Stephen’s next objective was the formal parlor, which—true to the butler’s assertion—was full of maids armed with dust mops and scrub buckets.

“You cannot do this,” Harmonia said, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice. “You cannot charge in here, upend the household, and, no. Stephen, that is the marquess’s study and even I— You cannot go in there!”

Stephen paused outside the door. “Stapleton has gone too far, Harmonia. He has troubled a woman I care for greatly, set his henchmen to bothering her in the park, and now he seeks to bully her into giving up personal possessions that have already been stolen from her. I won’t have it. You may either join the discussion or scurry back to your pretty parlor and your pretty painter.”

He expected her to flounce off in high dudgeon—she was good at that. Instead, she cast a miserable glance at the closed door.

“She’s in there. Miss Abbott.” Harmonia took four paces away, then four paces back. “She’s everything I’m not. Tall, self-confident, independent, competent. I hate her for that more than anything else.”

A niggle of intuition told Stephen that Harmonia’s admission had significance beyond an insecure woman’s fears.

“Harmonia, she had no idea Champlain was married. He was just another handsome customer flirting with her in her father’s shop, and then he became an admirer and a lover. The whole time, the entire time, he was deceiving her. If she’s independent and self-assured, Champlain must take a significant part of the blame for making her distrustful and lonely too.”

Abigail would smite him soundly for that conclusion, though it was nothing less than the truth.

“He lied to everybody,” Harmonia said miserably, “most especially to himself.”

Why did I ever think we had something to offer each other? Once upon a time, Stephen had willingly involved himself with this woman, knowing full well they were nothing more than a mutual diversion. Perhaps that had been the point.

A diversion never questioned the morality of war, a diversion never had the ingenuity to dress as a man, a diversion never confronted an aggressor who had a thousand times her social influence and ten thousand times her wealth.

“My lady, unless you want your son to turn out exactly like his father and like his grandfather, I suggest you join us in the marquess’s study. Champlain’s gallivanting about, wenching, and carousing made your marriage a polite misery. His behavior doesn’t have to ruin your future as well.”

Nor would Stephen let it ruin Abigail’s future.

A raised male voice penetrated the door, the words indistinct.

“Stephen,” Harmonia said, “there’s more here in play than you know, and Stapleton isn’t entirely to blame.”

“Of course not,” Stephen said, “he’s hired minions and impressed a co-conspirator in the person of Lord Fleming. His next move will doubtless be to inveigle you into trying to ruin Miss Abbott socially, which utterly clodpated maneuver will provoke Her Grace of Walden into mobilizing her legion of Valkyries against you. You will be banished to the north more effectively than if Stapleton had you bound and gagged and tossed into a coach.”