Page 19 of My One and Only Duke
Quinn had taken only Joshua into his confidence regarding this marriage, because Joshua’s assistance had been needed to obtain the special license, and Joshua would manage the funds promised to Jane.
Quinn would write one more letter—each of the last six letters was to have been his final correspondence—and explain Jane to Althea, Constance, and Stephen. Joshua could pass along the missive at the appropriate time, for Quinn would have no opportunity to send it.
“You will meet my siblings. Your confinement will be most safely passed in my—in my siblings’ household. Althea and Constance are difficult by nature, but they will be protective of you. Where you dwell after the baby arrives will be up to you. I suggest you distance yourself from any association with the Wentworths for the sake of the child.”
Jane rested her forehead against Quinn’s shoulder. “You are being very kind.”
“I am being contrary, which has ever been my nature.” Long ago, Quinn had been a boy much in need of kindness. Now he was a man in need of a miracle. Having never seen one, and having seen too many tragedies and precipitated more than a few himself, Quinn did not expect aid from the Almighty.
He wrapped an arm around Jane’s shoulders, searching his sordid past and short future for some useful words to give her.
“Look forward, Jane. You can’t change the past, and dwelling on it serves no purpose. The origins of your improved circumstances mean you’ll be outcast by good society, but you’ll eat well, you’ll be warm in winter. Get away from London and you’ll be safe. I like thinking of you and the child, safe and happy.”
A fine little speech, and Jane seemed fortified by it.
“I want something with your scent on it,” she said, sitting up. “The fragrance you wear settles my stomach, and it’s pleasant. Unique.”
A bloody miserable request for a bride to make on her wedding day.
Quinn rose and rummaged in the wardrobe, then passed her the bar of hard-milled soap from the wash basin. “My sisters know where to get more. The shop is owned by a Frenchman, and he makes these products only for the Wentworths. We have soap, sachets, and eau de parfum with this fragrance.”
She sniffed the soap and rose. “I’m a Wentworth now. Thank you.”
Quinn was a businessman. He did not expect thanks for lending money or making shrewd investments. He expected payment on time, honest dealing, and profit. He was thus not prepared for Jane to pitch herself against him and wrap him in a ferocious embrace.
“I wish you could walk out of here with me,” she said. “I wish I could hide you in a muck cart and spirit you away. I wish you could live to see the child who will bear your name.”
She clung to him fiercely and wasn’t letting go. In deference to her condition, Quinn wrapped his arms around her.
“If I could afford wishes, I’d wish that yours might come true.” He could afford a prison wedding and a private execution, but not a single wish.
A triple knock sounded on the door, Davies’s signal that the guard would soon be coming to escort Jane and her father from the prison.
Jane rested her cheek against Quinn’s chest. “I will tell the child that you were decent, kind, and generous, and I will be telling the truth.”
Quinn was angry, bitter, and condemned. He could have insisted to his wife that she not mislead the child, but what would be the point? Jane, he suspected, could be as stubborn as Althea or Constance, and that was fortunate. Soon enough the new Mrs. Wentworth would see reason and establish a household far from any mention of the late, disgraced Quinn Wentworth.
“Time to go, Jane. Be well, have a fine, healthy baby, and if you can, be happy.”
She kissed him on the mouth, surprising a man who’d thought life held no more surprises and certainly no more rejoicing.
But her kiss held joy, an affirmation of her vows, regardless of the circumstances, a loud cheer for having put to rights at least one injustice in a wicked world. She persisted, wrapping Quinn close and taking a taste of him, and then Quinn was kissing her back.
Jane Wentworth was formidable and brave, also pretty and pragmatic. With more time, she and Quinn might have made something together besides a hasty legal arrangement. He permitted himself three heartbeats’ worth of regret, then eased back.
“Away with you, Mrs. Wentworth.”
Still she held him. “I wish…”
He put a finger to her lips. “Time to go. You promised to obey me.”
She kissed him again—to blazes with obeying you, sir—and then slipped out the door.
* * *
Despite Ned’s every wish, hope, and prayer, Monday morning did not see a commutation order arriving for Mr. Wentworth. The shackles clinked and dragged as the prisoner was led from his cell, and now the damned guards stood about in the courtyard—four of them—as the same chains were removed.
“Bloody crime,” Ned said, “making a man pay to have the shackles put on, then pay to have them struck not five minutes later.”
