My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella
Page 6
Quinn sat on the bed next to his wife, and she scooted away. He reached over to scratch the cat behind the ears, and the new Mrs. Wentworth drew back.
Her reaction was understandable and should even have been a relief. “Jane?” He had the right to address her by name now.
“Mr. Wentworth?”
“I gather MacGowan’s connubial devotions were more enthusiastic than considerate. You have nothing to fear from me.” Of all men, she had the least to fear from Quinn Wentworth, who’d also learned early and well what folly indiscriminate lust led to.
The cat scrambled free of her grip, leaving a shower of dark hairs in his wake.
“Nothing to fear, Mr. Wentworth?”
Quinn took her hand, which was cool. “Contemplation of a grim death in less than forty-eight hours is a poor aphrodisiac.”
Her fingers were limp in his.
He tried again. “I could not do justice to you or the occasion, Mrs. Wentworth. Ours will be a short, cordial union free of conjugal intimacies. I apologize for not making that clear earlier.”
Jane had apparently assumed otherwise, doubtless a reflection of how badly she needed Quinn’s help.
She let out a breath, and the hand she’d placed over her belly slid to the mattress. “Will the marriage still be legal?”
“Absolutely. Nonconsummation is not grounds for an annulment, and who is to say, given your condition, what we’re getting up to behind that closed door?”
Her expression lightened considerably, which was mildly insulting. Also humorous, on a level Quinn had learned to appreciate only since becoming incarcerated.
“Then tell me about yourself,” she said. “I’ll have to explain you to the child, for he or she will bear your name. What shall I tell my child about the person who provided safety and comfort to him or her, and to me?”
An interrogation regarding Quinn’s past was probably the next least enjoyable fate besides a grim death, though if he had to endure questioning, he would do so holding his wife’s hand.
“You will tell this child as little about me as possible,” he said. “The less your offspring is associated with a convicted killer, the better. If pressed, you can allow I was a self-made man, but in truth I was simply lucky. In a situation where many children are born sickly, I was born big, strong, fast, and good with numbers. My father doubted my legitimacy, which offense he recalled when in his cups. He was a cooper by trade, though as a young man, he aspired to the status of wine merchant. One branch of the Yorkshire Wentworth family is titled, others are well respected. My father’s was not among them.”
A ducal family not far from York shared the Wentworth name, though Quinn had never so much as knocked on His Grace of Walden’s kitchen door. Wentworth was a common name, and Quinn had had no wish to be forcibly ejected from the premises.
“Your good luck outweighed the bad?” Jane asked.
A fair summary, but for recent events. “My father died, which was most fortunate for his offspring, and I prospered. I eventually took on a partner, whom you will meet next week. You can trust Joshua Penrose in all matters relating to money.”
Jane might just as easily have removed to the chair at the table, or declared herself ready to leave, and Quinn would have politely accommodated her choices. That she remained beside him, holding hands on the bed, was the first real comfort he’d had since losing his freedom.
Her hand in his gave him relief for a moment from the rage that had been locked in this room with him. The fury would return when she walked out, so Quinn allowed himself the respite.
“What of you?” Quinn asked. “Tell me about my wife.”
“She’s nobody. A study in obscurity who hadn’t the sense to appreciate even that station. I was a good girl, until I wasn’t. When Mama died, I lost my papa, too, in a sense, and I could never be what he needed me to be, so I gave up. When Gordie introduced himself to Papa in the churchyard one Sunday morning, I was easily charmed.”
A mortal sin in her lexicon, apparently. Did she know that good boys could be preyed upon by the shallow charmers every bit as easily as good girls?
“The Gordies in this life excel at locating virtuous young women on the brink of surrender. Don’t castigate yourself overmuch about it. Have you brothers or sisters?”
“None. You?”
He briefly described his sisters, two of the brightest, most stubborn, resilient people he knew, though even thinking of them was painful.
“And then there’s Stephen,” he went on. “The boy was under my father’s roof for the shortest amount of time, but in some ways suffered his influence the most. Don’t underestimate Stephen, whatever you do.”
“Were you speaking rhetorically, or am I to make the acquaintance of your family?”
Quinn had taken only Joshua into his confidence regarding this marriage, because Joshua’s assistance had been needed to obtain the special license, and Joshua would manage the funds promised to Jane.
Quinn would write one more letter—each of the last six letters was to have been his final correspondence—and explain Jane to Althea, Constance, and Stephen. Joshua could pass along the missive at the appropriate time, for Quinn would have no opportunity to send it.
“You will meet my siblings. Your confinement will be most safely passed in my—in my siblings’ household. Althea and Constance are difficult by nature, but they will be protective of you. Where you dwell after the baby arrives will be up to you. I suggest you distance yourself from any association with the Wentworths for the sake of the child.”
Jane rested her forehead against Quinn’s shoulder. “You are being very kind.”
“I am being contrary, which has ever been my nature.” Long ago, Quinn had been a boy much in need of kindness. Now he was a man in need of a miracle. Having never seen one, and having seen too many tragedies and precipitated more than a few himself, Quinn did not expect aid from the Almighty.
