“We arrive,” Lord Stephen said as the coach took a slow turn some moments later. “Jane will sweep you away from me before I so much as find a hassock for my foot, so allow me to pass along a parting thought.”

“A warning?” Abigail had met the Wentworths when she’d been in Lady Constance’s employ. Lady Constance—Her Grace of Rothhaven, rather—now bided with her duke in the north, her case having been successfully concluded.

“What I have to say is not intended as a warning,” Lord Stephen replied, “but you will hear it as such.”

The coach came to a halt, and the coachman shouted a greeting.

“Speak your piece, my lord.”

“I do not lie for anybody’s convenience, Abigail, including my own. I will court you to draw out Stapleton because you asked for my help and because I will enjoy the game. When I kiss you, that is not a performance. I like you, I desire you, I delight in sharing intimacies with you, and my actions in that regard are in complete earnest.”

He spoke calmly and quietly, no teasing, no insouciance in his tone. Would that he had been jesting.

“I never took you for a charming bounder, my lord.” The words were inadequate, unworthy of his display of courage, so Abigail tried again. “I am supposed to say thank you, put my nose in the air, and act as if such honesty is vaguely distasteful. I should pretend that I tolerate your advances because men cannot help themselves when females are willing, and it all means nothing as long as Stapleton believes the playacting.”

“Kisses should never be meaningless.”

Not exactly. Kisses should mean as much or as little to one party as they did to the other. If nothing else, Abigail had learned that much from her foray into worldly peccadillos.

“Your kisses are not meaningless, Stephen Wentworth. I have asked you to enter into a deception with me, and I am grateful for your aid, but I delight in sharing intimacies with you as well.”

He unlatched the coach door and pushed it open. The footman let down the steps and moved aside.

“I have two objectives, then,” Lord Stephen said, gathering up his cane and passing Abigail hers. “I must inspire you to like me, and I must also aid you to thwart Lord Stapleton’s mischief. Which of the two will be the greater challenge?”

Abigail descended from the coach rather than reply, but she knew the answer, for she already did like Lord Stephen—far too much.

Chapter Six

“You left me there for three days,” Abigail muttered before Stephen had even given the gelding in the traces leave to walk on. “Three days with little more than a note from you.”

“Did you miss me?” Stephen had missed her. Had missed their verbal swordplay, missed the sight of her, and even missed the tattoo of her confident stride on his carpets. Learning the identity of the varlet who’d broken her heart had become a mental puzzle box, one that distracted him from frustrated lust.