Abigail lay over her pillow, enjoying the glow of wanton abandon. Lovemaking had never left her so utterly boneless and at peace before.

“Do you fear I’ll leap up and desert you for the shops?”

Stephen lay on his back, Abigail on her belly. He appeared to feel as great a sense of repletion as she did, if the slumberous calm in his gaze was any indication.

“You will abandon me,” Stephen said, “though probably not for the shops. You will return to finding missing nieces and errant husbands, retrieving incriminating letters, or confronting embezzling clerks. Does lovemaking build up your appetite? For food, that is?”

“What will you abandon me for?” Abigail asked, though where the courage to posit the question came from she did not know. Perhaps from Stephen himself.

“You think me a fribble,” he said, reaching over to caress her cheek. “I enjoy fribbling, but I’m also a consultant to the military on all manner of weapons design questions. I am tinkering with steam power for naval vessels, and I am fascinated with locomotives. Steam could be used for everything from sending packets back and forth to Calais—no more waiting on the tide and wind—to reducing the manual labor involved in purse seining. I’m also fiddling with a lift that can be built on to the outside of an existing building, rather than requiring internal renovations.”

The small of Abigail’s back began to protest her position, so she pulled the pillow from beneath her hips and shifted to her side, taking Stephen’s hand in her own.

“Do you support any charities?”

“A dozen or so, mostly to do with returning soldiers, or families whose soldiers did not return. Many of the veterans need medical attention, and I’m not a doctor. I can hire doctors, though, and order them about and build surgeries and clinics for them. The Scots are the closest we have to competent medical practitioners in Britain, so I tend to employ them if I can.”

Abigail tucked closer. “What of children? Are you active in children’s charities?”

“I run two orphanages for the offspring of soldiers. They want more attention than I can give them, but the children seem happy and well cared for. I pop in unannounced whenever I’m in London, and have my eyes and ears among the urchins.”

Abigail would love to pop in with him and see him consorting with his little spies. “You are no sort of fribble whatsoever.”

“I’m a ducal heir. We apparently have a reputation to uphold as decorative bon vivants. You never did tell me if you’re hungry.”

Abigail was hungry. Starving for the company of a man who chatted in bed, took his time with lovemaking, and quietly supported more charities than any five dukes combined.

“I am a bit peckish,” she said, mostly because Stephen had to be famished. “I would not want to put the staff to any trouble.”