How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,94

hands, the picture of masculine despair. “I sought to offer Lady Harmonia an honorable union. I sought to safeguard the Stapleton legacy, I was only trying to be—”

“Tiresome,” Stephen interjected, stroking Hercules’s silky head. “Before the ladies return, we must resolve matters to their satisfaction. Stapleton, how do you propose to do that?”

Duncan looked bored, while Quinn had acquired a fascination for Stapleton’s collection of jeweled snuff boxes.

“How do I—? My lord, you overstep. I haven’t robbed any stagecoaches or broken into any houses, and as a peer of the realm, even if I had, the wheels of justice would not grind me under for such behavior, particularly not when undertaken to protect my family’s standing.”

Without turning away from the snuff boxes, Quinn muttered, “Don’t be too sure about that.”

Stephen rose, making certain to test his knee carefully before putting any weight on it. “Here is your dilemma, Stapleton. You have an illegitimate heir. This is of no great moment, despite the magnitude of the possible scandal. Legally, the boy’s right to the title is unassailable, and he would not be the first illegitimate heir born to a peer.

“The greater difficulty,” Stephen went on, “is that you have annoyed the child’s mother. Your son annoyed her too. Lord Fleming has seriously annoyed her, and I daresay I myself might have tried her patience on occasion. Lady Champlain doesn’t like you, she doesn’t trust you, and she would be within her rights to take that child and her settlements and banish you from the lad’s life. Is that what you want?”

Stapleton did not immediately reply, but then, he was not used to having to think of anybody but himself.

“My lord,” Duncan said, “you raised a dunderheaded son, you recruited a dunderheaded conspirator, you are uniformly disliked by your peers, and your mistress’s loyalty is to your coin rather than your person. Nobody would question Lady Champlain’s decision to quit this household and shield the child from your influence.”

“But the boy—” Stapleton began.

Quinn turned, a jeweled snuff box in his hand. “Is no relation to you. And a man who cheerfully sends six-year-olds into the mines, while bleating in the Lords about hard work being a Christian service to their exhausted, starving little souls, can hardly be expected to have much regard for children in general, can he?”

Stapleton put Stephen in mind of a bantam rooster, with all the arrogance of his larger fellows, nowhere near the power in a fight, and not enough brains to realize his disadvantage.

“But the boy—he’s all I have. For me to remarry would be pointless, and I haven’t even second cousins who could inherit.”

“Harmonia will have the raising of him,” Stephen said, tugging gently on a canine ear. “She will remarry and dwell where she pleases. You will not interfere with her or the child.”

“Or what?” Stapleton asked.

Fleming provided the obvious answer. “Or the Wentworths will ruin us both. The duchess will put it about that I have an unmentionable disease so no woman of any standing will marry me. My father will disown me and cut me off without a farthing. In the clubs, word will spread that you are growing mentally feeble, and your temper and arrogance will lend credence to the gossip. My sister’s latest gambling markers will all manage to fall into the wrong hands, and I rue the day I bloody met you, Stapleton. I’m done with this.”

He rose awkwardly, though this display of meekness wasn’t quite convincing. Hercules’s ears pricked up, suggesting even a nibble of rare haunch of dunderheaded viscount might be his favorite snack in the whole world.

“A moment, Fleming,” Stephen said. “You offended Miss Abbott. How do you intend to make reparation for the harm you caused?”

Fleming scrubbed a hand over his face. “Will she take money?”

For Fleming, that was a good try. “A signed apology, recounting your bad conduct, and money,” Stephen said.

“But if I all but confess…”

“My, my,” Duncan drawled, uncoiling from his reading chair with feline grace, “it appears you might have to leave the country for a time. Prague is a beautiful city, and not that expensive.”

“Take a fortnight to put your affairs in order,” Stephen said, “no more, and the sum should be generous enough to convey sincerity but not enough to be insulting. You may send your apology to the lady at the Walden ducal residence, to be received by this time tomorrow.”

“Be off with you,” Stapleton said, “and Godspeed.”

Fleming stalked out, his gait uneven, and only Hercules looked sorry to