“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 Fleming 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.”