“My errand in London is complete. I have a business to manage. I meant to bid you farewell before I departed.” And thank him. Thank him for so much.
Stephen lowered himself onto the bench two feet from her, and Abigail’s heart sank straight to the muddy bottom of the cold, dark waters of the Serpentine.
“This errand you speak of,” he said, laying his cane across his knees. “You are not yet murdered, and I distinctly recall you asking me to fulfill that office.”
She dared a glance at him, but could not read his mood. He was perfectly attired for social calls, the picture of sartorial elegance. He gazed upon the water, his expression calm. But for a slight tension in the way he clasped his walking stick, he might have been sitting for a portrait: Gentleman at His Autumnal Leisure.
“You arranged a happier outcome for me,” Abigail said. “Thank you for that. I want you to have the letters.”
“Abigail, I do not care bollocks or bedamned about the letters.”
His tone was mild, but Abigail would have bet the glass paperweight in her reticule that his lordship was peeved, perhaps even furious.
“The letters do not entirely establish your paternity, but they establish that the child is not Champlain’s issue. As the boy’s father, you should have that evidence to destroy or safeguard as you see fit.”
“You have this all sorted, do you? I am to keep the evidence, while you are off to York to resume peeking in windows and impersonating a man. Harmonia will be my duchess, and she and I will somehow contrive to produce more sons—on purpose this time and not out of heedless, rutting stupidity. So glad the itinerary is cast in stone, for I wasn’t likely to find the way on my own, avowed dullard that I am.”
This was the scene Abigail had dreaded, a parting in anger and sorrow, harsh words exchanged for no reason.
“You are that child’s father, and I will not stand between you and a chance to finish the raising of him. The boy has no stepfather, Stapleton sees him as some sort of hereditary prize, and Harmonia will reconcile herself to the terrible burden of being your duchess the moment you show her the Walden jewels. Besides, you would make a wonderful papa.”
Those last words cut like glass, but Abigail managed to speak them in civil tones. The vast, green preserve of Hyde Park wasn’t big enough for all the sadness her heart held, but she would not keep a child and his father apart. Not this father, and not that child.
“You are being noble,” Stephen said, “and unforgivably stupid. Harmonia and I took revenge with each other for mostly imagined slights. Our dalliance was of no moment to either of us. That’s the nature of a dalliance. You are too virtuous and stubborn to imagine such a thing, but seven years ago, I quite had the knack of the casual encounter. The Wentworth jewels, or at least my little portion of them, were on display in all manner of untoward locations.”
“Are you ashamed of that?” Abigail could not decipher his tone, suggesting perhaps he was in somewhat of a muddle himself.
“For God’s sake, Abigail. I have slept with both Harmonia and her current swain. He has slept with both the lady and myself. Champlain got you with child, but he could not impregnate his wife. I managed that feat handily enough, and now you and I…the situation is ludicrous.”
Well, yes, it rather was, when compressed into a few sentences. “The child is anything but. He’s a little boy, and the last thing you will do, Stephen, is turn your back on your own son.”
And for a time that was the final word. The breeze stirred the dead leaves and reminded Abigail that in York, the season would be more advanced and appreciably colder. She gathered up her reticule and parasol, and prepared to walk with Stephen back to Park Lane.
“Don’t you dare run off, Abigail. I am maneuvering my mental artillery into place.”
“I refuse to argue with you. I know how I felt about Winslow—how I still feel about him. I know how determined you are to put Jack Wentworth’s ghost to rest. I commend you for your integrity and wish you every joy.”
She shifted to the edge of the bench, rose, and readied herself to begin the process of leaving London, and leaving Stephen.
“Sit down, you dratted female. You know all manner of vital information, but you apparently don’t know the fact that matters most. I have not imposed the words upon you, thinking to wait for some cozy, private moment when I could ply you with spirits and tempt you with my manly charms, but to hell with that. Spirits imperil my balance, and you’ve sampled my manly charms. I love you, and I don’t care if the whole rubbishing park knows it.”
Abigail sat back down.
Winter storms in Yorkshire could blow with such ferocity that wind, cold, and snow obliterated any sense of direction. Gravity alone remained constant in the face of such a gale, and Stephen had survived this tempest of a day by clinging to one equally steadfast constant: He loved Abigail Abbott.
Well, two constants: He loved Abigail, and he hoped to hell she loved him back. Otherwise…
Otherwise did not bear thinking about.
“I’m selling my gun manufactories,” he said, which wasn’t an announcement he’d planned to make.
“I hope you aren’t doing that for me. You love the intricacy and complication of a precisely made firearm.”
I love you more. How simple life became in light of that singular organizing principle. “Do you know what the most complicated, intricate creation in the whole universe is?”
“You?”
“Close, but not quite. A child—my child, to be precise. If the boy isn’t to grow up very confused and disappointed, the adults around him will have to manage an elaborate dance. His mother claims his brilliance is unprecedented in the annals of English boyhood, but all I see is a busy little fellow with a big imagination and a kind heart. He’s a person, Abigail. A dear, unique person.”
Abigail was looking at Stephen as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “I know that.”
“To Jack Wentworth, children were chattel, possessions. Little beasts of burden put on earth to fetch him gin, placate his temper, beg for him, and flatter his arrogance. He was pleased with himself for arranging the sale of his young daughters into a life of misery, brutality, and disease. Pleased with himself. He was the lowest parody of manhood, but to his children he was more awful than the Almighty. He could literally kill us with impunity and laugh while doing it, and he gloried in his power over us.”
“Is this why you made Stapleton support the duke’s mining bill? Because children are not chattel?”
“I made Stapleton support Quinn’s bill because…I don’t know why, and that is not the topic under discussion. Nicky is not a thing, a possession that belongs to me because his mother and I shared some passionate moments. She carried him under her heart, she knows his every fear and dream, and she has had the raising of him. Who am I—Who the hell am I?—to strut into his life years later pretending I have a right to order his existence?”
“You are his father.” Abigail’s brow had acquired an encouraging crease, and she spoke with less certainty than she’d enjoyed previously.
“In a biological sense, I am his father, but I will not take the path Jack Wentworth would take and exploit such a relationship for my own convenience. I want to know Nicky, I want to be a father in any sense that contributes to the child’s welfare, but that does not have to be a public undertaking. Then too, there’s the whole business of Harmonia’s wishes. She brought that boy into the world, and she’s the only parent he’s known. Her welfare matters too.”