Language, Ned. “I know that man,” Abigail said, as Hercules rumbled a warning. “I’ve seen him before.” But he hadn’t been in morning attire. He’d been…
“Take this,” Ned said, shoving his walking stick at her.
“I have my own sword cane, Mr. Wentworth. That is Lord Fleming.”
“That is trouble. Goddammit, Stephen will kill me, and I haven’t even a loaded peashooter to wave about.”
“I have a knife in my boot, a glass weight in my reticule, and a very stout hatpin in my bonnet. Hercules is trained to handle situations exactly like this. We shall contrive, and we shall do so without violating any Commandments.”
Fleming approached, his escorts hanging back a few paces. They were sizable, muscular, and dressed just well enough not to be mistaken for highwaymen.
“That nasty man tried to abduct me from a stagecoach,” Abigail muttered. “I have a score to settle with him.”
“Miss Abbott.” Lord Fleming stopped three yards off and bowed, sparing Hercules an assessing glance. “We have not been introduced. Wentworth, good day. Perhaps you’d tend to the civilities?”
“Not if you think to bother the lady, I won’t.” Ned fingered the handle of his walking stick, which sent looks ricocheting among the three men behind Fleming.
“We mean the lady no harm,” Fleming said. “We simply want to have a civil conversation with her.”
The nanny collected her charge, while the swan glided away from the bank.
“Converse,” Abigail said, stroking Hercules’s head, “and I will decide if your intentions are civil.”
“I come to offer you my escort,” Lord Fleming said. “A certain gentleman of high station would like a word with you.”
The only gentleman of high station Abigail wanted a word with was Lord Stephen Wentworth.
“Here in London,” she said, “I’m told a quaint custom is observed among the wellborn. They pay calls on one another. They chat over a pot of tea and discuss any number of topics—the weather, attempted kidnappings, housebreaking, that sort of thing.”
Fleming’s brows rose. “You admit to breaking into my house?”
Abigail stepped closer, and Hercules moved with her. “I admit to having been the victim of housebreaking, sir. More than once, as my companion and my entire household in York will attest. Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
She itched to swing her reticule and drop Lord Fleming in his tracks. Between knives, sword canes, and the advantage of surprise, she and Ned could likely fend off Fleming’s toadies, and Hercules would doubtless give a good account of himself as well.
Except…this was Hyde Park. Half of London would witness the affray and know she had landed the first blow. Gossip would take wing because the lady assaulting the fine courtesy lord had been a guest of Their Graces of Walden before she enjoyed the hospitality of Newgate.
“Let’s talk,” Abigail went on, “about highwaymen who ride exceptionally fine horseflesh and speak in Etonian accents. Highwaymen who steal nothing but an innocent woman’s peace of mind.”
Fleming seemed amused. “You have interesting fancies, Miss Abbott. You can come with us now, or I am instructed to have you arrested for housebreaking. My own residence and that of Lord Stapleton were burgled less than a week past, and we have witnesses who put you in the immediate vicinity that same night.”
“Rubbish,” Abigail snapped. “Monstrous fictions typical of the fevered male imagination. You yourself saw me at the Portmans’ ball, which is the only entertainment I’ve attended.”
Ned took the place at her elbow, though she hadn’t heard him move. “You can’t accost a lady in the middle of Hyde Park, Fleming. That’s kidnapping, last I heard. Hanging felonies play hell with a man’s social schedule. Besides, you have too many witnesses here.”
Fleming glanced about. “Nobody of any consequence. Walden’s bastard hardly counts.”
“You flatter me shamelessly,” Ned replied, “but I’m afraid we cannot tarry. Tell Stapleton if he wishes to call on Miss Abbott, he should do like the rest of his ilk and send another of his catch-farts around with a card.”
Fleming took a step forward, as did his henchmen, which escalated Hercules’s rumbling to outright growls.
“Stapleton cannot be seen to call on his late son’s fancy piece, and well she knows it.”
