“I am not a Quaker miss.” The Quakers wouldn’t have her, not for one of their own. Good heavens, her dresses had pockets and she carried a sword cane and she wasn’t meek and peaceful and pious.
Nor did she wish to be. To be a bit more conventional might have been nice, though.
“Your lover was from a good family,” Lord Stephen went on, “maybe even a titled house. He was close enough to real consequence to trifle with somebody he considered of a lower order and know he would not be held responsible. He was all golden charm and lazy promises—he was doubtless an acolyte of Sartoris and probably gave you a bauble or two that you dared not wear. He had sense enough to win your heart. We must commend him for that one instance of good judgment, though he then broke your heart, for which I should call him out.”
“He did not break my heart, and you cannot call him out.” The wretch was dead, and his passing had occasioned all manner of confused emotions for Abigail. “I have no patience with guns, my lord, lest you forget.”
“Well, I can’t very well duel with swords, can I? My opponent would be felled by mirth when the first riposte sent me arse over ears into the dirt. I no longer duel, in the ordinary course, though for a time I indulged.”
The coach swayed around a corner and slowed.
“Indulged? And have you since realized masculine pride isn’t worth dying for?”
His lordship propped his foot on the opposite bench and idly rubbed his knee. “Masculine pride is not worth killing for, though I might set a brace of ruffians on the prancing dandiprat who broke your heart, Miss Abbott.”
Abigail’s lover had been a prancing dandiprat. Lord Stephen’s aim was deadly accurate in that regard. Her lover had also been gorgeous, exquisitely attired, and—this was also true—the embodiment of everything a pious Quaker girl ought not to esteem. He’d been vain, decorative, hedonistic, a slave to fashion, and self-indulgent to a fault.
And he hadn’t even given her baubles she could not wear. He’d entrusted her with a pocket watch that kept bad time. Even so, he had fulfilled some need in Abigail for rebellion, though she would not admit Lord Stephen had handed her that insight.
“The prancing dandiprat has gone to his reward, and this is all none of your business.”
His lordship paused in his knee-rubbing and peered at Abigail. “Is that how he broke your heart? Swilling bad ale or taking a stray bullet in a duel? Does an old shade own your affections?”
“We were no longer involved at the time of his death, and, no, a bullet did not end his life. He was simply taken before his time by happenstance and bad luck. Tell me about your family. I’ve met them, but I don’t know them.”
Stephen cocked his head. “That is the clumsiest attempt to change a subject this side of an occasion of royal flatulence. The ruddy prickster was married, wasn’t he? He was married, you were his delicious little secret, and he neglected to inform you that he would never make good on all his saccharine promises. It’s as well he’s dead, because I do not countenance lies told for amatory gain.”
How had this conversation happened? “I am nobody’s delicious little anything. Tell me about your family.”
“Tell me about the letters, Abigail. Why does Stapleton want them?”
“I have no idea. They are love letters that do not identify the party to whom they were sent. They are several years old and not particularly inspired. I have read them, and I saw no state secrets, no royal scandals, no discussion of stolen treasures. They are quite dull, actually.” And once upon a time, she’d thought them so precious as to deserve memorization.
“Have you read many love letters, then?”
Doubtless not as many as he had. “I have been employed on several occasions to retrieve embarrassing correspondence. One must read the letters to know whether they are the epistles one was hired to find.”
“My, my. The Quakers failed spectacularly with you, didn’t they?”
“They failed my father. What are the names of your nieces?”
He removed his foot from the opposite bench. “The newest one is Lady Mary Jane Christine Benevolence Wentworth, and she’s about the size of half a bread loaf. Jane labored for two days, and I gather Quinn was with her for most of it. They are like that—not at all high in the instep in the things that matter.”
He prattled on about his nieces, upon whom he clearly doted. He would make a devoted and patient father, and be the sort of papa who knew exactly how to discuss a difficult topic with a child. No helpless retreats into scripture when common sense was wanted, no vague allusions to celestial mysteries when some blunt biology would do.
His daughters would know where little dragons came from before genteel ignorance could be used against them.
“We arrive,” Lord Stephen said as the coach took a slow turn some moments later. “Jane will sweep you away from me before I so much as find a hassock for my foot, so allow me to pass along a parting thought.”
“A warning?” Abigail had met the Wentworths when she’d been in Lady Constance’s employ. Lady Constance—Her Grace of Rothhaven, rather—now bided with her duke in the north, her case having been successfully concluded.
“What I have to say is not intended as a warning,” Lord Stephen replied, “but you will hear it as such.”
The coach came to a halt, and the coachman shouted a greeting.
“Speak your piece, my lord.”
“I do not lie for anybody’s convenience, Abigail, including my own. I will court you to draw out Stapleton because you asked for my help and because I will enjoy the game. When I kiss you, that is not a performance. I like you,
