“I haven’t the luxury of leaving well enough alone,” Quinn said. “My wife is in a delicate condition, my sisters are unmarried, my brother spends most of his time in a Bath chair. If whoever had me arrested should attempt any more mischief, my family will not survive, my bank will fail, and then everybody from shop girls to courtesy lords will suffer. I would take the law into my own hands only as a last resort, but I cannot allow an enemy to threaten my family.”
The guard opened a tin of shaving soap, swished a brush in the tepid water, and worked up a lather. The scent of bay rum wafted across the small chamber.
“They say you’re from up north.”
“York, born and bred. I don’t make a secret of it.” Quinn waited while his host scraped away whiskers and made the undignified, peculiar faces men made when shaving.
The guard tapped his razor against the side of the basin. “Mind, I didn’t see anything.”
“Understood.”
“Didn’t hear anything, don’t know anything. Hand me that towel.”
Quinn passed over a less-tattered square of linen.
“I’ve been here at Newgate for more than twenty years. Other than the warden and some of the state prisoners, I have the best room in the house.”
Which spoke volumes for the accommodations at Newgate. “Go on.”
“I can sit by this window and see who comes and goes. Who’s got people waiting outside, whose children are coming around with a loaf of bread or a coin. We don’t get many swells calling here.”
“I’m surprised you get any.”
The guard patted away the stray flecks of lather on his cheeks and chin. “You work here long enough, nothing surprises you, Your Grace.”
“Point taken.”
“So a while back, maybe three months ago, one of them fancy coaches pulls up after dark. The nights were cold enough that the window was closed, but I rarely hear a coach and four stop out front.”
The main entrance was directly beneath the window. Late at night, iron-shod hooves on cobbles would make a racket.
“But one did.”
“Twice. The crests were turned, nobody got out. Warden got in. The coach pulls away. Fifteen minutes later, he’s back. I says to myself, ‘Jock,’ I says. ‘Somebody’s in for some trouble.’ Warden’s a good man, but he don’t always have a choice.”
“The warden nearly killed an innocent man.”
“It happens, and the guilty go free. Not my job or the warden’s to sort ’em out. It were a fine and fancy coach, guv.”
With crests on the doors, confirming that wealth was, indeed, involved. “What color was the team?”
“Grays, both times. If you’re trying to sneak about after dark, that’s an odd choice.”
Not if you were the Countess of Tipton, who’d always favored grays and was too arrogant to consider that they might be an indiscreet choice.
“Did you notice anything else about the coach?”
“The shades were pulled down, the lamps unlit. Just a fine coach and four matched horses.”
Which proved exactly nothing. “Then I thank you for your time.”
“They say you weren’t born rich.”
Quinn laughed. “I was born dirt poor in a room smaller than this one. All of my life, I told myself that poverty didn’t entitle me to lie, cheat, steal, or break the rules. I worked to exhaustion, got lucky, and then got luckier still, and worked even harder.”
“Until you got very unlucky.” The guard set about cleaning his razor and rolling up his kit. The interview was over, in other words, and had been a waste of time.
“I don’t consider it bad luck when somebody tries to kill me. Murder is evil and wrong, and I won’t stand for it.”
The guard tied his shaving kit with a tidy bow and set it on the mantel. “We’re stubborn, we Yorkshireman. Wish I could be of more help.”
Quinn extended a hand and shook. “If you think of anything, send word, Jock.” He passed over a card with the bank’s direction, because nobody needed to know the specific location where his family dwelled.
Jock studied the card. “You’re not about to bribe me, are you?”
“If your word can be bought, then it’s not trustworthy.”
“Precious. Don’t find many who see it like that.” He folded the battered mirror and set it beside the shaving kit. “Up home, a man’s word is still his bond, not here.”
Homesickness colored that observation, while Quinn never wanted to see Yorkshire again. “You were raised in York?”
“Out on the dales. Had a wife, a baby girl. Lung fever got ’em the same winter. Tried to find work at one of the fancy estates, but a shepherd boy who took the king’s shilling isn’t much use in a household like that.” No rancor colored these words, merely the soldier/shepherd’s stoic acceptance.
