How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,11

sent on the spur of the moment would be like him or like your sister.”

“Do go on.”

“After the prescribed time, the roast went onto the turnspit, and Cook set aside a bowl of burgundy marinade thinking to use it to baste the meat. When her back was turned, Malcolm got to the bowl and began to slurp up the contents. The dog regularly consumes ale. A few swallows of wine ought not to have laid him low, but he was asleep within minutes.”

“Asleep?”

“Cook used a feather to bring up the contents of his stomach. He survived.”

Lord Stephen traced the claw-foot carved into the head of one of his canes. “Are you fond of dogs?”

“What has that to do with anything?” Abigail was very fond of dogs and cats and of her stalwart cart horse, Hector. Had Malcolm suffered permanent harm…“Malcolm is a dear little fellow, for all he’s terribly spoiled.”

“We dear fellows enjoy being spoiled, Miss Abbott.”

“Malcolm nearly died because his bad manners go unchecked.”

“Did he? I ask if you care for the dog because I’m trying to discern motive. Was somebody trying to poison you, your companion, and your staff—because a roast would feed the whole household—or merely trying to frighten you? Did the perpetrator know you allow your dog kitchen privileges, and was poison involved, or had the burgundy gone off somehow and the whole business is merely an unfortunate culinary accident?”

“I dismissed it as such. My dimensions are much greater than a terrier’s, and poisoning a marinade is an unreliable way to administer an effective dose of many drugs. My companion, however, is a more diminutive specimen, though how could anybody know we’d use the burgundy for a marinade? If we’d consumed the wine directly, as a good burgundy deserves, the results might have been different.”

“Does your companion have enemies?”

“Not that I know of, but allow me to continue.” This part of the tale, the attempted harm, was more of the simple, truthful part, and the part Lord Stephen must be made to focus on. “I did not connect the poison and Lord Stapleton until his second call upon me. He believes I am in possession of some letters and asked me for the return of them. I declined to accommodate him for reasons having to do with client privacy.”

“Commendable,” Lord Stephen murmured, though Abigail had the sense he was mocking her. The letters terribly compromised the privacy of two parties, so her description was somewhat true.

Not entirely false, anyway.

“His lordship showed up on my doorstep on Monday well before sunrise, and he had two very large footmen with him. The hour was so early that the household should still have been abed.”

Lord Stephen’s caresses to his walking stick ceased. “As the lot of you might have been if you’d been drugged?”

“Precisely. Everybody partakes of a Sunday roast in most households that can afford a roast. A dose of somnifera or whatever the offending substance was, and we’d simply be slower to rise the following morning. Sunday is also the day when two maiden ladies are most likely to allow themselves a glass of good wine as a digestive following the weekly feast.”

The fire had been lit in this room as well, suggesting that cold aggravated Lord Stephen’s injured leg. Abigail found the warmth delicious, particularly after spending days and nights on a crowded, stinking coach.

Lord Stephen tipped his head to the side, considering Abigail with an owlish look. “Tell me about the letters.”

He would ask that. “They are predictably personal, between people who ought not to have been corresponding.”

Abigail was not blushing. She was too angry to blush. She picked up her empty cup, then set it down.

“Miss Abbott, have you been indiscreet?” His lordship’s tone was merely curious. If he’d made a jest of the situation, Abigail would have coshed him with his expensive cane.

“I did not write those letters, your lordship. Stop speculating. The marquess wants them, he’s not entitled to them, and he’s apparently willing to go to extreme measures to retrieve them.”

A little silence bloomed, while Abigail could nearly hear the gears whirring in his lordship’s busy mind.

“Tell me more about those extreme measures. You said Stapleton has made two attempts to do you mischief. A case can be made for poison, though it’s a weak case and shades more toward drugging you ladies to enable a thorough search. Something more serious inspired you to seek out my assistance.”

Abigail rose, not to escape Lord Stephen’s scrutiny, of course, but to better organize