“I don’t normally go about impersonating a hostler,” she said when Stephen drew back. “The poor young man seemed utterly helpless. I gather you were not mortified?”

“I am impressed at your generosity of spirit, Abigail.” At her pragmatic disregard for appearances, at her ingenuity when it came to using a cravat to secure wheel and axle.

She kissed him, a ladylike little peck on the cheek that drove him wild. “To the park, my lord. The day is fair and I’ve a mind to show off my new finery. Most worldly of me, but there you have it.”

Stephen gave the reins a shake. “I have just now this moment come upon a new use for the handle of a parasol.”

“What would that be?”

“French letters. A lady ought to be able to carry discreet contraception on her person, nobody the wiser. The handle of the shaft would have to be rectangular, like a pencil box, and the mechanism stout, but what do you think? Would it sell?”

He was improvising, and making a complete hash of matters, as usual.

Abigail made a sound halfway between a sniff and a chortle, then she punched Stephen on the arm and laughed outright, and soon Stephen was laughing with her.

“His lordship doesn’t drive young ladies in the park anymore.” Duncan offered that observation staring down at the empty drive, where not ten minutes past, Stephen had tooled away with Miss Abbott up beside him. They made a handsome couple, though Stephen would have demanded satisfaction if Duncan had rendered that compliment aloud.

“If Stephen wants time alone with Miss Abbott,” Quinn replied, “he’ll observe the proprieties, and that means driving with her in the park in an open vehicle at a decent hour.”

Duncan let the curtain drop. “Because he cannot walk with her in the park. He has nightmares, about being pushed in his Bath chair by unseen hands that shove him over the brink of a precipice.”

Quinn had been unaware of Stephen’s nightmares. Quinn was not, in fact, as well acquainted with Stephen as he should be. A difference in ages was partly responsible—he and Stephen were more than a decade apart—but so too was a difference in temperament.

“Stephen finds London misses insipid,” Quinn said. “They are not complicated enough for him.” Quinn, by contrast, had been awed by fine ladies as a young man. More fool he.

Duncan prowled the length of the library. He had overseen the development of the collection, and had doubtless read every volume on the shelves. Quinn liked books well enough, but only because his duchess enjoyed having him read to her at the end of the day.

“You have it all wrong, Quinn.” Duncan wound up a music box Stephen had made for Jane. “Stephen thinks himself too wicked for the sweet young things. He’s afraid he’ll make some joke, some little aside, and betray his upbringing. Add to that his inability to stand up with them, to even sit comfortably for long periods, and he’s like a cat in a kennel. His options are to remain in the shadows or stir the pack to violence.”