My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella

by Grace Burrowes

  “And the armbands,” Stephen added. “Go naked from the waist up if you must, but get rid of the armbands.”

  Duncan, ever a practical fellow, busied himself pouring the brandy. He was a cousin at some remove, recruited to manage Stephen, but he had the Wentworth dark hair, blue eyes, and height. He’d come when needed and Quinn considered him family, so family he was.

  While Joshua remained a business partner.

  “A toast,” Althea said, “to Wentworth resilience.”

  To Wentworth money, which was a result of that resilience. Joshua had no doubt that Quinn’s fortune had come between him and death—this time.

  “To Wentworth resilience,” Joshua murmured. “Or should I say, to the Duke of Walden’s resilience?”

  Stephen set his glass on the tray. “He got the title too? I told you lot it was real, and you wouldn’t believe me. If Quinn’s a duke, then I’m a courtesy lord, and you have to listen to me now.”

  “If you’re a lord,” Constance retorted, “I’m a lady, and so is Althea. You’ll have to learn a whole new set of manners.”

  Stephen doubtless already knew all the protocol, all the forms of address. As fast as Duncan threw subjects at him, Stephen gobbled down the knowledge. The boy was what Quinn could have become, had Quinn been allowed to think about anything but survival.

  “Speaking of ladies,” Joshua said, “we’d all best have a seat.”

  Duncan brushed a glance at Stephen, who lived half his life seated. The women arranged themselves on the sofa, leaving the wing chairs for Joshua and Duncan. They might have been any well-to-do family enjoying a glass of cordial on somebody’s birthday.

  “You’ve said there’s more,” Althea prompted. “What could be more than a reprieve from death and a lofty title to go with it? Doubtless Quinn will have to take some neglected estate and put it to rights, probably a half dozen of them, but that’s a stroll down the lane for him.”

  The extent of the Walden debts would be a challenge even for Quinn, though exactly the sort of challenge he was equipped to meet.

  “The dukedom, as Stephen has noted, is real,” Joshua said. “In typical Quinn fashion, he’s anticipated his obligations and already found himself a duchess.” And a potential heir. Joshua would let Quinn explain that development, if any explanation were needed.

  “Quinn is engaged?” Althea asked, drink halfway to her lips.

  “Not engaged,” Joshua said, with the same direct gaze he used when he foreclosed on a mortgage. “Married. Quinn has taken a bride, and she’ll be coming to live with you here.”

  A historic beat of silence went by, for the three younger Wentworth siblings were all quiet in the same room at once.

  Stephen stared at his cordial, his lips moving in a silent pattern of what appeared to be French profanities.

  Constance muttered, “I believe I’ll have another,” and reached for the decanter.

  Althea, dignified, self-assured, lady-of-all-she-surveys Althea, spluttered her drink all over her skirts, while Duncan patted her back and said absolutely nothing.

  Chapter Eight

  “But from whence cometh your late husband’s wealth, Jane Hester?” Papa asked, for the dozenth time. “The god of Mammon is a jealous god, and you cannot think to prosper by worshipping at his altar.”

  “Not prosper, Papa,” Jane said, folding her mother’s last good shawl into the battered trunk. “Survive. An infant needs food, shelter, and safety, and I intend that my child have those blessings.”

  Before Jane had been old enough to put up her hair she’d realized that Papa used his voice as a weapon. Everything, from the piety of his King James syntax to the sheer volume of his declamations, was intended to bludgeon the conscience if not the nerves.

  She had learned to wield the same weapon, to appropriate the vocabulary of holiness and faith, and to quote scripture or misquote it as the occasion demanded.

  “You’ll bless your child with the filthy lucre of a felon?” Papa could not pace, for Jane’s quarters were too small to afford him that bit of stage business. “You’ll use Wentworth’s ill-gotten gains to surround yourself with luxuries? Did your misadventure in Scotland teach you nothing?”

  “My marriage to Gordie taught me that life is precarious, and I must provide for his offspring as best I can.”

  Papa put a hand on the bedpost as if she’d hurled a dagger at his heart. “Jane Hester, what would your mother say?”

