And a right pain in the arse too, to quote his late son.
“I suppose it’s time,” the marquess said, folding over the newspaper and laying it flat beside his plate. “The boy has long since been breeched. A portrait with his mama ought to be hung in the gallery. Pass the toast.”
Harmonia was the entire length of the table away from her father-in-law, but he expected her to step and fetch like an unpaid scullery maid. When Champlain had been alive, he’d been able to jolly her past her frustrations with Stapleton. Champlain had been a fellow traveler on the journey to wrest pleasure from the dull business of waiting for Stapleton to die.
How was it Harmonia could miss such a frivolous, self-indulgent husband more each year? She aimed a smile at the liveried footman standing at the sideboard—Wilbur, and a lovely fellow he was too—and Wilbur set the toast rack at the marquess’s elbow.
“I can ask de Beauharnais to take on a second commission,” she said, “of me and Nicky, but I am having my own portrait done first.”
Stapleton looked up from his steak. “You aren’t exactly in the first blush of youth, Harmonia. Why memorialize the ravages of time?”
When the marquess peered down his nose like that, he looked like an arrogant ferret. “I am barely six-and-twenty, sir. You are twice my age, and you had your portrait done last year.” De Beauharnais had pronounced the result flattering and workmanlike, for he was too much of a gentleman to criticize a fellow artist.
Endymion was nothing if not diplomatic, which was why Harmonia—who was closer to eight-and-twenty, truth be told—wanted him doing her portrait. That, and he doubtless needed the money.
“I could remarry,” Harmonia said, pouring herself a second cup of chocolate. She ought not to indulge—her dresses were still larger than they’d been before she’d carried Nicky—but joys in her life were few, and a cup of hot chocolate was prominent among them.
“Remarry?” Stapleton chewed his steak. “Yes, I suppose you could. Remarry whomever and wherever you please, in fact. Marry an American. They’re a lusty bunch, I’m told. The boy stays with me, though. The boy will always stay with me.”
Stapleton’s authority over Nicky was not quite absolute. Champlain, bless him for an occasional flash of rebellion, had proclaimed before witnesses that Nicky was to grow up under his mother’s loving guidance, and in her household. He’d specified in his will that during Nicky’s minority, Harmonia was to have a London residence if she so desired, but he’d failed to spell out details other than that. Stapleton was the child’s guardian, and thus Stapleton held the legal reins.
Harmonia loved her son to distraction, but much more of Stapleton’s dismissiveness and meddling and she would be tempted to do Papa-in-Law an injury.
“I’m taking the carriage out this afternoon,” she said. The weather was still fine enough to enjoy a day of shopping and paying calls.
“No, you are not. I have committee meetings to attend. Where’s the butter?”
“Beside the toast.” Stapleton was being petty, forcing Harmonia to either remain at home on a sunny day or take the second coach and advertise to all and sundry that Lady Champlain was a tolerated fixture in her father-in-law’s household.
“Don’t frown, Harmonia. It emphasizes your wrinkles.”
“I have dimples, not wrinkles.” Champlain had assured her of that many times.
“Whatever they are, they are unattractive. If you insist on behaving disagreeably, perhaps you ought to remove to the dower house.”
The dower house was a moldering wreck on the Yorkshire dales. The dowager marchionesses of Stapleton went there to die in peace. Harmonia had been forced to spend the entire Season at the family seat in Yorkshire, because Stapleton had decreed that Nicky ought to learn to appreciate the ancestral pile from a young age.
“During Nicky’s minority,” she said, “I am to have the use of a London property of my own, should I decide to leave Stapleton House. The settlements are quite clear on that, and so was Champlain’s will.”
Stapleton put down his knife and fork and patted his lips with his table napkin. “Shall I have the solicitors find you a house? A woman dwelling alone won’t need much space.”
Meaning, a mother forbidden to live with her son. “And what would you do for a hostess, my lord? All those political dinners don’t plan themselves, and you would have a very hard time without the gossip and rumor I collect on your behalf. As you’ve aged and become unable to manage the grouse moors and hunting parties, your reliance on my intelligence has only increased.”