“She,” Abigail retorted, “can deliver a swift kick to a location that will imperil the succession of your father’s title. She will then accuse you of having made untoward advances to her at the Portmans’ ball, and she will make sure Lady Champlain and the Duchess of Walden are privy to all the lurid details. If Stapleton is determined to drag this situation down to the level of false accusations and public scandal, I will oblige him.”
In the midst of this diatribe, a question popped into Abigail’s mind: Why was Fleming still willing to do Stapleton’s bidding? The gambling markers signed by Fleming’s sister had been returned to him by anonymous post.
Unless Fleming sought to retrieve the letters? For his own purposes—who wouldn’t want some sordid correspondence to wave in Stapleton’s face?—or perhaps to encourage a match with Lady Champlain?
“If you don’t come with us peacefully,” Fleming said, “I will see Wentworth here arrested for housebreaking. He’s no stranger to Newgate, if the rumors are true. He and Walden were locked up together, in fact. Quite an example Walden sets for his progeny.”
“You do me great honor,” Ned drawled, “but Miss Abbott isn’t going anywhere with you.”
Abigail considered options while the comforting weight of her reticule rested against her leg and Hercules stared hard at Fleming.
Ned could not account for his whereabouts the night of the break-ins. He could well manufacture an alibi, and His Grace could likely see him freed, but the truth was, he’d gone on his criminal errand for Abigail’s sake.
And he was a man with a criminal past, however distant, and that did not bode well for his treatment at Bow Street.
Then too, to reproduce the letters in Champlain’s handwriting, somebody would have to locate the late earl’s journals in the Stapleton residence, which was doubtless a sizable abode.
“You are tedious,” Abigail said, rapping Lord Fleming on the chest with the handle of her sword cane. “I will accompany you to Stapleton’s residence and nowhere else. Mr. Wentworth will inform Their Graces exactly in whose company I departed this park. If I am not returned to the Walden household in blooming good health by two of the clock, you will be arrested for kidnapping and the Marquess of Stapleton will be named as your accessory. Mr. Wentworth will delight in testifying against you. This lot”—Abigail sent a glower in the direction of Fleming’s hired bullies—“will remain here with Mr. Wentworth.”
“Miss Abbott,” Ned said, most pleasantly, “might I have a word?”
Abigail rapped Fleming on the chest once more for good measure, then stepped back.
“I know what you’re doing,” Ned whispered, drawing her a few feet away. “Stephen will dismember me if I allow you to do it.”
“I fight my own battles, Mr. Wentworth. Nothing stops you from telling Lord Stephen where the battle will be joined. Stapleton will not relent until he confronts me, and I have more than a few things I want to say to him.”
“But, Miss Abbott, Abigail, the marquess does not play fair, and if anything happens to you—”
“You are very dear, but this is what I do, Mr. Wentworth. I untie the knotty problems and tidy up the messy ones. I know what I’m about. Tell Stephen what’s afoot, send him along to Stapleton’s house, and all will be well.”
“This is what you do, when the issue is a straying niece or somebody’s pearl necklace gone missing. These men are dangerous, Miss Abbott. They play dirty, and you know that or you would not have sought Stephen’s aid in the first place.”
Ned, blast him, had a point. “Can you have the carriage followed?”
“Of course, and I can make certain that Fl
eming doesn’t have three more ne’er-do-wells lurking at his coach, but this is still the most foolish, dunderheaded, cork-brained—”
Hercules growled, and Abigail wanted to growl along with him. “A confrontation with Stapleton is exactly what Stephen hoped to bring about when he dragged me to that fancy ball.”
“Not this sort of confrontation.”
Spare me from overly protective men. “I am leaving Hyde Park with Fleming, and a half dozen people, including you, will see me get into his coach. He is not foolish enough to harm a guest of Their Graces of Walden, much less to make an enemy of Lord Stephen Wentworth.”
Ned scowled in Fleming’s direction. “I will inspect the interior of the coach before handing you up, you will take the dog with you inside the coach and wherever else Fleming hauls you, and I will alert Stephen to this madness before St. Paul’s tolls the quarter hour.”
“Miss Abbott,” Fleming called. “Are you coming with me, or do I have Wentworth arrested?”
