Page 17 of My One and Only Duke
Jane’s belly threatened rebellion, as if even the babe objected to Papa’s dramatics. “Hush, Papa. You’ve no need to shout.”
“I have every need to shout. This is a travesty, a mockery of the holy union God intended. Will you shame me once again, Jane Hester?”
Mr. Wentworth wrapped his free hand over Jane’s knuckles. “I see no shame here, sir. We contemplate a union between consenting adults who have made sensible choices. My hope is that you will stay and give your blessing to your daughter’s decision. She is marrying a wealthy man, at a time when both she and you have few resources. Taking me as a husband, even for the few days I’ll fulfill that office, cannot be easy for her. Your support would mean much to her.”
Not support. Papa was incapable of supporting his only child. The best Jane could hope for from her father was fuming tolerance.
“Jane?” Papa no longer shouted. “Does this wretched man speak the truth? You do this of your own free will?”
Wealth had been mentioned. Very shrewd on Mr. Wentworth’s part. Now Papa would turn up reasonable—wounded and bewildered but reasonable. Jane wished dear Papa were anywhere else; she wished she were anywhere else.
She also, sincerely and to her surprise, wished Mr. Wentworth were anywhere else. When this ceremony concluded, Jane could leave, taking Mr. Wentworth’s name and a portion of his means with her.
Mr. Wentworth would leave Newgate in a shroud.
“Marriage to Mr. Wentworth is very much of my own free will, Papa. He does me a great courtesy when I am much in need of same.”
“Mr. Perkins, please resume the service,” Mr. Wentworth said.
“But this is…” Papa began, clutching his Book of Common Prayer to his heart. “I fail to see…”
A circle of tired, resentful faces turned on him, every expression impatient and annoyed. Ned’s little hands were balled into fists. Penny, Susie, and Sophie looked ready to add to the list of murderers incarcerated at Newgate. Davies had a hand on Ned’s bony shoulder.
Mr. Perkins cleared his throat.
“I, Jane…” Mr. Wentworth helpfully supplied.
Right. “I, Jane Hester Winston…Jane Hester Winston MacGowan, do take this man.…”
With no interruption or hesitation whatsoever, Mr. Wentworth completed his part of the service. They were pronounced man and wife, and gingerbread was served to all present, including the birds.
The ceremony could not have been stranger, and yet, when everybody had partaken of their gingerbread and left the new couple some privacy, Jane’s relief was enormous. She hadn’t fled, hadn’t run off, and thus she would have five thousand pounds.
“I might have capitulated to Papa.” She’d nearly done just that. “I would have let him lecture me back into my corner because I pity him. He has no congregation to respect him anymore, no wife to raise his spirits, no bishop to debate theology with.” Why was Jane explaining this to a man who’d soon be dead? “I’m glad you were able to make him see reason.”
Mr. Wentworth loosened his neckcloth. “So am I. The old boy has prodigious volume, but I gather he’s not altogether what you’d wish for in a parent.”
He was all Jane had—as a parent, as family, as a provider. “He used to be stern but reasonable. Mama could jolly him out of his excesses of piety. When he lost her…”
Mr. Wentworth folded the cravat and set it on a shelf in the wardrobe across the room from the bed. He hung his coat inside the wardrobe and then took the sleeve buttons from his cuffs.
“I won’t be needing any neckwear on Monday,” he said. “Ned and Davies are to divide my effects, though you should have this ring.” He wiggled a gold signet ring off his smallest finger and set it on the table. “You’re pale, Mrs. Wentworth. Shall I cut you another slice of gingerbread?”
Mrs. Wentworth. Mrs. Wentworth. Jane had wanted out of the prison before, because it was a prison, because a place very like this had made Mama ill, because marrying Quinn Wentworth was even more out of character for her than eloping to Gretna Green with a handsome Scottish officer.
Now panic beat hard against her ribs. “We are alone, Mr. Wentworth, and you are disrobing. Might I inquire as to why?”
Chapter Six
Quinn had learned early and well how to inspire fear. His first weapon had been a murderously fast pair of fists—still quite in working order—and his second had been equally fast feet. Then he’d perfected his aim with knives and pistols. Nobody got away from Quinn Wentworth. Not debtors fleeing their creditors, not cutpurses, not those with information sought by the authorities.
In York’s medieval warren of poverty and privilege, he’d learned how to turn speed and power into money. Then he’d learned how to turn money into yet still more power, until neither criminals nor countesses dared cross him.
None of which made the trepidation in Miss Winston’s eyes easier to look upon.
Not Miss Winston, never again Miss Winston. “The accommodations are dusty,” he said, turning back his cuffs. “These clothes will fetch more coin if they’re clean, and both Ned and Davies are short of funds at the moment.”
She picked up the cat and cuddled him to her chest—like a shield? “You could leave them money.”
