“Thank you.”
Quinn draped himself around her from behind, a large, warm, solid presence. Jane could lean against him and truly relax as his hand drifted from her neck to her shoulders to her back to her derriere.
“I want to touch you too, Quinn.”
“Time for that later.”
He was tall enough to be able to both kiss Jane and insinuate a hand between her legs. She wasn’t on her back—Quinn was everywhere supporting her, and yet, she was frustrated too.
She could not touch him, other than to run a hand over his muscular flank or wrap her fingers around his wrist.
He took that frustration and used it to enflame her longing for him. He teased, he explored, he kissed, and caressed, until Jane was panting and writhing against his hand. She’d never been this bothered previously, this desperate.
She expected Quinn to slip himself inside her at any moment—now would do nicely—and ease the ache he’d built, to make love with her. His fingers were slick between her legs, almost penetrating, then dancing away.
He did something—the merest whisper of a touch—and lightning struck Jane from within.
“That’s it, then,” he murmured against her neck. “I have ye now.”
Lightning could strike twice, and three times, and as often as Quinn Wentworth chose to make it happen. He set up a rhythm that counterpointed Jane’s breathing and the undulations of her hips, until all of her focus centered on where Quinn touched her.
Pleasure ambushed Jane, a breathtaking gift cascading through her, a shock and a wonder.
Also a revelation. She lay panting against Quinn, his hand a comfort over her sex. Her heartbeat throbbed beneath that hand, while her mind was flung to the farthest, brightest corners of creation.
Quinn kissed her temple. “Will ye survive?” He was pleased with himself, the great beast.
Jane heaved over to lie against him. She was pleased too, but he was leaving in the morning, and the moment presented opportunities that might not return for weeks.
“I have questions, Quinn.”
The self-satisfaction sighed out of him. “Will they keep, those questions? After such pleasures, you’ve earned a respite.”
Ah, a respite. He wasn’t through, then. “Yes, they’ll keep. Suffice it to say…”
He kissed her, and Jane kissed him back, even as whatever thought she’d been about to express—pity for her first husband, gratitude to her second—flew out of her head. She fell asleep cradled in Quinn’s arms, warm, wonderstruck, and determined to have some answers.
* * *
Quinn’s early morning escape was thwarted by nothing less than the hand of God, or so it felt when Reverend Winston was ushered into the breakfast parlor by a bleary-eyed Kristoff.
“Good morning,” Quinn said, as Kristoff laid another setting to the left of the head of the table, Jane’s customary place being to Quinn’s right. “I hope you’ll join me for a meal.”
Winston wore his usual rumpled, righteous mien. The breakfast parlor was redolent of warm toast and bacon, though, and the reverend took the proffered chair at his host’s left hand.
“A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss,” Winston said. “A visit from my prodigal daughter wouldn’t go amiss either.”
False paternal martyrdom was a sure way to drive Quinn onto the Great North Road, but Winston was family now, and he had answers to questions Quinn hadn’t been able to put to Jane.
“Newlyweds,” Quinn said. “We’re an inconsiderate lot. Then too, Jane needs her rest.”
Kristoff put a plate of steaming eggs and bacon before the reverend. Quinn passed over the butter, full pot of tea, and the rack of toast, then flicked a glance at his footman. Kristoff withdrew and closed the door.
“How is my Jane Hester?” Mr. Winston asked. “A father worries.”
This father had been waiting in his musty garret for more than two weeks for Jane to crawl home. Quinn had taken a solitary tour of Jane’s former abode when Winston had been off dispensing bibles and blame and the landlady had been at market. The upper apartment was the last, painfully tidy stop before the coach to penury reached its destination. The landlady’s quarters on the ground floor had been more commodious.
Quinn’s subsequent interview with the neighborhood pawnbroker had been illuminating.
“Jane is coping with much change,” he said. “My family has not had a genteel guiding hand, ever, and neither have I. If you’d tell me about Jane’s mother, I’d be grateful.”
Jane had mentioned her mother only in passing, and those mentions had been shadowed with grief.
