“I don’t think it works quite like that,” Stephen said. “If Champlain committed treason, he wasn’t the titleholder at the time. I’ll pay a call on your friends at the College of Arms and ask them a few questions.”

“I am off to ask questions of my pillow,” Ned said, rising. “A fine evening’s frolic, my lord.” He bowed to Stephen. “The lads and I thank you for it. Oh, and you might be interested to know that Fleming is calling on Stapleton’s mistress once a week.”

“Busy lady,” Quinn muttered, finishing his drink. “One cannot envy her her duties.”

“When does she see Fleming?” Stephen asked.

“Tuesday afternoons. She keeps a calendar. Stapleton calls Monday and Thursday at two p.m. and departs at three thirty. He’s never underfoot at any other time. The fair Miss Marchant also entertains a Mr. Watling, probably the paper merchant.”

“Was she once upon a time an opera dancer?” Stephen asked.

Ned gathered up his boots. “Not her too, Wentworth. Does a bad knee compel you to overuse other parts of your anatomy?”

Perhaps it had. Stephen would ask Abigail what she thought of that theory, and she would probably plant him a facer for his impertinence. If she was very wroth, she might be persuaded to spank him.

“Miss Marchant and I are not acquainted,” Stephen said, “but I probably know some people who are friendly with her. Go to bed, and my thanks for a job discreetly done.”

“’Night, Ned,” Quinn called, settling lower on the sofa as Ned took his leave. “I miss Jane.”

“Poor lamb. You had to go out among the wolves without your shepherdess.” Stephen shifted the pillow under his foot. “I have never longed to dance with a woman as desperately as I longed to dance with Abigail tonight. She was the loveliest female in the ballroom, and there I was, stuck at the bloody piquet table.”

“Jane says Miss Abbott doesn’t dance.”

“Abigail doesn’t know how to dance. If I had two sound legs, I could coax her into it.” A lovely dream, that, and Stephen had studied the instruction books enough to know that the patterns of the waltz weren’t so very complicated. “She made me copies of the letters.”

“She being Abigail. You’ve read them?”

“I’ve read half of them, and like Abigail, I sense a pattern that refuses to emerge. Your notion about treason is intriguing, because that would affect the heir, and Stapleton is the sort whose heir matters to him.”

Quinn regarded him by the light of the fire. “My heir matters to me too. How exactly did Jack Wentworth die, Stephen?”

Chapter Eleven

Between one tick of the mantel clock and the next, a series of thoughts marched through Stephen’s tired brain.

Why was Quinn raising this distasteful topic now?

Why hadn’t anybody raised it sooner? Jack had been dead close to twenty years.

Was Stephen protecting himself by withholding the truth, or was he protecting Quinn? Perhaps protecting Quinn’s view of himself as a competent older sibling?