How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,70
Stephen asked, still leaning heavily on her arm.
“Not by the urge to toss a glass of punch at these gaping simians. I’d like to tromp on a few toes while I’m at it and accidentally spill my supper in some laps.”
Stephen twitched her shawl up higher on her shoulder. “Ferocity becomes you, my love. I have two objectives this evening.”
My love. Abigail’s objective was to get Stephen off his feet. “And they are?”
“First, to ensure Fleming remains among the guests as long as possible. Quinn, Matilda, and Duncan will aid me to that end.”
“Second?”
“To make certain that all of society knows I am passionately smitten with you, and that I will take mortal umbrage at any who seek to do you harm.”
No humor leavened his words, no hint of teasing. “Ferocity becomes you as well, my lord. In fact, I think it defines you.”
He bowed over her hand. “If you continue to flatter me so shamelessly, I will find us a deserted parlor in which to be mutually ferocious.”
“Find us the card room instead, my lord.” And woe to any woman who thinks to steal you away from me.
The crowd let them pass, though that required a few well-placed glowers on Abigail’s part. By the time she and Stephen reached the card room, she was ready to break chairs over the heads of those slowing his progress.
“Don’t look,” Stephen said, as they waited for an elderly couple to exit the card room, “but about five yards away, near the potted lemon tree, Lady Champlain is flirting madly with Endymion de Beauharnais. At some point this evening, I should pay my respects to the pair of them.”
Abigail was not nearly as curious regarding Lady Champlain as she ought to have been. As badly as Champlain had treated Abigail, he’d been a disgrace as a husband.
“Her ladyship is entitled to flirt with the entire Ninety-fifth Rifles,” Abigail said, smoothing a hand over Stephen’s immaculate cravat, “and I hope the lot of them flirt right back. Matilda and I will visit the retiring room sometime before supper, and you can make your bows then.”
She had Stephen seated across from her at the piquet table shortly thereafter, and though he distracted her terribly with his wandering foot, with his hand under the table, and with his drollery, he’d nonetheless taken the chair with the best view of the ballroom. Abigail was confident he monitored the entire gathering, even as he won far more hands than he lost.
“Fleming doesn’t have those letters,” Ned said, helping himself to a half-measure of brandy. “Stapleton doesn’t have them, Stapleton’s mistress doesn’t have them; consequently, I don’t have them. Brandy, anyone?”
“No, thank you,” Stephen replied, easing his foot up onto the hassock before the sofa. “What of the vowels?”
Ned put a stack of folded papers on the reading table. “There will be rejoicing in the lower house when these are put in the post. I thought I’d mail them from St. Giles.”
The poorest and most depraved of the slums, of course. Ned’s sense of humor tended toward the ironic.
“How many?” Quinn asked from farther down the sofa.
“Twenty, and that was only what I found on a cursory tour. Stapleton’s safe is practically in plain sight behind a mediocre portrait of the late marchioness.”
Exactly where Stephen had said it would be. “Does Stapleton have anything on Lady Champlain?”
Ned aimed a look at him, which Stephen returned blandly. “She must know better than to document her dalliances,” Ned said, “though since planting Champlain in the family vault, she’s apparently been a pattern card of widowed decorum. I did find some vowels for Fleming’s sister.” He passed those over to Stephen. “For a lady barely out of the schoolroom, she is definitely frequenting the wrong establishments.”
“I could do with a nightcap,” Quinn said. “Lady Champlain was quite cozy with Stephen’s portraitist friend tonight. Does de Beauharnais frequently play the gallant with society widows?”
Stephen had not in fact made his bow before Lady Champlain. He’d instead lounged against a pillar under the minstrels’ gallery and watched her with de Beauharnais. The fair Harmonia might as well have been a stranger for all the emotion the sight of her stirred. Once upon a time, Stephen had delighted in her smiles and flattery, even as he’d known his role had been to ease the sting of her husband’s infidelity.
If she and de Beauharnais weren’t lovers, they soon would be, which raised the curious possibility that they might pass the time comparing Stephen’s amorous appeal.