Winston put down his fork. “I have a miniature.” He withdrew a small likeness from his coat pocket, the typical oval in a cheap gilt frame. “That’s my Hester. Sweetest woman God ever made, taken much, much too soon.”
The face smiling up at Quinn was indeed sweet. Kindness shone from her eyes, as did a glimmer of humor. She resembled Jane about the mouth and chin, though her gaze lacked the snapping alertness Jane turned on the world.
Quinn passed the miniature back. “Would you allow me to have a copy made of this painting?”
The portrait disappeared into Winston’s right pocket. “That is my only likeness of my Hester. I don’t typically let it out of my sight.”
“You would be welcome to watch the artist at work. He wouldn’t even need to remove the painting from the frame.”
Still, Winston’s gaze was guarded. “I’ll think about it. When will you bring Jane around to visit her old papa?”
The urge to coerce was instinctive: When will you allow her to have an image of her mother? In the alternative, Quinn could nick that portrait from Winston’s pocket without the pastor even realizing the painting had been removed from his person.
Would serve the old hypocrite right too, though Winston’s devotion to his wife’s memory seemed genuine.
“I’ll ask you again at a more opportune time,” Quinn said. “I suspect a copy of that little painting would be the finest wedding gift you might offer Jane.”
Another fine gift would be one genuine smile, aimed at Jane with sincere approval. Her words came back to Quinn: I love your smile. That Jane should be starved for smiles was wrong.
That Quinn was eyeing the clock, hoping to leave for York before Jane rose, was more wrong still. He wanted a few days to enjoy the memories Jane had given him before he submitted to her interrogation.
“I hear you’ve assumed a title,” Winston said around a mouthful of bacon. “A lofty title. News is all over the prison, and the guards say it’s true. My Jane is a duchess.”
She’s not your Jane. “The fellows at the College of Arms tell me I’m stuck with the title, and with the debts amassed by the entailed estate.” Which were, indeed, substantial.
Under Duncan’s supervision, two clerks were reviewing the ducal ledgers for fraudulent charges, double entries, overcharges, and bookkeeping “errors.” In Quinn’s estimation, the estate had been pilfered by disloyal subordinates more than it had been mismanaged by the aging titleholder. When the old fellow had died, the pilfering had expanded into outright pillaging.
Constance and Althea would delight in cleaning house at the family’s newly acquired seat in Yorkshire, though that would leave Quinn more privacy with Jane in London, which would not do.
“I could use a spot of marmalade.” Winston applied butter to his toast as if caulking a ship of the line for a voyage to China. “A duchess should have pin money.”
Quinn’s eggs curdled in his belly. “I’m well aware of what I owe my wife.”
He owed her the truth regarding his past and his plans, likely the only debt he’d never repay. He rose to retrieve more bacon from the sideboard for his guest.
Winston aimed the butter knife at Quinn. “I am here as Jane’s father, to ensure those responsibilities are generously met. You, by contrast, took advantage of a grieving young woman’s disordered thinking, the better to enjoy her favors when your circumstances were d
ire. You all but made a harlot of my daughter, man’s capacity for selfish pleasures being undaunted even by the prospect—”
“Shut yer filthy mouth, old man.”
Winston set down the knife. “You reveal your true colors, Mr. Wentworth.”
“When you sit at my table, you will refer to me and to your daughter as Your Grace. If you ever again use the word ‘harlot’ in the same house where my duchess dwells, I will do you the courtesy of teaching you to fly out of windows, like the winged angels whom you will never meet. You come here pretending to ask after Jane, but it’s her coin that interests you. How much do you need?”
“How dare you?” Winston retorted. “Accusing me, Jane’s father and only living relative, of having no more—”
Quinn snatched the carving knife from the ham platter and hurled the blade such that it embedded itself into the table two inches from Winston’s elbow.
“How much?”
Winston’s gaze went from Quinn’s face to the hilt vibrating subtly amid the lace runners, crystal, and silver. The bombast went out of the reverend, replaced with fear and what might have been bewilderment. He’d scurry off to his holy callings, then gather his courage and his favorite self-deceptions, and be back spouting his pious venom.
