“I named him Winslow Trueblood Abbott. Trueblood was my mother’s maiden name.” Abigail had never spoken her son’s name aloud before, never written it except on the walls of her heart.

Stephen collected the reins in one hand, and linked the fingers of his free hand with Abigail’s. “That is a fine name, very Quaker and upright. I like it. Any boy would be proud to have such a name.”

The park was deserted, save for a young woman feeding the waterfowl. Abigail was sitting too close to Stephen, clutching his handkerchief, and holding hands with him too. They might have been mistaken for any besotted couple, except the situation was worse than that.

She liked him. She trusted him, and she liked him enormously.

Chapter Seven

“I’m having my portrait done.” Harmonia, Lady Champlain, made that announcement at breakfast, the only time she was reliably in her father-in-law’s company. Lord Stapleton came to the nursery occasionally, and she served as his hostess at formal entertainments, but the marquess was a busy, busy man.

And a right pain in the arse too, to quote his late son.

“I suppose it’s time,” the marquess said, folding over the newspaper and laying it flat beside his plate. “The boy has long since been breeched. A portrait with his mama ought to be hung in the gallery. Pass the toast.”

Harmonia was the entire length of the table away from her father-in-law, but he expected her to step and fetch like an unpaid scullery maid. When Champlain had been alive, he’d been able to jolly her past her frustrations with Stapleton. Champlain had been a fellow traveler on the journey to wrest pleasure from the dull business of waiting for Stapleton to die.

How was it Harmonia could miss such a frivolous, self-indulgent husband more each year? She aimed a smile at the liveried footman standing at the sideboard—Wilbur, and a lovely fellow he was too—and Wilbur set the toast rack at the marquess’s elbow.

“I can ask de Beauharnais to take on a second commission,” she said, “of me and Nicky, but I am having my own portrait done first.”

Stapleton looked up from his steak. “You aren’t exactly in the first blush of youth, Harmonia. Why memorialize the ravages of time?”

When the marquess peered down his nose like that, he looked like an arrogant ferret. “I am barely six-and-twenty, sir. You are twice my age, and you had your portrait done last year.” De Beauharnais had pronounced the result flattering and workmanlike, for he was too much of a gentleman to criticize a fellow artist.

Endymion was nothing if not diplomatic, which was why Harmonia—who was closer to eight-and-twenty, truth be told—wanted him doing her portrait. That, and he doubtless needed the money.

“I could remarry,” Harmonia said, pouring herself a second cup of chocolate. She ought not to indulge—her dresses were still larger than they’d been before she’d carried Nicky—but joys in her life were few, and a cup of hot chocolate was prominent among them.