“My appearance when I am on a case is nobody’s business but my own,” Miss Abbott replied. “When I visit my Quaker relations, I observe the courtesies any lady ought to show her aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins.”
“You thee-thou them and call everybody by their first names?” Would you call me Stephen if I asked you to?
“They are family, all the family I have, so of course I use informal address and plain speech. Might we return to the problem at hand, my lord?”
His own words came back to him from their previous conversation: Sir, might you put your hand on my…
“You were the one dissembling, Miss Abbott. Tell me more about these letters that have Lord Stapleton attempting to kidnap you.”
She sat up very straight. “As letters go, they aren’t very remarkable. There are about two dozen.”
“Somebody fancied himself in love.”
She glowered at him. “And why do you assume the author was male, my lord? Women fall in love every bit as foolishly as men do.”
The asperity in her tone so soon after breakfast could not be explained by fatigue or hunger.
“No, Miss Abbott, women do not typically make asses of themselves on anywhere near the grand scale men achieve in matters of the heart. Ladies are generally sensible creatures compared to the louts who father their children. Women have a care for the next generation, whereas men usually have a care for nothing more pressing than their next pint of ale, though I’ll grant you, exceptions abound. My brother is sensible to a fault, and he’s also a man very much in love.”
“You see that as a paradox?”
Stephen shook a finger at her. “None of that. We will not plumb the abyss of philosophy. The letters, if you please. Who wrote them to whom, and why would Stapleton want them?” Why would Stapleton believe they’d been left in your care?
Stephen had a theory, though he was reluctant to share it with Miss Abbott. She was an inquiry agent, and thus no innocent where human foibles were concerned, but she was a Quaker-raised, lady inquiry agent.
“The letters, as you can imagine, my lord, shade in the direction of billets-doux. They are not recent, and they were not written by Stapleton himself or by anybody with whom Stapleton or his late marchioness might have been entangled, from what I can gather.”
Whenever Miss Abigail Abbott folded her hands in her lap and pretended demure fascination with the carpet, she was hiding information. The carpet was currently on the receiving end of a thorough inspection.
“You are doubtless protecting a client as you prevaricate,” Stephen said, “but let me share what I know of the situation, and you might feel free to be more forthcoming. Stapleton’s late son was a charming bounder, but let it not be said that the Earl of Champlain was a difficult husband. He and the fair Harmonia had a thoroughly civilized marriage.”
Miss Abbott turned her inspection on Stephen. “What does that mean?”
“To put it in the parlance of my youth, they comported themselves like a pair of minks. Lord Champlain indulged his amorous impulses wherever he pleased, and her ladyship had a number of gallants. I’m sure Champlain and his countess also gave the matter of securing the succession due attention from time to time—I believe he left a son behind, after all. Champlain and his wife were certainly cordial when they encountered one another socially.”
Stephen had reason to know the friendliness between the earl and countess had been genuine. They hadn’t been a love match, but they’d reconciled themselves to their parents’ machinations with good grace, good humor, and the occasional shared good time.
All very civilized.
Miss Abbott looked like she needed to pace again, and how Stephen envied her that habit.
“How do people live like that?” she asked. “How do they cavort from bed to bed, behaving—as you say—like beasts in rut? I have seen too much evidence of this nonsense to doubt your recitation, and such goings-on are not limited to the high and mighty. Nonetheless, I am unable to reconcile myself to the notion that something so precious and intimate can be undertaken as casually as sharing a glass of punch.”
Beneath the predictable distaste of a gently reared lady lay a hint of true bewilderment at marital infidelity. Perhaps that was the Quaker upbringing peeking through the inquiry agent’s pragmatism?
“Miss Abbott, the earl and his lady were very likely betrothed while still in leading strings. Champlain was heir to an ancient title and a vast fortune. He was not in the habit of denying himself.”
“You knew him?”
Stephen set his cane aside, though still within reach. “We were acquainted. He was no worse than many of his ilk, and that he and the countess were not possessive of each other was hardly unusual among the peerage. Lord and Lady Champlain considered themselves forward-thinking.”
Miss Abbott rose and struck off across the carpet, and as much as Stephen liked watching her move, he wasn’t as comfortable with her poking about his private domain.
“This is not a variety of forward-thinking of which I can approve.” She leaned over his worktable. “What are these?”
“Plans for a firing mechanism that will be less susceptible to heat and humidity.”
She picked up a diagram and held it about a foot from her nose. “You design guns?”
Did she but know it, she’d brought up an abyss into which Stephen could fall for days on end. “I design them, manufacture them, distribute them, and sell them. Britain cannot seem to enlarge its empire without doing so at gunpoint.”
“Hence the impropriety of that enlargement.” She put down the schematic and stalked around the table, bootheels rapping even through the thickness of the carpet. “I disapprove of the munitions trade.”
Stephen pushed to his feet, though his knee screamed in protest. “I disapprove of people who raise perfectly healthy children and forbid them to dance. We can debate that topic later, when we’ve figured out why Stapleton would need those letters so desperately, though I’m fairly certain I know.”
Finely arched brows drew down. “You do?”
“One of Lady Champlain’s lovers was apparently of a literary bent. Some fool mentioned her ladyship’s indiscretion to Stapleton, and now, having no wife to talk sense to him, the marquess is darting about like a March hare. He is determined to retrieve the evidence of his daughter-in-law’s peccadillo, even to the point of kidnapping you. We will need a list of the gentlemen who have employed you since Lady Champlain spoke her vows.”
An hour of sleep at Babette’s, then another hour upon returning home was plenty enough to refresh Stephen’s mind, but he’d been going short of sleep too much lately. His knee protested loudly, and yet he stood, hands braced on a single cane, while Miss Abbott peered at the signature on the landscape behind his desk.
“Who is Endymion de Beauharnais? Is he related to the late empress?”
The change of subject was much too welcome. “He’s the same fellow who painted my dragon. Very English.” Also breathtakingly handsome and an absolute dunderhead in matters of the heart. “He’s quite talented, unlike you, who are sadly lacking in the thespian’s ability to dissemble. You know who wrote those letters. You know why Stapleton thinks you have them.”