Page 35 of My One and Only Duke
A dukedom did not signify?
As it happened, Jane agreed with him. “I cannot tell if you thought I’d leap at the title or away from it, when in truth I can’t see that it makes any difference.” She stepped closer and removed Mr. Wentworth’s cravat pin, a plain gold sword in miniature. “I married you, not your title, not your fortune. We shall discuss our circumstances in greater detail when we are assured of privacy. Do your siblings know?”
“They do. Penrose told them, the rotter.”
Jane retied the neckcloth in the same elegant Mathematical, but looser than it had been. “Mr. Wentworth, might I offer a suggestion?”
He brushed a glance at the small golden sword Jane held near his throat. “You’re angry.”
“I am hungry, queasy, tired, and”—Jane slid the pin through the lace and linen—“in need of a retiring room, if you must know, but I am not angry. We can rejoice in our good fortune, and still admit we face unusual circumstances. Might we face them as man and wife? As people who regard one another as allies if not friends?”
The looser cravat revealed the edge of a bright red weal on his neck. His expression was stoic, though the neckwear had to have been paining him.
“Mine is not a confiding nature,” he said, “but you have no reason to regard me as an enemy. As for the rest of it…I will try to be the best husband I can be to you.”
“Fair enough. I shall try as well.” She kissed his cheek, mostly to take in a solid dose of his shaving soap, then ascended the steps with him, arm in arm.
Chapter Ten
Constance was tipsy and hiding it well, Althea was furious—she went through life in a perpetual state of annoyance—and Stephen had been fascinated with Jane on sight. Duncan, as always, was lending a veneer of sanity to the family interactions.
Quinn had endured thirty minutes of interrogation about everything from prison conditions, to the estates conveying with the title, to who benefitted from his death—dangerous ground, that—when Duncan sent him a look: Constance will soon reach the end of her tether.
As would Quinn, and yet, his family was owed this time with him.
“I must excuse myself,” Jane said, shifting to the edge of her chair. “I am easily fatigued these days. Mr. Wentworth, if you’d see me to my quarters?”
Quinn shamelessly took his cue, drawing Jane to her feet.
But where to take her? “The bedrooms are upstairs,” he said when they’d left the family murmuring among themselves in the parlor. “Stephen uses a lift, if you can’t manage the steps.”
“Now, you ask me about steps. I shall contrive, Mr. Wentworth.”
He’d spent years earning the right to be addressed as Mr. Wentworth rather than “boy,” “ye little bastard,” or “the Wentworth whelp.” Jane’s form of address was familiar, but not comfortable, and yet, the idea of becoming His Grace of Walden to her chafed like the abrasion on Quinn’s neck.
Jane took the steps slowly, her hand wrapped around his arm. He’d had the kitchen send up beef sandwiches, which Jane had nibbled between sips of tea. He wasn’t imagining her pallor, nor the lavender half circles beneath her eyes.
“You don’t know where to put me,” Jane said, as Quinn paused at the top of the steps. “I’m not particular. Clean sheets and some privacy will suffice.”
He’d have to do something about her habit of guessing his thoughts. “I was giving you a moment to catch your breath. My quarters are this way.” She was his wife. Where else could he stash her but in his own rooms?
His apartment had been kept clean, as if he’d simply been at the bank for the day, not rotting away in Newgate for a month. The window in the parlor was open, as he preferred if the temperature was above freezing, and the fire in the hearth had recently been built up.
“A bed,” Jane said, marching straight through the doorway to Quinn’s bedroom. “Ye gods, a bed. My kingdom for a bed, and such a magnificent bed it is too. If you’d unhook me, please.” She swept her hair off her nape and gave him her back.
The gesture was disconcertingly married, but then, Quinn was not her first husband, and hooks were hooks. He undid the first half dozen, and still Jane stood before him, hand on the back of her head, holding her hair away.
He undid another half dozen. “That should do.”
“If you could assist with my boots, I’d appreciate it.”
Her boots. “Of course.” He knelt before her when she sat on the hassock. “You have difficulty getting them on?”
“Some days, I manage quite well. Other days, bending to any degree upsets my digestion and leaves me light-headed.”
He eased off one battered boot, then the other. “Your garters?”
“Please.”
