“Good question,” Joshua said, heading for the door. “Shouldn’t be too hard to come up with an answer. I bid you both good day.” He departed on a soft click of the door latch, leaving a not entirely comfortable silence.
“Tipton banks at Dorset and Becker,” Duncan said, “the same as most of the northern aristocracy does. Penrose and I spent the last two weeks poring over the estate books from the Walden seat. Even I, who don’t care for ledger books, can read a tale of fraud and embezzlement there. When will you take an interest in your dukedom?”
The publican in the Walden village coaching inn had cheerfully confirmed in twenty minutes of gossip what Duncan and Joshua had taken two weeks to deduce: The previous duke’s steward had been a bold, greedy, shrewd thief, and the entire district had known it.
“I took a look at the ducal seat while I was in the north,” Quinn said, “but I wasn’t inclined to linger in the neighborhood. If you knew where Tipton banked, why not speak up?”
“Because finding a moment alone with you has become impossible. You’re either closeted with Jane, riding out with Stephen, haring off to York, or impersonating a doting brother where Althea and Constance are concerned.”
Duncan, who never raised his voice, never lost his composure, was…complaining. Possibly even pouting, because of Jane’s scheme to keep Quinn safe.
“If I attempted to dote on my sisters, they would fillet me, and Jane is my wife and in a delicate condition. Stephen is my brother and at a dangerous age.”
Duncan took inordinate care pulling on his gloves. “Speaking of Stephen…”
“If he’s got a maid with child, I’ll deal with it.” Though how was Quinn to beat the stuffing out of a brother confined to a Bath chair?
“Did Jane tell you he nearly blew her head off?”
Cold washed through Quinn, the sort of bone-deep cold he’d felt as a boy when his father’s voice acquired a whimsical sneer.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ask Ivor. Jane wasn’t in any danger, but Stephen showed very poor judgment. She was upset.”
“I am upset.”
“Glad to hear it,” Duncan said, tapping his hat onto his head. “You should be. I’m away to Berkshire tomorrow.”
“You’re jaunting off to the shires now?”
Duncan turned a look on Quinn reminiscent of Jane marshalling her self-restraint. “I’m off to inspect the most neglected of the estates you’ve inherited. I shouldn’t be gone outside of a fortnight, and from our discussion before you jaunted off to see the Minster, I thought you expected this of me.”
Quinn wrestled with a sense of being abandoned, of events spiraling out of control, but Duncan was only seeing to a task Quinn himself had delegated.
“Safe journey,” Quinn said, and…Let me know what you find? Of course Duncan would prepare a report. What else needed to be said? Duncan waited, a look of patient forbearance in his eyes.
“Thank you,” Quinn said. “Don’t leave without saying good-bye—I might have some specific tasks for you to tend to on your travels—and for all that you do, thank you.”
Duncan’s brows rose, a gratifying reaction, however slight. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter Twenty
“I never thanked you for summoning Quinn from the bank when Althea and I had our disagreement,” Jane said.
Constance turned a page of her book, though first she had to gently draw it out from under Hades’s paw. The cat reclined on the reading table, the front third of him sprawling over a volume on French portraiture.
“How do you know I summoned him?”
“Althea was too busy arguing with me, Stephen was too fascinated with the altercation, and Duncan clings to the misguided belief that most domestic difficulties will sort themselves out. You acted, and I’m glad you did.”
Constance scratched Hades’s ears, which inspired feline rumblings of contentment. “You are in a delicate condition. Althea ought not to have provoked you.”
Jane was beginning to know her husband, though she’d be decades learning his history. Althea held nothing back, announcing her opinions and intentions to all and sundry. Duncan wished to be left alone, and Jane’s curiosity about Stephen was dampened by caution.
Constance remained an enigma, but by summoning Quinn, she’d sided with Jane against her own sister. Or had she sided with the child?
“Althea was trying to look after me,” Jane said. “I appreciate the motive, if not the method. I also appreciate that you brought Quinn from the bank to resolve the situation.”
