He was improvising, and making a complete hash of matters, as usual.
Abigail made a sound halfway between a sniff and a chortle, then she punched Stephen on the arm and laughed outright, and soon Stephen was laughing with her.
“His lordship doesn’t drive young ladies in the park anymore.” Duncan offered that observation staring down at the empty drive, where not ten minutes past, Stephen had tooled away with Miss Abbott up beside him. They made a handsome couple, though Stephen would have demanded satisfaction if Duncan had rendered that compliment aloud.
“If Stephen wants time alone with Miss Abbott,” Quinn replied, “he’ll observe the proprieties, and that means driving with her in the park in an open vehicle at a decent hour.”
Duncan let the curtain drop. “Because he cannot walk with her in the park. He has nightmares, about being pushed in his Bath chair by unseen hands that shove him over the brink of a precipice.”
Quinn had been unaware of Stephen’s nightmares. Quinn was not, in fact, as well acquainted with Stephen as he should be. A difference in ages was partly responsible—he and Stephen were more than a decade apart—but so too was a difference in temperament.
“Stephen finds London misses insipid,” Quinn said. “They are not complicated enough for him.” Quinn, by contrast, had been awed by fine ladies as a young man. More fool he.
Duncan prowled the length of the library. He had overseen the development of the collection, and had doubtless read every volume on the shelves. Quinn liked books well enough, but only because his duchess enjoyed having him read to her at the end of the day.
“You have it all wrong, Quinn.” Duncan wound up a music box Stephen had made for Jane. “Stephen thinks himself too wicked for the sweet young things. He’s afraid he’ll make some joke, some little aside, and betray his upbringing. Add to that his inability to stand up with them, to even sit comfortably for long periods, and he’s like a cat in a kennel. His options are to remain in the shadows or stir the pack to violence.”
“They are young ladies, Duncan, not starving wolves.” Quinn’s daughters would be among those young ladies all too soon. Elizabeth was already jabbering about putting her hair up and letting her hems down and she was still a little girl, for God’s sake.
“The heiresses and matchmakers are of the same ilk as those who sent you to the gallows, Your Grace. What do we know of Lord Stapleton?”
That was Duncan, always focused, always thinking, and protective as hell where Stephen was concerned. “Should our duchesses join this conversation?”
“They are closeted in the sewing room. Miss Abbott’s wardrobe needs attention if she’s to be courted by a ducal heir.”
That bothered Quinn—the courtship that wasn’t supposed to be a courtship. “Stapleton and I butt heads in the Lords,” he said. “Jane is adamantly opposed to children doing factory labor, especially in the heavy industries. Stapleton maintains that a poor child should become inured to hard work early in life, the better to accept God’s will and make a contribution to the improvement of the realm. Children who don’t work are parasites in his estimation.”
The music box played a rendition of Mozart’s Sonata in C, a confectionary piece Elizabeth banged away at by the hour. Quinn had grown to detest it, though he’d never admit that to his daughter.
Duncan closed the lid of the music box and the contraption went blessedly silent. “Stapleton had only the one son if I recall?”
“Champlain, who went to his reward shortly after his own son was born. Stephen knew Lord Champlain and was among Lady Champlain’s many admirers for a time.”
“Stephen finds married women likeable.” Duncan set the music box in the middle of the reading table. “They are not interested in his prospects, according to him. He said Lady Champlain’s chess was so bad as to be interesting. I think he felt sorry for her because Champlain was such a bounder.”
Stephen seldom operated out of pity, at least not when he could be caught at it. “Could that be why Stapleton is in such a lather? His son misbehaved and left written evidence that Miss Abbott now possesses?”
“Few people care if titled sons misbehave,” Duncan said. “Stephen and I first encountered Champlain in Paris, where he was quite the bon vivant. According to Champlain, his papa sent him to the Continent precisely to indulge his frivolous inclinations. He and Stephen had a few adventures, about which I did not inquire.”
“Bordellos?”
“The French are more tolerant of certain predilections than we English.”
Duncan was former clergy, and the habit of primness died hard. “You think he and Stephen were lovers?”
“I did not inquire and neither will you, unless Miss Abbott, of all the ironies, has evidence of Stephen’s indiscretion and has earned Stapleton’s wrath as a result.”
Blast and bedamned. No wonder Duncan hadn’t suggested the ladies join them. “You and Stephen traveled on the Continent years ago. Why is Stapleton taking up the matter now? Maybe Stapleton committed the indiscretion or one of his mistresses did.” The old boy hadn’t remarried, which was odd, when the succession rested on the shoulders of one young child.
Duncan took the seat behind Quinn’s desk, and Quinn thought, not for the first time, that the wrong Wentworth had been made the duke. Duncan could inherit the title, if Stephen left no male issue and predeceased him.
Duncan—like all Wentworth menfolk, apparently—did not want the title, but he had the requisite gravitas, and more to the point, he would wield the power of the title for good ends.
“I am loath to suggest it,” Duncan said, “but somebody had better thoroughly interrogate Miss Abbott. Is Stapleton prone to violence?”
“We are all prone to violence under the right circumstances.” Quinn certainly was. “Stapleton dotes on his grandson, he provides well for his daughter-in-law, and he is civil enough when he and I
