He ordered a raspberry ice, Abigail chose vanilla, and she took charge of carrying their sweets out to the benches on the square. Opposite them across the walkway sat a young couple, clearly of modest means. The husband held a fat, jolly baby on his lap, while the wife nibbled at an ice.
“What do you suppose the infant’s name is?” Abigail asked, stealing a bite of Stephen’s treat. “She looks like a Georgina to me, little Georgie to her family.”
An inquiry agent would pay attention to her surroundings, and yet, Stephen had the sense Abigail would never ignore a baby.
“Georgina, possibly, or Georgiana,” Stephen said, emphasizing the first a, “like the late duchess. She’s a merry little shoat.”
The baby smacked her papa’s chin, and he pulled back in mock dismay. The mother smiled at him—a tender, indulgent smile—and at her baby, whose nose she touched with a playfully admonitory finger.
Stephen had just taken a spoonful of raspberry ice when a thought chilled him from within. “Abigail.”
She cocked her head. “My lord?”
“I did not…” Stephen looked around, then lowered his voice. “I did not withdraw.”
“I beg your pardon?”
How could he have been such a heedless, rutting, idiotish, imbecilic, hopelessly stupid, inconsiderate, foolish, thundering dolt as to not withdraw?
“I always withdraw, or wear a sheath, or wear a sheath and withdraw. I did not withdraw. I cannot beg your pardon humbly enough. Do you take precautions?”
She set her spoon in her empty bowl and put it aside. “I am not entirely certain of your meaning.”
“Pennyroyal tea, ginger tea. Rue can work to prevent conception, but I don’t favor it. The effective dose can be dangerous.”
Abigail gazed at the gurgling baby and doting parents, her expression vaguely puzzled. “You refer to avoiding an interesting condition.”
“I do. I apologize for having behaved abominably, but this is not a topic to ignore. I do not seek to become a father, but neither am I willing to be a monk. I compromise by taking precautions and resigning myself to the knowledge that, should fatherhood befall me, I will do the responsible thing.”
“Your ice is melting.”
My brain has melted. “You finish it.” He passed her his raspberry treat. “If I use my cane to start beating myself, do you suppose anybody would notice?”
Abigail took a bite from his spoon. “Champlain and I carried on for the better part of a year before I conceived. I don’t believe I’m particularly fertile, and I doubt we have anything to worry about.”
“You are admirably calm, Abigail. Babies create the opposite of calm. They are noisy, demanding, regularly un-fragrant, frequently hungry…” And dear. So very, very dear. And any baby Stephen made with Abigail would be…the idea stopped the forward progress of all his mental processes, produced a lump in his throat, and rendered his heartbeat akin to a kettledrum.
“If I get a woman with child, decency alone dictates that I marry her, and my conscience would insist on that course as well.” Particularly if that woman were Abigail. “Children matter, Abigail. My children matter to me. Or they would, if I had any.” Stephen fell silent lest he descend into outright gibbering.
“Does Her Grace know of these herbs?” Abigail asked.
The family across the way got up to leave, the father holding the child against his shoulder with one arm and taking his wife’s hand too. The baby smiled at Stephen over her papa’s shoulder, and Abigail waved farewell to her.
“Jane knows everything,” he said, blowing the baby a kiss, “but if you ask her, she will tell Quinn. Quinn will denounce me to Duncan. The whole family will know our business. I hate that.” Stephen also, though, trusted his family to do their utmost to look after Abigail.
“What of Ned?” Abigail asked. “Can he be discreet?”
“Brilliant suggestion. Neddy can be discreet, and he will enjoy having me in his debt. I will send around to my preferred apothecary and have them deliver the package to Ned. I am sorry, Abigail. I am sorry and ashamed of myself.”
She finished his ice, rose, and collected her empty bowl. “If you’d bring my parasol, please?”
Her parasol could double as a second cane. Stephen managed it easily, and soon they were again seated side by side in the coach.
Abigail took his hand before he could think to take hers. “I have had a wonderful day. Your plan is working. Stapleton knows I’m in London, and he will soon deduce that I am a guest of the Wentworths. We now know that Lord Fleming could be involved in Stapleton’s schemes, and that is progress. I very much enjoyed the toy shop and the ices.”
She was trying to tell him something, but Stephen was still too appalled with himself to parse the subtleties.
“Abigail, I have failed you. I have failed honor itself and banished myself from the land of gentlemanly sensibilities. If there are consequences—”
“I lost one child,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “Despite everything, I wanted my baby, Stephen. I am not a grand lady to be brought low by a common human contretemps. I’d leave York for a time, then come back with a baby in my arms, claiming that a widowed cousin in Cornwall had succumbed to a lung fever and orphaned her husband’s posthumous child. Everybody would know I’d mis-stepped, though nobody would much remark it provided I was a good mother and didn’t repeat the error.”
The carriage rolled along through tree-lined streets, the autumn sunshine slanting from the west. Stephen’s panic gradually subsided to worry and familiar self-loathing.
He would cheerfully, enthusiastically, marry Abigail, but he would not use a baby to entrap her. “When are your courses due to start?”
Abigail sent him an exasperated look. “Is nothing beyond the scope of your curiosity?”
“We are lovers. You’ve seen my knee.” She hadn’t really. Abigail, in fact, seemed to have no particular interest in his knee at all.
“Tuesday, and I am very regular. Put this from your mind, my lord, or I will have to distract you with a few kisses.”
She generously bestowed several protracted, sweet, hot, wonderful kisses on him anyway, then subsided against him for the rest of the journey home. Stephen handed her down, bowed politely to her in the foyer, and watched her waft up the steps until she was gone from sight.
“You’re holding a parasol,” Ned said, sauntering into the foyer from the direction of the clerks’ office. “I’ve had my suspicions about you, your lordship. One hears all manner of rumors regarding your proclivities.”
Stephen shoved the parasol at him. “If Abigail Abbott asked me to carry her reticule, her gloves, her smelling salts, and her muddy boots, I would be honored.”
Ned examined the mechanism on the parasol, as if looking for a trigger device. “That woman has never needed smelling salts in her life. You, on the other hand, look a bit peaky. Knee bothering you?”
“No, actually, but I could use a favor.” Stephen explained that a package would arrive from the apothecary addressed to Ned for discreet delivery to Abigail. “And before you try to pry details out of me, there’s also a new twist to the situation regarding Lord Stapleton, Lord Fleming, and God knows who else.”