling companion. Matilda had come along and spoken for all of Duncan’s waltzes, as it were.

  “You haven’t been out to see us for months,” Duncan said. “Are you in love again?”

  Another man might have asked how the crops were faring, how the harvest went on at the Yorkshire properties. Duncan had faced demons that made Jack Wentworth look like a passing inconvenience. Prying into Stephen’s non-existent personal life thus passed for small talk with Duncan.

  “I gave up falling in love when I turned five-and-twenty. Put away my childish things, as it were. When will you and Matilda have a son?”

  “Never.”

  Et tu, Duncan? “The Almighty has given you those assurances?”

  “I am older than Quinn, and Matilda has a year or two on Jane. We are well blessed with our two girls and refuse to court disaster by asking for more. You will make a fine duke.”

  Nothing frightened Duncan. His sangfroid was equal to highwaymen, irate dukes, squalling infants, and self-destructive adolescents. He’d studied for the church and drew on a well of moral fortitude Stephen could only envy. Duncan had taught a surly, adolescent Quinn to read. When Stephen’s mind had been caulked shut with rage and despair, Duncan had pried it open with books and riding lessons.

  Stephen would cheerfully die for Duncan, and Duncan would never allow him that privilege.

  “I will make a terrible duke,” Stephen said. “I am bad-tempered, enthralled with commerce, frequently in company with opera dancers, and unable to waltz.”

  Duncan set his chair to slowly rocking. “Dukes keep company with whomever they please, they generally own vast swathes of commercial property, and have been known to be difficult. Ergo, it’s that last—the waltzing—that renders you unfit for the title?”

  Well, no. “Go back to Berkshire.”

  “Matilda is having too much fun doting on the older girls, and that leaves the field clear for me to dote on my own offspring. What is it about the title that truly bothers you, Stephen? You have many of the attributes that should characterize the nobility. You are wise, tolerant, hardworking, loyal to friends and family, and kindly disposed toward humanity in general. You will be an asset to the Lords precisely because you were not born to privilege. You are already a reproach to the cits who use their wealth only for their own indulgence.”

  “An occasional charitable donation is expected of the wealthy. Quinn would thrash me if I were to neglect that duty.”

  Quinn would never thrash him. Once, long ago, Stephen had pilfered a currant bun—the most delicious, delectable, delightful currant bun ever to be consumed by a famished boy. Quinn had learned of the misdeed and swatted Stephen once on the bum. The pain had been nothing, but the reassurance to Stephen, that his older brother would not allow him to slip into a criminal life, had been inordinate.

  “Perhaps I should have stolen more currant buns.”

  “You would make a fine felon,” Duncan said. “You would execute your crimes without getting caught, inspire loyalty among your subordinates, and keep order in the ranks.”

  “You make me sound like some sort of regimental authority.” And how Stephen had envied all those young men buying their colors.

  A log fell on the hearth, sending a shower of sparks up the flue. “The military and the better-organized street gangs have much in common. That many of our returning soldiers now belong to those gangs emphasizes my point. What stops you from taking up a life of crime is the guilt. You know what it is to be a victim, thus you refuse to victimize others.”

  “Truly, Duncan, a return to Berkshire on your part would be appreciated. I’ll squire Matilda and the girls about, and you can go back to reading the Stoics. I have a houseguest.”

  Duncan’s chair momentarily stilled, then resumed its slow cadence. “You have acquaintances from all walks of life. What makes this houseguest different?”

  “Miss Abigail Abbott is unlike any female—any person—I’ve encountered. She has no patience with guns.”

  “And you love them. I’m sure that makes for rousing philosophical arguments. This is the inquiry agent from York whom Constance and Rothhaven hired?”

  “The same. Miss Abbott kept Con’s secrets for years, never gave up on the goal, and eventually met with success. I admire that.”

  “Having an entire regiment’s worth of tenacity, you would find such persistence admirable. Why is this woman your guest?”

  She had nowhere else to turn. Stephen knew what that felt like too. “She has provoked the wrath of the Marquess of Stapleton. She sought my counsel regarding the best means of thwarting him.” Duncan had kindly omitted the obvious lecture: Bachelor lords did not house female guests who arrived without benefit of chaperonage. Bachelor lords did not socialize with inquiry agents of common origins.

  Bachelor lords, in other words, were a lot of useless prigs.

  “The marquess has a reputation for self-importance,” Duncan said. “I believe he and Quinn are on opposing sides of the child labor law debate.”

