“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 them, perhaps somebody traded them for another twenty IOUs. Perhaps this whole business has something to do with posthumous charges of treason, of all the outlandish notions. Perhaps you should kiss me, Abigail. I truly did want to waltz with you.”

She kissed him and what followed was an odd, interesting addition to Abigail’s intimate vocabulary. Stephen wrapped her hand around his cock, then enclosed her hand in his own, and together, they stroked him to a quick, sighing completion.

The whole while, he kissed her and caressed her face and neck, but never once did he fondle her breasts or otherwise take liberties. She was left feeling friendly and cozy, happy to cuddle without the frustration that might have followed had Stephen been more passionate in his attentions.