“I wore livery once myself. Longest two years of my life.” And the most confounding and regrettable.
The guard smiled. “Bet you looked a treat, all done up in lace.”
Quinn was happy to leave on that note—he had looked a treat, damn it all to hell—but instead he asked one last question.
“I don’t suppose you noticed the livery on the coachman or grooms?”
The guard folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Happen I did. More foolishness if somebody’s trying to keep their business quiet. Grooms wore pale blue and silver with black stockings. You’d think we were holding a fancy dress ball here. I recognized that livery because the earls of Tipton have fancied it for as long as I can recall, and their domestics have been strutting about York in that finery just as long.”
“So they have.” Finery Quinn himself had once been proud to wear, right down to the black stockings and silver shoe buckles.
* * *
The baby was growing, almost as if the good food and rest Jane enjoyed in the Wentworth household were going straight to the child, and that was lovely.
Her regard for her husband was growing as well. Quinn Wentworth was an affectionate man, though Jane suspected only Constance’s cats had been privy to that secret. Behind a closed bedroom door, Quinn became a warm blanket of husband by night, and an inventive lover at all hours.
When Jane couldn’t find sleep, she found Quinn, and he loved her into dreams and peaceful slumbers. If she asked it of him, he escorted her and his sisters about the shops, though she knew he’d rather be at the bank. Because she did ask it of him, he tolerated the company of footmen, siblings, Ned, grooms, or Joshua rather than let Jane fret that he was without the safety of numbers.
He explained complicated financial instruments to her—trusts, deeds, mortgages, promissory notes—though Jane found his recitations baffling. To Quinn, these documents were so many forms of sport, challenges to craft and enforce, works of art to admire. She came to understand that banking had provided a sense of order and predictability to a young man who’d grown up amid chaos and violence.
Jane’s worries were growing as well. Papa had come by again, and Jane hadn’t the heart to refuse him entry to the house. Stephen had stayed by her side while Papa had discoursed at length on the quality of mercy, confusing Shakespeare and holy scripture while swilling tea and gobbling cakes.
To Stephen, that recitation had likely been a mind-numbing bore. To Jane it had been laced with alarming innuendo. Papa clearly intended to have the raising of her child, proof positive that her surviving parent had become a candidate for Bedlam. By the time the courts found in Papa’s favor—a theoretical possibility—Jane would be approaching old age.
But how to explain that to Papa, or how to put the situation to Quinn without Papa ending up in Bedlam?
The library door opened and Quinn entered. Jane rose to kiss his cheek, because such was a wife’s privilege.
“You’re home in the middle of day,” she said. “Is something amiss at the bank?”
Quinn kissed her back—on the mouth. “Something is terribly wrong. I missed my wife and couldn’t concentrate worth a damn. Joshua is in a temp
er over the clerks squabbling, the auditor is in a temper over Joshua’s bad mood, and I bethought myself: I have a perfectly lovely wife at home and it’s a beautiful spring day. Why am I subjecting myself to this drudgery, when I might instead be enjoying Jane’s company?”
The house was quiet, it being half day and the sisters having retired to Constance’s studio. Stephen was closeted with a new translation of Dante, and Jane had been contemplating composing a letter to Papa’s bishop, begging for word of a congregation Papa might serve.
How much more agreeable to spend time with her husband.
Quinn came down beside her on the sofa. “What are you reading?”
“Dr. Smellie’s treatise on childbirth.” Constance had given it to her, a strange offering, but then, everything about Constance bordered on the eccentric.
Quinn propped his boots on the hassock and put an arm around Jane’s shoulders. “I anticipate your travail with something approaching panic.”
“Women give birth every day, Quinn. I’m healthy, I’ll have good medical care. Please don’t worry.” Jane was worrying enough for them both. She slid down against him, pillowing her head on his shoulder.
She worried about giving birth as all women did, and she worried about her father’s increasingly odd notions. In the wrong mood, Papa might try to physically appropriate an infant—the accurate term was kidnap—and Quinn would be unable to overlook such behavior.