Harmonia never felt so much like a whore as she did pouring out for the wives of other peers, particularly the political wives. They all played a game, exchanging opinions on fashion while subtly conveying questions about this bill or that report. A question could hide a potential concession on an important vote, while a smile might signal acquiescence in some complicated exchange of favors.
The whole tedious, fraught dance bored Harmonia witless, but political gossip was her only means of exercising any influence over Stapleton. For the sake of Nicky’s future, Harmonia would pour oceans more tea and preside over hundreds more gossipy dinners.
“I can still sit a horse, Harmonia,” Stapleton muttered, finishing his ale. “And I’ve seen enough of Yorkshire of late. I really am considering opening up the dower house. Nicholas will be ready for public school in a year or two, and your role in his life will all but end. What Champlain saw in you, I do not know.”
Nicky would not be among the poor little wretches sent off to Eton to starve and shiver his way through a brutalized childhood masquerading as an education.
“Champlain left explicit instructions that his son was not to be sent to public school until age thirteen at least. Nicky is to have governesses until age six, then tutors and governors acceptable to me. I have already begun considering candidates for the tutors’ posts. Pass the toast, my lord. If you are not having any, I would like some.”
Stapleton rose. “The choice of tutors will ultimately be mine, though you are free to interview whatever handsome young men you please. A reducing diet might do you some good, Harmonia. Nobody likes a woman running to fat.”
“Champlain liked me because I am not mean, possessive, vain, or greedy—I was a refreshing change from the company to be had under this roof, in other words. I valued many of the same qualities in him, though how he came by them, I do not know. I wish you a lovely day, your lordship.”
She saluted with her cup of chocolate, because even Stapleton would not argue with his late son’s express wishes while a footman stood by. Champlain had been a terrible husband in many regards, but he’d been a good friend and—bless him, bless him—a loving father.
When Stapleton departed—without bowing to the lady of the house, of course—Wilbur brought Harmonia the toast and butter and laid the newspaper beside her plate.
“Will you and his little lordship be having a picnic for your nooning, my lady?”
“What a lovely idea. I believe we shall. Please send word to the nursery and have Nanny join us. If Mr. de Beauharnais should call, you can show him to the garden as well.”
The worst part of being a widow wasn’t the political nonsense, and wasn’t even Stapleton’s nasty, pinchpenny attitude. The worst part was the loneliness. Champlain had abandoned her for weeks at a time to swive and drink his way across France or the Low Countries, but she’d had his returns to look forward to and her own amusements to divert her.
Perhaps it was time to find another diversion—well past time—and if Stapleton wanted his steady supply of political gossip and tattle, he’d save his complaints and insults for his long-suffering mistress.
“We were seen in the park the other day,” Stephen said, “and word of your arrival in London will doubtless reach Stapleton shortly.”
Abigail looked well rested to him, but then, she was attired in a dress of soft rose velvet, a cream shawl wrapped around her shoulders. The color and cut of the dress flatter
ed her and hinted subtly at her curves. She seemed at home in the Walden family parlor, Jane’s big black Alsatian canine reclining at her feet.
“That’s good, then, that we were seen?”
“The sooner the gossip begins, the sooner Stapleton will know you’ve dodged his snares in York.” I missed you. Stephen settled into the place beside her on the sofa and resisted the impulse to take her hand. “How are Quinn and Jane treating you?”
“Splendidly. Matilda is giving me chess lessons, and Elizabeth is making me the heroine of her next great literary adventure. I grew up with only my father—visits to extended family were awkward and few—and having all these friendly people around…I envy you your family, my lord.”
“They are good folk.”
Abigail stroked the dog’s head, and Wodin, being a shameless beggar where female affection was concerned, sat up and put his chin on Abigail’s knee.
“He knows I miss Malcolm,” she said. “Dogs are such comfortable companions.”
