“Having an entire regiment’s worth of tenacity, you would find such persistence admirable. Why is this woman your guest?”

She had nowhere else to turn. Stephen knew what that felt like too. “She has provoked the wrath of the Marquess of Stapleton. She sought my counsel regarding the best means of thwarting him.” Duncan had kindly omitted the obvious lecture: Bachelor lords did not house female guests who arrived without benefit of chaperonage. Bachelor lords did not socialize with inquiry agents of common origins.

Bachelor lords, in other words, were a lot of useless prigs.

“The marquess has a reputation for self-importance,” Duncan said. “I believe he and Quinn are on opposing sides of the child labor law debate.”

In Stephen’s opinion, children did not belong in the mines or factories. They belonged at school, and at the sides of parents or mentors engaged in trades, crafts, or some family enterprise. Quinn shared that viewpoint, having been worked without mercy as a boy and paid next to nothing.

“Stapleton wants some letters Miss Abbott has. She is bound by conscience to safeguard them.” Or was she? Stephen had begun to wonder who exactly had those letters.

“You cite the conscience of a woman who goes through life essentially as a professional fraud. She finagles secrets from those who don’t even know they have them, disguises and misrepresents herself, and takes coin to spy at keyholes. What is it about her that draws you?”

The clocks elsewhere in the house chimed the quarter hour. One was an instant behind the others.

“The footmen have been lax,” Stephen said. “The clock in the family room was wound at least an hour later than the others.”

Duncan held his peace, at which he was damnably talented.

“Miss Abbott has a conscience,” Stephen said. She still suffered guilt over the moment of her birth, for example. “She managed Con’s business without once taking advantage of the situation.”

“And now Miss Abbott needs help. She cannot bide with you, Stephen. Her reputation will not withstand that impropriety.”

“I’m here to ask Quinn and Jane to extend their hospitality to her.”

Duncan rose and added a log to the fire. He could do that—rise, move the fire screen, grab a length of wood from the basket, lay it amid the flames, and replace the screen—without once having to consider his balance. He could do nearly everything without considering his balance, and how Stephen envied him such sure-footedness.

“When Matilda showed up on my doorstep,” Duncan said, “frightened, famished, and friendless, I had no choice. Gentlemanly honor was the fig leaf I draped over my actions—damsels in distress and so forth—but Stephen, I had no choice. She beat me at chess, she thought I was intelligent, she admitted an attraction to a man who’d eschewed all bodily entanglements. She took me captive, utterly and forever, and if you lot had told me to turn my back on her, I would have instead turned my back on you.”