to rise and smooth her skirts. “Why exactly are Constance and Rothhaven calling on Vicar Sorenson now?”
“Because they need a letter of introduction from him, apparently,” Stephen said. “Some of the girl’s connections are clergy, and Sorenson is likely to be at least indirectly acquainted with them. Where has Lord Nathaniel disappeared to?”
“Wherever Althea has disappeared to,” Jane replied. The look she sent Quinn this time was a bit harder to read. Had Stephen been forced to translate, the script might have read: Just as I could once be found wherever you were, before children, duchessing, and family became such a burden on my time.
Quinn offered Jane his arm, which was purely ridiculous when the distance to be traveled was down one sunny, carpeted corridor.
“Tell me, baby brother, how it is you know why our sister and her intended are calling at the vicarage? Have you taken to listening at keyholes?”
Stephen’s leg was paining him only moderately today, but the situation with Miss Ivy Wentworth—to hell with those other names—grieved him sorely. He therefore opted for more honesty than he might have chosen in other circumstances.
“I am constitutionally incapable of listening at keyholes, but I am well aware of how chimneys connect from floor to floor in a well-built house. An unused guest room sits above the parlor where Constance and Rothhaven interviewed Miss Abbott, and when our little card game broke up, I happened to find myself near its hearth when they spoke to her.”
He hadn’t caught every word—Constance had likely got up to pace—but he’d heard plenty.
“Tell us what you learned before Miss Abbott joins us,” Quinn said.
“And don’t leave anything out,” Jane added with a pleasant touch of dire duchess-threat.
Stephen first tended to the business of situating himself in one of the library’s reading chairs. Fortunately, he didn’t ache quite badly enough to prop his foot on a hassock. For Miss Abbott to see him impersonating a gouty bachelor uncle—which he nearly was, come to think of it—would not do.
Althea and Nathaniel arrived, and a footman was dispatched to summon Miss Abbott. Before her arrival, Stephen summarized the relevant facts for his family—uncle planning to emigrate, Ivy comporting herself like a headstrong Wentworth, dire measures under consideration.
All in all, a fine mess, and for once, Stephen was not to blame.
Miss Abbott arrived in the company of a footman who bowed and withdrew. Notwithstanding her escort, she’d brought her walking stick, along with her ever-present air of having business to be about. Stephen had met Wellington on several occasions, and His Grace had the same quality. The duke was not impatient so much as he seemed more interested in fighting the next battle than wasting time in civilian company.
“Miss Abbott, please do have a seat,” Jane said. “I can ring for a tray if you’d like.”
“No, thank you, Your Grace. I gather the family has questions.”
“We are worried,” Althea said, “as any loving family would be.”
Quinn and Nathaniel were trying to look lovingly concerned and were mostly looking dyspeptic, which left Stephen the job of asking the actual questions.
“Is the girl safe for the present?” he asked.
“You ought not to have ambushed me like this,” Miss Abbott replied, and her tone said she was using the singular you, meaning the rebuke was personal to Stephen. “This is a highly confidential matter and I do not discuss my clients’ business with anybody.”
“We’re not anybody,” Nathaniel said, assaying a smile that he likely meant to be charming, the clodpate. “We are all the family Lady Constance has, and prepared to use our collective resources to see her objectives met.”
“We are most anxious to be of assistance,” Althea added. “Constance is only newly engaged, and she and Rothhaven should not have to carry this burden alone.”
“My brother’s circumstances,” Nathaniel began, as if embarking on a lecture before the slower pupils in the class, “are somewhat diffi—”
“I know your brother’s circumstances, my lord. His Grace himself acquainted me with them by letter, including the situation in which he and Lady Constance met.”
Well, damn. Posturing and charm would get nowhere with this woman. “Then you know much more than we do,” Stephen said, “and while I respect your protectiveness toward my sister and her duke, we are protective of them as well, and of Ivy. Is there anything you can tell us without violating confidences? Anything a casual inquiry regarding Reverend Shaw might turn up?”
Miss Abbott palmed the head of her walking stick, which was carved to resemble—of course—a dragon.
“You will have those