He rubbed his knee as he spoke, which required that he bend forward rather than rest against the cushions.

“Shall I remove your boots?” Abigail asked.

“You’d play footman for me?”

“I will remove your boots so you don’t get dirt on the hassock.”

He left off rubbing his knee. “Do your worst. My boots aren’t as snug as some. They can’t be or I’d never endure their removal.”

His boot in fact slipped off easily. It wasn’t much larger than one of Abigail’s men’s boots, though the calf was longer. The second boot was a trifle more closely fitted. She set them both within his reach and took the place beside him.

“Does massage help?”

“Yes, but Miss Abbott, I must forbid—damn it, Abigail. That’s not fair.”

She’d wrapped both hands around his knee and made the same smooth, slow circles he’d used. “That you have a bad knee isn’t fair, and if the knee has become unreliable, the ankle and hip are likely in pain as well. Am I pressing firmly enough?”

He flopped back against the cushions, gaze on the ceiling. “My dragon’s name is Abigail. I’ve been waiting for inspiration to name her, and lo, the appellation fits.”

“You are trying to make me blush. Flattery is pointless, my lord. The joint isn’t quite as it should be, is it?” Not that she was well acquainted with the particulars of a man’s knee bones.

“You have a gift for understatement, Miss Abbott. Allow me to offer a reciprocally understated observation: Ladies do not apply their hands to the persons of ailing gentlemen. Desist, if you please.”

He was protesting for form’s sake, bless him. “You are not ailing. You were injured, long ago. How did it happen?”

He gave her a peevish look. “My father decided in a drunken rage that a boy with a bad leg would be a more effective beggar than one who could scramble out of range of Papa’s fists. He later intimated that stomping the hell out of me was an accident. I was the accident, and his violence toward me was quite intentional.”

Abigail kept her hands moving in slow, steady strokes, though Lord Stephen’s recitation upset her. “I try not to take cases involving children. Such matters can provoke me to an unseemly temper.”

“Abigail, please stop. You need not exercise your temper on my behalf. I had my revenge.”

She ceased massaging his knee but remained on the sofa beside him. “Good. A man such as your father deserves a thorough serving of retribution. That he spent coin on gin instead of providing for his children was his shame, not yours, and that he’d do violence against his own small son…”

Would that she was merely blushing. Instead Abigail felt tears welling. They were not for Lord Stephen, or not exclusively for him. They were for fatigue, and homesickness, old lost love, and all of the children who could not be protected from horrid fates.

“I miss Malcolm.” The stupidest words ever to escape from a woman’s mouth.