My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella

by Grace Burrowes

  “And butter. My sister sends me a daily basket of provisions and one for the guards, as well. Theirs includes a bottle of port, which they immediately consume, so mine finds its way to me.”

  “She sends a decoy,” Miss Winston said, taking a seat at Quinn’s table. The legs of the table were uneven, so that it rocked when anything was placed upon it. A month ago, Quinn would have had the table burned for firewood.

  “I would…give a lot for gingerbread with fresh butter,” Miss Winston said.

  I would kill for gingerbread with fresh butter, she’d been about to say. The poor thing was blushing. In light of her familiarity with the criminal element, that blush charmed Quinn.

  He set the pitcher of lemonade on the table along with two clean tankards. The gingerbread was wrapped in plain linen, as was the butter dish. Such ordinary fare, and yet Miss Winston was clearly pleased with it.

  She used the penknife to cut thick slices of bread and slathered both with butter.

  “No plates,” Quinn said. “The chophouse uses pewter, because the ceramic kind can be broken and used as weapons. I send my plates back across the street with each meal.”

  Ned had explained that to him. No ceramic, no porcelain, no glass. Wooden bowls or beakers, metal flasks, pewter mugs. Nothing sharp, heavy, or too valuable. Cravats were frowned on, because they had been used to strangle both guards and inmates.

  The boy had stoutly ignored the pitcher and basin sitting on the washstand as he’d delivered his tutorial.

  “Aren’t you having any?” Miss Winston asked, licking her thumb. “The gingerbread is quite good.”

  She’d barely sipped the lemonade—sweet, as lemonades went—while the gingerbread was rapidly meeting its fate.

  “Of course,” Quinn said, taking a bite from his slice. “I woolgather now almost as consistently as I used to dwell on bank business.” At Davies’s urging, he’d purchased a quantity of opium, but the considered wisdom of the house was to save the opium for the day Quinn was…the day he died.

  The effect would be greater that way when an effect was most needed.

  “Have you contacted your sisters?” Miss Winston asked. “Getting Ned out of here is only half the battle.”

  “I have written a note to my business partner, Joshua Penrose, and having conferred with you, I’ll have it sent. I’ll tell Ned on Tuesday night.”

  Ned would spend a day hiding among a pile of straw so vile even the rats avoided it, and then by night he’d be carried off to freedom. A simple plan, though it required that the escapee fit into the charwoman’s muck cart, which could accommodate only a child or a very small adult.

  The warden knew better than to allow the women to use larger carts, and his books would doubtless reflect the sorry truth that children died behind Newgate’s walls all the time.

  “I take it Davies can’t be freed.” A true injustice in Quinn’s opinion. Davies had been an innocent bystander when a pickpocket had done a toss and jostle. The victim had set up a hue and cry, and the thief had taken off through a crowd, depositing the stolen money not in his accomplice’s pockets, but in Davies’s. The accomplice had decamped hotfoot, after pointing at Davies and implicating him loudly.

  Merry Olde London indeed.

  “Mr. Wentworth, I have asked you twice who Davies is. For considerably more than ten pounds, he might be able to improve his circumstances.”

  “He’s innocent. Stolen goods were essentially thrust into his hands, but the judge did not believe him.”

  Plato sauntered around the door, tail up, not a care in the world. He’d doubtless smelled the butter.

  “You have another visitor,” Miss Winston said. “What a fine specimen.”

  Plato squinted at her—approvingly, Quinn thought. “He has a reputation for favoring the company of the condemned. Davies and Ned won’t touch him.”

  “Now that is ridiculous.” Plato leapt onto the table, and Miss Winston aimed her nose at the cat. Plato treated her to an almost-nose-kiss, then rumbled like thunder when the lady used her left hand to scratch behind his ears.

  A sense of sweetness stole over Quinn, of innocence in the midst of insanity. Miss Winston was fond of cats, apparently, and Plato was fond of the butter he’d soon try to lick from the fingers of Miss Winston’s right hand. For a moment, everything—the stink and noise of Newgate, the reality of death a week from Monday, the vague worry about what Ned and Davies were up to—receded as woman and cat charmed each other.