“Can’t have a lot of yelling and strife when a woman’s carrying.” Constance slid the book out from under the cat, which put an end to his purring and earned her an annoyed squint. She returned the book to the library shelf and regarded Jane from across the room. “What did you want to talk about?”
So much for pleasantries. “I found a packet of letters addressed to Quinn. Old letters, from a woman. If I stumbled upon them, any chambermaid could chance across them, and yet if I don’t replace them in the same spot, Quinn is bound to realize they’ve been moved.”
Jane put the packet on the table, complete with the green satin garter securing them.
Constance took down another book. “Those are not your letters, but if Quinn were concerned about keeping them private, he should have chosen a different place to store them.”
Constance did not appear the least bit dismayed that her brother was secreting correspondence in his own home, in his own sitting room, when he doubtless had safes, vaults, and strongboxes that would better serve to conceal them.
A man kept letters near because they meant something to him.
“Quinn chose a fine hiding place,” Jane said, “but when I discovered the letters, they tumbled free and I have no idea what order they should be in. If I knew something of the context, or how long they’ve been stashed away…” Something about the enraptured woman who’d sent them…The greetings alone confirmed that Jane had stumbled upon love letters.
“Constance, you will excuse us.”
Quinn stood in the library doorway. Jane hadn’t heard him come in; apparently even the cat hadn’t heard him, because Hades scrambled from the table and shot out the door ahead of Constance. She followed her familiar, book in hand, pausing before her brother.
“If I hear a raised voice, Quinn Wentworth, I will be right back in here, and no lock will deter me. Jane is with child.”
“I am well aware of my wife’s condition.”
Quinn closed the door behind his sister, then turned an icy stare in Jane’s direction. “I’ll take those letters.” He held out a hand, not an olive branch.
She could pass the letters over, apologize for having found them, and pretend she’d never seen them. She did not, because nowhere in the definition of letting bygones be bygones or allowing sleeping dogs to lie did Jane see a requirement to engage in self-deception.
She undid the garter and picked up the first letter. “‘My darling, most dear, desirable, Wentworth…’” She flipped to the next one. “‘My delightful, exasperating, inventive fellow…’” Then the third: “‘To the most well-endowed specimen ever to bring delight to his lady’s bed…’”
She never made it to the fourth. Quinn had crossed the library and snatched the packet from her hand.
“This is personal correspondence, Jane. Shall I start reading your letters?”
She could not discern his mood, but her own was very clear to her—she was angry, and beneath that, unsure of her husband.
“You told me you haven’t kept mistresses. You told me we shared newfound pleasures. You told me you were too busy to bother with affairs of the heart, and I believed you.”
“I spoke the truth.”
His calm mendacity only enflamed Jane’s temper. “My darling, dear, desirable Wentworth? Does your solicitor exercise his alliterative talents thus? Perhaps the fine fellows at the College of Arms open their correspondence to you with such effusions.” She marched
up to him and jabbed his chest with a finger. “New. Found. Pleasures.”
He stared down at her, a single furrow appearing between his brows. “Are you jealous?”
That hypothesis clearly pleased him. Jane whirled away lest she start shouting.
“I am not jealous, you mutton-headed gudgeon. I am angry. You lied to me, and about an intimate matter. Perhaps you sought to spare my feelings, but we agreed that we’d have honesty between us, Quinn, and then I come across passionate letters. How am I to trust you?”
He set the packet on the mantel. “You married me, I spoke vows. You either trust me or you don’t. I’ve fed you, clothed you, housed you, made love with you—”
“And lied to me.”
Quinn stared off across the library, as if doing sums in his head. “I take it the late, lamented Captain McGowan had an unreliable grasp of the truth.”
“We are not discussing him.” And yet, they were. Quinn’s instincts were, as usual, deadly accurate. “We are discussing a man who assures me his affections have not been elsewhere engaged, the same man who keeps these letters affixed to the topmost drawer of his desk.”
