The Quality were nothing if not hypocritical.
“If you can assure me that your family will be in no danger, I will stay with them.”
Lord Stephen opened his eyes. “Quinn is filthy, reeking rich, and as suspicious of his fellow man as only a gutter whelp who has come up in the world can be. He’s seen Newgate from the top of the scaffold, and been betrayed by fancy employers since his earliest youth. If you come across a titled family in financial distress, they probably hate Quinn Wentworth, because he either cut off their credit or refused to lend to them altogether.”
And this was the dukedom Stephen would inherit? “Walden is conscientious about his family’s security?”
“He’s fanatical about it and has tasked me with measures to safeguard the ladies in particular. Every Wentworth conveyance is a rolling fortress of my design, the footmen are all skilled with firearms and knives, which I’ve fashioned for ease of concealment. We employ a lowlier variety of domestic than most households, because we want the sharpest possible eyes looking out for us. My sisters typically carry weapons, as do I, and the children never go abroad without a platoon of guards.”
Abigail’s Quaker relatives would shudder with horror at lives lived in anticipation of violence. “My uncles would say the price of endless wealth is endless fear.”
“So they’ve sold all their worldly goods, given away the proceeds, and taken up a life of carefree penury? I can assure you, Abigail, the price of poverty is also fear, along with disease, misery, despair, starvation, and death.”
Would Stapleton kill her for the letters? Abigail did not know and would prefer not to find out.
“I will stay with your family. If I’m to be credibly passed off as your intended, that only makes sense.”
Lord Stephen caught her hand in his. “But you had to put me through my paces, lest I begin to think you anything less than deucedly independent. It’s better now.”
His grip was warm and firm, reminding Abigail of another firmness. “I beg your pardon?”
“My knee. It’s better. Thank you.”
Something about his smile was a little too cheerful. “No, it isn’t. You are dissembling. I have no patience with liars, my lord, and if I’m to impose on your family, please assure me that we will be honest with them about the nature of our dealings.”
His kissed her fingers. “They will know what’s afoot, the better to keep you safe.”
More glib assurances that Abigail did not entirely believe. “What’s the real reason you are sending me away?” The part about turning to his family for aid was true, as was the bit about safeguarding Abigail’s person and her reputation.
And yet, she’d bet her favorite sword cane Lord Stephen was prevaricating about something.
“I know why you are so fond of that terrier, Malcolm,” his lordship said. “You are both persistent to the point of foolishness.”
“Persistence gets results.”
His lordship winced as he lowered his foot from the hassock. “Truer words…How soon can you be ready to accompany me to the ducal residence?”
He was in a hurry to get rid of her, probably having second thoughts about the whole scheme. “I am nearly ready now. I have but the one satchel, and packing that will take me five minutes.” She rose, wanting to be away from the man who apparently wanted to be away from her.
Lord Stephen extended a hand to her, and Abigail realized that she was to help a gentleman to stand, a reversal of the usual social convention.
“Don’t get all hedgehoggy on me,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. “You turn up prickly at the least provocation. I am trying to keep you safe, outflank Stapleton, and preserve decorum.”
Never in the history of masculinity had a man’s scent been so delectable. Abigail batted aside that awareness and studied her reluctant host.
“Preserve my reputation? I’m an inquiry agent. I haven’t all that much reputation to safeguard. And if you must know, my virtue in the technical sense was jettisoned as useless baggage years ago.”
Lord Stephen’s gaze went to the dragon frolicking across the ceiling. “The precious resource I seek to preserve by putting your person at a slight distance from my own is my sanity, you daft female. I slept exactly not at all last night, and I haven’t had such a close acquaintance with my own right hand since I was sixteen years old.”
He stood near enough that Abigail could see the flecks of gold in his blue irises. Some rare breeds of cat had eyes like that, azure intensity gilded with promises of lethal force.
“What has your right hand to do with—?”
“I give up.” He appeared to address his surrender to the dragon, and then he wrapped an arm around Abigail’s waist and kissed her.