  “He’ll get hair all over your skirts.”

  She sat back. “Do I strike you as a woman who has the luxury of taking exception to cat hair?”

  Well, yes, she did, or she should have. Miss Winston should have had a maid brushing out her hair every night, bringing her chocolate first thing in the day, and fretting over her wardrobe. Not her two gray dresses, her wardrobe.

  Quinn went to the sideboard and extracted twenty shiny coins. He took them to the table, tied them up in his last monogrammed handkerchief, and slid it across.

  “A bit extra,” he said, “in case any of the parties involved require additional remuneration. Any excess you may keep for yourself.”

  She put the cat on the carpet and set about untying the bundle. “That is not necessary, Mr. Wentworth. I’d free every nonviolent offender on the premises, every child, every—” She fell silent until she’d worked the knot loose and spread the coins on the square of linen.

  “This is twenty pounds.” Miss Winston struck Quinn as a woman of great self-possession, and yet she was agog at the sum on the table. Once upon a time, twenty pounds would have been a fortune to him too.

  “You said ten pounds would see Ned free. That means a great deal to me.” Though Quinn wasn’t about to examine why Ned’s freedom meant anything at all. A last gesture of defiance, perhaps, or a sop to a conscience past redeeming.

  “But that’s ten pounds too much.”

  “Is it? Complicated sums have ever defeated me.”

  She looked up sharply. “Do not mock me.”

  “Never disdain money, Miss Winston. The coin is innocent of wrongdoing, and you can use a new pair of gloves.”

  Quinn brushed a few crumbs from the table and dusted them onto the windowsill. Birds would feast on them, and Ned would delight in the birds.

  “What are you doing?” Miss Winston asked.

  “Feeding pigeons. And you?”

  As Quinn had swept the crumbs into his palm, she had done likewise with the coins, then tied them up in the handkerchief.

  “I should not take your money,” she said. “Not more than the ten pounds agreed to. One behaves charitably and properly for the pleasure of doing the right thing.”

  She believed that twaddle, which was a sign of either great integrity or a weakness of the mind.

  “So allow me this small, final pleasure.” That was bad of him, bringing death into the conversation. Doubtless the Almighty had added another year on to the eternity Quinn would spend regretting a life largely wasted.

  Miss Winston stuffed the coins into a pocket of her cloak. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because a week from Monday, I will hang from my neck until, gasping, choking, and soiling myself, I die. I would like to be recalled as something more than a fine show for the guards on a Monday morning.”

  She put a hand to her throat, the first indication that she wasn’t impervious to the brutality of Newgate.

  “You haven’t eaten your gingerbread,” she said.

  He broke it in two and held out half the slice. Miss Winston looked at the treat, then at him, then at the treat. She must have had a fondness for gingerbread, because she took the proffered sweet.

  They ate in silence, while Quinn studied his companion. Was she pale today? Tired? Resentful of her father? Or had arranging Ned’s escape taxed her composure? Something about the lady was off. If he’d met her at the bank, he would have put her in the category of customers about to explain a late payment but not yet in default.


  “I apologize for my remark about your gloves,” Quinn said. “You have gloves. Mine were among the first casualties of the local economy.”

  She took a considering sip of her lemonade. “But you have coin.”

  “I do now. That took some time and ingenuity.” How that had stung, to be a banker without coin, without anything of value. Then old skills had reasserted themselves, and Quinn had bartered his way into a private cell and regular meals. The rest had been common sense and the inertia of a population for whom ingenuity was the difference between life and death.

  “This lemonade is quite sweet,” Miss Winston said, wrinkling her nose. “Or perhaps I’ve grown unused to anything made with sugar.”

  “Are your father’s circumstances that limited?” Preaching and penury did not necessarily go hand in hand.

  “His tolerance for anything other than necessities is limited. We were comfortable once. We’re on appallingly good terms with the pawnbroker now.” She put her hand to her throat again. “The lemonade is disagreeing with me.”

  Sickness was rampant at Newgate. Jail fever, consumption, venereal diseases, bad food…Misery concentrated here, and it spread.