“Have you read them?” Such a casual question.
“One can’t help but glance at what’s in plain view, which was sufficient to establish the nature of the correspondence. I did not read them.” Hadn’t been able to read them.
“You sound like you’re giving a sermon, Jane. If you take to task every man who has a few old letters in his possession, then I daresay—”
“Quinn, you lied to me. We don’t tiptoe around one another’s feelings like the shepherd boy and the goose girl. Why not simply admit that once, long ago, you lost your heart and never entirely regained it? Why not sigh and smile, and allude to a lady you loved dearly in your youth? My expectations of this marriage were honesty, civility, and a certain mutual accommodation. Of the three, you seemed to value the honesty most highly.”
Though those expectations had become augmented by hope on Jane’s part, and where hope flew, fears followed.
“How did you find the letters?”
“The drawer jammed—the lace of the garter was caught in the mechanism. They spilled onto the floor at my feet.”
“Why were you rummaging in my desk?”
Jane took a seat at the end of the sofa and tapped her fingers on the armrest in a slow triple meter.
“In point of fact, Your Grace, that is our desk, I being your wife and having no desk of my own. I was neither rummaging nor pillaging. I must sit somewhere when I draw up the menus and schedules for the maids and footmen. Am I now to ask you where I might sit?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his granite inscrutability slipping to reveal wariness.
Why was he home several hours early, today of all days?
Jane’s ire ebbed, as if somebody had turned down the wick on a lantern. “What’s wrong, Quinn? Something is amiss or you’d be at the bank.”
He took the place beside her, and more of Jane’s indignation slipped away. She could not cling to her anger when Quinn was troubled, though neither could she allow the situation with the letters to remain unresolved.
“I paid a call on the College of Arms.”
“Mr. Dodson was doubtless pleased to receive you. Constance and Althea mentioned him.”
“I wanted to discuss a banking matter with him, the dukedom being in some disarray, but he attempted pleasantries with me.”
Poor Mr. Dodson. “You have exquisite manners, though your patience wants work.”
Quinn took her hand, and the last of Jane’s anger skittered back to where she stored other vexations—Papa’s pigheadedness, Hades’s mating urges. What remained was worry—why had Quinn lied?—and determination.
“My patience wants major repairs,” Quinn said, “particularly since I’ve acquired a wife.”
They weren’t to discuss the letters, though Jane’s immediate problem—what to do with them—had been solved. They were Quinn’s letters, and he’d find a new place to store them.
“Odd, acquiring a husband has similarly tried my own usually placid nature. What did Dodson have to say?”
“Little of any moment, though he did mention that one of his heralds had a lively correspondence with Stephen going back several months. Not the same fellow who researched the Walden dukedom, else Dodson would have known of Stephen’s inquiries sooner.”
Jane was glad for the warm grip of Quinn’s hand in hers. “Stephen knew you were heir to a title?”
“He certainly had inklings, and his intellect is in better working order than most people’s. If anything happens to me, the title becomes his. When were you planning to tell me that he nearly blasted you to kingdom come, Jane? I thought we’d agreed to be honest with each other.”
Jane withdrew her hand. “Did you really? How disappointed you must be. Try counting to three when you’re vexed. I used to find that habit helpful when my patience was tried.”
Quinn had the grace to wince. “The letters are more than ten years old, and I keep them to prove that my attentions were not forced on the woman who wrote them.”
Ye gods, marriage to Quinn was complicated, and that explanation only replaced one worry with another.
“After ten years, you still fret that this woman could cause you trouble?”
“The statute of limitations on rape is considerably more than ten years.” He offered that observation with such a bleak, remote expression that his earlier claims about having refrained from romantic entanglements in recent years gained credibility.
“Whoever she is,” Jane said, scooting to the edge of the sofa, “she needs to forget her youthful indiscretions and leave you in peace.” This is what happens when a woman clings to her hurts and disappointments.