And walking a dog on a pretty day would be a pleasant outing for a lady and her doting swain, except Stephen could not manage a cane, a leash, and a rambunctious beast, much less all of that and a lady on his arm.
“You should know that Champlain’s widow is biding here in London along with Stapleton. Harmonia likes Town, and her son is also under Stapleton’s roof.”
Abigail’s caresses to the dog’s ears paused. “Harmonia?”
“Lady Champlain and I are acquainted. I was counted among her cavalieri serventi at one point.”
“What is she like?”
How in flaming perdition to answer such a question? “She’s pragmatic, tolerant, not-bad-looking if you prefer petite blondes, a devoted mother, sometimes funny, and occasionally bitter.”
Wodin put a large paw on Abigail’s knee. She gently replaced it on the floor. “You like Lady Champlain.”
“I do. You probably would too.” If her husband hadn’t abused your trust, got you with child, and broken your heart. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Abigail went on petting the dog, who seemed to be grinning at Stephen. “Ask.”
“Where are the letters?”
She rose, leaving Wodin looking bereft. He settled to the rug, his chin on his paws, ten stone of poor, abandoned puppy.
“I don’t know.”
Of all the answers Stephen could have anticipated—stuffed into a mattress, sent to the Quaker aunties, held in a safe, buried in the garden—I don’t know had not been among them.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I had them for years. For a time, I read them nigh daily. Sometimes, I would take them out and hold them, trace the handwriting, sniff them, and imagine I caught a hint of Champlain’s scent, but I moved past that. Then I’d read them on the anniversary of the day I lost the baby. The anniversary of my father’s death, my mother’s death. I stopped crying every time I read them. I stopped reading them all from start to finish, and instead browsed one or two.…”
Abigail stood by the bow window that overlooked the garden, tall, straight, dry-eyed, while Stephen absorbed what she wasn’t saying.
She had known repeated, grievous loss. She had not simply given her heart to Champlain, she had fallen for him body and soul. If Stephen lived to be a hundred and wrote letters to every woman he’d ever admired, none of those ladies would treasure his words as Abigail had treasured Champlain’s maunderings.
A fine wine, a talented violinist…mere travelogues with some smarmy endearment appended for form’s sake, and Abigail had counted those letters among her most precious possessions. What would it be like to so thoroughly claim a woman’s allegiance that even casual notes became holy relics?
“When did you last see the letters?” And won’t you please come sit beside me again?
“I had them in the spring,” Abigail said, turning her back on the window. “I know I had them in April, because the baby died in April and I read over the last letter to mark the occasion.”
“Did Champlain know you’d lost the child?”
“He did. He sent me a bank draft after our last…after we argued. A sizable sum. I was insulted and never deposited it. A week after I miscarried, I sent it back with a few lines of explanation. He did not reply, which I considered decent of him. By then I wanted nothing to do with him, and within two years, he was dead. I learned later than he’d left a child behind, a very young, legitimate son.”
“Champlain sent you a bank draft.” Abigail had said that almost casually.
“Yes, a substantial amount.”
Stephen had always struggled with his temper, particularly in adolescence, when other boys were gaining height and muscle, and he was becoming yet more awkward and visibly unsound. He had enough experience containing his rages that he could speak somewhat calmly.
“Champlain bestirred himself to spend three minutes affixing his name to a piece of paper. A bank draft. Does a bank draft check under a boy’s bed at night to make sure Old Scratch isn’t lurking there to steal an unsuspecting little fellow away in his sleep?”
Abigail’s expression had become wary. “I beg your pardon?”
“Does a bank draft explain to a lad that some words, no matter how much swagger they convey, are never used before the ladies?”
“My lord?”
“Does a bank draft read tales to a boy of brave knights on their destriers or magical unicorns whose horns can cure all ills? Does a bank draft give a child affection, love, a sense of his place in the world? A bank draft. Bloody hell.”