  Get out while you can, probably. Mama had been a dutiful wife and a pragmatic mother.

  “Mama would rejoice that an innocent life will not be born into undeserved hardship. She’d be grateful that some good fortune has come my way, despite the great sorrow of Mr. Wentworth’s passing.”

  Jane had lain on her side in bed that morning and watched the sun creep down the cracked, water-stained wall. Executions were held first thing in the day, the better to accommodate a crowd that could not miss work to take in its entertainments.

  Davies had told her that Mr. Wentworth’s execution would happen in the courtyard, by some miracle of bribery, meaning Jane’s husband had died almost three hours ago.

  She could not bear to dwell on that reality for more than a moment or two.

  He’s gone. That great, complicated, beautiful beast of a man is no more.

  I’m widowed again.

  Mr. Quinn Wentworth has been put to death.

  This should have been a relief, that matters had for once proceeded in exactly the fashion promised. For the first time in her life, Jane was free, she was possessed of a small fortune, and she could order her affairs as she saw fit.

  She was anything but relieved.

  Mr. Joshua Penrose had arranged for a coach to fetch her and her “effects.” When that coach arrived, she’d be ready. Perhaps then—once she was away from these cramped, miserable quarters—she could cry for her late husband.

  “You disappoint me, Jane Hester,” Papa said in his most funereal tones. “You break your father’s heart. Sharper than the serpent’s tooth—”

  “My child would not thank me for giving birth in these surrounds when a cleaner and more wholesome alternative is available,” Jane said. “My child would not thank me for being unable to afford a trained accoucheur. My child would not thank me for—”

  Papa had taken out his handkerchief. The last, most potent weapon in his arsenal. He eschewed violence—Turn the other cheek, Jane Hester!—but his definition of violence was limited to the physical.

  Much destruction of the spirit could be rendered with mere words, with inaction, with indifference. Jane’s heart suffered a blow every time she noticed that another of Mama’s mementos had been carted off to the pawnbroker’s.

  Papa touched the worn linen to the corners of his eyes. “Jane Hester, never did I think that a daughter of mine would seek worldly riches, much less worldly riches of such an unfortunate origin. I shall pray nightly for Mr. Wentworth’s soul, but I shall pray without ceasing for yours.”

  Jane tried mentally counting to three and praying for patience, her mother’s preferred prescription for life’s aggravations. No patience was to be found where Papa’s posturing was concerned, not today, not when Quinn Wentworth was likely being measured for a shroud.

  She closed the trunk and fastened the straps, then dragged its dead weight from the bed.

  “And for your grandchild, Papa? Will you pray for that innocent soul as well? Will you give thanks that even as Mr. Wentworth faced certain death, his concern was for a child he’d never have a chance to know? Will you be grateful that I was not forced to take up with another Gordie, or worse, simply to keep body and soul together?”

  Papa folded his handkerchief, his gesture a well-rehearsed study in sorrow.

  “I have made inquiries regarding Mr. Wentworth, Jane Hester. His antecedents are most irregular, and all agree the source of his initial fortune is unsavory. You leave this house without my blessing.”

  She was supposed to apologize and beg Pap
a’s forgiveness, for leaving, for having been widowed, for a lack of faith in the very Deity who had taken both Mama and Gordie before Jane had been prepared to deal with either loss.

  “Judge not, Papa, lest you be judged. I’ve left my direction with Mrs. Sandbridge downstairs. You will always be welcome to visit in my home.”

  Not to dwell there. Mr. Wentworth had made that clear.

  Mr. Wentworth, who was dead.

  Jane used the fury that thought inspired to wrench the trunk across the floor—she hadn’t the strength to lift it—and to the top of the stairs. Papa sat on the bed looking forlorn and bewildered, which he did well.

  What sort of father watches a pregnant daughter wrestle a heavy trunk and lifts not a finger to help her?

  The question popped into Jane’s head in Quinn Wentworth’s voice. She hoped she’d be hearing that voice frequently in the coming years, because she had genuinely liked her late husband. She’d respected him, and she was endlessly, endlessly grateful to him.

