How to Catch a Duke Grace Burrowes (classic novels to read txt) 📖

off the pantry, like a hinged portcullis. Constance’s cats and Wodin are free to visit the garden as they need to. Please tell me the rest of what you know about the letters, Abigail, or I will succumb to the lure of my impure thoughts.”

Her next stroke along his thigh—a caress, really—began an inch higher. “Impure thoughts?”

His thoughts regarding Abigail were both pure and impure. She’d lost a child, for God’s sake, grieved in solitude, and climbed from a pit of sorrow to fashion a life on her own terms. She solved other people’s delicate problems with a combination of cunning, tenacity, and discretion.

That she was as physically attractive as she was formidable created a tangle of esteem, desire, curiosity, and some vague yearning Stephen could not name in any language.

“Lustful thoughts,” he said, petting her knee. “Naughty, delicious, naked, wild, lascivious, hot, erotic…Trifle with me, Abigail, please.”

He was growing aroused, under his brother’s roof, the parlor door open, and the damned dog giving him censorious looks.

“I want to be alone with you,” he muttered, stealing another kiss. “I miss you. I dream of you, and any minute, my darling sister-in-law will march in here, a pair of smirking blond footmen pushing the tea cart behind her. I will die a thousand deaths of frustrated longing while swilling scandal broth and getting biscuit crumbs on my cravat.”

Abigail gave his knee the most luscious, maddening squeeze, and then sat back. “Now is not the time or the place for your courting nonsense, my lord. We face a conundrum.”

Where to swive without being interrupted was always a puzzle. “We do?”

“If I don’t have those letters and Stapleton doesn’t have them, who does? How did that person obtain them, and what will he do with them? Why steal the letters in the first place when they are merely sentimental effusions, years old, and they don’t even mention me by name?”

When Stephen fell, he usually experienced a moment of knowing he was toppling before the hard reality of the cobblestones or floor connected with his person. That instant of rage (to be sent sprawling again), dread (cobblestones hurt, carpeted floors weren’t much better), and resignation lasted a small eternity.

So too, when Abigail sat back, all polite composure and logical pronouncements, did a small eternity pass.

Stephen’s body grasped that yet another occasion of arousal was about to end in disappointment, even as his mind acknowledged that the situation with the letters was troubling.

Between those reactions lay the truth in his heart: He desired Abigail Abbott. She was formidable and luscious. Her touch was lovely and bold, she wasn’t put off by honest arousal, and she had reposed her darkest secret into Stephen’s keeping.

What smacked him as abruptly as landing on hard cobbles was the reality that he would die for this woman. She had heard his worst confessions, taken them quite in stride, and even seen his decisions in a compassionate light.

He would lay down his life to keep her safe, and, more than that, he would kill for her too.

“Stapleton is tithing to the Temple of Venus in the person of Ophelia Marchant,” Ned Wentworth said. “He plays his games in the Lords, and he haggles with the trades, but I couldn’t find any evidence that he is being blackmailed.”

As best Abigail could tell, Ned Wentworth wasn’t a Wentworth by birth, but he had in common with the family a practical approach to life’s seamier challenges. He was dark-haired, slim, and of an age to be recently down from university. His attire was natty to the point of dandyism, while his gaze held the shrewdness of a young man who’d matriculated in a hard school.

“Gaming debts?” Lord Stephen asked.

“He’s too busy fleecing John Bull in the Lords to sit about his clubs dicing,” Ned replied.

Various Wentworths were lounging about the library, Their Graces on the sofa, Duncan and Matilda on a love seat. Stephen had the reading chair by the fire, his foot on a hassock, while Ned had the seat behind the desk and Abigail the second reading chair.

“What about recent disruptions of routine?” Abigail asked. “Is his mistress of long-standing? Has Stapleton changed where he attends divine services? Does he no longer go to the theater, or has he discharged any staff?”

“You are thorough,” Ned said, “and those are good questions, but we don’t have all the answers yet. I can tell you Lady Champlain and Lord Stapleton don’t get along, don’t occupy the same box at the opera. One of our fellows chatted with Stapleton’s head maid over a pint. Stapleton is threatening to dispatch her ladyship to the north again after she spent the Season at the family seat, but the settlements say she must be housed in London if she so desires.”

“What of her ladyship?” Abigail said, getting up to pace. “Has she undertaken any new relationships lately, does she have debts, could she be expecting a child?”

The duchesses exchanged a look.

“My professional activities don’t permit me to shy away from human foibles,” Abigail said. “Somebody has those letters, and Stapleton has decided that now—years after Champlain’s death—the letters have significance.”

Stephen had put Abigail’s situation to his family in plain terms, saving her the recitation: Champlain had implied a promise of marriage, though Abigail hadn’t realized he was dissembling until it was too late. Champlain’s letters had gone missing several months ago, and Stapleton had started attempting to steal them from about the same time. Stephen had omitted mention of a child, for which Abigail was grateful.

If anybody thought Abigail an idiot for succumbing to Champlain’s charms, they were too well bred to show it.

“Do you have copies of any of the letters or can you recall portions verbatim?” Duncan Wentworth asked. “Sometimes codes can be secreted in the most innocuous-sounding prose. When Stephen and I traveled on the Continent, we were approached several times with requests to carry sensitive documents, though they were always described as reports, testaments, or simple correspondence.”

Stephen stuffed a pillow under his knee. “Duncan would