Page 32 of My One and Only Duke
Having Quinn arrested for a hanging felony was indirect but hardly stealthy. Still, Joshua bore watching.
As did Quinn’s family.
Quinn’s younger half-siblings had withstood Jack Wentworth’s dubious care for years before Quinn had been able to intervene. Stephen, Althea, and Constance lacked a motive to kill him, though, unless resentment qualified. Jack Wentworth was to blame for Stephen’s ill health, and God alone knew what horrors Althea and Constance had borne.
“Are you worried?” Jane asked.
Determined. “Like you, I am plagued by fatigue. Perhaps the relief of a pardon has that effect.” Or the weeks in Newgate, unable to sleep, unable to find quiet, unable to pursue true justice.
“Then I’ll see that your siblings don’t keep you overlong. They must reassure themselves that you’re alive and well, but you shall be allowed your rest.”
Jane subsided against him, not exactly a cuddle—Quinn wouldn’t know a cuddle if it pounced on him in a dark alley—but something wifely and trusting.
How odd. Of all the people in Quinn’s life—family, business associates, employees, enemies, neighbors, and old acquaintances—Jane alone was free from suspicion.
Perhaps that in itself ought to make Quinn cautious with her, but he could not sustain the burden of such zealous vigilance. She was expecting a child, without means, and all but a stranger to him.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steeled himself to endure his family’s welcome.
* * *
“Pardoned, can you believe it?” Beatrice, Countess of Tipton, crumpled up the handbill, intent on hurling it into the dustbin, then thought better of the impulse. She would read it again, read every word, when she had privacy.
These little announcements—a combination of obituary and lurid fiction passed out at executions—were popular with the lower orders. The printer would be sold out by sundown, and a woman of Beatrice’s station wasn’t likely to come by another copy.
“How can so much resilience and good fortune attach itself to such an unworthy object?” she asked, pacing before the fire. “How can a man who’s earned the enmity of half the good families in the realm, a jumped-up gutter rat in fine tailoring, earn the clemency of the very king?”
A handsome, shrewd jumped-up gutter rat. Beatrice had noticed Quinn Wentworth’s good looks too soon and seen the shrewdness too late.
“Perhaps Wentworth’s wealth played a role?” The Hon. Ulysses Lloyd-Chapman had casually passed over the handbill, as any caller would share the gossip of the day. Ulysses was Beatrice’s favorite sort of man—handsome, idle, venal—but what did he know about her connection to Quinn Wentworth and how had he learned of it?
“Money should have resulted in a verdict of innocence,” Beatrice retorted, “if money had been effective. Might you add some coal to the fire? The afternoon grows chilly.”
The afternoon was no colder than most April afternoons. Beatrice simply liked giving orders, especially to men.
Ulysses rose gracefully, prowled over to the hearth, and put half a scoop of coal on the flames. He was a blond lion of a male specimen, though in later years he might run soft about the middle. He set the scoop back on the hearth stand.
On Beatrice’s next circuit of the room, he made an elaborate, mocking bow.
Subtlety was a lost art. Quinn had been subtle, damn and drat him. “What are they saying in the clubs?” Beatrice asked.
“About Wentworth?” Ulysses lounged against the piano, looking both elegant and indolent. “The usual: He has the devil’s own good luck, he’s the symbol of everything wrong with society today, where did he get his money?”
Beatrice had some suspicions regarding that last item. She wasn’t about to share them with Ulysses.
She patted his cravat, adding a few creases to his valet’s artistry. “If that’s all you know of the matter, then you’d best be on your way. Give your sisters my love.”
Ulysses caught her hand in his and kissed her bare knuckles. “The Fashionable Hour approaches. By the time you’ve donned your finery, I can have my phaeton on your doorstep. The park will be full of the latest news, and Wentworth is bound to figure in several conversations.”
They would be quiet conversations, for nobody admitted to borrowing coin from Quinn Wentworth; nobody admitted to wishing him dead either.
Ulysses kept hold of Beatrice’s hand, stroking his thumb gently over her knuckles.
The wretch was coming to know her too well. “Away with you. My finery is not donned in an instant.”
He kissed her cheek, a small effrontery. “As my lady wishes.”
Ulysses sauntered off, letting himself out of Beatrice’s personal parlor. He wasn’t Quinn Wentworth—the Creator had fashioned only one Quinn Wentworth—but then, Quinn had caused far too much trouble in the end.
