Page 101 of My One and Only Duke
A cool ripple passed over Jane’s arms and nape. “That is my mother’s chest. That is Mama’s…that is the chest Mama left to me.” She knelt on the kitchen’s hard plank floor and opened the lid. The scent of cedar wafted up, along with Mama’s signature lemon verbena fragrance.
“Her mirror…” Jane held up the mirror only long enough to assure herself that the tarnish and speckling were as they had been when Mama had owned this same mirror. “Her Sunday shawl, her earbobs, her jewelry box. Quinn did this?”
“Nigh run me ragged,” Ned said. “Dragged me to half the pawnshops in London. Man knows how to haggle.”
Jane closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of her mother’s love. Quinn had done this. For her, without being asked, without mentioning a word of his plans…
“That man…” That wonderful, pigheaded, stubborn, lovely, lovely man. “He’s been at this for weeks, and I never suspected.” She dabbed her eyes with the edge of her mother’s shawl, and fell in love for the third time that day with the husband she never intended to speak to again.
“If you start bawling,” Ned said, “himself will sell me to the French Vikings. Are you having a difficult adjustment?”
Jane nodded. “Yes, so please bear with me a moment.”
Davies helped her to her feet. Ned, Constance, Stephen, and Althea were all watching her as if she was supposed to know what to do. Quinn had gone to confront the lunatic, idiot countess, and, Quinn-fashion, he’d neglected to bring along reinforcements.
“Ned,” Jane said, “perhaps you know where His Grace has got off to?”
Chapter Twenty-five
Quinn had timed his call on Beatrice, Countess of Tipton, for the hour of the day when Lord Tipton was most reliably away from home. The earl was a fixture at his club, and seldom voted his seat. He was solvent—which hadn’t been the case when Quinn had worn Tipton livery—and kept a mistress whom he visited most Tuesday afternoons.
Not every Tuesday, according to the flower girls, and thus Quinn was taking a risk.
No matter. The situation with her ladyship required resolution, lest Jane think her husband a socially backward recluse who was ashamed of his wife, and lest her ladyship get up to more tricks of a lethal nature.
“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”
“Ulysses Lloyd-Chapman.”
The butler’s brows rose. He was a handsome blond about twenty years younger than any other butler of Quinn’s acquaintance.
“I’m playing a jest,” Quinn said. “Or would you rather offend one of her ladyship’s oldest friends and spoil my little joke?”
“Have you a card?”
Quinn folded his arms, as Jane so often did, and remained silent.
“Very good,” the butler said. “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Lloyd-Chapman.”
He showed Quinn to a fussy little parlor that looked out on the garden rather than the street, suggesting Mr. Lloyd-Chapman was one of Bea’s familiars, if not a lover. The window had been raised, and the French doors were open, bringing the scent of scythed grass into the room.
Quinn disdained to take a seat but instead rehearsed his speech, for this wasn’t a social call. If Jane knew he’d willingly confronted his nemesis, she’d be hurt and angry, for which he could apologize. Jane would forgive him in time—he hoped.
Forgive and forget was her policy, after all.
In typical Beatrice fashion, he was made to wait ten minutes for her ladyship’s arrival. She swept into the room in a dress of pale rose with blue fleur-de-lis embroidered on the bodice, cuffs, and hems. Her fichu was cream lace, and her slippers gold.
She was still beautiful, still every inch the lady—to appearances. Quinn waited for some emotion to wash over him. Inconvenient longing, remorse, guilt, anger, anything, but annoyance and impatience were all that stirred. With luck, he could return home to Jane before she woke.
These thoughts skittered through his mind in the time it took the countess to come halfway across the carpet.
She stopped, catching her balance on the piano. “Ulysses, darl—Quinn?” Her shock turned to a hesitant smile that quickly faded to a chilly dignity. “What sort of ill-mannered deception is this? I was told Mr. Lloyd-Chapman awaited me, and in place of a gentlemanly acquaintance, I find…”
Her hauteur faltered as she took a visual inventory. Quinn had dressed as he always did on a workday: Bond Street morning attire, gold sleeve buttons, watch fob, and cravat pin. The only change was the ducal signet ring winking on his smallest finger.
“Do go on, Bea.”
“I am Lady Tipton to you.”
