My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella

by Grace Burrowes

  “Dermott MacGowan refused to make any provision for you or the child. I’m not about to consult him on so significant a matter as my grandchild’s well-being.”

  Ivor brought more tea cakes, Papa maundered on about the expenses of raising a child, and the baby kicked at Jane’s insides. Quinn would never allow Papa to have custody of the child, and Papa would never let this issue drop. He’d go to the courts—a certain path to scandal. He’d drag all of Quinn’s past into public view, tarnish Gordie’s memory, and hold Jane up to public scrutiny as an example of an ungrateful, stubborn, selfish woman.

  How on earth was any daughter to honor such a father? To forgive and forget this degree of hypocrisy?

  “Papa, I am ashamed”—bile rose in Jane’s throat—“of…” You. You and your pious cowardice, your righteous arrogance. Your failure to live up to Mama’s image of you.

  “Well you should be ashamed, Jane Hester. Your mother, God rest her, encouraged a certain independence in you that I have come to regret, meaning no disrespect to the dead.”

  Jane pushed to her feet when she longed to defend her mother’s memory. “You will excuse me, Papa. I’m about to be unwell. Ivor will show you out.” She snatched the bowl of dried rose petals and managed a dignified exit—only just. Then she was on her knees in the linen closet, retching into the antique French porcelain.

  * * *

  Stephen had learned years ago how to take apart and reassemble his Bath chair. He regularly oiled the metal surfaces, because any fellow with three older siblings needed to move quietly about his own home.

  He was thus proceeding silently down the corridor when an odd noise from the linen closet caught his ear. Either one of Constance’s cats had eaten a mouse that disagreed with it or somebody was in distress.

  He opened the door and the scent that assailed him ruled out the mouse theory. “Jane? Are you well?” Inane question. Quinn’s wife was on her knees, a porcelain bowl before her.

  “Go away.”

  Not dying, then. “Shall I fetch Quinn?”

  “I will kill you if you don’t close that door immediate—” She fell silent and put a hand over her mouth.

  Stephen rose from his Bath chair and knelt by her side. “The sachets and soaps probably aren’t helping. Ruddy stench permeates everything. Let’s get you to bed and find you some ginger tea, and—” And what? Quinn would know what to do—Quinn knew what to do with aggravating reliability—but where was Quinn when Jane needed him?

  “Stephen, every moment you remain in this linen closet you risk your continued existence.”

  He got a hand under her arm and lifted her to her feet. “I’m a doomed man, then, but hold off annihilating me until we get you down the corridor, hmm?”

  She leaned on him, which felt awkward and good. Good because he had the height and strength to support her. Awkward because Jane was soft, feminine, and not at her best. If Stephen had it to do over again, he’d probably not have shot the honeysuckle from above her head, but he didn’t have it to do over again, and he and Jane hadn’t spoken much since.

  “Are you able to walk, Jane?”

  “Of course.”

  He waited, and she remained for a moment right where she was, against his side. Of all people, Stephen did not associate “of course” with the ability to walk.

  “I hate this,” Jane muttered.

  Tarrying in an odoriferous linen closet with a dyspeptic sister-in-law wasn’t high on Stephen’s list of ways to spend a day.

  “I got drunk once,” he said. “Felt like the devil the whole next day. If it’s anything like that…”

  She left the linen closet, still leaning on him, and shuffled with him past Satan’s chariot.

  “It’s exactly like that, while you have no energy and your figure comes to resemble that of a…a heifer on summer grass. I’m whining.”

  “You’re also making progress toward your bed, so don’t stop on my account. I really ought to fetch Quinn.”

  “He’s napping in the library. I’ll nap in my bed.”

  Quinn never napped. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t chase women, he didn’t waste a day reading the paper or playing cards. He was a bloody paragon, as long as lack of imagination was a virtue and loneliness a high calling.

  He also avoided the library. “You left him asleep in the library?”

  They paused outside the door to Quinn’s suite of rooms. Jane shook herself free and peered up at Stephen. Lovely that, to have a woman looking up at him.