Stephen had tried the opera, and he’d tried locking himself in his idea room. He’d had a few tots of brandy, though inebriation and unsteady pins were a foolish combination, so the brandy had been of limited use.
He’d finally repaired to his study to partake of the strongest soporific he possessed, the steward’s monthly reports from the Yorkshire estate. Even that drastic measure hadn’t chased away memories of kissing Abigail Abbott.
She took hold of a fellow and kissed him into submission, and the novelty of that, the sheer relief of being confidently handled, had captured Stephen’s imagination as no mechanical puzzle ever had.
Self-gratification hadn’t eased his desire one iota, and kissing Abigail again was rank folly, but she was soon to be ensconced in the Wentworth family fortress, where folly could not intrude. Surely a farewell kiss was permissible?
“The scent of you,” she murmured, wrapping Stephen in her arms. “You drive me witless. I can’t bear—” She fused her mouth to his, and all over again, Stephen was awash in desire and madness.
“I dreamed of you,” he said. “You breathed on me and I went up in flames.” In the last reaches of his thinking mind, where reason despaired and mischief rejoiced, Stephen knew that nothing could come of his attraction to Abigail Abbott.
When he’d spiked Stapleton’s guns, Abigail would go back to her inquiry business and Stephen would resume—
She ran her hand over his falls, her touch every bit as sure as it had been on his stupid knee. An even more brainless part of him leaped at the pleasure of her caress.
“You are so wonderfully bold,” he whispered, “and I am so hopelessly willing. I can keep you safe from Stapleton, and Quinn and Jane will keep you safe from me.”
Abigail subsided against him, though gently. Stephen had kept hold of his cane, Abigail had kept hold of him. The whole kiss had progressed without Stephen once worrying about his balance.
“You might have been kissing me to distract me,” she said, “but you weren’t.”
Hence her bold caress. Ah, well. “Distract you from what?”
“Whatever objective you are truly intent on. You have guile too, my lord.”
He could have stood there embracing her until the seasons changed, except that the sofa was calling to him, as was the temptation to lock the door.
“Perhaps you are distracting me, Abigail.”
She pulled back to study him. “Your kisses are enticing. When you call me Abigail, in that slightly chiding, slightly confiding tone, I lose a piece of my self-control. Nobody addresses me by my given name. I am Miss Abbott, even to my companion.”
He smoothed his hand over her shoulder, just for the pleasure of learning her contours. “I hear a fellow call out to Lord Stephen at the club, and I think: Who let some damned nob in here when I’m trying to enjoy a quiet meal with another inventor?”
She smiled at him, the first such benediction Stephen could recall from her. “I wonder if anybody ever feels entirely themselves?”
“You can be yourself with me.”
Her smile dimmed into something more complicated. “Thank you. I trust you will do me the same honor—of being yourself with me.”
“You enjoy the company of barbarians? Perhaps this is the resu
lt of dwelling in proximity to the Scots.” The Scots did not deserve Stephen’s humor. They were better physicians, more skilled inventors, and wiser philosophers than their southern neighbors, and they brewed up hellfire in a glass which even their elderly ladies consumed as if it were Christmas syllabub.
“I enjoy the company of a gentleman with a lively mind and sweet kisses,” Abigail said, stepping back. “You are a very bad influence, my lord.”
“Happy to be of service, and might I add, you have a similarly salubrious effect on my own overly taxed self-discipline.”
The moment had turned, becoming superficial and wary. Stephen wanted to drag Abigail back into his embrace and kiss her senseless—or drag her to the sofa, where kissing would be the tamest aspect of their exchange.
“Shall I fetch my satchel?” she asked.
“Please. I’ll have the coach brought around. Jane is expecting you, and she has Matilda—Duncan’s wife—to abet her schemes where you are concerned. When I left yesterday, they were conferring about fabric.”
Abigail stepped away. “Fabric, my lord?”
