“For God’s sake, Abigail. I have slept with both Harmonia and her current swain. He has slept with both the lady and myself. Champlain got you with child, but he could not impregnate his wife. I managed that feat handily enough, and now you and I…the situation is ludicrous.”

Well, yes, it rather was, when compressed into a few sentences. “The child is anything but. He’s a little boy, and the last thing you will do, Stephen, is turn your back on your own son.”

And for a time that was the final word. The breeze stirred the dead leaves and reminded Abigail that in York, the season would be more advanced and appreciably colder. She gathered up her reticule and parasol, and prepared to walk with Stephen back to Park Lane.

“Don’t you dare run off, Abigail. I am maneuvering my mental artillery into place.”

“I refuse to argue with you. I know how I felt about Winslow—how I still feel about him. I know how determined you are to put Jack Wentworth’s ghost to rest. I commend you for your integrity and wish you every joy.”

She shifted to the edge of the bench, rose, and readied herself to begin the process of leaving London, and leaving Stephen.

“Sit down, you dratted female. You know all manner of vital information, but you apparently don’t know the fact that matters most. I have not imposed the words upon you, thinking to wait for some cozy, private moment when I could ply you with spirits and tempt you with my manly charms, but to hell with that. Spirits imperil my balance, and you’ve sampled my manly charms. I love you, and I don’t care if the whole rubbishing park knows it.”

Abigail sat back down.

Winter storms in Yorkshire could blow with such ferocity that wind, cold, and snow obliterated any sense of direction. Gravity alone remained constant in the face of such a gale, and Stephen had survived this tempest of a day by clinging to one equally steadfast constant: He loved Abigail Abbott.

Well, two constants: He loved Abigail, and he hoped to hell she loved him back. Otherwise…

Otherwise did not bear thinking about.

“I’m selling my gun manufactories,” he said, which wasn’t an announcement he’d planned to make.

“I hope you aren’t doing that for me. You love the intricacy and complication of a precisely made firearm.”

I love you more. How simple life became in light of that singular organizing principle. “Do you know what the most complicated, intricate creation in the whole universe is?”

“You?”