Stephen was also babbling, prattling like the nervous suitor he almost was.
Abigail took down a cloak from a hook. “My father always had fine words for the ladies who came into his shop. They wore lovely bonnets, had fetching reticules, or were in quite good looks, while I—striving endlessly to learn his trade without even the respect an apprentice is owed—was invisible.”
Stephen took the cloak from her and managed to drape it over her shoulders without setting aside his cane.
“Which do you suppose does more damage,” he asked, “a violent parent or a parent who treats a child like an invisible servant?”
He fastened the frogs of her cloak, and—glorious moment—she allowed him to perform that courtesy.
“I feel conspicuous in colors,” she said, frowning at her reflection in the mirror over the sideboard. “But Her Grace has an eye for fabric, and velvet is durable. Who is this friend I’m supposed to meet?”
Her cloak was brown, for pity’s sake, the plainest color Stephen could think of that flattered her coloring, and the richest velvet he could purchase on short notice. The garment had a mere dash of red and purple embroidery on the collar.
“I have brought a gentleman to make your acquaintance,” Stephen said. “He comes from good family, and his betters have put the manners on him. He will also safeguard your person at times when I cannot.”
Abigail pulled on her gloves. “You insult your brother’s footmen. I don’t so much as sit in the garden without two of them keeping me in sight at all times.”
Stephen would thank Quinn for following orders, or thank Jane. “Footmen cannot sit adoringly at your feet while you read salacious novels by the hour.”
Abigail glanced around, then pressed a kiss to Stephen’s cheek. “You are so naughty. I adore that about you.” She took a straw hat from the sideboard but didn’t put it on.
“One tries.” Stephen opened the door and Abigail sailed through ahead of him. She took his arm when he joined her at the top of the portico’s steps and let him escort her to the coach waiting under the porte cochere.
“I miss you,” she said, staring at the coach door as she donned her straw hat. “I watch Their Graces, always touching each other. I see Duncan sitting with an arm around Matilda’s shoulders. Your family is affectionate and I…”
They hadn’t always been affectionate. Far from it. “And you?”
“I have regrets,” Abigail said. “Introduce me to your friend, and let’s be on our way.”
Stephen sent up a prayer, opened the coach door, and stepped back. “Hercules, come.”
The beast descended with all the dignity of a duke, his plumed tail waving gently. He sniffed at Stephen’s hand, then at Abigail’s, then sat as if he awaited the formal introductions that must follow with any new acquaintance.
“This is your friend?” Abigail said. “This splendid fellow is your friend?”
Hercules panted gently at her side, his enormous head coming to her hip.
“He’s a Danish-bred mastiff, sold to me by an earl’s son who has a way with canines. Hercules can impersonate a lapdog or an imperial guard, depending on your commands.”
Abigail scratched Hercules behind the ears, and Hercules sent her an adoring look. “He’s not a lapdog. Gentlemen usually give ladies fussy little lapdogs.”
Well, blast and bedamned, Stephen had got it wrong, then. “One doesn’t want to be predictable, Abigail, and one does want you to be safe. A lapdog can bark, true enough, but Hercules can take down an intruder. The command is ‘Take down,’ followed by ‘Hold.’ His leash manners are impeccable, and he has all that sit, stay, shake, and roll over nonsense well in hand—or in paw?”
Hercules flicked him an annoyed glance. Reciting commands when twelve stone of noble hound was busy at his flirtations was apparently not the done thing.
Abigail took off her glove, the better to bury her fingers in newly washed fur. Stephen’s footmen had threatened to give notice over that job.
“He’s really quite splendid,” she said. “I love his name. It suits him.”
“You don’t mind that he’s a little big for a lapdog?”
Abigail left off petting her puppy. “I love him. I love that you thought of my safety, that you have found a companion for me whose quiet good nature is apparent even on a few minutes’ acquaintance. Thank you.”