“He can do that, Ned, but he won’t physically harm me. He could have shot me from a rooftop as I returned from Sunday services if my actual end was Stapleton’s objective. They must believe I know where the letters are, and that ensures my safe conduct.”
“Miss Abbott,” Fleming said again. “You try my patience.”
“And you,” Abigail said, striding up to him, “would try the patience of St. Peter himself. I will accompany you, Lord Fleming. Your dis-honor guard will remain here, and Mr. Wentworth will see me to your coach. Hercules comes with me, and if you object to those terms, I invite you to go for a swim in the Serpentine. Lord Stapleton’s next caller will be Lord Stephen Wentworth, and he will do much more than try your meager patience.”
Ned made a shooing motion toward Fleming’s toughs, and they shuffled off in the direction of Knightsbridge, where any number of drinking establishments doubtless awaited their custom.
Abigail took a firm hold of Hercules’s leash with one hand, grasped Fleming’s arm with the other, and directed his lordship back to the walkway.
Hercules trotted along at her side, issuing the occasional growl. Truth be told, the dog’s company did make Abigail feel ever so much safer.
Chapter Thirteen
“She was enjoying herself,” Ned said, pacing the length of Stephen’s office. “The damned female was meant to rule Britain, and she knows it.”
“She doesn’t,” Stephen said, shrugging into his morning coat before getting to his feet. “Miss Abbott cannot be talked into considering the management of even a duchy. I must be off. Send a badger to tell Quinn and Duncan what you saw, and that I’ve gone to aid…I’ve gone to see if I can render any service to Miss Abbott.”
And to kill Stapleton, if need be.
Badgers were the Wentworth family’s network of street urchins, beggars, flower girls, and crossing sweepers. Some of them took work as bank messengers, and all of them answered to Ned. They were sharper than Wellington’s scouts and expected a good deal less in terms of wages.
“A badger has already been dispatched, and I will follow as soon as I talk sense to you. You can’t just barge in on a marquess’s household, Stephen. Not even you would be that bold.”
“Yes, I would”—he slipped a knife into his boot and tucked another into a coat pocket—“if I thought Abigail was in immediate danger. Stapleton tried to make off with her in York, but she belongs to the Wentworths now, and the marquess will tread carefully, at least for a time. Abigail knew that, or she would not have gone with Fleming. Once Stapleton realizes she doesn’t have the letters, he might not be so polite.”
“These are the copies?” Ned asked, gesturing to the papers spread over Stephen’s desk.
“Reconstructions, such as they are. Champlain was a nearly slavish correspondent, as if he thought his letters might be published someday to vast acclaim. He wrote to Abigail every Monday and Thursday without fail, for better than five months. Ninety percent of it is drivel.”
“And the other ten percent?”
“Worse than drivel. You may read them as examples of what not to write to your lady love. If you see anything approaching a pattern, you will tell me. I am at my wit’s end with the damned things.”
The object of the exercise was to give Ned something interesting to do, lest dear Neddy take it upon himself to break a few heads that were by rights Stephen’s heads to break.
“You think a code of some sort might be embedded here?” Ned asked, gathering the letters into a stack.
“A cypher, a signal, something.” Except that only Abigail had ever read the dratted letters, so what was the point of a hidden message?
“And you’re off to challenge Stapleton to a duel?” Ned said, shuffling the letters into some sort of order.
“Abigail frowns on violence, so no. I am off to call on Lady Champlain,” Stephen said. “When I showed up in Portman’s ballroom, I was swarmed by matchmakers, hostesses, dowagers, and the usual straying wives and merry widows. Lady Champlain did not offer me so much as a smile during the eternity that was the ball.”
“She’s one of your…”
“Dear former acquaintances. I met Harmonia when she was in the mood to make Champlain jealous, and I—being an agreeable sort of fellow—obliged her.”
“You are a disgrace.”
“I am a charming man who enjoys the occasional interlude with a willing woman, and Champlain all but threw her at me. Said my consequence exceeded his, and she ought to like that. I am not proud of my behavior, but everybody involved was willing.”