  “You don’t have your canes.”

  Shite. Shite, bollocks, and bother. “I have good days and bad days. Damsels in distress inspire me to heroic feats.” He was blushing, damn it all to hell, and Jane wasn’t buying his load of goods. Quinn never blushed, may he be condemned to a purgatory full of other humorless paragons.

  “If you have too many good days, Duncan will be out of a job, is that it?”

  Stephen peeled away from her to rest his back against the wall. “Do you do that to Quinn? Fire off insights without warning?”

  “Yes, and he returns the favor. Shall I fetch your chair?”

  Stephen’s stamina was improving, slowly, but he paid for his excesses, and he needed a moment to gather his wits.

  “Please.”

  Jane returned with the Phaeton of the Doomed and held it steady as Stephen settled onto the cushion.

  “You’re feeling better?” he asked.

  “One often does, physically. My dignity is another matter.”

  Stephen had considered his regard for Jane, and decided that he liked her but he wasn’t at risk of falling in love with her. She was too much Quinn’s, too clearly devoted to her husband. Then too, she was expecting a child. A daunting prospect.

  “Was that your father I saw coming up the walk?”

  She straightened a painting hanging above the deal table—drooping roses and green apples. “Yes. He’s probably still in the family parlor appraising the portable goods.”

  “Quinn will march him off to the magistrate if he steals.”

  Rather than upset the lady, this seemed to interest her. “Quinn would be that unforgiving?”

  “That scrupulous. Quinn does not bend rules. He has a little speech that he gives all the courtesy lords and dowagers who seek to borrow money from him. He warns them not to go in debt to him unless they understand that he will see them jailed and bankrupt should they default. They smirk at him, but he’s sent the sponging houses a lot of custom.”

  “No exceptions? That seems harsh.”

  Stephen agreed, but then, the Quality squandered fortunes on gaming and vice. “Quinn says he gives his word, they give theirs. Exceptions and special cases only muddy the waters. It’s all in writing, so they know exactly the terms of the loan.”

  Jane left off fussing with the furnishings. “Quinn is nothing if not logical. If you’d see my father out, I’d appreciate it. If Duncan were here, I’d ask him.”

  “Are you well, Jane?” Stephen was no judge of the fairer sex, but Jane’s indomitable air was like Althea’s temper and Constance’s discontent: always there, just below the surface. Jane was trying to get rid of him—all the siblings did—and yet, she seemed off to him, daunted.

  “I’m well, considering.”

  The corridor was empty, and another opportunity to converse with Jane privately was unlikely. “I’ve learned something you should know.”

  “I should know many things.” Her smile was wan. “Such as why you hide your strength from your family.”

  “I’m honestly not that strong. I do my exercises, and…maybe someday. You mentioned Duncan.”

  “He’s away to Berkshire to look in on one of the ducal estates, or so Quinn told me.”

  Meaning Duncan had lied to Quinn—had gone out of his way to lie to Quinn. “He’s not off to Berkshire, Jane. He’d have taken the coach for a journey of that length. He’s on horseback, and he took only a pair of full saddlebags.”

  “Perhaps he’ll stay with
friends along the way.”

  Jane was only half listening, one hand on the door latch, the other on her belly. How many more months did this go on, and where the hell was Quinn?

  “Duncan doesn’t have friends, Jane. He has books. He has ideas.” Stephen doubted Duncan even had a mistress.

  Jane pushed the door open and leaned on the jamb. “You must excuse me, Stephen. I’m truly not feeling well. You’ll tell Quinn what you’ve told me?”

  Stephen had been hoping Jane would pass this development on to Quinn. Tidier that way. “I’ll tell him.”

  “My thanks, and do look in on the reverend. I left him rather abruptly.” She withdrew and softly closed the door.

  Stephen wheeled himself down the corridor, nearly running into Quinn outside the family parlor.

  “Have you seen Jane?”

  “She’s in your sitting room, not feeling quite the thing. She asked me to keep her father company.”

  Quinn scowled at the door to the family parlor. “He’s back?”

