Nobody else outside the family knew this story. Duncan, Stephen’s cousin, had the basic facts, but Stephen didn’t discuss what he’d done with even his siblings. Better that his sisters not know how close they’d come to dwelling in hell itself, better that Quinn never learn of it.
“You saved your sisters’ lives,” Miss Abbott said. “And that is understating the matter.”
To hear the words spoken with such conviction, by a female as decent and estimable as Abigail Abbott, was unsettling.
“Tell me about your mother.” Stephen kept the query general rather than ask specifically how the lady had died.
“I killed her simply by being born. She survived a month past my arrival, but she never stopped losing blood.” Miss Abbott sniffed at Stephen’s handkerchief and bowed her head. “I was too big.”
Those four words held a world of sorrow and despair.
Also a world of injustice. “You were not too big. Babies are whatever size the Almighty decides they should be, and I have it on the authority of no less person than Jane, Duchess of Walden, that her smallest baby gave her the worst trouble in childbed. The larger brats seemed to have some sense of how to go about the business, but the littlest one was contrary. She still is, in fact.”
Miss Abbott’s profile belonged on some martyr of ancient renown. “But the midwife said…”
Clearly, nobody had ever walked the formidable Miss Abbott through some basic reproductive facts.
“Is this why you haven’t married?” Stephen asked. “You punish yourself for biology you had no power to change? Do you know who ought to be examining his conscience? The rutting fool who got your mother with child. Women do not conceive absent the involvement of some fellow or other, unless you’d have me believe divine intervention occasioned your existence? You do know where little dragons come from, don’t you?”
She swung her gaze on him like the port authority swiveling harbor cannon on an enemy fleet.
“Why haven’t you married, my lord? You are in line for a dukedom, you are a gun nabob, and not hard to look upon. Surely if one of us is behindhand matrimonially, you are.”
Stephen rejoiced to see the glitter of battle returning to Miss Abbott’s eyes, rejoiced to earn her upbraiding. That she’d light upon the sad reality of his situation was entirely convenient to his plan.
“You and Her Grace will get on famously, Miss Abbott. She likes you. My entire family will second your opinion that I am behindhand matrimonially, and in a variety of other regards. This is precisely why you must give up on your plan to die for Lord Stapleton’s convenience.”
Miss Abbott folded his handkerchief and rose, stuffing it into a pocket. “Stapleton will not stop, my lord. Nothing less than a permanent end to me will suffice to ensure my safety.”
Why was she so confident of that conclusion, and what exactly had been in those letters?
“Stapleton bides here in London at present, and yet he had the ability to set six ne’er-do-wells on your tail in godforsaken Yorkshire. He nearly managed to have your household drugged, if we accept your version of events, and that took both careful attention to your circumstances and a ruthless exercise of power. Do you suppose he won’t have your corpse dug up, Miss Abbott?”
Grave robbers were a sad fact of life. Miss Abbott’s expression said she hadn’t calculated on Stapleton retaining their services.
“And what if,” Stephen went on, “you die and his search for those letters goes on? Does your companion suffer his wrath? Is Malcolm’s well-being imperiled again? You, being ostensibly dead, could not intervene to protect them. I surmise that if you had the letters, you would have surrendered them, but for two things: A client asked you to keep them safe, or client privacy means you cannot surrender them. That also means you aren’t at liberty to destroy the letters. Destroying yourself won’t destroy the letters.”
Miss Abbott took the seat behind Stephen’s desk. “You really can be quite detestable, my lord.”
“Nonsense. You have been anxious, exhausted, concerned for your household, and had nobody with whom to think the situation through. A half-daft, wealthy marquess makes a formidable foe. What you detest is being out-gunned and out-maneuvered by him.”
She tapped a fingernail against his blotter, like a cat switching its tail. “I hate that too, but I cannot carry on my business expecting every coach I climb onto will be stopped and searched, and every roast I serve will be poisoned. Dying will at least stop the attempts on my person.”
She was magnificently stubborn, and that quality was probably why she had so many happy clients.
Stephen, however, had learned to be stubborn as a matter of survival, and now he would be stubborn for her sake as well.
“The attacks will stop,” he said, “only until Stapleton figures out that you are not, in fact, deceased. What of your family, Miss Abbott? Will you leave them to grieve your passing with no explanation? They will inherit your personal goods, I’m guessing, and Stapleton might well turn his attention in that direction. A passel of peace-loving Quakers up against a man who resorts to armed criminals and poison. How well do you think your thee-thou aunties and grannies would fare against such odds?”
“You would like them,” she said, balancing the point of his favorite silver letter opener on the tip of her finger. “Their unwillingness to use force of arms means they are ingenious about other means of persuasion.”
“If you’d like to put your feet up on my desk, please feel free.” Stephen could picture her like that, at ease, feet up, her grand decorum for once set