“I wanted to redeem a cedar chest from the pawnshop,” Winston said. “Belonged to my wife. I thought one day, Jane might…that is…”
The chest was in the housekeeper’s parlor, awaiting a thorough cleaning. Quinn hoped to locate a hand mirror, two shawls, a jewelry box, and pearl earbobs as well.
“Last chance,” Quinn said. “How much?”
“Five pounds.”
“You need that five pounds because you are in arrears on your rent,” Quinn said, setting the plate of bacon before his father-in-law. “You haven’t paid the coal man since the first of the year, and your credit at the chophouse is gone. Instead of honest work carrying hod or tutoring the sons of merchants, you make a pestilence of yourself among the most unfortunate creatures ever to be incarcerated. You cling to your respectability like a terrier with a rat. Be glad I value that respectability for Jane’s sake.”
A soft click warned Quinn to leave unspoken the remaining half dozen dire admonitions he had for the reverend.
“Good morning.” Jane stood in the doorway, looking pale and severe. “Papa, good of you to call. Your Grace, I trust I’m not interrupting.”
Quinn had hoped to slip away before Jane rose, or, failing that, hoped to take a pleasant leave of her. Ah, well. So much for hoping, as usual.
“I’ll be on my way soon.”
She didn’t so much as look at him, but she’d troubled over her appearance this morning. For Jane, this meant a slightly more intricate braid in her coiffure, and a lace shawl rather than the wool she normally favored.
And about her eyes, a surprising touch of self-consciousness.
Quinn held her chair and bent to brush a kiss to her cheek. “You’re looking well this morning.”
“Thank you.”
Across the table, Winston ploughed through the remainder of his eggs. He might have made a grab for the rest of the toast but Quinn set the rack before Jane’s plate, along with the butter and the honeypot. From the sideboard he retrieved a cellar of ground cinnamon mixed with sugar, for this was how Jane liked her toast.
“Tea, madam?”
“Please.”
She typically took the first cup plain. If that sat well, she would add a dash of sugar to her subsequent two cups. Quinn liked knowing these details about her, though he wondered what details she was hoarding up about him.
Threatens old men simply for being lazy and selfish.
Leaves a new wife to fend for herself among the Visigoths barely a fortnight after the wedding.
Avoids intimacies with said wife, though that nearly costs him his sanity.
Hurls carving knives across the breakfast table.
“How are you, Papa?” Jane asked.
“Quite busy,” Winston replied. “I’ve been asked to substitute for Mr. Carruthers on the last Sunday of the month. The sermon topic is turning the other cheek.”
“One of your favorites,” Jane said, sprinkling cinnamon over her toast. She murmured appropriately as her father sailed forth on a wind of scripture and self-importance, and Quinn stayed long enough to know that Jane’s toast agreed with her this morning.
And then, lest he put off leaving for another day, he rose. “I must be on my way. I’ll bid you both farewell.”
Jane stood as well, too fast for Quinn to hold her chair. “I’ll see you out. Papa, I’ll be right back.”
The coachman had been walking the team up and down the street for the past twenty minutes. Tarrying with Jane wasn’t on Quinn’s schedule.
“You needn’t see me off,” he said. “You and your father doubtless have catching up to do.”
Jane turned on him that patient, determined expression that wasn’t so much a glower as it was a portent of doom. She was mentally counting to three. He was coming to know the look.
“Don’t be silly, Your Grace. A wife wishes her husband farewell.”
Well, damn. Quinn bowed her through the door, pausing only to offer his hand to his father-in-law and give the reverend a pat on the shoulder in passing.
“Good to see you, sir,” Quinn said, “and you will please forgive my earlier harsh words. I am protective of my wife’s peace.”
“As well you should be,” Winston replied around a mouthful of bacon. “Good day.”
Jane would have walked Quinn to the front door, but he stopped with her at the foot of the stairs.
“Duncan will take the coach to the bank,” Quinn said. “I’m leaving through the wine cellar. A precaution, only.”