Should anybody overlook such behavior?
“Joshua says we ought to move to a larger house,” Quinn said.
“Why?”
“I’m a duke. I’m supposed to involve myself in the House of Lords now, and ensure banking laws remain sane, because the present crop of titled buffoons will just pillage the exchequer in the usual fashion if left to their own devices.”
Quinn’s fingers started a slow massage on Jane’s nape. Tension she’d held all day eased away, and she considered telling Quinn of her father’s scheme.
“Does Joshua want you to take your seat, or is that your conscience talking?” Even after a morning at the bank, Quinn still smelled of his lovely shaving soap.
He toed off one polished boot with the other. “I was absent from the bank for weeks, Jane. Joshua had no warning I’d be unavailable, and he not only managed without me, he managed well. We’ve increased the number of depositors by twenty percent since I was arrested, and now that my title is becoming common knowledge, our customers include peers as well as shopkeepers.”
Jane took Quinn’s free hand. “And?”
“Joshua is delighted. He’s hired more tellers, another amanuensis, two clerks…while I’m wondering if I cheated the hangman merely to keep a larger ledger book.”
For Quinn, that was an expression of fundamental doubt. “You have doubtless worked just as hard as Joshua for just as long to make the bank succeed. You have been through hell, taken a wife, been saddled with a title, and will soon have an infant underfoot. You’re due a little time to sort out your thoughts.”
He nuzzled her temple. “So sensible. When you’re all prim and proper I get bothered.”
Quinn had a naughty streak, much to Jane’s delight—a lusty, naughty streak. She sensed in his more exuberant overtures a newfound glee, a relief at being spontaneous and physical that was new for Jane as well.
“I like it when you’re bothered, Quinn.”
He rose and held out a hand. “Come upstairs with me, Jane. Help me sort out my thoughts.”
When he smiled like that, his thoughts needed no translation. Jane took his hand, struggled to her feet, and let him escort her to their rooms.
She’d bring up the situation with Papa only if circumstances made that discussion imperative. By the time the child arrived, Papa might have a congregation again, preferably on a remote island to the west of Scotland.
* * *
“Where could he be?” Althea tossed herself into the reading chair by the hearth. All the comfortable furniture seemed to end up in Constance’s studio, though how and when it migrated here only Ivor and Kristoff knew.
“Davies says Duncan is in Berkshire,” Constance replied around the paintbrush sticking out of her mouth. “When Davies passes along gossip, it’s usually trustworthy. He knows we rely on his reports. Perhaps our cousin came across a librarian flaunting a first folio of the Bard and became passionately distracted. Hand me that rag.”
Constance was not an artist so much as she was a caricaturist. Her paintings were emotionally accurate—revealing character, motive, sentiments—while her physical representations were interpretative. She’d shown a respectable talent with watercolors by age fifteen, and then…
Then she’d taken up oils, which ladies were not supposed to do. Althea handed her a rag that was stiff with myriad blotches of paint and redolent of linseed oil.
“Duncan should be back by now,” Althea said. “Berkshire’s not that far.”
Constance took the brush from her mouth and the brush in her hand and tucked one behind each ear, paint end out.
“Duncan deserves a break from us, Althea. He never chastises or criticizes, but in his very silence, I hear volumes of long-suffering. If he were a better man, he’d pray for us, but he’s a Wentworth, so he simply endures. Stephen would have been lost without him.”
Stephen would have been dead without Duncan. Five years ago, Ivor had found one of Quinn’s cravats fashioned into a noose in Stephen’s dressing closet. A further search had revealed a note—“The pain defeats me.”—and enough arsenic to kill an elephant-sized rat. Quinn had left the evidence undisturbed. He reasoned that a twelve-year-old’s melancholia need not be complicated by humiliation, and he’d sent a pigeon to Duncan in York the same hour.
Duncan had resigned his post as a schoolteacher and boarded the next stage for London.