He wrapped an arm around Jane’s shoulders, searching his sordid past and short future for some useful words to give her.
“Look forward, Jane. You can’t change the past, and dwelling on it serves no purpose. The origins of your improved circumstances mean you’ll be outcast by good society, but you’ll eat well, you’ll be warm in winter. Get away from London and you’ll be safe. I like thinking of you and the child, safe and happy.”
A fine little speech, and Jane seemed fortified by it.
“I want something with your scent on it,” she said, sitting up. “The fragrance you wear settles my stomach, and it’s pleasant. Unique.”
A bloody miserable request for a bride to make on her wedding day.
Quinn rose and rummaged in the wardrobe, then passed her the bar of hard-milled soap from the wash basin. “My sisters know where to get more. The shop is owned by a Frenchman, and he makes these products only for the Wentworths. We have soap, sachets, and eau de parfum with this fragrance.”
She sniffed the soap and rose. “I’m a Wentworth now. Thank you.”
Quinn was a businessman. He did not expect thanks for lending money or making shrewd investments. He expected payment on time, honest dealing, and profit. He was thus not prepared for Jane to pitch herself against him and wrap him in a ferocious embrace.
“I wish you could walk out of here with me,” she said. “I wish I could hide you in a muck cart and spirit you away. I wish you could live to see the child who will bear your name.”
She clung to him fiercely and wasn’t letting go. In deference to her condition, Quinn wrapped his arms around her.
“If I could afford wishes, I’d wish that yours might come true.” He could afford a prison wedding and a private execution, but not a single wish.
A triple knock sounded on the door, Davies’s signal that the guard would soon be coming to escort Jane and her father from the prison.
Jane rested her cheek against Quinn’s chest. “I will tell the child that you were decent, kind, and generous, and I will be telling the truth.”
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Quinn was angry, bitter, and condemned. He could have insisted to his wife that she not mislead the child, but what would be the point? Jane, he suspected, could be as stubborn as Althea or Constance, and that was fortunate. Soon enough the new Mrs. Wentworth would see reason and establish a household far from any mention of the late, disgraced Quinn Wentworth.
“Time to go, Jane. Be well, have a fine, healthy baby, and if you can, be happy.”
She kissed him on the mouth, surprising a man who’d thought life held no more surprises and certainly no more rejoicing.
But her kiss held joy, an affirmation of her vows, regardless of the circumstances, a loud cheer for having put to rights at least one injustice in a wicked world. She persisted, wrapping Quinn close and taking a taste of him, and then Quinn was kissing her back.
Jane Wentworth was formidable and brave, also pretty and pragmatic. With more time, she and Quinn might have made something together besides a hasty legal arrangement. He permitted himself three heartbeats’ worth of regret, then eased back.
“Away with you, Mrs. Wentworth.”
Still she held him. “I wish…”
He put a finger to her lips. “Time to go. You promised to obey me.”
She kissed him again—to blazes with obeying you, sir—and then slipped out the door.
* * *
Despite Ned’s every wish, hope, and prayer, Monday morning did not see a commutation order arriving for Mr. Wentworth. The shackles clinked and dragged as the prisoner was led from his cell, and now the damned guards stood about in the courtyard—four of them—as the same chains were removed.
“Bloody crime,” Ned said, “making a man pay to have the shackles put on, then pay to have them struck not five minutes later.”
“Bloody crime,” Davies replied from beside him, “when no writ of transportation shows up for such as him. Every other cove who’s committed the same offense gets transportation. He gets the noose.”
Ned wanted to mash his face against Davies’s skinny ribs and howl. Instead he mashed his fist against Davies’s arm. “Stop crowding me.”
Davies tousled his hair, and Ned was so enraged he didn’t bother hitting him again.
“This is wrong,” Ned muttered, turning back to the barred window. “He’s not a killer, not like them other poor sods.”
The condemned were usually kept segregated in miserable conditions in the prison’s bowels. Had Mr. Wentworth been confined thus, Ned would be dead.
“Don’t watch, Neddy. He’ll be just as dead if you stand guard over his things. I’ll stay here.”
“Nobody will dare steal his clothes. He left them to us, and he made sure everybody including the wardens knew that.” Which made no sense. “If he could bribe the wardens not to steal his clothes, why couldn’t he leg it, Davies?”
The guards formed a circle around Mr. Wentworth as the right shackle came off. The courtyard was drenched with early morning sun, an obscenity given what the new day held for Quinn Wentworth. The Ordinary had been sent for first thing to say prayers for him, another obscenity, for the Thou Shalt Not Kill man to ease the king’s conscience about taking a life.
“He’s not stupid, Neddy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The left shackle was proving stubborn, which was bad and good. Mr. Wentworth couldn’t bolt until it was off, but they wouldn’t hang him in chains either.
“Think about it,” Davies said, gaze on the scene in the courtyard. “Quinn Wentworth is as rich as Fat George, but he’s not a lord, not Quality. Penny’s solicitor friend was at the trial. He said the physician was lying through his teeth, the witnesses were all familiars. Somebody wanted Quinn Wentworth put in jail, and that same somebody saw to it that his sentence wasn’t commuted to transportation.”