  “His daughter lives here. Some fathers do this, I’m told. Look in on their offspring, not that we’d know.”

  Quinn aimed his scowl at Stephen. “Don’t turn your back on him. He’s every inch the respectable parson, but he cites scripture for his own purpose and hasn’t done an honest day’s work in years.”

  No greater transgression existed in the gospel according to Saint Quinn, which left a brother in a wheeled chair feeling ever so decorative.

  “If you have a moment, I’ve a few things to talk over with you, Quinn. The reverend can stuff himself with tea cakes in solitude.”

  “No, he cannot. We’ll talk when next we hack out in the park. I need to see to Jane.” He stomped off down the corridor more purposefully than Moses had crossed the Red Sea. Perhaps he’d noticed the traveling coach sitting in its bay, perhaps Jane would mention Duncan’s odd behavior.

  And perhaps she wouldn’t. “Quinn!”

  He turned outside his door, expression impatient. “Not now, Stephen.”

  “Let’s ride out tomorrow.”

  “If the weather’s fair.” Then he slipped through the doorway and left Stephen to the thankless task of entertaining company.

  “I want them to treat me as if I’m normal,” he said to nobody in particular. Not exactly the truth. Stephen wanted to be normal. A slight, manly limp would be acceptable, but not the ungainly lurching that meant he’d never turn a lady down the room. “Dealing with inconvenient callers is normal.”

  On that cheering thought, he let himself into the family parlor. The reverend set down the little gold snuff box, a guilty expression suggesting that the Eighth Commandment had been in jeopardy, or perhaps the Tenth.

  Quinn hadn’t the patience for the old twattle-basket. If life in a Bath chair taught a fellow one thing, it was patience. Tomorrow, Stephen would share his observations regarding Duncan with Quinn. Now, he’d defend the family’s monogrammed snuff boxes, and wonder where the hell Duncan had got off to, and why he’d lied to Quinn.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Jane had apparently sent forth a decree, and Quinn had acquired a battalion of nannies where previously only a devoted duchess and a few watchful siblings had been. Going to and from the bank, the running footmen kept pace with the phaeton, and Ned clung to his post as tiger.

  If Quinn stepped outside the bank to pass the time with the flower girls, Ned appeared four yards away. If Quinn took a notion to stop by his one and only club to eavesdrop on gossip at midday, Joshua took the same notion. At the pawnshops, Ned waited outside, nose pressed to the window like a neglected puppy.

  A week went by, while Quinn’s patience ebbed like the funds in the royal exchequer. Lady Tipton was biding not four streets away from where Quinn’s family dwelled, and something had to be done. Tracking Pike down in France might prove impossible. Then too, Quinn was being followed, and not by one of his own footmen.

  “This is not the way to the park,” Stephen said as Quinn turned his horse out of the alley. “I wait days for you to find the time to ride out with me, comport myself like the soul of fraternal patience, and you forget where the park is.”

  “And yet,” Quinn replied, “if anybody inquires, you will tell them we enjoyed a lovely hack on a pretty morning.” The streets were already busy despite the early hour, and today wasn’t Monday. Nonetheless, Quinn grew queasy as he guided his horse toward the City.

  “You put me off for a week,” Stephen said, “then drag me across London when I’m looking forward to the bucolic splendor of Hyde Park? I can’t exactly confide my woes to you in the middle of the street, Quinn.”

  “The rain put you off for a week.” Quinn’s need to ensure Jane’s day started pleasantly had also played a role. If he brought her plain toast and ginger tea before she got out of bed, her belly was less rebellious.

  Following the toast and tea, on two memorable occasions, Quinn had climbed back under the covers and Jane had started his day very pleasantly indeed.

  “The rain put me off for two days,” Stephen said. “Are we going to bloody bedamned Newgate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it ever occur to you to ask other people what they want, Quinn?”

  He’d asked Jane. She liked to be on top. “You’re free to gallop off to the park, but because nobody has asked me if I’d like a little privacy, I suspect you’ll stick to my side like a rash.”

  “A devoted rash. Why are we visiting the scene of your execution?”

