How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,106

the perishing, rubbishing grouse moors.”

She put a hand to her mouth. “I said bedamned. I am quite vexed. I do apologize. My mama will be overjoyed to have a duchess for a daughter.”

“To summarize, then,” Stephen said, taking up his cane and pushing to his feet, “you do not want me.”

Harmonia’s dread was written in her teary eyes. She dreaded to offend the man who could all but force her to the altar, and she dreaded equally to speak her vows with him.

“What matters,” Stephen said, “is the child. The situation must be resolved with his best interests in mind. I’d like to meet him.”

All the righteous wind dropped from Harmonia’s sails. “I was afraid of that. He’s in the nursery, and Andy is with him. Come along, and don’t think to introduce yourself as his father. This isn’t the time for that. Nicky won’t understand what it means.”

“My dear Harmonia, I barely understand it myself.”

Abigail chose to spend her last London afternoon in Hyde Park, watching the swans glide on the leaf-darkened water. Her ears warned her of Stephen’s approach, so attuned had she become to the cadence of his gait.

“You could not brood on a handy back terrace, could you?” he muttered. “You had to secret yourself in the wilds of the largest park in England and force a poor, lame fellow to track you down. Well, know this, Miss Abigail Abbott: You could disappear into the Scottish Highlands and I would yet find you if finding you were my objective, which it doubtless would be. What is this dreadful rumor I’ve heard about you boarding the Northern Flyer this evening?”

Abigail hadn’t expected him to hunt her down, but then, when had Stephen Wentworth done the expected?

“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