Almost everybody condemned to die, even the typical manslaughterer, got a commutation. Execution was usually reserved for an outright murderer or a counterfeiter. Familiars—witnesses whom the court knew from frequent testimony—were on the take or had agreed to testify lest they be charged with a crime themselves.
“Half the nobs must owe him money,” Ned said, as the damned shackle gave way.
“They’ll still owe that money when he’s dead. Somebody hates him, worse than the Quality hate the rest of us anyway.”
An argument rose in the courtyard, between the guards and the executioner. Nobody had thought to bring out a white hood to place over the condemned man’s head.
“They even muck up a damned killing,” Ned said.
“They know he’s innocent. Even that lot know they’re doing the devil’s work today.”
“They know he’s innocent,” Ned muttered, “we know he’s innocent, and he knows he’s innocent, so why didn’t he just buy his way onto a ship?”
Davies was innocent. Ned could smell it on him, smell the stalwart bewilderment of one who’d been caught up in the crooked, stupid net of the king’s justice. Bewilderment was all that stood between Davies and the despair that made a good man give up on goodness altogether. His own, and anybody else’s too.
Mr. Wentworth wasn’t innocent in the same way, but he hadn’t killed anybody. Ned could smell that too.
“I have a theory,” Davies said. “He’s innocent, but somebody wanted him hanged—the worst death there is, much worse than a knife in an alley. If somebody is powerful enough to make that happen, despite Mr. Wentworth’s fortune, they’re powerful enough to go after his family. He has sisters and a little brother, a business partner. If Wentworth were to bolt, or get a commutation to transportation, what would happen to that lot?”
One of the guards trotted off to fetch the damned hood. Mr. Wentworth was smiling as his hands were bound.
Smiling.
“I used to want to be like him,” Ned said. “I’ll never be like him. What if your theory is wrong? What if whoever put him in here will go after his family next?”
“If they’re his family, they’ll be careful. He will have warned them and put protections in place. He’s gambling with his life that they’ll be careful enough, and that this is personal.”
“You think he knows who did this to him?”
The guard who’d gone for the hood lumbered across the gravel, a scrap of white cloth in his hand. Mr. Wentworth’s hands were secured with a yank to the rope, and the hood was placed over his head.
“He knows or suspects who’s done this to him. Don’t watch, Neddy.”
Ned couldn’t watch and he couldn’t look away. “I was starving when he got here, Davies. I wasn’t hungry anymore, hadn’t been hungry for days. I was seeing things that wasn’t there. He made me eat. Made me take a bite of meat, and when that stayed down, two bites. Nothing but meat and eggs at first, and plain, weak tea. Like he knew what it was to starve.”
The gallows was a simple crossbeam with nooses dangling from it. Under the crossbeam was a plank floor that dropped when a lever was pulled. The whole contraption was drawn out into the street for public executions. In the bare expanse of the courtyard, the same apparatus loomed like an obscene altar.
Ned wiped at his cheeks. “I wish he’d let me starve.”
The length of rope was such that the condemned dropped eighteen inches at most, not enough distance to develop the speed that would assure a quick end.
“I’d starve right along with you,” Davies said, wrapping an arm around Ned’s shoulders. “But first I’d kill a few guards, the warden, and if I ever learn who put Mr. Wentworth’s neck into that noose, I’d make very sure to kill them too.”
Thus did Newgate turn a decent man murderous. “And I’d help you.”
Up to the gallows Mr. Wentworth went, despite the hood. He was in no hurry, but certainly not dawdling either, damn him.
Damn them all, and damn this stupid, starving life.
The rope was snugged about his neck. He wore only a shirt and breeches, not even a waistcoat, because the waistcoat hanging in the wardrobe would fetch a pretty penny.
“This is wrong,” Penny said. “This is bloody, damned wrong.”
The guards lined up, as if standing straight and tall could contradict Penny’s truth. Davies’s arm tightened about Ned’s shoulders, and still, Ned could not look away.
* * *
Quinn had started to drink the laudanum Joshua had purchased for him, then thought better of it. Laudanum was in precious short supply among the incarcerated, and others needed it more than Quinn did.
Besides, why make this killing any easier for those taking a life? Why provide them a dazed, distant victim, one beyond pain, beyond reality?
So Quinn had been marched out into the courtyard only a little the worse for medication. Ned and Davies would find the laudanum in the wardrobe along with clothes and coin. No soap, though. That bequest had gone to Mrs. Wentworth.
Quinn pushed thoughts of Jane aside as the shackles were struck and the guards began arguing about the hood. Whose job was it to bring it out? Where was the damned thing? Why was this damned show taking place in the courtyard rather than on the street like a proper doin’?
The gallows were in the courtyard because Quinn had spent a thousand pounds to make it so. The warden had quietly told him that fifty thousand would not be enough to buy a commutation.
“So save your coin for your family, my friend.”
The jury had been kind as well, observing the courtesy of finding that Quinn was without resources, and thus preserving his wealth from forfeiture to the Crown. In the usual case, that had become a formality decades ago. Quinn’s was not the usual case.
The sun on Quinn’s face was kindest of all, a gentle warmth that hinted of a beautiful day.