“Of all of us,” Althea said, “Duncan strikes me as the loneliest. He’s a Wentworth who doesn’t fit in among Wentworths.”
“I like him for that. He’s also brilliant, and doesn’t lord it about, unlike certain younger brothers.”
“You’ve never liked anybody.”
The two paintbrushes jutting from Constance’s hair made her look like a fanciful bull with one red-tipped horn and one black.
“I like my cats.” Constance poured another inch of ale into both mugs, passed one to Althea, and perched on her stool. “Are you hiding in my studio?”
Yes. “Quinn’s home in the middle of the day.”
Constance took a sip of ale and drew her sleeve across her lips to wipe the foam away. “They are newly married. Allowances must be made.”
Perhaps that explained why the portrait on the easel was Persephone and Hades, cuddled up on a hearth rug. The tomcat looked pleased with himself, while the she-cat licked the top of his head. Hades was half a lick away from having his ear gnawed off, did he but know it. Persephone, like her owner, did not suffer fools.
“They are newly married,” Althea said, “but it’s peculiar to see Quinn smiling with his mouth. He smiles with his eyes on occasion, such as when Stephen bests Duncan on some philosophical point, but Quinn smiles at Jane. At the dinner table, in front of everybody.”
“Jane smiles too,” Constance said, studying her ale, “at Quinn.”
Worse, they smiled with each other, like, like a besotted couple sharing sweet secrets and private jokes.
Most peculiar. “Jane won’t be smiling at him when she finds out he’s hiding invitations from her, among other things.”
The invitations had started as a trickle, after Jane had crossed paths with some other duchess at a glovemaker’s. Althea had never seen more gracious curtsying, while the proprietress had hovered and cooed like a matchmaker eavesdropping on a proposal.
Several days later, a pair of calling cards had appeared in the perpetually empty crystal bowl in the foyer—a marchioness and a countess, whom Debrett’s revealed to be related to the other duchess. Every day a few more cards and invitations showed up, only to be snatched awa
y before Jane caught sight of them.
“Quinn means well,” Constance said, withdrawing the paintbrushes from her hair. “He’s being an idiot. A stint in Newgate will be a minor scandal compared to snubbing half the peerage.”
“Better to be an idiot than have all of polite society looking on as you introduce your wife to the woman who tried to see you hanged. Do you trust Duncan, Con?”
Constance should have scoffed at Althea’s question, should have snorted with laughter as only Constance could on the semi-annual occasions when she was amused.
Instead she set her brushes on the easel tray and took a considering sip of ale. “I trust Duncan. Do you trust Stephen?”
Uncomfortable question, but one Althea had pondered. “The Stephen who fired a gun in Jane’s direction?”
“That Stephen, the same one who knew the Walden title was in search of an heir.”
Althea had the damnedest urge to ring for a tea tray. Ale made one burp, and the taste was pedestrian. Unrefined.
“I do trust Stephen,” she said, “but mostly because anybody trying to get away with Quinn’s murder wouldn’t announce their violent intentions by threatening Quinn’s wife. Stephen is a pestilence of a brother, but he’s far from stupid.”
Constance put her feet up on a hassock, revealing slender ankles and bare feet. “I hate this, doubting family. Family is all we’ve had for so long. Jane is not to blame for Quinn’s troubles, but I resent her nonetheless.”
That was a considerable admission for Constance. “Do you resent Jane, or the fact that Jane arrived with a child on the way?”
“Both, of course, but there’s something I haven’t found a way to pass along to Jane, and catching Quinn alone has become nearly impossible.”
By design, of course, because Jane wasn’t stupid either. “Spill it, Con.”
“Do you recall the day Jane met Her Grace of Moreland at the glovemaker’s?”
“The occasion has doubtless been memorialized in dozens of genteel drawing rooms.”
“Did you notice who was coming up the walkway, footman and maid trailing, as we were leaving?”
On second thought, ale was a fine drink. In sufficient quantities, it dulled the day’s sharp edges and fortified against the sudden arrival of bad news.
My One and Only Duke--Includes a bonus novella Page 25