Abigail patted Stephen’s knee. “Your brother is protective of you. He showed me your old room.”

What the hell? “And?”

“You had read more books by age eighteen than I have seen in my life.”

“When a fellow spends most of his time in a damned chair, reading happens.”

“Walden admires you for your book learning. He doesn’t understand how anybody could devour that much knowledge, and he respects you for it.”

Abigail no longer wore her rosemary hedgehog scent. Jane must have put a stop to that. The new fragrance was soft, gardenia with a citrusy top note and a cinnamon finish. Complicated, warm, feminine…perfect for Abigail Abbott.

“Quinn said he admires me?”

“The admiration was in his voice, in his gaze as he peered around at shelves and shelves of books, some in German, some in French, many in Latin. He said you are a mechanical genius. I was flattered to be allowed into the sanctum of your adolescence and found two books on poisons that I would like to borrow.”

“You may have them, of course. Quinn is a financial genius, by the way. He reads the paper, stares off into space, moves money around, and the money has babies and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I am more pragmatic, investing in the inventions that I know will be of use.”

Abigail withdrew her hand. “You made a portable cannon that could swivel three hundred and sixty degrees. Walden showed me the plans.”

Just what a lapsed Quaker lady did not need to see. “I’ve also patented firing mechanisms, safety triggers, bullet molds, rifling processes, bomb designs, cranes, lifts, folding stairways…some of it’s useless, some of it’s lucrative. Might we get back to the letters?”

“You are quite enterprising. Walden was warning me.”

Enterprising was good, wasn’t it? “Subtlety is not Quinn’s style. His warnings are blunt, sincere, and unmistakable. What would he be warning you about?”

“Not to trifle with you, not to try to make a pretend engagement into something it cannot be.”

God spare me from meddling siblings. “What if I’d like to be trifled with? What if you’d like a bit of trifling in return? We are adults, Abigail, and I’m a first-rate trifler. One of the best in the realm. I like trifling, and because one doesn’t need two good knees to go about it, I’ve made something of a study of trifling in all its glorious permutations.”

She patted his bad knee, which was not well advised when the subject under discussion was trifling.

“You have such a keen wit. I like that about you.”

He kissed her cheek. “I am not jesting, and Quinn was not threatening. He was meddling. He thinks he’s being subtle, but he’s about as subtle as Wodin introducing himself to a cured ham. So I read a lot of books. What sort of woman is impressed with that?”