Page 31 of My One and Only Duke
Joshua was wearing his harmless, charming look, which meant he was up to no good. “You are newly married and newly risen from the almost-dead. Mightn’t you want to spend some time with your family before resuming your duties at the bank?”
Jane watched this exchange with veiled curiosity.
“I will spend the balance of the afternoon at home,” Quinn said, “and endure as much of my family’s joy as one day can hold, but then I have business to attend to.”
The business of finding and putting period to an enemy, first and foremost.
“I will wish you both good day,” Joshua said, “and extend my sincere felicitations on your nuptials.”
He accompanied them to the front door, and an awkward silence ensued while Quinn waited for his coach to arrive and Jane discreetly gawked at the stormy Dutch seascapes displayed on Joshua’s walls.
Silence had always been a friend to Quinn, assuring him his father was away from home or sleeping off another drunk in his filthy bed. Silence had remained an ally in the banking business, because customers who’d mis-stepped prattled of their stupidity when Quinn allowed a silence to last too long.
Silence was uncomfortable now, because it was shared with Jane and Joshua and the butler hovering near the porter’s nook.
“Will you undertake a wedding journey?” Joshua asked.
Trying to get rid of me? “Perhaps later,” Quinn said. “My wife’s health must come before any other consideration.”
Her health and her safety, for somebody’s scheme had been thwarted by that royal pardon, and that somebody had wanted Quinn dead. Such a person might think little of hurting Jane or her child in a second attempt at ruining Quinn.
The coach pulled up and Quinn once again took his place beside Jane inside. To have company in the carriage was different. Quinn’s sisters had their own conveyance, while Stephen preferred traveling on horseback if he had to go any distance.
Jane remained quiet as the coach pulled into the street.
“Did you have anything to eat?” Quinn asked. The new Mrs. Wentworth had had a trying day, and her condition was delicate.
“The housekeeper brought me some ginger biscuits with the tea tray. I was in heaven.”
While Quinn had spent the past month in hell’s family parlor. “We didn’t finish discussing my siblings.” Though where to start?
“I don’t expect them to like me,” Jane said, smoothing a hand over her velvet skirts. “We don’t have that sort of marriage. I’ll be agreeable, Mr. Wentworth. I excel at being agreeable when needs must.”
“You sound determined on your penance.” Also surprisingly fierce. Alas, Quinn hadn’t an agreeable bone in his body.
“You were kind to me when I was in desperate need of kindness. I’ll endure much to repay that consideration.”
She saw the marriage as a bargain, a transaction. Quinn understood business dealings, so a commercial frame of reference ought to suffice.
Except it didn’t. “My family might be unruly when they greet me. Loud, undignified.” Foul-mouthed, if they’d been at the brandy. Constance could swear like a sailor, though she usually exercised restraint out of deference to Duncan’s delicate sensibilities.
Jane took Quinn’s hand. “I was loud and undignified when I saw you, also overjoyed.”
She had hugged him as if he’d been a prodigal son lost in a hostile land during a time of famine.
“I will not be undignified,” Quinn said. “I am disinclined to displays of passionate sentiment.” He could not engage in displays of passionate sentiment was the more accurate admission.
“No matter,” Jane said, stifling a yawn. “In my present condition, I’m the next thing to a watering pot. I’m not half so interested in maintaining my figure as I am in maintaining my dignity, all to no avail. I’ll doubtless be sentimental enough for the both of us.”
“Are you interested in taking a nap?”
Jane looked unwell to him. The dark dress accentuated her pallor and her fatigue, and ginger biscuits weren’t the steak and kidney pie she ought to be eating.
“I have become prodigiously talented at appearing awake,” Jane said. “Before I retire yet again, you will introduce me to your family, please, for they will be my family now too.”
She alluded to some bit of scripture, a laughable source of authority in the life of Quinn Wentworth. As the coach horses clip-clopped along, Quinn turned his mind to the list of suspects he’d pursue starting first thing tomorrow.
Joshua most likely did not belong on that list. He had an abiding respect for money, as would anybody raised in Yorkshire poverty, but more than money, Joshua Penrose had a taste for power. He liked the role of éminence grise, influencing parliamentary debates, bringing down enemies by stealth and indirection.