  In Stephen’s opinion, children did not belong in the mines or factories. They belonged at school, and at the sides of parents or mentors engaged in trades, crafts, or so
me family enterprise. Quinn shared that viewpoint, having been worked without mercy as a boy and paid next to nothing.

  “Stapleton wants some letters Miss Abbott has. She is bound by conscience to safeguard them.” Or was she? Stephen had begun to wonder who exactly had those letters.

  “You cite the conscience of a woman who goes through life essentially as a professional fraud. She finagles secrets from those who don’t even know they have them, disguises and misrepresents herself, and takes coin to spy at keyholes. What is it about her that draws you?”

  The clocks elsewhere in the house chimed the quarter hour. One was an instant behind the others.

  “The footmen have been lax,” Stephen said. “The clock in the family room was wound at least an hour later than the others.”

  Duncan held his peace, at which he was damnably talented.

  “Miss Abbott has a conscience,” Stephen said. She still suffered guilt over the moment of her birth, for example. “She managed Con’s business without once taking advantage of the situation.”

  “And now Miss Abbott needs help. She cannot bide with you, Stephen. Her reputation will not withstand that impropriety.”

  “I’m here to ask Quinn and Jane to extend their hospitality to her.”

  Duncan rose and added a log to the fire. He could do that—rise, move the fire screen, grab a length of wood from the basket, lay it amid the flames, and replace the screen—without once having to consider his balance. He could do nearly everything without considering his balance, and how Stephen envied him such sure-footedness.

  “When Matilda showed up on my doorstep,” Duncan said, “frightened, famished, and friendless, I had no choice. Gentlemanly honor was the fig leaf I draped over my actions—damsels in distress and so forth—but Stephen, I had no choice. She beat me at chess, she thought I was intelligent, she admitted an attraction to a man who’d eschewed all bodily entanglements. She took me captive, utterly and forever, and if you lot had told me to turn my back on her, I would have instead turned my back on you.”

  Such effusions from Duncan, the soul of intellectual dispassion, were unprecedented. Stephen had told Duncan to at least consider the proprieties where Matilda was concerned and had got exactly nowhere.

  “Your point?”

  “You never ask anybody for anything, but you are imposing on Quinn and Jane for the sake of this inquiry agent. That says a lot.”

  “It says I can’t keep a decent female under my roof without her reputation suffering.”

  “It says you will do for her what you would never do for yourself.”

  “Observe propriety? Really, Duncan, I am not the outlandish boy who careered all over Europe with you. I am to be a bloody duke, after all.”

  Duncan ambled for the door. “And a duke who intends to secure the succession must have a willing duchess, and that, my friend, is why you so dread taking up the title. I look forward to meeting your Miss Abbott.”

  “Go back to Berkshire.”

  Duncan paused, hand on the door. “What you dread to do beyond all else is ask for help. If Miss Abbott inspires you to such humility, she is surely the stuff duchesses are made of. Mind you don’t muck this up, Stephen. The right duchess only comes along once in a fellow’s life.”

  Duncan slipped through the door, leaving Stephen alone to contemplate missing letters, irate marquesses, and family obligations.

  Try as he might to focus on those topics, his thoughts kept wandering, back and back again, to kisses much too passionate to be entirely for show.

  Chapter Five

  “You have agreed to play the part of my intended,” Lord Stephen said. “All manner of speculation will start once the gossips get word of my interest in you. Your reputation must be above reproach, and thus you will accept Their Graces’ hospitality.”

  Abigail stalked up to him, and to his credit he did not flinch or step back. “Where was your concern for my reputation when you consigned me to the blue suite two nights ago, my lord?”

  The last she’d seen of him, he’d been off to pay a call on his family yesterday afternoon. He had not come home for dinner, and he’d avoided her at breakfast that morning. She’d barged into his study in search of something to read—something besides lurid novels—and found his lordship peering at the plans spread out on his worktable.

  He patted her arm. “Inactivity makes you cross, or perhaps your female humors are troubling you. I don’t care that”—he snapped his fingers before Abigail’s nose—“for polite society. They would have cheerfully hanged my brother and let a titled potwalloper go free. My concern is for your safety.”

  Abigail was cross, and inactivity did not sit well with her. That Lord Stephen would make a decision without consulting her rendered her positively furious.

  “According to you, I am safe here. I do not want your family burdened with my problems.”

  He peered down his nose at her. “Have trouble asking for help, do you? That shows a serious want of humility. What would your Quaker relations say to this display of hubris, Miss Abbott?”