Jane leaned close, as if inspecting the folds of Quinn’s cravat. “Papa asked for money, didn’t he? That was doubtless difficult for him.”
“He was working up to it. You are not to pass him a single farthing, Jane. He’s in good health, he’s literate, and I won’t let him starve or jeopardize his respectability. Somebody in your family needs to at least look the genteel part.”
Jane braced her forehead against Quinn’s chest. “I’m sorry. He wasn’t always like this.”
Time to go, before she could change the sub—
“I’ll miss you,” she added, kissing Quinn’s cheek. “And I’ll dream of you. Very bad of me to drift off like that last night.”
She was asking Quinn a question, and he needed to leave.
“Your father might have dropped this,” Quinn said, withdrawing an oval miniature from his pocket. “That is your mother, isn’t it?”
“Mama?” Jane took the portrait carefully, as if it might break when it had doubtless traveled safely in Winston’s pocket for years. “I haven’t seen this in ages. I thought he pawned it.” She traced a finger over the glass as a tear trickled down her cheek. “The likeness is good. Very good.”
“You should have a copy made before you return it. Your father would thank you. Little treasures have a way of going missing.” Little treasures like Jane’s entire inheritance from her mother, according to the pawnbroker.
Jane clasped the miniature to her heart. “Excellent suggestion.”
“Duncan knows some artists. Consult with him, and now I really must be on my way.” Quinn allowed himself one taste of Jane’s lips—cinnamon and sweetness—and then he descended the steps two at a time.
Chapter Sixteen
“I give Quinn a head start,” Duncan said, shrugging into his greatcoat. “Then I go to the bank in his place. Most will assume Quinn is the fellow climbing into the town coach and trotting up the steps to the bank’s side entrance. He’s an exceptionally wealthy man and exceptionally attached to his privacy. This is simply how he leaves London if he must travel on business.”
Jane needed to get back to the breakfast parlor before Papa took to admiring the silver and forgetting that he’d slipped a place setting into his pocket. She also neede
d to take advantage of Duncan’s willingness to talk.
“Does Quinn travel often?”
“Yes, and then he bides here in London for months at a time. I expect the dukedom will mean considerably more racketing about.”
Duncan was nearly as tall as Quinn and equally broad-shouldered, but more civilized. Whereas Quinn’s hair was sable, Duncan’s was russet brown. Quinn’s gaze was fierce, Duncan’s watchful and intelligent. He tended more to leanness than muscle, but Jane suspected he’d be just as quick as Quinn with wits or fists.
She ought to like Duncan, for despite all the scrapping and bickering Quinn’s siblings did, she liked them. He was certainly attractive, though where Quinn and Stephen unapologetically attired themselves in Bond Street splendor, Duncan’s clothing was noteworthy for its plainness. No trio of gold watch chains, no elegant silver cravat pin or nacre buttons—nothing that called attention to him.
And yet, in his sober demeanor, in his understated dress, in his dedication to developing Stephen’s prodigious intellect, Duncan had a dignity all his own. The siblings teased each other, and they even occasionally twitted Quinn, but they did not make jests at Duncan’s expense—ever.
Someday, when Jane was feeling very brave, she’d ask him why his career with the church had been cut short, and if tutoring Stephen was a penance or a reward.
“Does Quinn take along any of his trusty running footmen when he travels?” She kept her voice down lest Papa eavesdrop while he pilfered the silver.
“Two, and they are both armed, as are his outriders and grooms. They know you expect His Grace to be guarded at all times. The traveling coach is a rolling arsenal and he changes teams frequently. He’ll come home, Jane, safe and whole. He always does.”
Jane refrained from pointing out the obvious: Quinn had nearly gone to his celestial reward a fortnight past.
“Shall I bid the reverend good day?” Duncan asked. “One doesn’t want to give offense, and he has become family of a sort.”
Was there no privacy in this house? “You’d best not. Papa exerts gravity in the form of other people’s good manners, and then you’ve spent half your morning listening to his well-rehearsed thoughts on woman’s responsibility for original sin. Can you have a copy made of this painting for me?”
My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella Page 17