Page 102 of My One and Only Duke
He closed the distance between them rather than raise his voice. “Then I am His Grace of Walden to you, which suits me quite well for a change. I refuse to waste even a single extra instant in your company so don’t bother ringing for any damned tea. Here’s what you need to know: If you ever again attempt to harm me or mine, I will see you jailed and ruined if not hanged.”
The fragrance of attar of roses enveloped him, a signature scent that brought back memories of afternoons when perfume had been all the lady had worn. What a rutting, strutting fool he’d been.
She took a step back and bumped into the piano. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
“I was hanged, your ladyship. Felt the platform drop from beneath me, the noose choke the life from my body. I drew my last breath. But for a chance intervention, you would have succeeded in ending my life. Why, Beatrice? I left you in peace, and if you wanted your letters back, you had only to ask for them.”
Her gaze fixed on his cravat pin, the lion rampant from the ducal crest. “Quinn—Your Grace—I had nothing to do with your arrest or your trial. I never wanted to see you again, but I wish you no ill fortune.”
Even at seventeen, Quinn had grasped that the object of his desire was not a particularly deep individual. Beatrice was easily bored and easily hurt, and now she regarded Quinn not with guilt, but with fear.
Which was puzzling. She’d sent him to his death, a scheme that had taken cunning and confidence in addition to coin.
“If you didn’t fabricate charges against me, bribe witnesses, send Robert Pike to France, and all but put that noose around my neck, then who did?”
She looked away. “You should go. If you’re intent on taking a place in society, we’ll occasionally cross paths. As far as anybody need know, we’re strangers. Unless we’re introduced by some well-meaning fool, you need not acknowledge me.”
That was too easy. “And your letters?”
A soft tread sounded behind Quinn.
“Ask for them back, pet. Demand them back. I know Wentworth plagued you mercilessly and took advantage of your tender female heart, but he really has no need of those letters now.”
The Earl of Tipton stood in the doorway, and abruptly the fear in Beatrice’s eyes made sense.
“Was your mistress not receiving callers this afternoon, my lord?” Quinn asked.
Beatrice winced. The earl smirked. He made a deceptively harmless figure in a rumpled jacket, but the malice in his eyes was formidable.
“My schedule is none of your business, Wentworth. Give her ladyship those letters and be on your way. You really ought to be ashamed of yourself, preying on a lonely woman, then threatening her with scandal. Not well done of you, but considering your upbringing, one shouldn’t be surprised.”
Beatrice spared Quinn one desperate glance, which was explanation enough. She’d spun a tale for her husband, painting herself as the wronged party, taken advantage of, threatened even. If Quinn passed the letters over to Tipton, then Beatrice’s role in the affair would become obvious, and Quinn’s defense against allegations of wrongdoing toward her ladyship would be destroyed.
This was what came of kicking over a hornet’s nest. “And if I don’t have the letters with me?” He did, tucked into an inner pocket of his coat.
“Then the time has come for you to die.”
Tipton withdrew a tidy little double-barreled pistol from his pocket. The distance was such that he stood a good chance of hitting Quinn, particularly with two tries at his target. Doubtless Tipton would have drawn that pistol even if Quinn had produced the letters.
Quinn stepped in front of Beatrice. “Put that damned thing away. The noise will bring a half dozen servants running, and you will be the only suspect in my attempted murder, unless you’d like to see your wife arrested for that crime.”
Tipton’s smile was downright merry. “Oh, my dear fellow, how little you know of the company you seek to keep. When an earl, a peer of the realm, uses deadly force to defend his wife from the untoward advances of a brute who has already been convicted of taking a life once, then that earl is not a suspect. He’s a bloody hero.”
“Quinn, he’s not bluffing.” Beatrice spoke softly, pleadingly.
“He’s not a hero either. Go ahead and shoot me, Tipton. I am a brute, but I’ve survived more misery, cold, pain, and hunger than you can imagine in the worst of your pampered nightmares. I am also a duke, and I will not give quarter to a cowardly blackguard.”
Quinn watched Tipton’s eyes for the telltale shift that would presage a squeeze of the trigger. Tipton was quietly furious—perhaps with his wife, definitely with Quinn.
“Must you remind me?” the earl snapped. “Had you been content to remain wallowing in your wealth in Yorkshire, or even kept to your counting house in London, I might have allowed you to live. But no, you had to inherit a title, and not just any title. Your land all but marches with mine, and when the College of Arms came around asking pointed questions about the village gravestones, I knew where the answers would lead. It isn’t to be borne.”
Behind Quinn, Beatrice made a sound that conveyed dread and grief.
“At least you didn’t get a child on her,” Tipton said, “the smallest of mercies, that. Beatrice, step away from him, or all of London will soon know that your gowns and jewels were purchased with rents owed to the Walden dukedom.”
The irony was exquisite: For years, Quinn had carried guilt and regret about his liaison with Beatrice, while Tipton had probably enjoyed having the leverage the affair gave him over his countess. All the while, Tipton had been stealing Quinn’s birthright, and that—the earl’s theft, not Quinn’s lack of restraint with the countess—had put Quinn in danger.
Tipton was prepared to shoot an unarmed man when sending that man to the gallows had failed. What would the earl do to an unarmed woman?