She kissed Stephen’s cheek, and if he’d been able to dance a jig, he would have. “You like him, then?”
“I adore him. Nobody gives me gifts, nobody worries about me. I must consider a reciprocal display of affection, for we are a courting couple, are we not?”
They were, and they weren’t. “Be honest, Abigail. Willow Dorning always sends his dogs off on trial, and if the canine doesn’t suit the owner or the owner doesn’t suit the dog, he takes the beast back.”
Abigail leaned close. “Hercules is my dog now. You cannot have him back, not even when this business with Stapleton is over. A little somnifera would not have slowed Hercules down one bit, would it?”
She aimed that question at the dog, who appeared to reward her faith in him with a toothy smile.
“He’s yours,” Stephen said. I am yours too, if that matters. “Shall we leave Hercules here to get acquainted with Wodin?”
“I suppose we should, but what an impression he would make on the shopkeepers.”
Stephen signaled a groom. “Take him around to the back garden, please, and a bone to gnaw on wouldn’t go amiss.”
Abigail watched the dog trot off, her expression more wistful than one panting, drooling canine deserved. “I will treasure him all of his days, my lord. He is the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever been given.”
Stephen opened the coach door. “Then clearly the wrong people have been giving you gifts. Let’s be off.”
She climbed in and took the forward-facing seat, a minor victory. Stephen came down beside her and thumped the roof with his fist—once, because a sedate walk would give them a longer period of privacy than a brisk trot.
“I’d like to deposit your letters in my safe before we make our obeisance to Bond Street,” he said.
Abigail set her hat on the opposite bench. “They are only approximate copies, my lord.”
“If they should fall into the wrong hands, that won’t matter. Are we shopping for anything in particular? Handkerchiefs, gloves, scent bottles, or fripperies?”
Abigail took his hand, as if that was simply how couples comported themselves when sharing a coach.
“I have no need for fripperies.” She shifted closer. “I love that dog, Stephen Wentworth, and I have missed you.”
He’d parted from her less than twenty-four hours ago. They were alone, she was tucked up beside him, and he had missed her too.
He wrapped his arm around her and gently pushed her head to his shoulder. “You must humor me. A gentleman buys his lady-fair fripperies. You could use a spare sword cane, I trust?”
She sighed, she snuggled closer, and Stephen’s heart eased in a way he could not describe.
“A new sword cane would be lovely. I was thinking of asking you to design one for me.”
He kissed her temple, and launched into a discussion of features necessary for a lady’s sword cane to be both attractive and serviceable. By the time they reached his town house, they’d had two arguments and four kissing spells, and he was even more hopelessly in love.
Also as hard as an ironwood sword cane.
Running from the Marquess of Stapleton had seemed like a solution to Abigail, but what sort of future did an inquiry agent have if she couldn’t solve her own case? She had agreed to this shopping expedition because she wanted Stapleton to know she was in London, and also—heaven help her—because she wanted to spend more time alone with Lord Stephen.
“The porte cochere isn’t only for privacy, is it?” she said, as Lord Stephen handed her down from his coach. “It’s to keep the cobbles dry for when you alight.”
“Both objectives
are important,” he said, offering Abigail his arm.
She liked his escort. Whether his bad knee prevented him from hauling a lady about or he was inherently tactful when handling a woman, he had the knack of keeping pace without interfering with Abigail’s progress.
“Duncan said you are a demon on horseback. How does that work with an unreliable knee?” She was making conversation lest her mind turn back to their last kiss. Stephen had slipped a hand beneath her cloak to rest his palm against her belly, an oddly intimate touch.
“I love to ride,” he replied, holding the door for her. “I love the speed and power and motion.”
“But one must put weight in the stirrups at least some of the time.” The foyer was deserted, and Abigail made no move to take off her cloak because she wanted Stephen to do that for her.
