The young fellow looked glum. “I haven’t any such thing, and my brother will kill me. This is his phaeton, and I didn’t precisely ask permission before taking it out. Why does nobody fix the potholes in London’s streets?”
“That would cost money,” Stephen said. “Miss Abbott, might you surrender your parasol?”
She passed it over and Stephen unscrewed the handle from the shaft. “This might do,” he said, brandishing the handle. “You will have to hold the phaeton steady so the wheel isn’t bearing weight when you thread the pin through the axle.”
The young man looked baffled, which meant Stephen would have to climb down and show him, an awkward undertaking with no groom to hold the horse, pass Stephen his cane, or otherwise prevent a fall.
“Miss Abbott, might you take the reins?” She was a competent whip, at least in the wilds of Yorkshire.
She studied the damaged vehicle and stepped down from the gig. “I believe I can manage, my lord.” She stripped off her gloves and left them on the seat.
Stephen passed her the parasol handle, which had a good four inches of straight steel shaft above the curved end.
“What is she about?” the young man asked.
“She is making sure you live to see your majority.”
“This will work,” Abigail said, peering at the axle. “Let’s be about it, sir. I will lift the phaeton, and you will hoist the wheel onto the axle. Then you slip this”—she held up the length of steel—“through the holes in the axle.”
The repair took less than a minute, with Abigail holding the phaeton just high enough off the ground that the owner could fit the wheel on straight and thread the parasol handle through the hole bored in the axle.
“We still need something to stabilize the makeshift pin,” Stephen said. “If the axle wobbles too much it can shear off the pin, and you’re stranded all over again.”
Abigail climbed into the gig unaided. “Your cravat is made of silk, my lord, and silk is exceedingly strong. If knotted tightly…”
“I cannot go about in public without my neckcloth, Miss Abbott.”
She gestured at the youth standing beside his conveyance. “If linen will do, then why not use his?”
“Good idea. Lad, knot your neckcloth around the axle and the parasol handle so the lot is snug, and then walk your cattle—and I do mean walk—back to their stable. Do not put the weight of your fashionable arse upon the bench—walk your horses like a groom would walk them. If anybody asks, you tell them the nearside gray is going a bit off.”
“That is a capital notion.” He tipped his hat to Abigail again, and bowed to Stephen. “My thanks to you both. All’s well and all that, right?”
Stephen saluted with his whip and waited until the phaeton had clattered out of the alley.
“I have never encountered a parasol with a steel handle,” Abigail said. “Where did you say you bought it?”
Damn and blast. “I made it.”
“You made me a parasol?”
“Not precisely. I am experimenting with designs, toying with the notion that a parasol can serve more than one function.”
She pulled on her gloves. “Such as carrying a scent bottle or vinaigrette in the shaft?”
Small scent bottles were typically about the size and shape of a fat cheroot. “Something like that. You did that boy a significant service, Abigail.” She’d hefted the phaeton like it weighed no more than a velvet muff, a feat Stephen could have managed only at peril to his balance.
“He was in the way and nobody save you was on hand to gawk at my outlandish behavior. You made that parasol?”
Stephen stopped the horse short of the end of the alley. High garden walls provided privacy on both sides, and the plane trees had enough leaves left to obscure the gig from any second-story windows.
“I made that parasol. I like adding cleverness to existing designs.” That much was true.
She examined the stitchery around the rim of the parasol. “You sew a very pretty seam, my lord.”
She was paying him a compliment rather than mocking him.
“I could not have lifted that damned phaeton, Abigail.”
“I could not have designed a parasol with any practical uses, my lord. Shall we to the park?”
“In a moment.”
First, he kissed her. Kissed her because she liked his pretty seams and his un-fussy, un-plain parasol, kissed her because she’d helped save a young man from mortification, kissed her because he could not do anything more than kiss her and shouldn’t even be doing that.
“I don’t normally go about impersonating a hostler,” she said when Stephen drew back. “The poor young man seemed utterly helpless. I gather you were not mortified?”
“I am impressed at your generosity of spirit, Abigail.” At her pragmatic disregard for appearances, at her ingenuity when it came to using a cravat to secure wheel and axle.
She kissed him, a ladylike little peck on the cheek that drove him wild. “To the park, my lord. The day is fair and I’ve a mind to show off my new finery. Most worldly of me, but there you have it.”
Stephen gave the reins a shake. “I have just now this moment come upon a new use for the handle of a parasol.”
“What would that be?”
“French letters. A lady ought to be able to carry discreet contraception on her person, nobody the wiser. The handle of the shaft would have to be rectangular, like a pencil box, and the mechanism stout, but what do you think? Would it sell?”
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.”