“Verily.” Quinn’s hand on Jane’s arm stayed her from trying to rise. “But rather than discuss my misspent youth, I’d like to hear about Stephen’s asinine behavior with a gun.”
“Ivor tattled.”
“We agreed to have honesty between us, Your Grace.”
“That we did.” Jane sat back. “Stephen exercised poor judgment, and he apologized. He felt it imperative to warn me that Wentworths aren’t safe, and must never let down their guard. I gather this woman is among those who taught you that same lesson.”
Quinn remained silent, staring at the peacocks and doves patterned into the library carpet. He was an articulate man, but the conversation had apparently taken a turn even he hadn’t anticipated.
Instinct leapt ahead of reason, and dread closed around Jane’s heart. “You think the lady who sent those letters had you arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Who is she, and what happened that, years later, she’d still hate you enough to see you hanged?”
* * *
Nobody save Quinn and her ladyship knew the entirety of his involvement with Beatrice, Countess of Tipton. He’d kept his gob shut, and prayed to whatever god took pity on stupid young footmen that her ladyship had done likewise. Having lent money to many a titled family, Quinn could now see—at a distance of more than a decade—that he’d been embroiled in a silly affair with a neglected aristocratic wife. He’d been an idiot of sixteen, too randy for his own good, and much taken by an older woman’s overtures.
Jane was making no overtures whatsoever. She rose from the sofa and paced across the library, a worried lioness whose claws were sheathed—for now.
“I have no proof that her ladyship is behind my arrest, Jane.”
“Not your arrest, Quinn, your attempted murder and ruin, years after you’ve given any grounds for offense. Tell me the rest of it.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I was sixteen when I became a footman for the Earl of Tipton. I was big, fit, and sufficiently good-looking that a lack of polish could be covered up by handsome livery. Footmen aren’t required to speak, only to step and fetch and endure endless boredom.”
Jane tidied up a pile of books that Stephen had doubtless left on the reading table. “W
as her ladyship bored?”
“Bored, lonely, neglected, and angry at her husband. At the time, all I could see was that she…”
Jane organized the books on the table by color—red leather bindings in one stack, brown in another. “She was attracted to you?”
The countess had sought to possess Quinn, to own him like a dog on a leash. “I hate discussing this.”
“I hate casting up my accounts, but sometimes that’s the only way I’ll find relief.”
“Hardly a genteel analogy, Jane.” But apt. Good God, was that analogy apt.
“I am a Wentworth,” she said, coming close enough to pat Quinn’s cravat. “We’re sometimes a little rough around the edges. If you feel like an idiot for becoming entangled with a predatory older female at sixteen, imagine how stupid I must feel for having succumbed to Captain MacGowan’s dubious charms at twenty-three.”
She wafted away when Quinn had wanted to catch her by the hand. “You? Stupid?”
“And desperate. I’d lost my mother to influenza, or to stubbornness, to be more accurate. My father wasn’t getting over his grief and had quarreled with his bishop, and Papa hasn’t been assigned a living since. Month by month, he’s pawned the little treasures Mama brought to the marriage or accumulated over the years. Even the cedar chest Mama left me was sent to the pawnbroker’s.
“Ahead of me,” she went on, “I could see nothing but impoverished spinsterhood, while Papa’s mind grew more vague and our situation more precarious. Then one day, he ‘accidentally’ brought one of Mrs. Sandridge’s teaspoons upstairs. I slipped it back into her apartment, but what if she’d accused Papa of stealing? I was frightened, lonely, and tired of being the only adult in a situation where I was constantly belittled, and yet, I was supposed to honor my father.”
Jane had stroked a hand over her belly, probably a reflex when she was upset.
“You’re human, Jane. To be constantly criticized and mocked by the parent who is supposed to stand up for us makes running away from home a sane choice.” Quinn had debated with himself whether killing a parent was ever justified, though the hand of fate and some bad gin had allowed the question to remain theoretical.
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