“The problem isn’t putting weight on my knee,” he said. “The problem is the joint itself. The horse stabilizes the joint laterally so it never gives out. The bones or ligaments or whatever can’t slip to the side when I’m gripping the horse with my legs. My knee for once can support me because the horse supports my knee. I find all this talk of anatomy somewhat…” He fell silent while he undid Abigail’s frogs and slid the cloak from her shoulders.
“Somewhat…?” she asked, setting her hat on a hook.
“Somewhat stirring.” He set his hat and gloves on the sideboard. “I think not of a great, hairy horse, but of a knee—your knee. Of my hand stroking your knee, and what manner of derangement turns the knee into a source of venereous inspiration?”
“Venereous?”
The house was quiet, suggesting the servants were belowstairs or perhaps on their half day.
“Venereous,” Stephen replied. “That which excites or stimulates sexual desire.”
He stood close enough that Abigail could have stroked her hand over his falls. She didn’t dare. “You wanted to put my letters into your safe.”
“The safe.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Letters. Lest we forget. This way.” He stalked off down the corridor, his cane striking the carpet with particular force.
Abigail followed, noting, not for the first time, the breadth of Stephen’s shoulders and the taper of his hips. His clothing was exquisitely well made, but then, so was he. His older brother was more heavily muscled, while Stephen was both lean and strong.
“The safe is in the most prosaic of hiding places,” he said, leading Abigail to the study, “in plain sight.”
He closed and locked the door, withdrew the letters from his inside coat pocket, and approached a longcase clock built into a corner of the room. He set his cane against his desk and opened the middle compartment of the clock, where nothing but chains or weights should have been. The compartment concealed a combination lock on the face of a steel box.
“Where are the clock parts?” Abigail asked.
“The weights drop behind the safe. There’s exactly one-half-inch clearance.” He spun tumblers and turned the handle, and the safe opened with a soft click. “I put another safe behind that portrait over the fireplace, and I leave a little money in it, but nothing of any import. Everybody puts their safes in the chimney wall. Can’t blame a cracksman for looking there.”
“But you didn’t want to be predictable. Is there a third safe?”
He stashed the letters inside, shut the door, spun the tumblers, and closed the clock panel. “Abigail, you are a constant source of delight. The house has a total of five safes. Two are decoys, and one only Quinn and I have the combination to. I suspect a gunsmith’s daughter could open at least three of them, given enough time.”
He was smiling at her with approval and affection.
“I would rather not spend the next hour getting into your safes, my lord. I’d rather plunder treasure of a different sort.”
He blinked. “The shops. Right. I am your humble—Abigail?”
She had stepped closer, mindful that he wasn’t holding his cane. “You,” she said. “I want to plunder you.”
“Plunder…me.”
“Your person. I want to enjoy your intimate favors. This is not a real engagement, and when it ends, I will go back to being York’s most boringly dressed inquiry agent, while you…”
“While I?”
She passed him his cane. “While you resume the life of a duke’s genius heir, flirting with all the merry widows and straying wives, making fortunes in all the wrong industries, and hiding treasures where nobody will find them. A little trysting with me ought not to impose too much on your busy schedule until you can resume your usual diversions.”
He caught her hand when she would have stalked off across the room, for he appeared to regard her proposition with something less than enthusiasm.
Perhaps that was for the best.
“Abigail.” He kept hold of her hand. “Is this what you want? An illicit affair with a scapegrace lordling who can’t even manage to promenade around a ballroom with you?”
When did anybody, ever, ask Abigail what she wanted? “If you aren’t inclined, you need only say so, but your kisses have been convincing, and you tell me that honesty characterizes—”
He braced his cane across her bum, grasped an end in each hand, and pulled her closer. “I want you. I want you until I am insensate with longing, until you haunt my dreams and preoccupy my waking thoughts. I had to toss myself off in the damned coach on the way to fetch you. That came out wrong.”
“I know what you meant.” And the image of him, falls undone, cock rampant, all that velvet, leather, and lace luxury around him while he…“Shall we find a bed?”
