Jane patted Quinn’s chest. “We do trust Stephen. He will have considered every permutation of the facts and possibilities, and he will have them all in hand.”
Quinn caught her fingers in his. “And if Stapleton takes Stephen’s cane away?”
Jane and Matilda exchanged a look. Ned had been deciphering such glances for several years now, and could make nothing out of them. Quinn, Duncan, and even Stephen were much easier to read, but the ladies remained a mystery. Ned suspected they remained somewhat mysterious to their devoted swains as well, and that only added to his puzzlement.
“You’d best be on your way,” Jane said. “Ned will go with you as my personal guarantor that no unnecessary bravado imperils anybody I love.”
Duncan bowed to his wife and released her hand. “And should necessary bravado arise?”
“Imperil somebody I do not love,” Jane said. “Lord Stapleton’s politics are disgraceful, but Quinn hasn’t yet allowed me to interfere. Stapleton sends six-year-old children into the mines when his own offspring never worked an honest day in his spoiled life. Now the marquess is troubling Miss Abbott, and that troubles Stephen. We are entitled to make a show of support, lest Miss Abbott think we don’t look after our own.”
In other words, Jane trusted Stephen, but did not trust Stapleton.
“Gentlemen,” Quinn said, “we have our orders. Let’s be off.”
Abigail frowns on violence. Stephen reminded himself of that guiding directive as he stalked from Harmonia’s pretty sitting room down the corridor to the library. A quick inspection revealed that Champlain’s handwritten journals weren’t hiding in plain sight.
“My lord, you cannot run tame about this house,” Harmonia said, tagging after him. “My father-in-law will take a very dim view of your behavior, and I am none too impressed with it myself.”
De Beauharnais had apparently made the prudent decision to bide in Harmonia’s parlor. Alternatively, somewhere in the house a proper portrait of her ladyship was in progress.
Stephen’s next objective was the formal parlor, which—true to the butler’s assertion—was full of maids armed with dust mops and scrub buckets.
“You cannot do this,” Harmonia said, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice. “You cannot charge in here, upend the household, and, no. Stephen, that is the marquess’s study and even I— You cannot go in there!”
Stephen paused outside the door. “Stapleton has gone too far, Harmonia. He has troubled a woman I care for greatly, set his henchmen to bothering her in the park, and now he seeks to bully her into giving up personal possessions that have already been stolen from her. I won’t have it. You may either join the discussion or scurry back to your pretty parlor and your pretty painter.”
He expected her to flounce off in high dudgeon—she was good at that. Instead, she cast a miserable glance at the closed door.
“She’s in there. Miss Abbott.” Harmonia took four paces away, then four paces back. “She’s everything I’m not. Tall, self-confident, independent, competent. I hate her for that more than anything else.”
A niggle of intuition told Stephen that Harmonia’s admission had significance beyond an insecure woman’s fears.
“Harmonia, she had no idea Champlain was married. He was just another handsome customer flirting with her in her father’s shop, and then he became an admirer and a lover. The whole time, the entire time, he was deceiving her. If she’s independent and self-assured, Champlain must take a significant part of the blame for making her distrustful and lonely too.”
Abigail would smite him soundly for that conclusion, though it was nothing less than the truth.
“He lied to everybody,” Harmonia said miserably, “most especially to himself.”
Why did I ever think we had something to offer each other? Once upon a time, Stephen had willingly involved himself with this woman, knowing full well they were nothing more than a mutual diversion. Perhaps that had been the point.
A diversion never questioned the morality of war, a diversion never had the ingenuity to dress as a man, a diversion never confronted an aggressor who had a thousand times her social influence and ten thousand times her wealth.
“My lady, unless you want your son to turn out exactly like his father and like his grandfather, I suggest you join us in the marquess’s study. Champlain’s gallivanting about, wenching, and carousing made your marriage a polite misery. His behavior doesn’t have to ruin your future as well.”
Nor would Stephen let it ruin Abigail’s future.
A raised male voice penetrated the door, the words indistinct.
“Stephen,” Harmonia said, “there’s more here in play than you know, and Stapleton isn’t entirely to blame.”
“Of course not,” Stephen said, “he’s hired minions and impressed a co-conspirator in the person of Lord Fleming. His next move will doubtless be to inveigle you into trying to ruin Miss Abbott socially, which utterly clodpated maneuver will provoke Her Grace of Walden into mobilizing her legion of Valkyries against you. You will be banished to the north more effectively than if Stapleton had you bound and gagged and tossed into a coach.”
A woman’s voice joined that of the shouting male, her annoyance palpable through the closed door.
“Come along,” Stephen said. “I won’t allow Stapleton or Fleming to bully you, and Miss Abbott won’t either.”
“She won’t bully me?”
“Don’t be tiresome. Miss Abbott won’t allow their lordships to bully you.” He opened the door and marched in—as best he could with a cane—just in time to see Abigail wallop Lord Fleming in the knee with her reticule and a growling Hercules strain at the leash held firmly in Abigail’s hand.
“Well done, Miss Abbott,” Stephen said. “Next time—if Fleming is foolish enough to provoke you again—aim higher and between his legs. The targets are doubtless tiny, but I trust you to make the blow count nonetheless. Good doggy, Hercules. Very good doggy, indeed.”
Abigail considered herself a patient woman, and with Stapleton, she was managing adequately. The marquess was stubborn and arrogant, but he kept his hands to himself. Fleming, however, made the mistake of attempting to take her by the arm and steer her to the sofa one too many times.
Abigail had no intention of sitting like a penitent schoolgirl while two men loomed over her and attempted to intimidate her.
She clipped Fleming on the knee with her reticule, a glancing blow that ought to smart for a time without doing any real injury. Fleming, however, was apparently not used to being thwarted, and he rounded on her with an ugly snarl, reaching for her arm again.
At some point in this exchange the door had opened, though Abigail could not take her eyes off Fleming to see who the intruder was. Stapleton was apparently inclined to let his minion manhandle a lady, which was, quite honestly, frightening. Abigail had come here for sound tactical reasons, but she hadn’t counted on Fleming acting like the ne’er-do-wells he consorted with.
Hercules was about to make his opinion known regarding Fleming’s rudeness while Abigail scrambled to recall the appropriate commands.