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 two cudgels.”
She passed over the second cane, which was sturdy indeed. “Why must you go about armed even in your own home?”
He used both canes to maneuver to a couch arranged along the inside wall. “You don’t ask about my unsteady balance. Thank you for that. If you wouldn’t mind sliding that hassock—”
Abigail gave the hassock a shove with her boot. The thing would have been hard to move for a man using two canes.
“How often do you fall?” An impolite question, but then, Lord Stephen was not a polite man, and he’d already reported falling “regularly.” He was mannerly when it suited him, and Abigail suspected he was kind to those he cared for. He would never tolerate a slight, and never leave a debt unpaid.
That he occasionally went sprawling offended her on his behalf. He wasn’t nice, but in his way, he was honorable, a far more worthy virtue in Abigail’s opinion.
“In my youth, I toppled over constantly. Boys do not carry canes, and I hated that I was different. I’d forget where I put my canes, leave my room without them. For my Bath chair, I spewed maledictions too vile to blight a lady’s ears. I was not reconciled to my fate, and thus everybody around me had to suffer as well.”
He rubbed his knee as he spoke, which required that he bend forward rather than rest against the cushions.
“Shall I remove your boots?” Abigail asked.
“You’d play footman for me?”
“I will remove your boots so you don’t get dirt on the hassock.”
He left off rubbing his knee. “Do your worst. My boots aren’t as snug as some. They can’t be or I’d never endure their removal.”
His boot in fact slipped off easily. It wasn’t much larger than one of Abigail’s men’s boots, though the calf was longer. The second boot was a trifle more closely fitted. She set them both within his reach and took the place beside him.
“Does massage help?”
“Yes, but Miss Abbott, I must forbid—damn it, Abigail. That’s not fair.”
She’d wrapped both hands around his knee and made the same smooth, slow circles he’d used. “That you have a bad knee isn’t fair, and if the knee has become unreliable, the ankle and hip are likely in pain as well. Am I pressing firmly enough?”
He flopped back against the cushions, gaze on the ceiling. “My dragon’s name is Abigail. I’ve been waiting for inspiration to name her, and lo, the appellation fits.”
“You are trying to make me blush. Flattery is pointless, my lord. The joint isn’t quite as it should be, is it?” Not that she was well acquainted with the particulars of a man’s knee bones.
“You have a gift for understatement, Miss Abbott. Allow me to offer a reciprocally understated observation: Ladies do not apply their hands to the persons of ailing gentlemen. Desist, if you please.”
He was protesting for form’s sake, bless him. “You are not ailing. You were injured, long ago. How did it happen?”
He gave her a peevish look. “My father decided in a drunken rage that a boy with a bad leg would be a more effective beggar than one who could scramble out of range of Papa’s fists. He later intimated that stomping the hell out of me was an accident. I was the accident, and his violence toward me was quite intentional.”