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 conscience. 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.”
“Sword canes are more useful out-of-doors, where I have room to swing and thrust. For indoors, a cudgel is the better option, or
