How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,26

you will do for her what you would never do for yourself.”

“Observe propriety? Really, Duncan, I am not the outlandish boy who careered all over Europe with you. I am to be a bloody duke, after all.”

Duncan ambled for the door. “And a duke who intends to secure the succession must have a willing duchess, and that, my friend, is why you so dread taking up the title. I look forward to meeting your Miss Abbott.”

“Go back to Berkshire.”

Duncan paused, hand on the door. “What you dread to do beyond all else is ask for help. If Miss Abbott inspires you to such humility, she is surely the stuff duchesses are made of. Mind you don’t muck this up, Stephen. The right duchess only comes along once in a fellow’s life.”

Duncan slipped through the door, leaving Stephen alone to contemplate missing letters, irate marquesses, and family obligations.

Try as he might to focus on those topics, his thoughts kept wandering, back and back again, to kisses much too passionate to be entirely for show.

Chapter Five

“You have agreed to play the part of my intended,” Lord Stephen said. “All manner of speculation will start once the gossips get word of my interest in you. Your reputation must be above reproach, and thus you will accept Their Graces’ hospitality.”

Abigail stalked up to him, and to his credit he did not flinch or step back. “Where was your concern for my reputation when you consigned me to the blue suite two nights ago, my lord?”

The last she’d seen of him, he’d been off to pay a call on his family yesterday afternoon. He had not come home for dinner, and he’d avoided her at breakfast that morning. She’d barged into his study in search of something to read—something besides lurid novels—and found his lordship peering at the plans spread out on his worktable.

He patted her arm. “Inactivity makes you cross, or perhaps your female humors are troubling you. I don’t care that”—he snapped his fingers before Abigail’s nose—“for polite society. They would have cheerfully hanged my brother and let a titled potwalloper go free. My concern is for your safety.”

Abigail was cross, and inactivity did not sit well with her. That Lord Stephen would make a decision without consulting her rendered her positively furious.

“According to you, I am safe here. I do not want your family burdened with my problems.”

He peered down his nose at her. “Have trouble asking for help, do you? That shows a serious want of humility. What would your Quaker relations say to this display of hubris, Miss Abbott?”

In their last conversation, she’d been Abigail, my dear, and dearest to him. “My Quaker relations would say I come by my self-sufficiency honestly. They disowned my father, read him out of meeting. He was a master gunsmith, raised to excel at his trade before the Friends took such a dim view of it. Papa had no other skills with which to make a decent living, so he turned his back on his faith community.”

“As you turn your back on both guns and your father’s religious affiliations. Might we sit? I’ve been out and about already today, and a respite would be appreciated.”

Abigail caught a whiff of his lordship’s luscious fragrance and moved away. “You need not ask my permission to sit, my lord. Sit whenever you please.”

He remained standing, regarding her, both of his hands resting on the head of his cane. This one looked to be of oak—more easily worked than mahogany and still quite heavy.

“You value self-sufficiency, Miss Abbott. I value every semblance of normal, able-bodied gentlemanly behavior I can manage.”

Abigail sat on the sofa, a poor choice given the memories she had of it.

His lordship came down beside her. “What is the real reason you are reluctant to dwell with Their Graces?” He rested his foot on the hassock, which Abigail took to be a concession to his limitations.

“If Stapleton was willing to poison me once, he might try poison again. If he set brigands looking for me once, he might do that again too. Their Graces have children in the nursery—a newborn, for God’s sake—and you expect the duke and duchess to take on the burden of me and my troubles.”

His lordship propped his cane between them and began rubbing his knee. “Have you any siblings?”

“My father never remarried. My mother was the love of his life.”

“Whom you killed, with malice aforethought, being an entire eight pounds or so of villainy at the time of the crime,