Some ladies did, and Abigail paced.

“I want to raise my son,” Harmonia said. “I want to be left in peace to raise Nicky and maybe find a fellow who doesn’t mind about me being so old, and not having much in the way of settlements or a bosom. I want my own house, a little manor somewhere in Kent and not in the freezing bedamned north because it’s convenient to the perishing, rubbishing grouse moors.”

She put a hand to her mouth. “I said bedamned. I am quite vexed. I do apologize. My mama will be overjoyed to have a duchess for a daughter.”

“To summarize, then,” Stephen said, taking up his cane and pushing to his feet, “you do not want me.”

Harmonia’s dread was written in her teary eyes. She dreaded to offend the man who could all but force her to the altar, and she dreaded equally to speak her vows with him.

“What matters,” Stephen said, “is the child. The situation must be resolved with his best interests in mind. I’d like to meet him.”

All the righteous wind dropped from Harmonia’s sails. “I was afraid of that. He’s in the nursery, and Andy is with him. Come along, and don’t think to introduce yourself as his father. This isn’t the time for that. Nicky won’t understand what it means.”

“My dear Harmonia, I barely understand it myself.”

Abigail chose to spend her last London afternoon in Hyde Park, watching the swans glide on the leaf-darkened water. Her ears warned her of Stephen’s approach, so attuned had she become to the cadence of his gait.

“You could not brood on a handy back terrace, could you?” he muttered. “You had to secret yourself in the wilds of the largest park in England and force a poor, lame fellow to track you down. Well, know this, Miss Abigail Abbott: You could disappear into the Scottish Highlands and I would yet find you if finding you were my objective, which it doubtless would be. What is this dreadful rumor I’ve heard about you boarding the Northern Flyer this evening?”

Abigail hadn’t expected him to hunt her down, but then, when had Stephen Wentworth done the expected?

“My errand in London is complete. I have a business to manage. I meant to bid you farewell before I departed.” And thank him. Thank him for so much.

Stephen lowered himself onto the bench two feet from her, and Abigail’s heart sank straight to the muddy bottom of the cold, dark waters of the Serpentine.

“This errand you speak of,” he said, laying his cane across his knees. “You are not yet murdered, and I distinctly recall you asking me to fulfill that office.”

She dared a glance at him, but could not read his mood. He was perfectly attired for social calls, the picture of sartorial elegance. He gazed upon the water, his expression calm. But for a slight tension in the way he clasped his walking stick, he might have been sitting for a portrait: Gentleman at His Autumnal Leisure.