My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella

by Grace Burrowes

  She showed Duncan the miniature, though she resented that another’s gaze should fall on Mama’s countenance when Jane had been deprived of that pleasure for so long.

  “How soon do you need it?” No comment on the resemblance to Jane, though Duncan flicked a speculative gaze over her features.

  “The sooner the better, and let’s have two copies while we’re about it.” Because Papa lost what mattered to Jane most and took her treasures and memories ’round to the pawn shop when she was napping.

  Jane told herself that Mama’s personal effects evoked painful memories for Papa, and that Mama would have wanted him to be happy. Those excuses had worn thin before Mama’s second-best shawl had disappeared.

  Duncan pulled on his gloves, the briskness of the gesture reminiscent of Quinn departing for a day at the bank.

  “Quinn has brought the reverend’s accounts up to date,” he said, “including his rent and his arrears at the chophouse. Your father is also to be paid a quarterly stipend. You must promise me you’ll act surprised if Quinn ever tells you that himself.”

  Duncan’s tone was severe, though in his blue eyes Jane detected a hint of devilment. He was teasing her, as none of the other Wentworths had, taking her into his confidence and treating her as family. The tears that had started when she’d seen her mother’s portrait threatened again.

  “I’m not surprised at Quinn’s generosity, though I’m very, very pleased.”

  “Quinn’s generosity required a bit of prompting,” Duncan said, taking up a gold-tipped walking stick. “Though only a bit. You would never have asked Quinn to look after your father, which point was made to Quinn at a moment when he was receptive to suggestions.”

  He tapped his hat onto his head, and that gesture too put Jane in mind of Quinn.

  “You are a new recruit to the Wentworth ranks,” Duncan said. “They are my cousins and I love them dearly, but five years after joining this household, I still often feel as if we must be from different species, much less from different families.”

  He surveyed himself in the mirror above the sideboard, and in the angle of his hat, in his posture, and in his grip on the walking stick, he was every inch a Wentworth male.

  “I feel it only fair to warn you,” he went on, “Quinn cannot abide a sneak. The first time you pawned a bracelet, he’d notice, and there wouldn’t be a second time.”

  Jane owned no bracelets, and Duncan’s gaze held no mischief now. He was warning Jane not to violate Quinn’s trust—and perhaps not to violate his own—though the warnings were unnecessary.

  “Hold still,” she said, freeing a fold of Duncan’s cravat from the lapel of his coat. “You don’t want to arrive to the bank wrinkled.…” She gave his chest a pat. “Better.” For an instant Jane wondered if she’d given offense, so pure was the consternation in Duncan’s gaze.

  “Thank you.” He tucked the miniature into his pocket. “Stephen is looking forward to your first lesson in the effective use of firearms later today.”

  “Then Stephen is bound to be disappointed. I’ll see you at supper.” For Duncan always attended family meals, usually in the capacity of referee or scorekeeper. One wondered what Duncan truly thought and felt. With the younger Wentworths, one never wondered.

  “I’d best protect the cutlery from Papa’s admiration,” Jane said. “Until this evening.”

  Duncan bowed and strode for the front door, and even in his walk he had something of Quinn’s air. Perhaps that was appropriate. If anything happened to Quinn and Stephen—angels forefend!—Duncan would become the Duke of Walden.

  * * *

  “Will it stink like this all the way to York?” Ned asked.

  “You’re smelling Smithfield Market,” Quinn replied, as the coach turned onto St. John Street. “In the course of a year, a million sheep and tens of thousands of cattle are penned on less than five acres.”

  “Bloody lot of sheep shit,” Ned said, wrinkling his nose. “Whose idea was it to put a livestock market in the middle of London?”

  Long ago, Quinn’s view of life had been equally circumscribed by inexperience. He’d known his neighborhood, then his town. The transition to working at the Tipton estate in the Yorkshire countryside had left him feeling very much a man of the world.

  And then, very much a fool.

