Page 100 of My One and Only Duke
“Tutor the sons of squires,” Jane said. “Manage a Magdalen house such that its inmates aren’t worked to death. Take up the chaplaincy at a hospital or herd a lot of stinking sheep, for all I care. You will no longer come around here spouting scripture while you appraise the porcelain and empty the larders.”
“Come now, daughter. You don’t mean these unkind words. I admit the past months have been difficult for you, and that grief can derange the best of us.”
For an instant, a bewildered widower stood in the boots of a bombastic conniver, but the moment was so fleeting as to be nearly imaginary. Papa drew himself up like an aspiring actor preparing to deliver his few insignificant lines of dialogue.
“Sorrow notwithstanding,” he said, holding up one finger, “Christian decency counsels us to magnanimity of spirit, Jane Hester, and I am willing to overlook your ungracious attitude and judgmental words. We are family, and turning the other—”
“Out!” Jane bellowed. “I have turned the last other cheek I intend to turn in your case. Get out of this house now or you will be shown the door.”
One of the footmen cracked his knuckles, a rude, nasty sound that Jane heard like the pealing of cathedral bells.
“Her Grace said now.”
Papa sniffed, he glowered, he tried to draw out a dramatic silence, but Jane stepped aside, giving the footmen a clear path to him, and thus did Papa march past her to the door.
Ivor and Kristoff followed him out of the room, and when the front door closed, Jane felt as if she’d been given a royal pardon. Slow applause came from the direction of the corridor, and Jane whirled to see Althea, Constance, and Stephen crowding in the doorway.
“I was right,” Jane said. “Shouting at an opponent can be salubrious. Enjoyable even.”
She nonetheless sank onto the sofa, because ejecting one’s father from the premises apparently left one weak in the knees. Weak with relief, perhaps.
Stephen wheeled into the room ahead of his sisters. “Next, we’ll teach you to curse. Constance and I can both curse in French, and I have enough German to get you started. Do you suppose the old windbag will stay gone?”
Althea and Constance chided him for disrespecting an elder. Stephen sensibly argued that no respect was due a man who insulted his hostess, much less his own daughter. Ivor and Kristoff returned, smiling shamelessly, and somebody ordered a bottle of cordial.
Jane was returning the white knight to the mantel when a movement outside the window caught her eye.
“Why is Ned pelting across the garden as if the press gangs are after him?” she asked. “And where is Quinn?”
“Shall I fetch Ned from the kitchen?” Ivor asked, as Kristoff brought the bottle of cordial in on a tray with several glasses.
The moment recalled for Jane the day she’d met the Wentworth siblings. They’d been drinking cordial then too, tossing quips back and forth, subtly teasing each other as they welcomed Jane into their midst. She’d been exhausted, bewildered, famished, and so glad that Quinn was alive.
“No need to summon Ned upstairs,” Jane said. “I can interrogate him just as easily in the servants’ hall, and don’t anybody try to tell me that I’m not permitted to breach that fortress. I’m a Wentworth and a duchess. I go where I please.”
As Quinn had apparently done, alone, blast him to perdition.
“We’re coming with you,” Althea said. “Don’t tell us you’re planning something rash without us.”
“I am Her Grace of Walden. I’ll be rash if I deuced well choose to be.”
“Then we’ll be rash right along beside you,” Constance said. “Pity Duncan isn’t underfoot. He could do with some excitement.”
The Jane who’d turned too many other cheeks did not want any excitement. The Jane who’d married Quinn Wentworth was learning that sometimes excitement, even confrontation, was necessary.
“There you are,” Ned said when Jane arrived to the kitchen, the siblings trailing behind her. “Idiot Davies said you wasn’t to be disturbed.”
The boy glowered at his compatriot, who glowered back. “Himself said herself wasn’t to be disturbed, Idiot Neddy, and now herself is here in the kitchen, where she isn’t supposed to be.” Davies stood before the wide hearth, the one where the fire was never allowed to die out.
“Why aren’t I supposed to be in the kitchen?” Jane asked. “His Grace comes through here every time he uses the tunnel.”
“Now you done it,” Ned muttered.
Davies blushed, his fair coloring going scarlet. “The duke was planning a surprise.”
He stepped to the side and Jane’s gaze fell on a small wooden chest.
“Been combing the pawnshops,” Davies said, “buying back what he could, making offers for what’s been sold on. He’s still hunting for one more shawl—has doves on it, I think. He sent a regimental sword and scabbard off to the silversmith for a cleaning and polishing.”
