How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,42

to answer such a question? “She’s pragmatic, tolerant, not-bad-looking if you prefer petite blondes, a devoted mother, sometimes funny, and occasionally bitter.”

Wodin put a large paw on Abigail’s knee. She gently replaced it on the floor. “You like Lady Champlain.”

“I do. You probably would too.” If her husband hadn’t abused your trust, got you with child, and broken your heart. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Abigail went on petting the dog, who seemed to be grinning at Stephen. “Ask.”

“Where are the letters?”

She rose, leaving Wodin looking bereft. He settled to the rug, his chin on his paws, ten stone of poor, abandoned puppy.

“I don’t know.”

Of all the answers Stephen could have anticipated—stuffed into a mattress, sent to the Quaker aunties, held in a safe, buried in the garden—I don’t know had not been among them.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I had them for years. For a time, I read them nigh daily. Sometimes, I would take them out and hold them, trace the handwriting, sniff them, and imagine I caught a hint of Champlain’s scent, but I moved past that. Then I’d read them on the anniversary of the day I lost the baby. The anniversary of my father’s death, my mother’s death. I stopped crying every time I read them. I stopped reading them all from start to finish, and instead browsed one or two.…”

Abigail stood by the bow window that overlooked the garden, tall, straight, dry-eyed, while Stephen absorbed what she wasn’t saying.

She had known repeated, grievous loss. She had not simply given her heart to Champlain, she had fallen for him body and soul. If Stephen lived to be a hundred and wrote letters to every woman he’d ever admired, none of those ladies would treasure his words as Abigail had treasured Champlain’s maunderings.

A fine wine, a talented violinist…mere travelogues with some smarmy endearment appended for form’s sake, and Abigail had counted those letters among her most precious possessions. What would it be like to so thoroughly claim a woman’s allegiance that even casual notes became holy relics?

“When did you last see the letters?” And won’t you please come sit beside me again?

“I had them in the spring,” Abigail said, turning her back on the window. “I know I had them in April, because the baby died in April and I read over the last letter to mark the occasion.”

“Did Champlain know you’d lost the child?”

“He did. He sent me a bank draft after our last…after we argued. A sizable sum. I was insulted and never deposited it. A week after I miscarried, I sent it back with a few lines of explanation. He did not reply, which I considered decent of him. By then I wanted nothing to do with him, and within two years, he was dead. I learned later than he’d left a child behind, a very young, legitimate son.”

“Champlain sent you a bank draft.” Abigail had said that almost casually.

“Yes, a substantial amount.”

Stephen had always struggled with his temper, particularly in adolescence, when other boys were gaining height and muscle, and he was becoming yet more awkward and visibly unsound. He had enough experience containing his rages that he could speak somewhat calmly.

“Champlain bestirred himself to spend three minutes affixing his name to a piece of paper. A bank draft. Does a bank draft check under a boy’s bed at night to make sure Old Scratch isn’t lurking there to steal an unsuspecting little fellow away in his sleep?”

Abigail’s expression had become wary. “I beg your pardon?”

“Does a bank draft explain to a lad that some words, no matter how much swagger they convey, are never used before the ladies?”

“My lord?”

“Does a bank draft read tales to a boy of brave knights on their destriers or magical unicorns whose horns can cure all ills? Does a bank draft give a child affection, love, a sense of his place in the world? A bank draft. Bloody hell.”

Abigail regarded him from a distance of several yards across a sea of consternation. “I would think that a man raised in want of coin would value financial responsibility in a parent.”

“You were insulted by that bank draft,” Stephen retorted, “because you know that coin alone does not raise a child. Quinn used to leave his wages with Althea. He’d sneak around to wherever we were begging or make stupid bird calls outside the window until she could slip away. We’d have food for a few days. Lucky us.”

“You consider yourself unlucky to have an older brother taking an