  “The market was established when London was still contained within the City walls,” Quinn said, “hundreds of years ago. I expect it will move eventually.” Somebody would make a lot of money when that happened.

  Ned’s nose remained pressed to the glass. “Tell ’em to move it downwind.”

  That commonsense suggestion bore the inklings of profit. The livestock market would be moved someday not because of the stink—Londoners were far from delicate when it came to the city’s myriad stenches—but because slaughtering that many animals created the sort of waste that threatened water supplies and public health.

  Had Quinn not left Jane less than a quarter hour earlier, he’d have turned his mind to where—downwind of London—a livestock market might ideally be located, and how he could quietly buy that land now. Such a purchase might not yield a profit for decades, but profit and patience often went hand in hand.

  Instead of land development schemes, Quinn’s head was full of regrets. He wished he’d lingered with Jane in bed. He wished he’d not left her to deal with her father alone. He wished he’d lectured Duncan at length—at greater length—about the need to ease Jane’s transition into a family that knew nothing of gentility.

  “You miss her?” Ned asked, breathing on the window, then drawing his finger through the condensation.

  “Would you like to ride on the roof, Ned?” Quinn used his most quelling tones, which would have had any bank employee trembling in his boots. “Two hundred miles of stink, wind, and rain might teach you to keep impertinent questions to yourself.”

  Ned wiped his palm over the window, erasing the lopsided W he’d drawn. “I miss her. Miss Jane is that sort of female. I hear her in me head, reminding me to wash behind me ears. I feel her hand brushing the hair outta me eyes.”

  Oh, yes. Jane was that sort of female. “Stop smudging up my windows and pay attention.”

  Ned grinned and breathed on the window again, but before he made another streak, Quinn snatched him onto the opposite bench.

  “You will comport yourself according to my rules, Ned, or I’ll toss you out of the coach now. You can go back to sleeping in church doorways and hoping you don’t wake up in a brothel.”

  Quinn had had that experience when he’d been about Ned’s age. His abductors had neglected to tie his feet, leaving him free to break a window and hare off.

  I hate that I must return to the north. The Walden ducal seat was not far from York, and even closer to the Tipton estate.

  “The abbesses won’t get me,” Ned said, kicking his boots against the bench. “I’m too fast.” His gaze had gone flat, suggesting he too had had a near miss.

  “They can make another attempt, so test my patience at your peril. While we’re traveling, you don’t refer to me as Mr. Wentworth or Your Grace. You don’t gossip with the stable boys. You keep your gob shut or I’ll leave you in Yorkshire, where winter starts in September and doesn’t let up until May.”

  A child living on the streets knew to fear the cold.

  Ned popped off the bench and resumed peering out the window. “Miss Jane would fetch me home, and she’d ring a peal over your head if you left me behind.”

  True, and a comforting thought. “I’ve faced the hangman, young Edward. A nattering female holds no terror for me.” Not that Jane nattered. She chided, she teased, she sighed, she counted to three, and she yawned.

  She nestled against her husband in the night, as trusting as a kitten and a hundred times more dear.

  “What’s York like?”

  Like an ancient slice of hell, for a hungry boy with no safe place to lay his head. The enormous edifice known as the York Minster cast its shadow over
the entire city, a looming presence that marked a site even the Romans had used as a gathering place.

  Quinn hated the damned thing, hated its sheer size and durability.

  “York is a cathedral town, with Roman fortifications, much like London and St. Paul’s, though York Minster is older than the present version of St. Paul’s by centuries. Why the Vikings didn’t knock the damned walls down and use the lot to build a mead hall, I’ve no idea.”

  Ned continued to gawk as they crossed the New Road. Stretches of open fields ran between groups of houses, and the great bustling institution of the Angel Inn held pride of place on the corner.

  The empty feeling in Quinn’s belly grew worse. Perhaps he could send Jane a letter or two, though what could he say? Don’t forget your ginger biscuits in the morning. Trust no one except family.

  “You’d have the barbarians tear down God’s house?” Ned asked.