Sexual congress did not require a bed, but Abigail would have few enough opportunities to be intimate with Stephen Wentworth. Some awkwardness was unavoidable. Nonetheless, she wanted their memories to be sweet, not of itchy carpet or a hard desk.
“We have a bed,” Stephen said, easing the pressure of the cane against her backside. “The sofa folds out, like the benches of a traveling coach, only more commodious.” He crossed to the sofa, bent down and released some sort of latch, then gave the bottom cushions a yank. The sofa flattened out into a sizable bed.
“Et voilà tout. Shall I undo your hooks, or will we go about this dressed?”
He probably knew eighteen different ways to copulate without removing a single stitch—the wretch.
“We have time. Why not dispense with some clothing?”
Stephen closed his eyes, hands braced on his cane. “Abigail, you are a woman after my own heart. Come here.”
She crossed her arms.
“Please, rather. Please come here that I might be your lady’s maid and finally, finally get my hands and lips and tongue on the luscious abundance of your breasts.”
He did more to arouse her with words than Champlain had done with his entire repertoire of loverly overtures. “Please suffices. You needn’t lapse into erotic flights.”
Stephen wiggled his fingers at her. “No second thoughts, Miss Abbott, and one doesn’t lapse into flights. One soars. More accurately, two will soar into flights and raptures.”
“Such humility about your amatory skills.” Abigail crossed the room and turned her back to him. She expected to feel deft fingers undoing her hooks, but nothing happened.
“My lord?”
“I am marshaling my self-control. If a stray bit of tinder were to land on my imagination right now, the Great Fire would be a mere glowing coal by comparison.”
Something was afoot with all this prolixity. Not shyness, exactly, but self-consciousness, perhaps?
“My hooks, Stephen, and my stays. Be about it, please, or we will have to go shopping when we could be cavorting instead.”
She barely felt his fingers brushing at her nape as he undid the back of her dress. Her stays loosened without any of the usual tugging.
“You have the hands of a safecracker,” she said, turning. “Allow me to reciprocate.” To stand around in loosened stays and an undone dress in the middle of the day was peculiar and naug
hty. Abigail liked the daring of it, and made a production out of removing Stephen’s cravat pin and sleeve buttons, then his watch and fob.
“Why do you wear silk cravats?” Most men preferred starched linen, though the silk was exquisite to the touch.
“Several frolicsome relationships ago, the other party had a taste for being bound when I used my mouth…” He tipped his chin up, as if consulting with the dragon on the ceiling. “She liked to have her hands tied during certain intimate acts. I could not countenance rope against a lady’s wrists, so I took to wearing silk cravats.”
Abigail drew the cravat from around his neck. “I see.”
“You don’t, but if the Deity is merciful to a man about to sin as boldly and joyously as he possibly can, you will soon.”
She unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt, and pushed his coat from his shoulders. “I should take off your boots.”
A frisson of wariness flickered in his eyes. “We should take off our boots, unless you’d like to be rogered while you wear stockings and boots.”
Abigail considered it. “Not this time.” She pulled the draperies closed on both windows, then shimmied out of her dress and laid it across the desk. Next, she sat on the sofa and unlaced her boots. All the while, Stephen merely watched her, and she ignored the bulge displacing the line of his falls.
“What?” she asked.
“You, sashaying around my study in your shift, boots, and stockings. You are very bold.”
She bent to unlace her boots. “And you are shy.”
He shrugged out of his waistcoat and pulled his shirt over his head. “Me, shy? My family would be overcome with hilarity to hear that description.”
Abigail set her boots aside, undid her garters, and rolled down her stockings. “I want to kiss you, want to shove you to your back and run my hands all over you, but if I stop for that now, I will never get you out of those breeches.” She rose from the sofa and held out her hand. “Boots, Stephen.”
How to Catch a Duke Page 13