Ned folded the letters into a pocket of his tailcoat. “I do not now, nor will I ever, understand the Quality. Miss Abbott and I are agreed on that.”
“Read the letters,” Stephen said. “I will find out why Harmonia ignored me and see what Abigail’s about with Stapleton.”
Stephen knew better than to hurry—hurry resulted in falls, and falls could result in complete bed rest, not to mention days of pain and self-recrimination—but he made an efficient trip to the stables and a very quick jaunt on horseback to Stapleton’s front door.
The marquess’s butler was too well trained to overtly convey surprise, but he did try to take Stephen’s cane from him.
“I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind,” Stephen said. “I can see myself to the formal parlor.”
“My lord, I must announce you.”
“No, you must not. Her ladyship and I are old friends, and I’m surprising her.”
“But, my lord, she’s not in the formal parlor. His little lordship’s sixth birthday is next week, and the formal parlor is being thoroughly cleaned in anticipation of the happy day. Her ladyship is in the family parlor.”
“And where is Stapleton?” Stephen asked, examining his appearance in the mirror hanging on the door of the porter’s nook.
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, my lord. If you’ll follow me this way.”
A carriage rolled up to the front door, the Fleming town coach, though the crests were turned and the coachy and groom were not in livery. The chestnuts in the traces were distinctive, though, in that their white stockings did not quite match.
Fleming emerged and politely offered Abigail a hand down, which she ignored. She was in magnificent good looks, her parasol and walking stick at the ready. Hercules, regal and dangerous, panted at her side. Stephen had figured out on the ride over that her objective was reconnaissance of enemy territory. If she spotted one of Champlain’s journals, she’d doubtless discreetly borrow it.
And thus commit a crime. Stapleton might not see her tried and convicted, but he’d destroy her reputation as a lady and as an inquiry agent. That he himself had sought to commit the same crime where the letters were concerned would be utterly irrelevant from Stapleton’s perspective.
Stephen made a show of organizing his cane and following in the butler’s wake, until they arrived at Harmonia’s private sitting room.
“No need to knock,” Stephen said, slipping past the butler and lifting the
door latch. “We’re old friends, and I hope to surprise her ladyship.” He opened the door just wide enough to gain admittance to the room and closed and locked it behind him.
“Harmonia”— Stephen bowed —“and de Beauharnais. Have you graduated to doing nude portraits now, or is her ladyship posing for a few random sketches?”
De Beauharnais had the savoir faire to smile, while Harmonia blushed and yanked up her bodice. Her figure was a trifle fuller than when Stephen had kept her company, and the added flesh looked lovely on her.
“Wentworth.” De Beauharnais rose, set aside his sketch pad, and bowed. “Your timing is execrable. Her ladyship was graciously indulging my artistic inclinations.”
“If you didn’t want to be interrupted at your diversions,” Stephen said, “then you should have locked the damned door. Harmonia, you appear to be thriving, and I mean that with all gentlemanly sincerity. A fellow could do with a spot of tea, now that you’re back in your clothes. Autumn air can be so dry. Is the comely Mr. de Beauharnais the reason you all but gave me the cut direct at the Portmans’ ball?”
Though that couldn’t be quite right, because she’d been more than friendly with Fleming and happy to dance with a few other gentlemen as well.
“You are quite rude to interrupt us,” Harmonia said, getting to her feet. “Quite rude. I did not cut you at Lady Portman’s ball, though if this is how you behave in polite company, then cut you, I shall. I avoided your company because you seemed devoted to the woman you were escorting, and introductions between her and me might have been awkward. Besides, I do entirely prefer Mr. de Beauharnais’s company to yours or that of any other gentleman, and you will please accommodate my preferences by taking yourself off. Give my love to Their Graces.”
The impact of this grand dismissal was undermined by de Beauharnais staring hard at a spot on the carpet while his lips twitched. The fabric of his breeches covering his manly apparatus betrayed either a misjudgment on the tailor’s part or an enthusiasm on de Beauharnais’s.
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