Lord Stephen traced the claw-foot carved into the head of one of his canes. “Are you fond of dogs?”

“What has that to do with anything?” Abigail was very fond of dogs and cats and of her stalwart cart horse, Hector. Had Malcolm suffered permanent harm…“Malcolm is a dear little fellow, for all he’s terribly spoiled.”

“We dear fellows enjoy being spoiled, Miss Abbott.”

“Malcolm nearly died because his bad manners go unchecked.”

“Did he? I ask if you care for the dog because I’m trying to discern motive. Was somebody trying to poison you, your companion, and your staff—because a roast would feed the whole household—or merely trying to frighten you? Did the perpetrator know you allow your dog kitchen privileges, and was poison involved, or had the burgundy gone off somehow and the whole business is merely an unfortunate culinary accident?”

“I dismissed it as such. My dimensions are much greater than a terrier’s, and poisoning a marinade is an unreliable way to administer an effective dose of many drugs. My companion, however, is a more diminutive specimen, though how could anybody know we’d use the burgundy for a marinade? If we’d consumed the wine directly, as a good burgundy deserves, the results might have been different.”

“Does your companion have enemies?”

“Not that I know of, but allow me to continue.” This part of the tale, the attempted harm, was more of the simple, truthful part, and the part Lord Stephen must be made to focus on. “I did not connect the poison and Lord Stapleton until his second call upon me. He believes I am in possession of some letters and asked me for the return of them. I declined to accommodate him for reasons having to do with client privacy.”

“Commendable,” Lord Stephen murmured, though Abigail had the sense he was mocking her. The letters terribly compromised the privacy of two parties, so her description was somewhat true.

Not entirely false, anyway.

“His lordship showed up on my doorstep on Monday well before sunrise, and he had two very large footmen with him. The hour was so early that the household should still have been abed.”

Lord Stephen’s caresses to his walking stick ceased. “As the lot of you might have been if you’d been drugged?”

“Precisely. Everybody partakes of a Sunday roast in most households that can afford a roast. A dose of somnifera or whatever the offending substance was, and we’d simply be slower to rise the following morning. Sunday is also the day when two maiden ladies are most likely to allow themselves a glass of good wine as a digestive following the weekly feast.”

The fire had been lit in this room as well, suggesting that cold aggravated Lord Stephen’s injured leg. Abigail found the warmth delicious, particularly after spending days and nights on a crowded, stinking coach.

Lord Stephen tipped his head to the side, considering Abigail with an owlish look. “Tell me about the letters.”

He would ask that. “They are predictably personal, between people who ought not to have been corresponding.”