  “Please, Stephen. I had a brush with death, a misfortune, an unpleasant ordeal. You’re a lord now—try to find some damned delicacy.”

  Stephen fell silent, which was delicacy enough. All too soon, the horror that was Newgate came into view.

  “You’ll stay with the horses,” Quinn said.

  “Because I can’t hop down and chase you. Sometimes, I hate you.” Said without heat.

  “Sometimes,” Quinn replied, “I hate myself.” As when he sneaked away from Jane’s side, because he didn’t want her to worry needlessly. “I’m here to question a guard.”

  Stephen crossed his hands on the pommel and regarded the bleak façade. “Imagine that. You’ve come back to the scene of your misfortunate brush with death by the ordeal of hanging to question a guard. This has to be the ugliest piece of architecture ever to house mortal man.”

  And women and children. “That’s the intention, to intimidate and frighten.” Quinn did not want to be here, but the person he needed to speak with dwelled on the premises.

  He dismounted at the entrance and passed his reins to Stephen. “Don’t go far.”

  “Don’t stay long. Duncan is up to something.”

  “About damned time he got his head out of the learned tomes. I’ve asked him to look into a few delicate matters for me.” Among them, a ducal estate in Berkshire that stewards and solicitors had picked cleaner than bleached bones. The family seat in Yorkshire was in no better condition if the new steward’s reports were to be believed.

  Stephen peered down at him, which was disconcerting when Quinn was accustomed to looking down on his baby brother.

  “You sent Duncan on his present errand? But then, why should I be told what my tutor has got up to. I’m merely his only pupil, his cousin, and the closest thing he has to a friend. No need to keep me informed.” Having concluded his lamentation, Stephen led Quinn’s horse away, hoofbeats ringing against the dew-slick cobbles.

  At the street corner, the shadow Quinn had acquired shortly after returning from York pretended to read the bill of fare set outside a pub. A slow reader, apparently, or a footman new to the business of spying.

  Getting inside Newgate was simple—a hard stare, a name—and then Quinn was again enveloped in the stench and filth that had been his temporary home. He’d been lucky to get into a state room, because the alternative was eventual death for most who dwelled too long in the common wards.

  He was led up a set of steps to a dormitory portion of the prison. The sme
ll wasn’t as bad, and the noise was muted. Sounds from the street hinted at normalcy while iron rings anchored in the stone wall confirmed that nothing in this place was normal.

  Quinn was left outside a partly open wooden door. He knocked and pushed the door open.

  “If it isn’t our Mr. Wentworth.” The guard had yet to shave and was without his coat. His beard was a mix of gray and flax, his eyes the blue of northern summer skies. He rose from a battered table and smiled, revealing good teeth. “You’re looking well, sir.”

  “I’d like to stay well.”

  “Wouldn’t we all. Easier said than done. You wanted to talk.”

  Quinn closed the door, though it made him uneasy to do so. The chamber was small: one window, one door, a tiny hearth. The furnishings consisted of a bed, a table, a chair. Six pegs had been jammed into the wall opposite the hearth, and a worn Bible sat on the mantel.

  Once upon a time, Quinn would have regarded these snug, dry, secure quarters as palatial.

  “I want to live,” he said. “To do that, I need to know who put me in jail.”

  The guard unrolled a shaving kit on the table and wrapped a tattered towel across his throat. He brought a basin of water from the hearth and resumed his seat, propping a speckled mirror against the side of the basin.

  “You put yourself in here, guv. Took a man’s life. Happen it might have been by accident, but the cove’s just as dead.”

  “In point of fact, he is not dead. Mr. Robert Pike is kicking his heels in Calais, and has written at least twice to his brother in York. He’s no more dead than you are.”

  A steel blade was held up to the meagre morning light. “Good for Mr. Pike. You’re a free man, a wealthy free man with a royal pardon. Why can’t you let well enough alone?”

  Exactly what Jane had advised.

  This rough, aging man had once been kind to Quinn, and he’d had a brutally sharp knife and quick reflexes when those had been the difference between life and death. He was trying to be kind now.