“Abigail dearest, we all need a little kissing, cuddling, and cavorting. Proving that to you shall be my fondest challenge.”
Abigail closed her eyes, savoring the rare comfort of another’s animal warmth, the utter relaxation Lord Stephen’s touch encouraged. Even as her body quietly hummed with pleasure, her mind faced an uncomfortable truth.
She could pose as the object of Lord Stephen’s affections. She could easily reciprocate his overtures and enjoy his attentions. That playacting would complicate the whole business of the letters, even as it sheltered her from Stapleton’s mischief.
The greater problem was the role Abigail would be inhabiting. She would be impersonating the woman she could never be, the woman Lord Stephen Wentworth loved with his whole, complicated, magnificent, devious heart.
Lady Mary Jane Christine Benevolence Wentworth was perfect, her tiny fingers and toes all present in the proper numbers, her face the envy of Botticelli’s cherubs. In sleep, her mouth worked in a pantomime of suckling, as if even her dreams were of nurture and security.
“Welcome, my lady,” Stephen said, cradling the baby against his heart. “I am your uncle. I will counsel you in the difficult diplomacy of having older sisters. I claim two such siblings, and they are formidable. I am proud to say that your older sisters are terrors, in no small part thanks to my inspiring influence.”
Mary Jane had three older siblings, all robust, clever, darling young ladies, full of the well-loved child’s high spirits and lively curiosity. Their papa and mama—Quinn and Jane—ruled the nursery with loving firmness, and unlike other titled parents, spent considerable time with their children.
“You have chosen well,” Stephen whispered. The nursery had a pair of rocking chairs next to the hearth, and in this setting—and in this setting only—a chair that rocked made sense to Stephen. “I taught Hannah how to pick a lock, and she’ll soon need clocks to take apart. Elizabeth makes up stories for me.” The baby—meaning the third youngest, who was no longer the baby—had yet to manifest her special gifts, but Stephen suspected she’d be highly musical.
He was helpless not to love them, and the little beggars took shameless advantage of his weakness. They loved him back, indifferent to his lurching gait, his tendency to play with their toys, and his frankly nasty outlook on humanity in general.
“You lot ruin all my theories,” he murmured, rocking the baby gently. “Curmudgeonliness becomes impossible with little princesses galloping the corridors of their kingdom and flying down the banisters.” Though sorrow was ever at hand when the nieces were present.
Stephen could not chase Quinn and Jane’s offspring, could not grab them about their sturdy middles as Quinn and Duncan did to hoist them onto the stair railings, could not take them on his shoulders when they began to tire in the park. He could put them up before him in the saddle, but only if an obliging groom lifted the child for him.
“You will not have cousins of me,” he murmured against the baby’s downy crown. “I told your sisters the same thing. Look to Althea and Constance for that madness.” Or to Duncan and Matilda. Duncan was a cousin to Stephen and Quinn, and Duncan, like Quinn, seemed capable of fathering only females.
“Whom he spoils shamelessly,” Stephen added. To the casual observer, Duncan appeared all serious and academic, but put an infant in his arms and he was about as scholarly as fairy dust and spotted unicorns.
“The Wentworth menfolk are easily besotted,” Stephen said, more quietly still. “See that our womenfolk have more sense than that, for I will call out any young swain who offers you dishonor.”
The nursery door creaked open, and Stephen prepared to hand the baby over to her mother or father. A mere nursery maid would not be able to pry the child from his arms, for Jane’s labor had been difficult, and the infant’s survival a domestic miracle.
Quinn settled into the second rocking chair. His temples sported a few threads of silver, and he was within hailing distance of his fortieth year. Jane said he grew only more handsome—about which Stephen had no opinion—but clearly, Quinn grew happier with each passing year.
About which, Stephen was torn.
“Promising her ponies and peppermints?” Quinn asked, leaning his head against the back of the chair.
“Promising to kill anybody who brings her dishonor.”
“That’s my job, though Jane will usurp that honor from both of us. Why are the children always so good for you?”
Because I love them. Of course, Quinn and Jane loved their children, but Stephen never envisioned having progeny of his own—what sort of father couldn’t carry his own toddler up to the nursery at the end of the day?—and thus Stephen’s love was gilded with desperation.
These children had to be happy, they had to thrive, or he would go mad.
“The children are simply children,” he said, “and that wonder bedazzles me whenever I behold them.” The girls were the antidote to Stephen’s memories, tonic for the constant pain of a leg that would never be straight or strong.
“You are a fraud, Stephen Wentworth.” Quinn pronounced sentence gently. “You travel the world leaving a trail of lordly disdain and casual brilliance. You build heavy artillery and small arms, you destroy any business that you take into dislike, but in your heart, you were meant for domesticity.”
The baby sighed, the softest, most contented exhalation ever to soothe an upset uncle.
“I am about as well suited to domesticity,” Stephen said, “as you are to be a duke.”
Quinn’s gaze shifted from Stephen to the baby. “Jane says I’ve grown into the title, and my duchess is never wrong. She sent me to retrieve yon hooligan, and when it comes to Her Grace’s whim, I am pleased to step and fetch.”
Stephen’s every instinct clamored to keep the baby close and safe, to guard her from even the loving attentions of her own parents, and yet, he could not safely rise with the child in his arms.
He could not manage
