Page 46 of My One and Only Duke
“On one level, we were arguing about whether I’d make an outing to Oxford Street. On another level, we were arguing about who shall be the lady of your house.”
The master of the household scrubbed a hand over his face and settled behind the desk. Why did he need a handsome desk in both his bedroom and his sitting room?
“Explain.”
“Would you like some luncheon?” Jane asked. “I’m a bit peckish.” She’d glossed over breakfast with tea, toast, and two ginger biscuits. Perhaps that accounted for the light-headedness.
“Order whatever you like,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Use the bellpull in the bedroom once, wait for the count of five, then speak into the tube.”
Jane asked the kitchen to bring up trays, though where should those trays be put? Mr. Wentworth’s quarters held two desks and one enormous bed, but nowhere to take sustenance.
She sank onto the sofa, which was devilishly well padded. “Shall we eat on the balcony?”
“Jane, what in all God’s creation was so important that somebody called me home from the bank?”
He hadn’t raised his voice. Jane suspected Quinn Wentworth never had to raise his voice.
“I have no idea. I did not call you home from the bank. I do know that Lady Althea, doubtless thinking to be helpful, decided to jail me on the premises. Without a word to me, she arranged a procession of modistes, milliners, mercers, and other tradesmen to invade this house, destroy my peace, and generally keep me from making a single adult decision regarding even my own attire without both her and Constance to supervise me.”
Mr. Wentworth was back to studying the maple. “You’re upset because my sister tried to be helpful?”
Jane preferred diplomacy and tact for resolving delicate matters—“Turn the other cheek, Jane Hester!”—or she had before marrying Quinn Wentworth. Turning the other cheek, in this one instance, would not do. She pushed off the sofa, wobbled a bit, and crossed the room to slap both palms on the desk blotter.
“Lady Althea,” she began, “is not being helpful when she decides how my time is spent, with whom, or where. I can understand that she has been the lady of this house, and I would never attempt to divide your loyalties. Neither will I permit her to treat me as some dimwitted child who can’t be trusted to cross the street without a nanny. My own father seldom sank that low.”
Mr. Wentworth picked up an engraved gold snuff box and rotated it, dropping each edge in succession onto the leather blotter. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk…
“Althea wasn’t treating you like a dimwitted child. She was trying to keep you safe.”
“From what? The baby isn’t due for months.”
He set aside the snuff box, rose, and took down a sachet bag that hung on the balcony curtains. The bag held a key, which unlocked the balcony door.
“Remember where the key is,” he said, replacing it in the bag, “in case there’s a fire and the balcony becomes your only route to safety.”
The day wasn’t quite warm, but the balcony was on the lee side of the house, the air was still, and sun was strong. Jane took a seat on a wrought-iron chair while her husband faced her, leaning against the railing. He made a handsome picture backdropped by the maple—a handsome, annoyed picture.
“The Wentworths aren’t like any other family on this street,” he said.
They weren’t like any other family in all of England. “One gathers as much.”
“We started off in the gutter, Jane. We’re as lowborn and disreputable as a family can be this side of Newgate, and now the distinction of a prison record has befallen us as well.”
A man unused to explaining himself was trying to make something clear. Jane ignored her rumbling belly and set aside the argument with Althea.
“And yet, you are a duke.”
He folded his arms and gazed upward, which made the edge of the injury to his neck visible above the linen of his cravat.
“Dodson agreed that no announcement would be made regarding the title. I’ll be invested as quietly as possible, and the dukedom will be a matter of gossip and speculation unless and until I take my seat in the Lords.”
This apparently was a relief to him, the poor man. “You’d be better off using the title and having done with the gossip. A dukedom is impossible to keep quiet for any length of time. Just get it over with, and let people draw their own conclusions. Refuse to discuss your personal situation and you can’t be drawn into gossip.”
He took the chair beside her, then took her hand. “The matter isn’t that simple. I am legally the son of a destitute drunk and a desperate woman. What I did to escape that upbringing is grounds for one scandal after another. I dug graves, Jane. I emptied privies for the night soil men. I collected debts. I drove a knacker’s cart. If there was a low, contemptible job available for coin, I did it. I made enemies, very powerful enemies.”
Those enemies haunted him, whoever they were. “Your foes have had years to bring you low and they haven’t succeeded.”
He kissed her knuckles, an odd gesture. “Yes, Jane, they did. They brought me all the way to the gallows.”