  “You see the Minster as God’s house. I see it as a place I wasn’t allowed to set foot on even the coldest winter nights, when I was no older than you. I see it as a fantastic monument to man’s conceit, upon which many a coin has been spent while children starved in its shadow.”

  In every regard, the thought of York during daylight left Quinn feeling hemmed in, cramped, and uncomfortable. At night, the town expanded. All the winding streets, narrow alleys, and crumbling walls became so much darkness, where possibilities multiplied, most of them lucrative and dangerous, and some of them even legal.

  “Stick close to me on this journey, Ned.” Quinn pushed the hair away from the boy’s eyes. “Don’t wander off, don’t explore, don’t investigate.”

  “Right,” Ned said, wiggling out of fussing range. “Not my town, not my turf. Best watch meself.”

  “Watch me,” Quinn said, as the coach picked up speed. “Don’t let me out of your sight if we go abroad. If John Coachman summons you to the livery, you stick to him like a cocklebur.”

  “Ned Cocklebur. I like it.”

  The boy would likely vanish a dozen times in the course of the journey. Jane would kill Quinn if anything happened to Ned, assuming Quinn lived long enough to return to her side.

  * * *

  When Jane rejoined her father, Kristoff was at attention by the sideboard, and no carving knife protruded from the breakfast table. Very little of the bacon had survived Papa’s appetite, which suggested a significant portion was secreted in a table napkin somewhere on his person.

  “What has you out and about so early today, Papa?” Jane asked, as Kristoff held her chair. Why did Papa never observe that courtesy?

  “The Lord’s work, of course. We can’t all slumber the morning away, Jane Hester. Your husband lacks couth.”

  “If Quinn’s manner was less than genteel, he was doubtless sorely provoked.”

  Papa chewed with the focus of a squirrel, gesturing with his toast to hold the floor. Mama had scolded him for that very mannerism many times. Jane sent up a prayer for patience.

  “A man who will hurl knives at family members is no fit influence on my grandchild, Jane Hester.” The same knife now lay innocently beside the ham, and Kristoff’s expression was professionally blank. “I cannot dissuade you from giving credence to this farce of a marriage, but I intend to be a conscientious guardian of your offspring’s morals. Make no mistake about that.”

  Papa had also appointed himself guardian of the butter. Jane took what remained in the butter dish and dabbed it on her toast.

  “You will always be welcome to visit, Papa.” She forced herself to recite that invitation, though the habit of deference was growing harder to maintain. He means well, and he has suffered much. One…two…

  “To visit? Jane, do you forget the terms of your late husband’s will?”

  “You claimed I was too overset by grief to make sense of it, so of course I’m not familiar with every detail. I inherited what few possessions Gordie had, and those promptly disappeared to the pawnshop.” Without her permission, not that Gordie had had much. Still, his regimental sword might have meant something to his only child.

  Or to his grieving, overset widow.

  “One doesn’t provide a soldier a proper Christian burial without paying for the service. Will you leave me any butter?”

  Kristoff set a fresh pat by Papa’s elbow.

  “Thank you, Kristoff,” Jane said. “If Gordie intended to direct the details of this child’s upbringing, he should have had the decency to remain alive and be a father.”

  Papa set down his toast and bowed his head. Jane took a sip of her tea rather than ask what troubled him. A frustrated thespian inclination troubled him, certainly, and, considering how much food he’d consumed, his belly might also be protesting.

  “Jane, I will overlook your disrespectful tone because your condition is delicate and you are newly widowed. Trust me when I assure you that Gordie MacGowan expected me to serve as guardian of his child, should the Almighty grant the infant life. Reconcile yourself to respecting your late husband’s wishes in at least this regard, and know that you too will always be welcome under my roof.”

  He aimed a gentle smile at her, and Jane nearly pitched the honeypot at him.

  “Very generous of you, Papa, though I’m sure my current husband will be happy to provide for the child whom my previous husband left half orphaned.”