  Getting the trunk down the stairs was a noisy business—thunk, scrape, thunk, scrape—and Jane was put in mind of the steps a convicted felon climbed to ascend the gallows.

  Light-headedness assailed her. She knew better than to ignore it, so she sat on the trunk in the foyer until coach wheels and shod hooves clattered to a halt in the street. A large conveyance judging from the racket, not a mean little gig.

  Jane rose—slowly, always slowly—waited a moment, then cracked the door.

  A smart black town coach drawn by four matched grays sat at the foot of the steps. The coachman and grooms wore black livery trimmed in red, and the coach’s appointments were also done in black with crimson piping.

  Lucifer would arrive in such a conveyance, somber and dashing at the same time.

  “I have grown fanciful,” Jane muttered, grabbing her cloak and opening the door wider. In truth, she was famished, but had dared only half a slice of dry toast with a few sips of ale to break her fast.

  She had not met Mr. Penrose. She’d communicated with him only in writing, and thus when a largish gentleman stepped down from the coach, she wasn’t shocked. He was attired in sober perfection for the time of day, top hat brushed to a sleek shine that matched equally handsome boots.

  His linen was immaculate, his clothing exquisitely tailored. His arrival on this street would be talked about for days, so uncommon a sight was he. The fellow knew how to make an impression, and his height helped in that regard. Put a high-crowned beaver hat on a man as tall as Mr. Wentworth had been…

  A queer feeling came over Jane as the gentleman mounted the porch steps. The same mental dislocation that an impending faint caused, though she wasn’t dizzy.

  “Mr. Wentworth.” And not a version of Mr. Wentworth who had any concern regarding his liberty or his continued existence. A splendidly turned-out version of a splendidly self-possessed, handsome man.

  “Mrs. Wentworth.”

  Same deep voice, same steady blue eyes that gave nothing away.

  Jane pitched into her husband and wrapped him in a tight hug.

  “You are alive. Thank heavens, you are alive.” She wept tears of joy and relief, wrinkling his cravat, breathing in the lovely, lovely scent of him. “You did not die. I am so glad you did not die. You are alive.”

  He drew Jane aside, so two footmen could take her trunk down the steps, but Jane could not turn loose of him.

  “I was pardoned,” Mr. Wentworth said. “I take it you regard this as a cheering development?”

  Jane squeezed him again, though hugging him was like hugging a stone cross. “I am ecstatic to see you hale and at liberty, sir. Nothing could please me more. A pardon—a royal pardon, I take it. You are so wonderfully alive.”

  She beamed up at him, while he regarded her coolly. “I rejoice to be alive. Have you only the one trunk?”

  Five words? He gave his resurrection from the dead a mere five words? Jane used the sleeve of her cloak to dry her eyes, until a square of white linen, initials monogrammed in red silk on one corner, was dangled before her.

  “My mother’s cedar chest is at the pawnshop.” An inane reply. Mama’s hand mirror, her jewelry box, her earbobs, her writing desk—they all gathered dust at the pawnshop. “The one trunk suffices.”

  “Then let’s be on our way. We have matters to discuss.”

  He offered his arm, Jane took it and descended to the waiting coach. Before she gathered her skirts to climb into the most elegant conveyance she’d ever beheld, she spared her former home a final inspection.

  Papa stood in the doorway, his expression blank. Jane felt again the compulsion to apologize, to beg forgiveness, to protect Papa’s dignity even at the cost of her own.

  Mr. Wentworth waited in silence, Jane’s hand on his arm. A footman stared straight ahead; not even the horses dared fidget.

  Jane did not know her husband at all. Having her for a wife might be a great inconvenience to him now. Having him for a husband might be something of an inconvenience as well.

  Oh, dear.

  She climbed into the coach and settled onto the padded comfort of the front-facing seat. Her husband took the place beside her, rapped the roof once with a gloved fist, and the coachman gave the horses leave to walk on.

  * * *

  As Quinn’s town coach pulled away from the curb, his wife—his duchess—let down the shade over the window.

  “All of London will soon know we’re married,” he said. “Not much use trying to hide.”