  Quinn came around the table and put the back of his hand to Miss Winston’s forehead. “You’re not fevered. Does only your digestion trouble you?”

  “I’m sure it will pass.” She rose and braced herself against the table, but made no attempt to reach the door.

  “If you’re unwell, then you’re better off staying here.”

  She wasn’t coughing, wasn’t hot to the touch, didn’t appear chilled, though many illnesses began slowly and gathered momentum until suffering reached a crescendo that made death welcome.

  “I’m not ill.” She hunched her shoulders and leaned over, as if winded. Her weight was on one hand, while the other hand pressed to her belly.

  No. Not her belly. Lower.

  Her hand pressed against her womb, which bulged slightly, now that she’d smoothed the billowing folds of her cloak.

  “Sit down.” Quinn nudged the chair closer with his foot. “Sit down, and tell me who the father is.”

  She didn’t sit; she swayed into him. Quinn wrapped his arms around her, and for the first time in years, embraced a woman of his own free will.

  Chapter Four

  “Sir, I’ve found another small problem.” Timmons had ambushed Dodson outside the College offices, right on the London street, where more privacy was to be had than under the noses of a lot of scribbling clerks.

  “Life is nothing but problems,” Dodson replied as Timmons fell in step beside him. The week had been productive, though disappointing. A duke was facing the hangman, a doleful thought. Dodson consoled himself that Mr. Quinn Wentworth would go to his death with that much more regret if he knew he was also saying good-bye to a lofty title.

  Though Dodson had stumbled upon one very significant problem where His Grace of Walden was concerned: Quinn Wentworth had technically become the duke three years ago and should have been tried in the House of Lords. They’d have sentenced him to death too, quite possibly, Wentworth being not of their ilk. Yet another reason to let the matter resolve itself quietly.

  “About the Walden situation,” Timmons said, keeping his voice down. “I fear I must report a development.”

  “You couldn’t let it go.” Tenacity in a subordinate was a wonderful quality, when preserving the interests of the Crown. Contrariness was hard to overlook. “I told you how we’ll proceed, Timmons, and the sovereign is yet enjoying the restorative pleasures of the seaside. Unless this development is another legitimate adult son in great good health, I doubt it’s relevant.”

  “The development is relevant, sir. Mr. Wentworth—His Grace of Walden, rather—is a banker.”

  “We do not hold that against him. He’s also a condemned felon, which is rather more problematic.”

  They paused on a street corner to allow a hackney to rattle past.

  “A banker,” Timmons said, “would have his affairs in order. I bethought myself to have a look at those affairs.”

  “Bethinking yourself is not what the Crown pays you to do, Timmons. We had that discussion last March.” Timmons had bethought himself to see about any afterborn Elizabethan heirs in a situation where the Crown had very much wanted an estate to revert. Timmons’s bethinking had cost King George a lucrative viscountcy that had gone—God save the realm—to a Cheshire farmer.

  “I do apologize for my wayward impulses, sir, but in this case—a wealthy banker, a dukedom nearing insolvency—I could not stop myself. Wentworth’s younger brother will inherit little.”

  Dodson came to a halt in the middle of the street. “How is that possible?”

  “Stephen Wentworth, the boy of seventeen, will inherit an enviable competence to go with the ducal honors. He can live as a comfortable gentleman of means, assuming his guardian does not squander his funds.”

  Guardians were always trouble. “Who is the guardian?”

  “Wentworth’s business partner, Joshua Penrose, and a second cousin who serves as the young man’s tutor.”

  A fishmonger’s donkey cart went by, perfuming the air with haddock. “What does the cousin inherit?”

  “Mr. Duncan Wentworth will have mementos, guardianship of the boy, and an old horse.”

  “Good God. The sisters?”

  Timmons glanced up and down the street. “They have handsome portions, all tied up in the funds. Each has a dower property, which becomes hers in fee simple absolute upon Wentworth’s death or her twenty-eighth birthday, whichever shall first occur. Wentworth has provided well for his family, left his partner a thriving business, and tied it all up with enough knots and bows that even Chancery won’t be able to untie it.”

