Page 14 of My One and Only Duke
Was she paler than she’d been five minutes ago?
“If you’re feeling charitable, Mr. Wentworth, why not simply hand me a banknote?”
Her question was valid, in light of the fact that Quinn would be giving the child a convicted killer for a father.
“Banknotes can be stolen, and as long as your status is simply a disgraced daughter rather than a widow or a wife, your money all but belongs to your father. I have sisters. I know what machinations are necessary to guard their independence, and we haven’t time to pursue those.”
She arranged the folds of her cloak, which did nothing to shake the dirty straw free. “I came to dislike being married the first time, and I like being widowed even less.”
“I won’t relish making a widow of you again. Think, though: How will your child fare as an orphan without means? I can tell you from experience, such a fate isn’t pleasant. I was lucky—York is tiny, compared to London, and people knew me to be a hard worker. What assets will your child have if you fall prey to jail fever?”
She gazed at him for a long moment, while birds flitted through the bars and stole the last crumbs from the windowsill. Beyond the door, two of the whores were in a shrieking altercation about a garter.
Where was Ned, and why wouldn’t Jane Winston accept an offer of help?
“Why me?” she said. “This entire jail is full of misery. I’m better off than all of them, and yet, you choose to assist me.”
Her greatest asset by far was her caution, earned, as most caution was, at high cost.
“You are a victim of misfortune. I know what that’s like. I also know what it’s like to be a child upon whom fate has turned an unrelenting frown. To my great surprise, my experiences now include the perspective of a man facing ignominious death. Perhaps I’m arguing with the Almighty in mitigation. A convicted killer I might be, but I’m capable of protecting innocent life as well.”
Jane spread her hands on the table. They were clean and feminine, though where was her wedding ring?
“I am not innocent,” she said. “I am willful, reckless, ungrateful, stupid, and pregnant.”
Quinn tore off a corner of gingerbread and crumbled it over the windowsill, then remained by the window, gazing out at the bare courtyard where his life would end.
“My mother was no different from you,” he said. “Marrying in haste, for reasons that seemed paltry in hindsight but mattered very much to a sixteen-year-old girl. We do the best we can.”
The birds would not come back as long as Quinn remained by the window, so he took a seat on the bed, jostling the cat, whom he appeased with a scratch behind the ears. Plato was a mouser. He enjoyed frightening the birds, but mostly left them to their crumbs.
“Where is your mother now?” Miss Winston asked.
Her name was not Miss Winston. Like almost everybody else in this armpit of the king’s justice, she was traveling under false colors.
“In a pauper’s grave in Yorkshire. She was gone shortly after I turned five.” Few people knew that.
“I had my mother until three years ago. She caught a fever, and even as her health waned, she insisted on accompanying Papa to visit the less fortunate here and at the Magdalen houses.”
The birds came again: a crow, a sparrow, a little wren, always one at a time, never staying for more than a moment.
“What would your mother tell you to do, Jane?”
The whores fell silent, though somebody else was ranting, gibberish punctuated by profanity.
“I’m not saying yes,” Miss Winston replied, “though how do we procure a special license?”
“That part’s easy, but I’ll not put my man of business through the aggravation unless you agree to marry me. Five thousand pounds ought to see you comfortably established without setting the fortune hunters on you.”
She touched her forehead to the table, as if felled by an excess of spirits, then sat up. “Five…Five thousand pounds? Five thousand pounds? You can toss that at me as a casual gesture on your way to the gallows?”
He could toss her ten times that amount and have nobody the wiser.
“If you invest at five percent, that gives you 250 pounds a year to make a home for yourself and the child. Not a princely sum, but many clergy make do on less. My business partner, Mr. Joshua Penrose, will see to your finances if you have nobody else in mind for that role.”
“Five thousand pounds,” she muttered, looking about as if to make sure she hadn’t been magically transported to a different realm. “I cannot fathom…”
Her expression had gone from cautious to anxious.
