“Commendable,” Lord Stephen murmured, though Abigail had the sense he was mocking her. The letters terribly compromised the privacy of two parties, so her description was somewhat true.
Not entirely false, anyway.
“His lordship showed up on my doorstep on Monday well before sunrise, and he had two very large footmen with him. The hour was so early that the household should still have been abed.”
Lord Stephen’s caresses to his walking stick ceased. “As the lot of you might have been if you’d been drugged?”
“Precisely. Everybody partakes of a Sunday roast in most households that can afford a roast. A dose of somnifera or whatever the offending substance was, and we’d simply be slower to rise the following morning. Sunday is also the day when two maiden ladies are most likely to allow themselves a glass of good wine as a digestive following the weekly feast.”
The fire had been lit in this room as well, suggesting that cold aggravated Lord Stephen’s injured leg. Abigail found the warmth delicious, particularly after spending days and nights on a crowded, stinking coach.
Lord Stephen tipped his head to the side, considering Abigail with an owlish look. “Tell me about the letters.”
He would ask that. “They are predictably personal, between people who ought not to have been corresponding.”
Abigail was not blushing. She was too angry to blush. She picked up her empty cup, then set it down.
“Miss Abbott, have you been indiscreet?” His lordship’s tone was merely curious. If he’d made a jest of the situation, Abigail would have coshed him with his expensive cane.
“I did not write those letters, your lordship. Stop speculating. The marquess wants them, he’s not entitled to them, and he’s apparently willing to go to extreme measures to retrieve them.”
A little silence bloomed, while Abigail could nearly hear the gears whirring in his lordship’s busy mind.
“Tell me more about those extreme measures. You said Stapleton has made two attempts to do you mischief. A case can be made for poison, though it’s a weak case and shades more toward drugging you ladies to enable a thorough search. Something more serious inspired you to seek out my assistance.”
Abigail rose, not to escape Lord Stephen’s scrutiny, of course, but to better organize her thoughts. “I travel about for my clients. It’s part of the job. For one client, I began taking the coach from York to Allerton every Tuesday. Round-trip, that’s often six or eight hours, longer if the roads are bad.”
“Why subject yourself to such misery?”
“The case paid well. I attended a weekly meeting of a knitting group, gathering intelligence for an inheritance situation.”
“I do envy you the variety of challenges your profession entails.”
Lord Stephen seemed to mean that, though nobody should envy a woman hours and hours on English public conveyances.
“Coach travel is cheaper for those on top of the coach,” Abigail said, “but outside passengers are rarely female. I dress as a man for the coach rides. I can get the cheaper fare, and I’m less likely to be identified as Miss Abigail Abbott of Cockcrow Lane, York.”
Lord Stephen’s brows rose. “You wear trousers, waistcoat, boots, the whole bit?”
“Complete with pocket watch and hat. I put my hair in an old-fashioned queue and wear it under my coat. Because of my size, I pass for a man easily.” A boon, that. Truly, having the dimensions of a plow horse had been a benefit in any number of situations.
“So there you were,” his lordship murmured, “bouncing along topside, probably sharing a flask with your fellow passengers and discussing the latest racing form, and then what happened?”
They’d been discussing some pugilist or other. “Highwaymen stopped the coach, your lordship. No less than six armed and masked men on very fine horseflesh, towing a spare mount. They had exquisite firearms—Mantons, if I’m not mistaken—and dressed rather better than highwaymen ought to.”
“Noticed that, did you?”
“They also took nothing and spoke like exponents of public school. They simply demanded to see the lady travelers. The passengers were all made to get off the coach while the brigands inspected the parcels on the boot and beneath the seats. Then they let us go on our way. The two female passengers were wearing wedding rings worth a bit of blunt, and one of the inside dandies had a pocket watch well worth stealing.”
“But the brigands wanted only you.”
“I believe your blue spectacles saved my life.” The first time Abigail had seen Lord Stephen in disguise, he’d been wearing blue spectacles and impersonating a down-on-his-luck tinker.
“You recalled my blue spectacles. Miss Abbott, I am touched and impressed, and you, my dear, are being less than forthcoming. Tell me the rest of it.”
Abigail was not his dear and she had no intention of telling him the whole rest of it, so she served up the morsel she’d saved back for purposes of gratifying his lordship’s vanity.
“They had a likeness of me,” she said. “About the size of a miniature, maybe a little larger. They compared the two lady travelers to the likeness, and thank heavens neither woman resembled me. They were both also too petite to be me.”
Abigail sank back into her seat, that last admission not exactly comfortable.
“Do you know what I think when I consider your fair form, Miss Abbott?”
“The question of your opinion of my physique has never crossed my mind.” Though it had kept her up for a moment or two last night, and possibly on a few other nights. Abigail sorted men into two categories: tall enough, and the rest. The rest were disappointingly numerous, and she took many precautions not to unduly offend them.
Lord Stephen, for all his numerous faults and annoying tendencies, was tall enough.
“When I behold you,” he replied, “I think, ye gods, if only I had the ability to waltz with such a magnificent creature. We would turn every head in the room, and should I stumble, which I am wont to do regularly, she could easily catch me up in her arms and put me right. You could do it too, without a thought. How I adore that about you.”
Now, when it mattered not at all, Abigail felt heat creep up her neck, suffuse her ears, and fill her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed in years, but less than a day under Lord Stephen’s roof, and she was as pink as a blooming carnation.
“Quakers eschew dancing, my lord.”
“I am not a Quaker, Miss Abbott.” No sooner had Stephen spoken than he grasped the significance of her comment. “You are a member of the Society of Friends?” This was bad news. Quakers were an appallingly virtuous lot, much given to probity, reform, and philanthropy.
“I am not, but my parents were born into the Quaker faith, and my father raised me according to its precepts.”
“And what would the Friends think of you strutting about the countryside in breeches and top hat?” The image would not leave Stephen’s mind. That lusciously curved backside in trousers, that abundant bosom trussed up in a waistcoat…
He shifted in his seat, crossing an ankle over a knee. Such pre-occupations always befell him after he’d parted with a chère amie. He became both sentimental and randy, a dangerous combination.