“But you didn’t take him into your confidence, did you?” Stephen mused. “The problem with the letters isn’t that they confirm Champlain’s reputation as a”—he spared Lady Champlain an apologetic smile—“bon vivant, but that they prove he was kicking his heels in France at the time his son was conceived. The current heir to the Stapleton title is a cuckoo in the nest, and the letters, dated and highly descriptive of the locations in which they were written, prove that conclusively.”

Lady Champlain’s complexion went from pale to translucent, confirming that Stephen had deduced the why of the whole imbroglio. Champlain could have been the world’s greatest libertine and merited only a few raised eyebrows.

Not so, Lady Champlain.

“You can’t know that,” her ladyship said, sinking onto the sofa. “Nobody can know that. I met Champlain in Paris that year, and we found a country house to rent until summer. Nobody can know…”

“We know it now,” Abigail said gently.

At the desk, the marquess was silent, his gaze fixed on the portrait hanging over the mantel.

“Well, hell,” Fleming muttered. “If I’d known that’s why you were looking for—”

Abigail hefted her reticule. “Hush, lest I heed his lordship’s guidance regarding where I aim my second blow. You are a walking verification of the theory that excessive inbreeding has rendered the aristocracy mentally unfit.”

“I wanted to destroy the blasted letters,” Stapleton said. “That’s all I sought, to destroy them. I would have never known about them, except Champlain kept journals of his travels, for posterity, I suppose, and he noted when he wrote to whom. Her ladyship was his Sunday correspondent, Miss Abbott he wrote to twice a week. As if he feared she’d forget a marquess’s heir the moment he took ship.”

Would that I had. Stephen was watching Abigail, and she realized he had more to say but was waiting for her permission to say it.

“You’ve had Champlain’s journals for years,” Abigail observed. “Why set your highwaymen and housebreakers on me now?”

Stapleton, who’d aged about twenty years in five minutes, twisted a ring on his fourth finger. “The boy turns six next week. He’ll soon be old enough to be interested in his father’s—in Champlain’s—journals. I read through them to make sure there’s nothing a lad ought not to see regarding his father. The journals are surprisingly dull given my son’s proclivities, but then I noticed the pattern of his correspondence, and I knew something had to be done.”

“But the boy isn’t your grandson,” Fleming said. “Why go to all that trouble when the child isn’t even your blood?”

“I didn’t realize he wasn’t my grandson until recently, and what does that matter? He’ll be the next Marquess of Stapleton, and he’s just a little boy. I want to blame Harmonia, but Champlain was…he was a difficult husband. One must concede the obvious.”

Lady Champlain had regained some of her color. “Champlain wasn’t a bad man, he simply had more growing up to do.”