Without being spotted, much less caught.

“You are wondering,” Ned said, “what my agenda in all this is. I have several—a habit I picked up from his lordship. First, I am loyal to my family, because the Wentworths are my family. I was a boy bound for New South Wales when His Grace decided I’d make a passable tiger. I don’t care how lowly the task, I was and am entirely his man.

“Her Grace put the manners on me,” Ned went on. “And that was no mean feat. Duncan gave me an education, not so much by confining me to a schoolroom or deluging me with books, but by showing me how capable and articulate a well-educated man can be. Walden has wealth and influence, but Duncan will pin His Grace’s ears back with a single quiet word, and devil take the hindmost.”

Abigail ought to silence Ned with a single quiet word, but she was too eager to hear more Wentworth family history. Over the years she’d been employed by Lady Constance, she’d gleaned an occasional detail, and those had been filed away for recall if they proved relevant to the case.

Lady Constance’s case had been solved, while Abigail’s curiosity about Stephen’s family had become voracious.

“And what of his lordship?” Abigail asked. “How did he earn your esteem?” For he clearly had.

“Do you know why he turned to designing firearms, Miss Abbott?”

“Because his mind works like that. He just as easily designs music boxes, stained-glass windows, lifts, puzzle tables. I’ve seen evidence of his cleverness all over this house.”

Ned took two steps closer. “Lord Stephen cannot march.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He cannot march. He cannot slog along like the average infantryman, and even his ability on horseback can’t hide the fact that he’s unfit for military duty. He was denied the honorable course open to every other titled younger son when Boney was grinning at us from the coast of Normandy, so Stephen found a way to contribute without marching.”

“That’s why he makes guns?”

“He doesn’t merely make guns, Miss Abbott. He looked at the whole process, from the gun-making to the shot and powder, to the rammers, and the way the men were deployed on battlefields. Britain has produced more high-quality arms, more efficiently, than at any other time in her history, and Lord Stephen Wentworth is a significant part of that achievement.

“He did the same with the heavy artillery,” Ned went on, “the quartermasters’ wagons, the cavalry sabers and scabbards, the navy’s cranes and saws, the powder magazines.…They would canonize him at Horse Guards if they could, but here in Mayfair, our neighbors snicker at his limp.”

Abigail sank back onto the bench. “War is wrong. I will never be convinced otherwise.”

“And when war is brought to your doorstep,” Ned said, “do you calmly hand over your women and children? Line up your menfolk to be conscripted into the enemy’s army or shot? Pass along your corn and livestock to feed the enemy’s populace while your own starves? Your theology is laudable, Miss Abbott—nobody approves of war—but you’re a bit short on practical solutions.”