  This was what came of commoners amassing too much wealth. “Then where in perdition does the rest of the money go? Is the problem a mistress? An aging auntie?”

  “I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sir, but the bulk of the Wentworth fortune, and a great fortune it is, will go to charitable interests in Yorkshire.”

  “Yorkshire is nothing but sheep farms. How can there be any—”

  A beer wagon came around the corner, harness jingling, the hooves of the great draft team churning thunderously against the worn cobbles. Dodson marched for the opposite walkway, Timmons at his side.

  “Charitable interests in Yorkshire,” Dodson grumbled. “Of all the notions. That will not serve, Timmons.”

  “I thought not.”

  A disagreeable breeze wafted on the air, and a crossing sweeper darted out to collect dung from the middle of the street.

  “That money cannot go to charity while our good king is left with a lot of useless debt.”

  “Certainly not, sir. Shall I pack for a jaunt down to Brighton?”

  “No need. I’ll handle this. What is that smell?”

  Timmons’s gaze fixed on the retreating beer wagon. “I believe you might have stepped in something, sir. Something left by a passing horse.”

  Dodson darted a glance at his boots, which he prided himself on maintaining at a high shine.

  Most of the time. “Well, damn. You say the family dwells in Mayfair?”

  Timmons recited a direction in a very pleasant neighborhood.

  “I’ll pay a call on Mr. Wentworth’s siblings, and then I’m off to Brighton.”

  “Best hurry, sir. Mr. Wentworth has only a few days left.”

  * * *

  Until conceiving a child, Jane had felt little more than passing sympathy for the unfortunates whom Papa harangued at such holy length. She’d been too preoccupied with her own tribulations. Besides, if the prisoners hadn’t sinned to the point of breaking man’s laws, they wouldn’t have been a captive audience for any preacher with a nose strong enough to tolerate the Newgate common.

  Impending motherhood had caused Jane to re-examine her conclusions. Had the prisoners sinned or had they been unlucky one too many times, such that sin was the price o
f survival? Were they victims of circumstance and bad luck, or of criminals yet running free?

  She sank into the chair Mr. Wentworth considerately held for her. “You ask me who the father of this child is. The father is no longer relevant. He will never be relevant again.”

  Mr. Wentworth’s glower would have sent a lesser woman fleeing from the room—the cell—but vertigo was another of the charming indications of Jane’s condition. She no longer fainted outright, mostly because she took seriously the first glimmerings of unsteadiness or fading vision.

  “The father,” Mr. Wentworth said, “was relevant for the five minutes required to get you with child. He forfeits any claim to irrelevance for the duration of the child’s minority, at least.”

  Mr. Wentworth’s words were carried on a Yorkshire winter wind of conviction.

  “He was relevant for the five minutes necessary to speak our vows as well,” Jane said, “but he entangled himself in a matter of honor and did not emerge victorious.”

  “Dead?”

  “Quite, and these matters are not discussed.” Ironic, that in the eyes of the law, Gordie had been murdered. The killer had gone back to his club, sat down to a breakfast of beefsteak, and probably had a sound nap thereafter.

  Mr. Wentworth, by contrast, had a date with the gallows.

  “My condolences.” He put a hand on Jane’s wrist as she reached for her tankard. “No more lemonade for you. You should be eating as much red meat as you can.”

  He was right. The lemonade had not agreed with her. His touch should have felt presumptuous—he was a condemned killer—but he meant to protect Jane from further misery, and his fingers whispering over the back of her hand were gentle.

  “We have beef on Sundays, usually. Or ham,” she said. “Fish or game other days, in the most modest portions.”

  “Not enough. Why did you introduce yourself as Miss Jane Winston?”

  Why had he remembered such a triviality? “Because for all but one of my twenty-five years, that’s who I was. My spouse and I eloped. He was of Scottish extraction, and galloping up to Gretna Green was a great lark to him.” Everything had been a great lark to Gordie MacGowan, and that had made Jane uneasy. The thought of spending the rest of her life as Papa’s sole support and companion had driven her past reason.