Quinn and Jane exchanged a glance, which from long practice Stephen could decode easily enough: Do we ambush Miss Abbott without our brother’s meddling assistance and attempt to intimidate her with ducal consequence, or do we allow Stephen to be the disagreeable meddler—a role he plays so very well—while we personify gracious, concerned reason?

All of that passed between them in the time it took Jane to rise and smooth her skirts. “Why exactly are Constance and Rothhaven calling on Vicar Sorenson now?”

“Because they need a letter of introduction from him, apparently,” Stephen said. “Some of the girl’s connections are clergy, and Sorenson is likely to be at least indirectly acquainted with them. Where has Lord Nathaniel disappeared to?”

“Wherever Althea has disappeared to,” Jane replied. The look she sent Quinn this time was a bit harder to read. Had Stephen been forced to translate, the script might have read: Just as I could once be found wherever you were, before children, duchessing, and family became such a burden on my time.

Quinn offered Jane his arm, which was purely ridiculous when the distance to be traveled was down one sunny, carpeted corridor.

“Tell me, baby brother, how it is you know why our sister and her intended are calling at the vicarage? Have you taken to listening at keyholes?”

Stephen’s leg was paining him only moderately today, but the situation with Miss Ivy Wentworth—to hell with those other names—grieved him sorely. He therefore opted for more honesty than he might have chosen in other circumstances.

“I am constitutionally incapable of listening at keyholes, but I am well aware of how chimneys connect from floor to floor in a well-built house. An unused guest room sits above the parlor where Constance and Rothhaven interviewed Miss Abbott, and when our little card game broke up, I happened to find myself near its hearth when they spoke to her.”

He hadn’t caught every word—Constance had likely got up to pace—but he’d heard plenty.

“Tell us what you learned before Miss Abbott joins us,” Quinn said.

“And don’t leave anything out,” Jane added with a pleasant touch of dire duchess-threat.

Stephen first tended to the business of situating himself in one of the library’s reading chairs. Fortunately, he didn’t ache quite badly enough to prop his foot on a hassock. For Miss Abbott to see him impersonating a gouty bachelor uncle—which he nearly was, come to think of it—would not do.

Althea and Nathaniel arrived, and a footman was dispatched to summon Miss Abbott. Before her arrival, Stephen summarized the relevant facts for his family—uncle planning to emigrate, Ivy comporting herself like a headstrong Wentworth, dire measures under consideration.

All in all, a fine mess, and for once, Stephen was not to blame.