“Yes,” Abigail said, passing Stephen the dog’s leash, “it will. After you, my lady.”
“I assure you,” Lady Champlain said, casting a pleading look in Stapleton’s direction, “you need not treat me like a common criminal. I was only trying to protect my son.”
“Then you might have approached me directly and discussed the situation with me like an adult. The earl has long since gone to his reward, and I have no interest in ruining you or your son.”
“Harmonia,” Stapleton said patiently, “please fetch the rubbishing letters and let us be done with this.”
Quinn and Duncan bowed as Abigail followed Lady Champlain to the door. Fleming rose awkwardly, standing with one knee cocked.
“Abigail.” Stephen remained perched against the desk.
“My lord?”
“I named my dragon well.”
His words fortified her, and she very much needed fortifying. Abigail offered him and him alone a curtsy, and followed Lady Champlain from the room.
“Stapleton, attend me. That fellow,” Stephen said, pointing with his cane at Lord Fleming, “will sell you out before you can say God bless Mad King George. He knows your family secrets, and if you try to have him arrested for his housebreaking and coach robbing, he will implicate you thoroughly.”
Hercules settled onto his haunches as if well aware that the most exciting bits were over. He insinuated his head under Stephen’s hand, and damned if petting the dog didn’t help Stephen restrain his temper.
Stapleton sat up straighter at his desk. “Fleming would not dare betray me. I’d call in his sister’s debts, and let all of society know what a fickle and unreliable creature he is.”
“Fickle and unreliable,” Quinn said, studying the volumes lining the shelves of Stapleton’s bookcase, “but honest in his assertions regarding your grandson’s patrimony, and if I understand aright, you no longer hold the lady’s vowels.”
Fleming had resumed his place on the sofa, suggesting Abigail had dealt him a solid blow. “I didn’t rob any coaches, and I won’t say anything about the boy.”
Duncan flipped out his coattails and assumed the reading chair. “You interfered with the lawful progress of a public stagecoach, which is in itself a hanging offense, no robbery required. Miss Abbott, who has a very keen eye for details, noticed your horse, your voice, and your manner of moving.”
“She wasn’t on the coach,” Fleming retorted.
“She was dressed as a man,” Stephen said, gently, for Fleming was having a trying day. His day was in fact about to get worse. “And she knows you effected at least one occasion of housebreaking, so hush while we decide what your punishment is to be. Be glad that Miss Abbott frowns on violence.”
Fleming held his head in his hands, the picture of masculine despair. “I sought to offer Lady Harmonia an honorable union. I sought to safeguard the Stapleton legacy, I was only trying to be—”
“Tiresome,” Stephen interjected, stroking Hercules’s silky head. “Before the ladies return, we must resolve matters to their satisfaction. Stapleton, how do you propose to do that?”
Duncan looked bored, while Quinn had acquired a fascination for Stapleton’s collection of jeweled snuff boxes.
“How do I—? My lord, you overstep. I haven’t robbed any stagecoaches or broken into any houses, and as a peer of the realm, even if I had, the wheels of justice would not grind me under for such behavior, particularly not when undertaken to protect my family’s standing.”
Without turning away from the snuff boxes, Quinn muttered, “Don’t be too sure about that.”
Stephen rose, making certain to test his knee carefully before putting any weight on it. “Here is your dilemma, Stapleton. You have an illegitimate heir. This is of no great moment, despite the magnitude of the possible scandal. Legally, the boy’s right to the title is unassailable, and he would not be the first illegitimate heir born to a peer.
“The greater difficulty,” Stephen went on, “is that you have annoyed the child’s mother. Your son annoyed her too. Lord Fleming has seriously annoyed her, and I daresay I myself might have tried her patience on occasion. Lady Champlain doesn’t like you, she doesn’t trust you, and she would be within her rights to take that child and her settlements and banish you from the lad’s life. Is that what you want?”
Stapleton did not immediately reply, but then, he was not used to having to think of anybody but himself.
“My lord,” Duncan said, “you raised a dunderheaded son, you recruited a dunderheaded conspirator, you are uniformly disliked by your peers, and your mistress’s loyalty is to your coin rather than your person. Nobody would question Lady Champlain’s decision to quit this household and shield the child from your influence.”
“But the boy—” Stapleton began.
Quinn turned, a jeweled snuff box in his hand. “Is no relation to you. And a man who cheerfully sends six-year-olds into the mines, while bleating in the Lords about hard work being a Christian service to their exhausted, starving little souls, can hardly be expected to have much regard for children in general, can he?”
Stapleton put Stephen in mind of a bantam rooster, with all the arrogance of his larger fellows, nowhere near the power in a fight, and not enough brains to realize his disadvantage.
“But the boy—he’s all I have. For me to remarry would be pointless, and I haven’t even second cousins who could inherit.”
“Harmonia will have the raising of him,” Stephen said, tugging gently on a canine ear. “She will remarry and dwell where she pleases. You will not interfere with her or the child.”
“Or what?” Stapleton asked.
Fleming provided the obvious answer. “Or the Wentworths will ruin us both. The duchess will put it about that I have an unmentionable disease so no woman of any standing will marry me. My father will disown me and cut me off without a farthing. In the clubs, word will spread that you are growing mentally feeble, and your temper and arrogance will lend credence to the gossip. My sister’s latest gambling markers will all manage to fall into the wrong hands, and I rue the day I bloody met you, Stapleton. I’m done with this.”
He rose awkwardly, though this display of meekness wasn’t quite convincing. Hercules’s ears pricked up, suggesting even a nibble of rare haunch of dunderheaded viscount might be his favorite snack in the whole world.
“A moment, Fleming,” Stephen said. “You offended Miss Abbott. How do you intend to make reparation for the harm you caused?”
Fleming scrubbed a hand over his face. “Will she take money?”
For Fleming, that was a good try. “A signed apology, recounting your bad conduct, and money,” Stephen said.
“But if I all but confess…”
“My, my,” Duncan drawled, uncoiling from his reading chair with feline grace, “it appears you might have to leave the country for a time. Prague is a beautiful city, and not that expensive.”
“Take a fortnight to put your affairs in order,” Stephen said, “no more, and the sum should be generous enough to convey sincerity but not enough to be insulting. You may send your apology to the lady at the Walden ducal residence, to be received by this time tomorrow.”