Page 53 of My One and Only Duke
“But that business with the muck carts and viscounts?”
“A test, and I passed, no thanks to your thespian capabilities.” Elsmore would have a quiet word with his bankers, and they’d advise Detwiler to keep his funds with Quinn for the sake of investment continuity or some such fiction. Detwiler’s financial muck cart would remain parked in its present location amid Quinn’s accounts.
A courtesy done between banking establishments, one that coincided with Detwiler’s best interests, or Quinn would not have even hinted to Elsmore of the viscount’s true situation.
“When will you let me start at the bank in earnest?” Stephen asked, nudging his horse forward on the path. “I’m good with numbers, and I’m entirely in Your Grace’s confidence. I can also keep an eye on you for Jane’s sake.”
Quinn’s gelding kept pace with Stephen’s mount. “You’re entirely a pest.” A loyal pest with quick wits, also Quinn’s only brother. “Robert Pike’s body was not in the grave where it was purportedly buried.”
Stephen stared at his horse’s mane while a squirrel started a racket overhead. “That’s good.”
“And it’s bad. The poor sod in that coffin had his hair dyed dark to match Pike’s, and he might have resembled Pike somewhat in life, but he wasn’t Pike.”
“You can tell his hair was dyed?”
“He was doubtless seriously ill, and chosen for his resemblance to Pike. His hair was dyed some time before he died. For however much longer he lived, his hair grew and nobody thought to touch him up in death.”
“I wish you didn’t know so much about dead people.”
“I know about staying alive, I hope. His skull bore no sign of injury, though the physician’s report said Pike’s death was precipitated by a mortal blow to the head.”
Abetted by exposure to a cold March night, lack of medical treatment, and six pages of nearly illegible lies, deceptions, and obfuscations by the physician, who was not regularly employed in the capacity of coroner. The author of the report hadn’t testified at the trial, but rather, a coroner who’d read that report had mumbled and muttered under oath in his place.
Quinn had brought a retired physician with him to examine the deceased, though anybody could see the poor blighter’s head hadn’t been bashed in.
“You planning to have a chat with the coroner who wrote that affidavit?” Stephen asked.
“He’s on indefinite holiday in a location his former housekeeper could not recall—somewhere far, far away.”
“That’s bad.”
“Pike hailed from York, and his family still bides there. I’ll be traveling north at the end of the week—on business, as far as Jane is concerned.”
The Countess of Tipton hailed from York, as did her in-laws. Quinn had pushed that fact to the very edge of his awareness, where it refused to stay.
Stephen brushed a glance in Quinn’s direction, presaging one of the lad’s rare attempts at delicacy. “Jane won’t like you disappearing onto the Great North Road even on business. She’ll expect you to take an army of nannies, all of whom will tattle on you without a qualm.”
“I know.” And that was bad too.
Chapter Fourteen
Wellington must have felt this frustrated taking years to advance across Spain. Jane’s only ally in her efforts to create a peer’s household under the Wentworth roof was Susie—Susan, rather—who had been in service long enough to know a lax housekeeper when she saw one, and a lax butler, and a pair of footmen whose discretion belowstairs was sadly wanting.
The maids made a rioting mob look decorous by comparison, to the point that Penny had pronounced them less civilized than streetwalkers.
“They want to do better,” Susan said, “but they haven’t anyone to show them how to go on.”
“The house is reasonably clean,” Jane replied, toeing around on the carpet beneath the desk in search of her house mules. “The meals arrive to the table hot, the fires are kept lit and the hearths swept.” But oiling the gears for Stephen’s lift took precedence over blacking andirons, because Stephen hated when his use of the device made noise.
Dusting Althea’s harps—she had four—was more important than cleaning the windows, and God forbid that Constance’s cats should be occasionally groomed, the better to minimize the hair they left on every upholstered surface.
Worse, both felines roamed the house freely, and had graced one corner of the formal parlor with a decided odor of courting tomcat. Jane could detect that smell from the corridor, though Susan assured her the stink wasn’t “that bad.”
As if any stink was acceptable in a ducal domicile. The house was a monument to minimal efforts applied with minimal supervision, and Jane’s entire day had been spent listing the work to be done in each room. Her usual habit of counting to three when in need of patience had become a slow count to ten.
Down in the foyer, the front door clicked open.
“The hearths are swept,” Susan said, “but half the time, nobody’s at the front door. The menus never vary, the staff bickers, and in the servants’ hall they tipple gin like vicars swilling China black.”