Abigail regarded him from a distance of several yards across a sea of consternation. “I would think that a man raised in want of coin would value financial responsibility in a parent.”
“You were insulted by that bank draft,” Stephen retorted, “because you know that coin alone does not raise a child. Quinn used to leave his wages with Althea. He’d sneak around to wherever we were begging or make stupid bird calls outside the window until she could slip away. We’d have food for a few days. Lucky us.”
“You consider yourself unlucky to have an older brother taking an interest in your welfare?”
A logical question, but what did a lame boy know of logic? “He left us with Jack Wentworth, Abigail. Time after time, he’d scuttle away, back to his grave digging or his footman’s job, knowing that Jack was using his fists and worse on us. I begged Quinn to take me with him, but he said to stay where I had a roof over my head, to stay and look out for my sisters.”
Begging for food had never been half so corrosive to Stephen’s soul as begging Quinn not to go, begging him to take them with him.
“And you held up your side of the bargain,” Abigail said. “You plainly took your sisters’ welfare to heart in a way your brother could not. Quinn provided the coin, you provided the safety, though I shudder to think of the toll that arrangement took on such a young and defenseless boy.”
Abigail was so refreshingly practical, and her view of the matter—Stephen doing the part Quinn could not—hadn’t occurred to him previously. He’d reconciled himself to having committed murder, but in a situation where nobody dared interfere with a habitually violent father, perhaps that constituted a child’s form of self-defense?
A merciful God might see it thus. Perhaps. Maybe.
“I would do it again,” Stephen said, “if I heard Jack making the same plans for Althea and Constance, I’d do it again in a trice. Quinn was off somewhere on a job that was expected to last weeks. I planned to drink the poison myself at first. If Jack would sell my sisters to a brothel, what fate would he plan for me? Then it occurred to me that the poison might have another use.”
And what a wicked, hopeful thought that had been. “I recall gazing at the gin bottle in its place of honor on the windowsill, the light shining through the blue glass, obscuring the color of the contents. Jack was not a delicate drinker. He guzzled in quantity. Althea and Constance were out, unaware of the danger, and there I was, alone with my conscien
ce and a quantity of rat poison.” Not a perfect solution, because rat poison did not take immediate effect.
But a solution nonetheless.
“How fortunate for your sisters that you did not go off into service with your brother.”
Fortunate for them. Althea had likely figured out the sequence of events, but she’d never mentioned it, and neither had Stephen.
He’d recounted the whole to Abigail, along with all the sordid details. What had got into him? “Suffice it to say that bank drafts do not impress me when paternal duty is at issue, and this digression is hardly relevant to the instant topic. When did you realize the letters were missing?”
And can we please forget I ever mentioned Jack Wentworth?
Abigail drew the shawl up around her shoulders, though the day was mild. “I first realized the letters were gone in June,” she replied, clearly willing to leave the topic of patricide behind. “Another anniversary—my father’s death—and at first I thought I’d misplaced them. I asked my companion about them. We searched the entire premises and found nothing. The staff professed ignorance, and they’ve been with me for years, so I believe them. Nothing else, not so much as a hairpin, has ever gone missing.”
Stephen patted the cushion beside him, wanting Abigail closer for reasons that didn’t bear examining. “We must think this through. How do you know Stapleton didn’t take them?”
“Because his attempts on me and my household were later in the summer. I have wondered if one of his subordinates didn’t steal the letters with intent to blackmail the marquess.” She settled beside Stephen, cozily close. “But why hold them this long? Stapleton is wealthy, and he could pay handsomely for a lot of old drivel.”
Stephen did take her hand and Wodin visually reproached him. “Are they drivel?”
“I have seen enough love letters to know Champlain was no Byron.”
“Nonetheless, Stapleton is apparently concerned they will fall into the wrong hands and reflect badly upon the late earl.” Though that explanation bore further thought, because Stapleton himself was no Puritan and never had been. Nobody expected strict fidelity of a wealthy, married peer or his charming son.
How to Catch a Duke Page 11
