He sat up, pain flitting across his features. Lord Stephen spent so much effort being naughty and disagreeable that his looks probably went unnoticed, but they were interesting looks. Like his siblings, he had dark hair and blue eyes. His build was leaner than that of the other Wentworths, though his shoulders were powerful and his air more self-possessed.

The Wentworth siblings had been born to direst poverty, with an abusive gin-drunk for a father. That much was common knowledge. The oldest sibling—Quinton, now His Grace of Walden—had finagled and scrapped his way into the banking business, where he’d made a fortune.

And that was before an ancient title had meandered and staggered down familial lines of inheritance to add old consequence to new wealth.

Lord Stephen, the duke’s only brother, was heir to the title and to at least some of the wealth. Their Graces had four daughters, and Lady Constance maintained that the duke and duchess were unwilling to add to the nursery population when Her Grace’s last two confinements had been difficult.

Lord Stephen limped badly, often using two canes to get about. The limp ought not to slow the matchmakers down at all—in fact, it made their quarry easier to stalk—but the naughtiness and sour humor were doubtless more difficult to overlook even in a ducal heir.

All of which made Lord Stephen the perfect accomplice to a murder of convenience. Nobody would trifle with him, if indeed anybody ever suspected him of the crime.

Abigail served him a quarter of the second tart—a largish quarter—which seemed to amuse him.

“You will accept my hospitality for the night,” he said, “and I will brook no argument. The staff seldom has an opportunity to spoil anybody but me, and they have grown bored with my crotchets. The laundry is heating your bathwater, the kitchen will make you up a posset, and before I go out I will select a few lurid novels to entertain you as you rest from your travels.”

“And if I’d rather stay with the grouchy widow at the poky lodging house?” She would not. Self-indulgence was Abigail’s besetting sin.

Lord Stephen took a bite of tart, which drew her attention to his mouth. Had she ever seen him smile? She’d seen him happy. He’d taken the time to explain to her the mechanism in his sword cane, conveying a child’s delight with a new toy over an elegant spring lock set into a sturdy mahogany fashion accessory.

Not the cane he was using now.

“If you’d rather stay with the grouchy widow, then London’s footpads could well render your death a truth rather than a fiction. Times are hard for John Bull, Miss Abbott, and thanks to the Corsican menace, an unprecedented number of humbly born Englishmen have grown comfortable with deadly weapons. Such a pity for the civilian populace who can offer no employment to the former soldier.”

Abigail had occasionally spent time in London, but she was nowhere as familiar with the capital as she was with the cities of the Midlands and the north. Besides, London was growing so quickly that even somebody who’d known the metropolis well five years ago would be confused by its rapid expansion.