How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,76

never have been put in the position I was in.”

Abigail sat up and laid an arm across Stephen’s shoulders. “Now you are annoyed, because life was so much easier when you had this wall of resentment between you and the duke. He disappointed you by being decent. Wretched of him.”

Stephen turned his face against her shoulder. “Have mercy, woman.” His tone suggested a hint of a smile. “I will have to ravish you simply to still your tongue.”

“I am indisposed.” She had informed him of that by note. He’d replied with a bouquet of scarlet salvia and blue hyacinths. The first connoted consolation and was often sent to sickrooms. The second, if Abigail recalled correctly, stood for a request for forgiveness—or for regret.

Stephen took her earlobe between his teeth. “You are indisposed. I am not put off by a little untidiness, Abigail.”

“You are trying to change the subject, because emotional untidiness drives you barmy. His Grace thwarted your precious fictions about his fragile pride and arrogant indifference, and now you have to like him as well as love him.”

Stephen left off sucking on her earlobe and shifted down to lay his head in her lap. “And I thought Jane was a tad too perceptive. When we marry, will you carry me over the threshold?”

“We will never marry.” Abigail stroked his hair, trying not to let the heartache of that reality ruin the moment. “I truly had no idea how extravagant a society ball is. It’s appalling.”

“You can view it that way—the elaborate food, the gowns worn only once, the casual wagers in the card room—or you can see the beauty in it. The dancing, the music, the sartorial splendor, and laughter—also the sums transferred from wealthy coffers into those of people who work for a living. The kitchen makes certain none of the food goes to waste either. You looked lovely, Abigail, and you are a woman who deserves to dress occasionally in something other than sackcloth and ashes.”

She could argue with him—nobody needed jeweled dancing slippers, for God’s sake—but she didn’t want to argue. She wanted to curl up in his arms and wake up in a world where nobody got in a lather about old letters, and a common inquiry agent could fall in love with a ducal heir.

“Abigail, dearest,” Stephen murmured, cheek pillowed on her thigh, “have you ever had a notion to put your mouth on a man’s—?”

She gave his hair a gentle yank. “Champlain kept journals.”

“Journals?”

“When he’d have to wait a few minutes for me to join him in the stable, or by the side of the stream, I’d come upon him jotting in a notebook. He said he transferred the notes he took in pencil into journals, because a man’s life should be of interest to his progeny.”

“Not a humble sort, was he?”

“The journals will provide an extensive sample of his handwriting.” Abigail traced a fingertip over Stephen’s lips. “Champlain wasn’t vain in the usual sense; he simply could not allow his mind to idle, so he busied himself with jottings in the odd moment.”

Stephen closed his teeth on her finger, sucked for a moment, then let go. “I did not instruct Neddy to look for journals. Stapleton will have them, though, and they weren’t in his safe, so they must be in his private sitting room. He’d be unlikely to keep such volumes in his library, or where Lady Champlain or a casual guest could come across them.”

Stephen sat up and wiggled out of his knee breeches, extracted a handkerchief from a pocket, and tossed these items onto the clothespress. “A good forger needs some time to work, but we don’t have to copy the entire body of letters. Just enough to draw Stapleton out. You might have to sit in the park reading them, and then we’ll catch him trying to accost you.”

“You are aroused.”

He looked down at himself. “Around you, darling Abigail, this is my usual condition. One need hardly remark it and I assure you, I am capable of easing my own needs.”

He was so casual about such an intimate, complicated undertaking. Or perhaps not casual—competent.

“We need to talk about the letters,” Abigail said, though she didn’t want to talk about the damned letters. She wanted to cuddle up with Stephen Wentworth and never let him go. “Who has them? Who might have destroyed them? What if they aren’t destroyed and we make copies and…?”

Stephen kissed her. “It’s possible your copies are the only evidence of them. Perhaps Fleming destroyed