“I told them you prefer subdued colors and no flourishes. You aren’t quite dressing plain, Abigail, so don’t attempt to hide behind Quaker eccentricities at this late date.”
“I compromise,” she said, leaning over to sniff at a bouquet of roses on the windowsill. “I need pockets for my work, but I eschew the ruffles, lace, and flounces most ladies indulge in. I wear no jewelry and own nothing of brocade or silk.”
Embroidery, then, was fair game, and velvet wasn’t out of the question. A watch for her bodice might be allowable, or nacre hairpins.
“I will leave the wardrobe questions to you and the duchesses.”
Abigail straightened. “Matilda is a duchess too?”
“Maybe not now in the strictest sense, but she’s the widow of some pumpernickel duke, and she is the equal of any duchess I know. You will get on well with her.”
“They will try to fancy me up.”
Stephen maneuvered himself away from the sofa and hassock. “They’ve been trying to fancy me up for years, all to no avail. To have a fresh challenge will do them good. Before I throw you to the lionesses, though, I did have a few questions for you about the letters Stapleton is so keen to get hold of.”
Abigail’s gaze went from guarded to absolutely composed. “Questions, my lord?”
“Why does Stapleton want them so badly? Whose letters are they, and what do they contain that makes his lordship so nervous?”
Abigail started for the door. “I’ll fetch my satchel, and we can have this discussion on the way to your brother’s house. There really isn’t much to tell.”
She swished through the door, leaving Stephen with a fading cockstand and a sense of disappointment as much of the heart as of the body. Abigail was planning to lie to him, though she apparently needed a few minutes to rehearse whatever Banbury tale she was preparing to spin.
This suggested she did not entirely trust Stephen, which was prudent of her. His courtship of her would be for show, while his desire was very much the genuine article. Even he wasn’t sure what to make of that puzzle.
The blasted, bedamned letters were the aspect of the situation Abigail hadn’t sorted out to her own satisfaction. She’d kept possession of them as a reproach to herself, proof of where mad impulses and foolish dreams could lead the unsuspecting. Now she had to explain them to a man whose intelligence was outstripped only by his curiosity.
And ye gods, by his kisses. Stephen Wentworth knew exactly where and how to touch a woman so she became focused exclusively on him. On his words, on the pitch of his voice, on the stillness he used as effectively as he used his hands. On the slow brush of his lips across her cheek, the heat of his palm along her shoulders.
“That is not why I came to London.” Abigail took stock of her reflection in the cheval mirror positioned in the corner of her bedroom. She wore the same gray coach dress she’d worn upon her arrival, but it had been brushed, sponged, pressed, and otherwise refreshed.
The dress hadn’t changed, but the blue velvet bed hangings, blue brocade curtains, and fancy floral carpet gave the ensemble a borrowed luster. Then too, Lord Stephen’s house had the high ceilings common to the dwellings of the wealthy. The result was more wall space on which to hang expensive art and, in summer, a cooler room.
A tall woman benefited from chambers built on a grander scale, complete with floor-to-ceiling curtains and yards of bed hangings. She looked less out of proportion with her surroundings, more of a piece with good taste, elegance, and comfort.
A maid rapped on the doorjamb and joined Abigail in the bedroom. “Excuse me, miss. Jake’s here to take your valise. Himself awaits you in the porte cochere and himself does not deal well with idleness. Jake, get in here.”
Standing for any length of time doubtless aggravated Lord Stephen’s leg.
A lanky young fellow in sober livery came through the door and offered Abigail a cross between a nod and a bow. She passed him her satchel, took up her sword cane and reticule, and followed the maid down the steps.
“I hadn’t realized this house had a porte cochere.”
“We have tunnels too, and priest holes, and hidden passages. His lordship is clever like that, and this is not his only London residence. He moves about, never biding in one place for long.”
The maid showed Abigail to the side entrance, where his lordship waited, looking impatient and handsome beside a gleaming town coach.
