Fleming assumed parade-rest posture—chin up, hands behind his back. “Perhaps Miss Abbott doesn’t have the documents, my lord. Some time has passed, after all, and paper burns easily.”

“Does it? Does it truly?” Stapleton sat forward, linking his hands on the desk blotter. “Paper burns easily. Well, I had no idea. Thank you for enlightening me, Fleming. You put my mind at ease. I will simply trust that some very sensitive information has been twisted into spills and sent up Miss Abbott’s chimney. That makes perfect sense, paper also being expensive and her means being limited.”

A flash of impatience showed in Fleming’s eyes. He was the typical English lordling, flaxen-haired, tall, full of his own consequence, and none too bright. For Stapleton’s purposes he was an adequate resource. Fleming had enough standing to be treated deferentially by lesser mortals—by hired footpads, for example—and enough native wit to execute most tasks without immediate supervision.

Most tasks, apparently not all. And the blighter was besotted with Harmonia, or with what he perceived her settlements to be.

“Your lordship must consider that we’re on a goose chase,” Fleming said. “Perhaps if you’d see fit to share with me the nature of the documents, I might have a better chance of retrieving them.”

Stapleton had the odd thought that if Miss Abbott had been tasked with retrieving the letters, she would not make excuses or let inane flirtations distract her from the goal. She’d see the thing done and done right—drat the woman.

“Your job is not to find the documents.” Fleming would doubtless read the letters, which Stapleton could not allow, hence the necessity of resorting to less literate subordinates for searching Miss Abbott’s abode. “Your job is to find a woman who’d stand out in a company of dragoons. Perhaps you are in need of spectacles, Fleming. The dratted creature is impossible to miss.”

Stapleton knew he was being petty, but he preferred proper ladies, all sweet and diminutive with just enough guile to be interesting. A Brobdingnagian such as Miss Abbott was contrary to the natural order, towering over men who substantially outranked her. Had she the docile nature of a beast of burden, her proportions would not rankle so, but she was half a foot taller than Stapleton. She would only affect docility in service of some stratagem such as she had used to entangle Stapleton’s hapless son.

Champlain likely hadn’t known what had hit him, poor lad.

Fleming strode for the door. “I will instruct the men to maintain vigilance over her residence in York and keep an eye on the usual posting inns. I thought we might also set a watch here in London, my lord, at Smithfield Market at least.”

There you go, thinking again. “Why would Miss Abbott flee straight to the very place where I await her capture?”

Fleming paused, not quite turning, his posture conveying impatience. “Because she is canny as hell, and London is the last place you’d think to look for her?”