  In their last conversation, she’d been Abigail, my dear, and dearest to him. “My Quaker relations would say I come by my self-sufficiency honestly. They disowned my father, read him out of meeting. He was a master gunsmith, raised to excel at his trade before the Friends took such a dim view of it. Papa had no other skills with which to make a decent living, so he turned his back on his faith community.”

  “As you turn your back on both guns and your father’s religious affiliations. Might we sit? I’ve been out and about already today, and a respite would be appreciated.”

  Abigail caught a whiff of his lordship’s luscious fragrance and moved away. “You need not ask my permission to sit, my lord. Sit whenever you please.”

  He remained standing, regarding her, both of his hands resting on the head of his cane. This one looked to be of oak—more easily worked than mahogany and still quite heavy.

  “You value self-sufficiency, Miss Abbott. I value every semblance of normal, able-bodied gentlemanly behavior I can manage.”

  Abigail sat on the sofa, a poor choice given the memories she had of it.

  His lordship came down beside her. “What is the real reason you are reluctant to dwell with Their Graces?” He rested his foot on the hassock, which Abigail took to be a concession to his limitations.

  “If Stapleton was willing to poison me once, he might try poison again. If he set brigands looking for me once, he might do that again too. Their Graces have children in the nursery—a newborn, for God’s sake—and you expect the duke and duchess to take on the burden of me and my troubles.”

  His lordship propped his cane between them and began rubbing his knee. “Have you any siblings?”

  “My father never remarried. My mother was the love of his life.”

  “Whom you killed, with malice aforethought, being an entire eight pounds or so of villainy at the time of the crime, and so on and so forth. I recall the particulars. Allow me to enlighten you regarding that blessing known as the sibling bond, at least among Jack Wentworth’s offspring, though for all we know, Quinn isn’t related to the rest of us.”

  “His Grace of Walden is a legitimate bastard?”

  “We can’t be sure. His poor mama was already carrying when she married Jack, and she married somewhat down, suggesting Jack was a husband of convenience. He also treated her miserably, sending her into an early grave and reviling her ever after for her faithlessness.”

  His lordship shared this extraordinary confidence casually, and yet, Abigail knew why he did it. He was informing her, in a roundabout way, that she wasn’t the only one with family secrets and sorrows. As if an inquiry agent needed reminding of that.

  “His Grace of Walden might not even be your brother?”

  “The College of Arms doesn’t care. Quinn is the legal and legitimate offspring of Jack Wentworth, and more to the point, a brother is as a brother does. Quinn saved our lives, over and over. We would have st
arved without the wages he earned, or worse, we would have succumbed to Jack’s meanness without Quinn to show us how to manage. Althea took much of the brunt of Jack’s temper, but we all came in for our share.”

  “Let me see to your knee,” Abigail said, setting his cane aside and moving closer.

  “My cane, please.”

  “Your leg hurts. You should rest it.”

  “Abigail, please put my cane where I can reach it.” His tone was civil—barely.

  She passed him his cane. “Only the one today?”

  “When I go out, I try to manage with one.”

  “And then you pay for your pride.” She began the slow, smooth massage he seemed to favor.

  “Harder,” he said, leaning his head back against the cushions. “That knee only understands a firm touch.”

  She dug in with her fingers, which earned her a sigh.

  “Exactly like that. Ye gods, I might not let you stay with Quinn and Jane after all.”

  “You are not letting me do anything, my lord. I’ve asked for your help. That does not put you in control of me. Finish your explanation regarding your siblings.”

  “If my family learned that I was in difficulties, and I did not turn to them for aid, they would be hurt. I have hurt them enough. In my youth, when I could not lash out with my fists, I lashed out with words. I broke antique vases. I threw food I would have sold myself for a few years earlier. I was impossible, and only Duncan’s monumental patience and even greater stores of academic guile stopped me from the worst of my foolishness.”

  “What is academic guile?”

  Lord Stephen closed his eyes. “When you meet him, you’ll understand. Life is a logic puzzle to Duncan, and guiding my self-destructive impulses into creative directions became his defining challenge. Duncan’s virtue is so stern as to be nearly invisible, but nobody loves more fiercely than he. I owe him my life. I owe Quinn, Constance, and Althea my life. I owe Jane my soul, and my nieces my heart. Please say you will stay with Quinn and Jane.”

  The truth was, Abigail could not bide with Lord Stephen for any length of time and still be accepted by decent society. Lord Stephen might produce a fictitious maiden auntie to serve as a nominal chaperone for a sum certain, or he might allude to an equally fictitious distant family connection between him and Abigail, but tongues would inevitably wag.