Using the time to discuss old cases was pointless and just plain wrong, though Lord Stephen’s worldly sexual adventures weren’t an ideal topic for such an outing either.
“I have promised you honesty,” Stephen said, “and the healthy male form honestly delights me, and so have a few healthy males in particular. I mentioned the painter to you—Endymion de Beauharnais. He’s everything I’m not. Athletic, artistic, charming, beautiful, socially deft. I am a skilled draftsman and something of a flirt, but that man can make dragons fly and dowagers simper. I like him very much, though when it comes to the actual passionate part…”
He steered the horse around a bend in the path, and London might have been magically transported a hundred miles away. The quiet was deeper here, the sunlight more golden.
“I found intimate congress with men worth a casual investigation,” Stephen went on. “I find parasols, guns, poisons, cannon, lifts, anatomy, locomotives, canals, codes, alchemy, locks, clocks…I find much interesting. Endymion was genuinely attracted to me—a nearly incomprehensible notion, I know—while I was mostly tired of earls’ daughters groping me under the card table. My darling Jenny will always hold a place in my heart, while Andy…I am fond of him. In answer to your question, I do not prefer men in the sense you allude to, but I have enjoyed a passing hour or two with a specific few fellows.”
And Abigail sensed Stephen would tell her if his interest was more than avid and lusty curiosity. That degree of honesty was attractive, also troubling.
He steered the gig up onto the verge, which was carpeted with fallen leaves. “I have shocked myself.”
“I can keep a confidence, my lord. My livelihood depends upon it.”
He drew the horse to a halt. “I have shocked myself because I do not part with confidences ever—at all. That business with de Beauharnais.…I was eighteen, he was twenty-two. Sophisticated men of the world, or so we thought ourselves. I don’t discuss it, don’t think of it, don’t bring it up when he and I share a meal, which we do every few months. I’ve never so much as hinted about it to Duncan even when in the dregs, and Duncan has seen me in the dregs many a time.”
A gust of wind stirred the carpet of leaves, a dry, chilly sound, though the sun was warm and the grass a lush green.
“I have not been entirely forthright with you,” Abigail said. She had deliberately misled him, which had cost her the past three nights’ sleep.
“Are you married, Abigail? Are you Stapleton’s runaway marchioness? His illegitimate daughter? He’s a tiny cockerel, but my own father wasn’t nearly as tall as I am. Please tell me you aren’t married.”
Lord Stephen seemed genuinely distressed, and Abigail was genuinely ashamed. “If I had a husband, would you put aside our sham engagement before it’s announced?”
“No, but I’d keep my lips and hands to myself. The occasional determinedly straying wife has overcome my gentlemanly scruples—I’ve admitted as much—but your vows would be genuine and sincere. You would not stray. You might deal severely with a husband who disappointed you, but you would not stray.”
“I am not married, but neither do I deserve your good opinion of me.”
“I will be the judge of that. Whatever frolic or wrong turn you’ve kept to yourself, you’d best out with it. Quinn, Duncan, and the duchesses are doubtless conferring, and they will have questions for us. We need some leverage over Stapleton, and if he has leverage over you…Well, forewarned and all that.”
Why can’t we be just a couple in love enjoying a pretty autumn day? Why must we be two people with complicated pasts and no future?
“The letters Stapleton wants,” Abigail said, “I’ve read every one. I have nearly memorized them.”
“I admire your thoroughness.”
“Thoroughness has nothing to do with it. I was a fool.”
Lord Stephen picked up the reins and stared off into the trees. “Did you steal the letters? Steal them for a client, perhaps?”
“I had no need to steal them. They were sent to me, and they belong to me. Stapleton has no right to them.” No right to cut up her peace and wreak havoc in her life.
His lordship propped his boot on the fender. The breeze stirred again and a shower of freshly fallen leaves twirled to the grass. He said nothing for a long moment, then sent Abigail a faintly puzzled glance.
“Champlain was your lover. That sniffing hound charmed his way under your skirts, put his false promises to you in writing, and now Stapleton thinks to destroy the evidence of his son’s rutting. Was there a child, Abigail?”
She shook her head.
“Abigail?” Stephen spoke her name gently as he tucked an embroidered handkerchief into her hand. “The damned bounder is dead. I can’t call him out, and I no longer duel. Talk to me.”
He slipped an arm around her shoulders, a shocking presumption in public, no matter how secluded the path, and Abigail leaned into him.
“I was so happy. Champlain had promised to have a very important discussion with me as soon as he returned from his latest trip to the Continent—a discussion of highly personal matters, he said. Champlain called himself Mr. Richard Champion when I knew him, the man of business for a great lord whom discretion forbade him to name. I was too overjoyed to question anything he did or said. Everything I’d ever wished for—a devoted husband, a family, a home of my own—I was to have it all, at last. I was about five months along when he returned from Paris. He wrote to me, but I wasn’t to write to him, so I told him in person. I expected him to share my joy and have the banns cried.”
“I take it back. I will kill him even if he’s already dead. I knew Champlain, I know his widow. He could have plundered any number of willing citadels. He should not have trifled with you.”
“Oh, he loved me. Said so himself, wrote the words many times. I only learned he had a wife after I’d conceived. He loved his wife too, and would never give her cause to regret their marriage. But what did it matter that he was married when he would cheerfully set me up in my own establishment and make sure the child wanted for nothing?”
“I hope you hit him, Abigail. I hope you kicked him right in his courtesy title.”
So fierce, for a man who couldn’t kick anybody. “I almost burned his letters. Mon petit agneau chéri and Mein liebstes Häschen…As if I could be anybody’s dearest little lamb or favorite bunny rabbit. I should have burned them. I lost the baby a month later. A stillborn boy.”
The words were simple, the emotions complicated. She had eventually been relieved not to face endless scandal, not to visit illegitimacy on her firstborn. But the relief had been tiny, belated, and guilty—also vastly outweighed by sorrow.
“You kept the letters to punish yourself, didn’t you?” Stephen stroked her shoulder, as if they had all the time and privacy in the world. “You kept them as a reproach, and you became an inquiry agent because you wanted to preserve other young women from having to pay for trusting the wrong man.”
Perhaps she had. Abigail had never considered her motivations, beyond keeping a roof over her head and maintaining her independence.
“Champlain died within two years,” she said, “and destroying the letters seemed overly dramatic. They are mostly travelogues of his gallivanting on the Continent. Fine beer here, excellent wine there, an impressive violinist at some comtesse’s chateau. That should have told me something.”