Abigail pulled on her gloves. “You insult your brother’s footmen. I don’t so much as sit in the garden without two of them keeping me in sight at all times.”

Stephen would thank Quinn for following orders, or thank Jane. “Footmen cannot sit adoringly at your feet while you read salacious novels by the hour.”

Abigail glanced around, then pressed a kiss to Stephen’s cheek. “You are so naughty. I adore that about you.” She took a straw hat from the sideboard but didn’t put it on.

“One tries.” Stephen opened the door and Abigail sailed through ahead of him. She took his arm when he joined her at the top of the portico’s steps and let him escort her to the coach waiting under the porte cochere.

“I miss you,” she said, staring at the coach door as she donned her straw hat. “I watch Their Graces, always touching each other. I see Duncan sitting with an arm around Matilda’s shoulders. Your family is affectionate and I…”

They hadn’t always been affectionate. Far from it. “And you?”

“I have regrets,” Abigail said. “Introduce me to your friend, and let’s be on our way.”

Stephen sent up a prayer, opened the coach door, and stepped back. “Hercules, come.”

The beast descended with all the dignity of a duke, his plumed tail waving gently. He sniffed at Stephen’s hand, then at Abigail’s, then sat as if he awaited the formal introductions that must follow with any new acquaintance.

“This is your friend?” Abigail said. “This splendid fellow is your friend?”

Hercules panted gently at her side, his enormous head coming to her hip.

“He’s a Danish-bred mastiff, sold to me by an earl’s son who has a way with canines. Hercules can impersonate a lapdog or an imperial guard, depending on your commands.”

Abigail scratched Hercules behind the ears, and Hercules sent her an adoring look. “He’s not a lapdog. Gentlemen usually give ladies fussy little lapdogs.”

Well, blast and bedamned, Stephen had got it wrong, then. “One doesn’t want to be predictable, Abigail, and one does want you to be safe. A lapdog can bark, true enough, but Hercules can take down an intruder. The command is ‘Take down,’ followed by ‘Hold.’ His leash manners are impeccable, and he has all that sit, stay, shake, and roll over nonsense well in hand—or in paw?”

Hercules flicked him an annoyed glance. Reciting commands when twelve stone of noble hound was busy at his flirtations was apparently not the done thing.

Abigail took off her glove, the better to bury her fingers in newly washed fur. Stephen’s footmen had threatened to give notice over that job.

“He’s really quite splendid,” she said. “I love his name. It suits him.”

“You don’t mind that he’s a little big for a lapdog?”