  “Your current husband is a barbarian. No grandchild of mine—”

  The first cup of tea was sitting well enough, but the conversation was stirring in Jane a long-simmering rage. Papa could no more provide for a grandchild than he’d been able to provide for a daughter, and that was not Quinn Wentworth’s fault.

  “My husband might lack couth in your opinion,” Jane said, arranging her toast on her plate, “but he has every bit of my loyalty. Because you are apparently out of sorts today, I’ll leave you to finish your meal in peace. Feel free to call again anytime, Papa, but don’t expect me to listen to you insult my husband.”

  Jane gathered up her tea and toast, sent Kristoff a visual warning not to leave the room until Papa was done gorging himself, and took her breakfast up to her apartment.

  She had wanted to start the day with her husband, possibly even making love with her husband. She had wanted to apologize for falling asleep. She had wanted to tell Quinn that her rest had been sound for the first time in weeks, and that she would miss him.

  Her toast was half gone before she admitted that under ideal circumstances, she would have asked Quinn to write to her—even demanded a note or two from him. York was hundreds of miles away, and the king’s highway was dangerous.

  A wife worried.

  Jane ate the rest of her toast, mentally composing a letter to Quinn and getting nowhere. Why didn’t you finish what we started? Why not waken me with kisses? When will you come home? Provoking a disagreement with her husband would be foolish and pointless, so she didn’t even try to put that sentiment in writing. Let bygones be bygones.

  The maids had yet to tidy up the bedroom, so Jane took her plate to the sideboard to be collected later. She washed her hands behind the privacy screen and reached for the cloth bunched beside the basin.

  Somebody had already used it, though not recently. The cloth was half damp, half stiff. Jane shook it out, and a peculiar odor assailed her. Nothing else had the same smell, one she’d come across only after taking a husband.

  She dropped the cloth in the basin and wiped her hands with her handkerchief.

  At some point last night, Quinn had spent his seed behind this privacy screen rather than make love with his wife. Was that consideration, cowardice, or something else? Jane didn’t like it, whatever the reason.

  She rinsed the rag, wrung it nearly dry, and hung it on the towel rack. The day, which had begun with the lovely discovery of Mama’s miniature, turned sour.

  Jane got halfway through devising a schedule for the maids. Her progress had been slow, frequently interrupted by the necessity to pace and resent Quinn’s odd behavior, when Stephen wheeled h
imself through the door, leaving it open behind him.

  “Good morning, Jane. Are you ready to learn how to blow out a man’s brains?” His question bloomed with eager good cheer.

  An hour ago, her answer would have been different. Now she was more aware of how little she understood about her husband, and how dependent she was on his honor and generosity.

  And she was furious with her meddling, posturing father. “I am prepared to learn how to handle a gun. The knowledge is doomed to remain theoretical, though one should not neglect any educational opportunity.”

  “Spoken like a Wentworth,” Stephen said, “and Althea and Constance can’t wait to get you started with the knives.”

  “I have always appreciated a good, sharp blade. Let’s be about it, shall we?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “How can it take years to find the heir to a dukedom?” Joshua asked, tossing a pencil onto the ledger before him. “Dukes die, and old dukes die fairly predictably. The College of Arms can’t say they were taken by surprise.”

  “They can,” Duncan replied, “in this case. The old duke had heirs, a trio of second cousins, all between the ages of forty and fifty. One was married without issue, the other two bachelors in good health.”

  “What happened to the heirs?”

  Duncan rose despite a protest from his right knee, a legacy from too many winter afternoons spent kneeling on the stone floor of Uncle’s church.

  “Bad luck happened, or so we are to believe. One bachelor was run down by a runaway team on his way home from Sunday services. The other bachelor had an ingrown toenail that turned putrid, but he refused surgery. The married fellow succumbed to a heart seizure soon after losing both of his younger brothers.”

  Joshua pinched the bridge of his nose. “When a dukedom is going begging, bachelorhood is a singularly stupid indulgence, and that is a prodigious streak of bad luck for one family.”