Page 4 of My One and Only Duke
“Neddy.” Mr. Wentworth’s expression was amused.
The child fell silent, his little chin showing a hint of sullenness.
“A reprieve, then,” Jane said. “Is that welcome or a particularly cruel blow?” The bread and ale were sitting well—breakfast had not—so Jane tried a nibble of cheese.
“Both, I suppose, or neither,” Mr. Wentworth replied. “It simply is. The end is the same; somebody else’s downfall will be the object of gossip when I can no longer oblige. Ned, would you be so good as to determine where Miss Winston’s father has got off to?”
The child bolted out the door with a speed that had likely frustrated many a constable.
“Cutpurse?” Jane asked.
“Jack-of-all-trades and as good a lad as he can be.”
Mr. Wentworth’s gaze remained on the half-open door, as if he harbored regrets where the boy was concerned. Condemned felons were people, Jane had learned, as were soiled doves, pickpockets, confidence tricksters, grave robbers, and other criminals. They loved, they laughed, they had their rules and regrets.
Mr. Wentworth might well have saved lives during his years on earth, but he had taken a life that mattered to somebody, and that was prohibited by the Commandments. On the field of battle, men forgot the Commandments, though they called upon the same God in their various mother tongues. On the field of so-called honor, the Commandments never earned a mention.
Would that Gordie had been more devout and less honorable.
“You’re supposed to eat the bread,” Mr. Wentworth said. “I make sure to have extra of all my provisions and to never finish my portion, so that Ned, Penny, and Davies have enough to share or use for bribes. From the warden right down to the charwomen and the petty swindlers, Newgate’s population has a fine appreciation for goods and coin.”
Nobody had as fine an appreciation for coin as a poor minister’s widowed daughter. “You were a banker?”
“I am—I was.”
Mr. Wentworth wasn’t a cit in the usual sense. He’d not been born to wealth, and he’d not been lucky at the tables. From gossip in the prison’s common, Jane had gleaned that nobody was sure where his fortune had come from.
“Are you sorry for your sins?” Jane asked. “My father would gladly hear your confession, if you’re of that persuasion.”
Papa was good at sitting with the guilty and the sick and listening to their regrets. Jane had regrets, and the last person she could confide in was her father.
“Sorry?” Mr. Wentworth sat back. “I am angry, Miss Winston. Angrier than I have ever been, which impresses even me. Of course I have regrets. Ned has already found regrets that will haunt him all his days, short though those days are likely to be. I am not sorry.”
Jane was sorry. Sorry she’d trusted Gordie not to get himself killed. Sorry she had chosen a man of unsteady temperament to pry her loose from Papa’s household. Sorry Papa had lost his congregation, sorry her mother had died.…The list was endless.
“I might be able to help Ned,” Jane said. “If he’s awaiting transportation, arrangements can sometimes be made—for coin, you understand.”
Mr. Wentworth was a banker in Newgate, and he’d been the one to mention money. If Mama were alive, Jane would not be having this conversation with this man in this place. Mama had departed from the earthly realm three short years ago, but Jane could barely recall a time when genteel rules and polite conventions had defined her world.
She had resented those rules with the bitter fury of a minister’s daughter, more fool her.
“What sort of arrangements will free Ned?” Mr. Wentworth asked.
“If you think I’d sell him to a brothel, you are sadly mistaken. Ask anybody in the common wards, Mr. Wentworth. Reverend Winston is the genuine article, pious to the much-mended soles of his boots, and I am his loyal offspring. This is good cheese.”
“Made on my properties in the north. If Ned is released, I want him sent to my sisters. They will be in need of projects and they have the means to see to the boy.”
Ned struck Jane as a child who wouldn’t tolerate much seeing to. He had run wild too early and too long to be tamed at this stage. Mr. Wentworth had the same air, despite his fine tailoring and clean fingernails.
But Ned could be freed, while Mr. Wentworth’s death warrant had been signed.
“I will need some time,” Jane said, “and you will need a day or two to make arrangements. Ten pounds will be more than sufficient to see Ned released into your siblings’ care.”
“A boy’s life is a matter of ten pounds?”
Ten pounds was two years’ wages in some households. “A girl wouldn’t have cost you half so much.”
An emotion flared in the man across the table, gone before Jane could label it. “You’ve freed girls, Miss Winston?”
