Harmonia’s own dear god-mama had termed her god-daughter’s looks “middling pretty.” Mama had been even less complimentary. Champlain had married Harmonia for her settlements and for her earnest assurances that she would not interfere with his “manly pursuits.”
He’d appeared vastly pleased with those assurances and offered Harmonia reciprocal promises to ignore her “little adventures” as well.
She’d been vastly disappointed at his cavalier attitude and had entered into holy matrimony determined to make Champlain so jealous he’d stop his philandering and declare his undying love for her.
He’d declared her a capital good sport and gone frolicking off to France. Or the grouse moors. Or Brighton. Or God alone knew where. Harmonia had coped as best she could, developing skills appropriate to a future marchioness and taking lovers when her mood was particularly low.
One of the skills she’d found indispensable was the ability to eavesdrop on the marquess. Stapleton had his fingers in many a pie, from mining ventures to legislation that protected his mining ventures to trysts with his current mistress, and all manner of political intrigues. For Stapleton, socializing was an ancillary activity to manipulating politics for the betterment of himself and his titled cronies.
When Tertullian, Lord Fleming, strode up the walkway apparently intent on paying yet another call on Stapleton, Harmonia decided to have a listen. Fleming was heir to an earldom and had a dull, dutiful view of life that might recommend him to Stapleton, but Harmonia found Fleming’s company tedious. He wasn’t a bad fellow, but he was already going a bit portly about the middle, and he smelled of bay rum. Bay rum, according to Mama, was a sure sign that a man lacked imagination in bed. Harmonia had tested the theory on three occasions, and, alas, Mama had been right.
A fit of pique had inspired Harmonia to mention remarriage to the marquess, and that had been a mistake. She would not put it past Stapleton to choose her next husband, and make marriage a condition of remaining part of Nicky’s life.
Blast all meddling men to perdition anyway.
Harmonia took herself to the pink parlor and lifted the carpet that covered a vent in the ceiling of Stapleton’s office. The vent kept the office below cooler in summer and afforded a view directly down onto Stapleton’s enormous desk all year round. Champlain had showed her this spy-hole and several others, may he rest in peace amid well-endowed nymphs.
“I tell you, she was on the arm of Lord Stephen Wentworth,” Fleming nearly shouted. “I know Miss Abbott at sight by now, and Lord Stephen is hard to miss. He can’t walk proper, and he’s even taller than she is.”
Stapleton remained at his desk, fingers steepled, while Fleming paced before him. Papa-in-Law was a small man in both senses of the word. He’d married a lady whose stature exceeded his own, and Champlain had taken after his mother’s side of the family. Stapleton remained seated as much as possible, wore heeled slippers even when dancing and lifts in his boots.
“How did Miss Abbott get from York down to London without your men spotting her en route? She rather stands out in a crowd.”
“She was doubtless in disguise,” Fleming said, pausing before the portrait of the late marchioness. “She does that sort of thing. She might have been hobbling along bent over like an old crone or even have been dressed as a man.”
How wonderfully devious of Miss Abbott.
“But the fellows you set to watch for her were supposedly a sharp-eyed bunch, Fleming. Now you tell me this woman is strutting about on the arm of Lord Stephen Wentworth in the middle of Mayfair?”
“His family hails from Yorkshire. Maybe he and Miss Abbott know each other from up north.”
Stapleton remained silent, tapping his steepled index fingers against his lips. Fleming was supposed to squirm and fret as the silence lengthened, but he mostly seemed annoyed.
“You promised to smooth the way for me with Lady Champlain,” Fleming said. “I’ve wasted plenty of coin and time in a nearly criminal pursuit on your behalf. You still haven’t told me what this is all about, and I have yet to so much as stand up with Harmonia.”
“That’s Lady Champlain to you.”
“She said I could call her Harmonia, and she fluttered her fan as she said it.”
Stapleton’s hands dropped to the blotter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, but m’sister claims the ladies use their fans to say what can’t be said in polite conversation.”
Lord Stephen Wentworth knew the languages of the fan, glove, flower, and parasol. He was a better flirt sitting in his Bath chair than Fleming could be in his most inspired moments. If Miss Abbott was keeping company with Lord Stephen, she had good taste in escorts.
Troublingly good taste.
“Lady Champlain is the pattern card of decorum,” Stapleton said, “as any proper widow must be if she wants to remain a part of her son’s life. She will attend Lady Portman’s ball.”
That was news to Harmonia. Lord Portman was young, Whiggish, and always spouting off about reform. His family had an old title, and the previous generation had married new money. Papa-in-Law had no time for Portman or his ilk.
“You’re telling me I’ll have an opportunity to stand up with her?” Fleming asked, facing the desk.
“You might. Her Grace of Walden has come safely through another confinement—a fourth girl, may the Almighty be thanked for small favors—and that means Walden might not attend. Lord Stephen will likely have to carry the family standard because Portman and Walden are as thick as a pair of drunken drovers when it comes to the blasted child labor bills. If Lord Stephen is smitten with Miss Abbott, he’ll escort her.”
Fleming leaned across the blotter, hands braced on the desk. “Lord Stephen has a reputation for dueling first and ignoring all questions. I am not kidnapping Miss Abbott from a Mayfair ballroom. Not for you, not even for the promise of marriage to Harmonia.”
Papa-in-Law gazed off across the room. “I never said the objective was to kidnap the woman. The objective is to inspire her to surrender some letters, and that apparently requires a pointed, face-to-face discussion. She must have a price, and she can’t possibly know what the letters are worth. With whom is she staying?”
“I only caught sight of her an hour ago. How should I know where she’s biding?”
Stapleton rose, but went only so far as to prop a hip on the corner of the desk. This was another ploy to mask his lack of height, to ensure that he never went literally toe-to-toe with taller men.
“Miss Abbott comes from Quaker stock,” he said. “She’s not wealthy, and she charges only modestly for her snooping services. She’s probably staying with some widowed third cousin or in a boarding house run by a Quaker goodwife. Start looking in those sorts of places. She doubtless has the letters with her, and she’s probably planning to call on me to discuss them.”
Fleming went back to studying the marchioness. “What if she’s given the letters to Lord Stephen for safekeeping?”
Oh, dear. Papa-in-Law’s face turned the shade of a ripe pomegranate.
“Why would she do that?” he asked. “Stephen Wentworth is nothing but a randy, tinkering, lame ornament. He and his brother should have been consigned to the mines in childhood, and the entire peerage would have been spared the embarrassment the Walden title has become.”