  Jane sat back. “The sun causes everything to fade. I close curtains out of habit.”

  She looked tired, and Quinn was growing to hate her damned gray cloak. “I prefer curtains and windows open in all but the coldest weather.”

  They regarded one another, two strangers now legally one flesh.

  Jane’s joy at seeing Quinn had been unexpected and not entirely welcome. Not entirely unwelcome, either.

  She no longer radiated exultation. “We hardly know each other, Mr. Wentworth.”

  Quinn knew she needed help, knew she’d been genuinely glad to see him. Those factors alone would not have sent him to her doorstep, but he also knew she was with child. The evidence of her pregnancy had been pressed to his very person, and yet, her father had watched her departure with complete indifference.

  “We have time to become better acquainted,” Quinn said, though they’d be at Joshua’s town house in less than an hour. “What would you like to know?”

  She rolled up the window shade. “Do you have children?”

  Interesting place to start. “I do not—yet.” This topic needed to be raised. With Quinn’s family underfoot, the requisite privacy for such a discussion would be scarce. “We are married, Jane.”

  “I was present at the ceremony, Mr. Wentworth.”

  Quinn had been present in body. He still wasn’t sure where his wits had got off to. “Do you intend to honor your vows?”

  She fussed with her cloak, the dreariest excuse for an outer garment Quinn had beheld in years. The wool would keep her warm even when wet, and thus qualified as that most offensive of wardrobe items, the practical garment.

  “What are you asking me, sir?”

  “You did not anticipate becoming my wife in truth, did not anticipate sharing a household with me. The marriage can be annulled, for a sum.” He would make this offer, though it rankled. Vows were vows.

  “You are correct that I did not foresee myself married to you, and in the general case, I dislike surprises. What if I said yes, I’d like an annulment?”

  Quinn would be disappointed, but not surprised. In the course of this long and strange morning, he’d been plagued by regrets and memories, though among the flotsam in his mind had also been treasure: Jane had kissed him on their wedding day.

  Kissed him like she’d meant it from the heart.

  She had trusted him to safeguard her future, taken him at his word, and never once inquired into his guilt. Quinn knew better than to hope for some marital
fairy tale, but her kiss had been stubbornly unforgettable.

  “If you want an annulment,” he said, “I’ll notify the requisite bishop, and you’ll have your freedom. The sum put in trust for you will remain yours to do with as you please.”

  For yet more sums, any word of their prison ceremony would be stricken from memory, and Quinn would go on with his life as before, getting and spending.

  While he also hunted the varlet who’d sent him to an ignominious death.

  “Would you like an annulment?” she asked, folding her hands over her belly. “If you’re laboring under the notion that a gentleman doesn’t cry off, you needn’t be so delicate.”

  She thought him a gentleman? “I spoke vows, Jane. I keep my word. At times, my word has been the only possession I had of any value. Once broken, it will never mend as strong as it was before. I make an exception in the case of our vows because nobody could have foreseen that I’d walk out of that prison. If you decide to honor your promises, then we will be man and wife in every meaningful sense.”

  She wiggled around on the bench, like a hen on a nesting box. “Do you drink to excess?”

  Gordie MacGowan deserved to roast in hell. “I drink strong spirits only sparingly. The last time I got drunk I was twelve years old.”

  “Would you raise your hand to me in anger?”

  On second thought, hell was too good for MacGowan. “I will never raise my hand to you. I will probably raise my voice, and you are free to do likewise in response.”

  She considered Quinn frankly, and he resisted the urge to look away. “I might enjoy that,” she said. “Shouting matches instead of sermonizing would be a novelty. I might enjoy that rather a lot.”

  In her shabby cloak and mended gloves, Jane was yet dignified. Quinn liked that about her. Liked that she could interrogate him despite the upheaval of the day—she’d had a shock, after all—and he liked that his finery hadn’t intimidated her. He’d also like more of her kisses, provided those kisses were freely given.

  “Shall we be married, Jane? I will never be a doting swain, never shower you with flattery or romantic nonsense. You and your children will know every material comfort, and I’ll make every effort not to annoy you.”