A rolling fortress, he’d said, though the vehicle was also beautiful. Black lacquered panels were trimmed in red, crests adorned the door and boot, and the coachman and grooms all wore black-and-red livery.
“I have never traveled in such style.”
“And I have never known a woman for whom five minutes actually meant five minutes. You impress me, Miss Abbott. In you go.”
A footman held open the door, and Abigail climbed inside. She took the rear-facing seat out of habit, and Lord Stephen took the forward-facing seat.
“Miss Abbott, you are playing the part of a future duke’s sweetheart and you are to be the guest of a duchess. Stop acting like a maiden auntie or paid companion.” He patted the tufted red-velvet seat cushion at his side. “I don’t bite. I do nibble on occasion when offered certain delicacies.”
Abigail switched seats, which in this roomy conveyance was easy. “Stop being naughty.”
“You like it when I’m naughty, and I love it when you are naughty.”
His teasing was preferable to being interrogated about the letters. “I kissed you once to ensure we could support the fiction of a romance between us, and a second time because you caught me unaware.” He hadn’t been playacting the second time, but what had he been up to?
“What excuse will you make for our third kiss, because I very much hope there will be a third kiss?”
So did Abigail. “My justification for further familiarities will be that I am out of the habit of kissing overbearing louts and the business wants some practice.”
His lordship thumped the roof once with a gloved fist and the coach rolled smoothly forward.
“Which overbearing lout had the pleasure of relieving you of your virginity?”
He would ask that. “Relieving me of my ignorance, you mean? I can hardly recall. To whom did you surrender yours?”
He smiled—fondly, damn him. “Her name was Jenny O’Neill. She was four years older than I, a goddess wearing a tavern maid’s apron and a siren’s smile. I learned to spend an entire hour on a single tankard just for the pleasure and torment of watching her flirt with the other fellows.”
The coach was delightfully well sprung, traversing the cobbles as smoothly as a barge crossed a calm lake. “You weren’t supposed to answer that question, my lord.”
“I will always answer your questions, Miss Abbott.”
“Did you break her heart?” Abigail hadn’t meant to ask that. She was merely trying to put off any discussion of t
he letters.
“She broke mine, gently, sweetly, as all hearts should be broken the first time. I make it a point to stop by her inn when my travels take me back that direction. She has a pair of little boys now, and her husband worships her and the boys equally, else I should have to have a stern word with him. They are trying for a daughter and I expect they will succeed.”
Abigail caught a hint of wistfulness beneath this cheery recitation. “Her inn?”
The shades were drawn, doubtless to protect Abigail’s privacy, but she could see Stephen’s eyes well enough. He sent her a bland look.
“I might have bought the place for her. I can hardly recall, it was so long ago. Shall I tell you about the handsome blighter who stole your heart?”
“You will air your suppositions whether or not I want you to.” His lordship’s mood was hard for Abigail to read, which he doubtless intended.
“He was handsome, because only a man with a bit of arrogance would have the balls to approach you.”
“Language, my lord.” And whatever did he mean?
“You ride atop stagecoaches with ne’er-do-wells and drovers. My language does not shock you. This man, though, whom you can hardly recall, was above your touch too, or you would never have given him the time of day. He was no tame Quaker lad. He instead embodied what a sheltered Quaker miss would consider forbidden fruit.”
“I am not a Quaker miss.” The Quakers wouldn’t have her, not for one of their own. Good heavens, her dresses had pockets and she carried a sword cane and she wasn’t meek and peaceful and pious.
Nor did she wish to be. To be a bit more conventional might have been nice, though.
“Your lover was from a good family,” Lord Stephen went on, “maybe even a titled house. He was close enough to real consequence to trifle with somebody he considered of a lower order and know he would not be held responsible. He was all golden charm and lazy promises—he was doubtless an acolyte of Sartoris and probably gave you a bauble or two that you dared not wear. He had sense enough to win your heart. We must commend him for that one instance of good judgment, though he then broke your heart, for which I should call him out.”
How to Catch a Duke Page 8
