Page 54 of My One and Only Duke
Masculine voices drifted up from below. Quinn and Duncan, and at an earlier hour than usual. Quinn had missed dinner—he usually missed dinner—and Stephen and Constance had started a row at the table over the Irish question. Duncan had tried to intervene—Duncan was nothing if not brave—and they’d both turned their cannon on him. Jane had pitched her table napkin at Stephen’s head and prompted a ceasefire on the strength of the combatants’ sheer surprise.
They’d stopped bickering, though Jane had vowed to herself not to resort to such an undignified tactic again, not that any strategy would work twice in succession with the Wentworth siblings.
“If you’d have the kitchen send up trays, please,” Jane said. “Beef sandwiches and apple tarts.”
“And ginger biscuits,” Susan said, pouring a scoop of coal onto the hearth. “Aye, Your Grace. Your slippers are under the bedroom desk.”
The bedroom desk, which was kept locked, just like the desk in the parlor was kept locked. Jane hadn’t purposely gone looking for the keys, but she’d found them when she’d replaced the stale sachets hanging from the bedposts.
She’d not used those keys—yet. Susan took her leave, while Jane retrieved her slippers. It wouldn’t do to meet her husband in bare feet.
Or would it?
Quinn let himself into the sitting room and stopped near the door. “You should be in bed, Jane.”
“I took a nap this afternoon.” Already, she was tempted by the Wentworth habit of dissembling, and that was unacceptable. She had promised Quinn honesty and expected the same in return.
He speared her with a glower. “You lay down. You never rest for long.”
That Quinn saw through her half-truths was comforting, in a Wentworth sort of way. “I do the best I can. If you’d unhook me, I’ll make another attempt at sleep once I’ve seen you fed.”
He remained by the door, looking tired and beautiful. Jane did not go to him, because she’d tried that. Tried being his valet, tried being his companion at a late-night dinner, tried waiting for him to make any husbandly overture at all. When pressed into her company as an escort, he was polite but clearly bored.
Their marriage was much too young for boredom.
He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over the chair behind the desk. “I passed Susan on the stair. She should have assisted you into your nightclothes. You must be firm with the staff, Jane. They won’t know their duties unless you make your needs clear.”
One…two…three. “Be firm with the staff,” Jane said, taking Quinn’s jacket into the bedroom and hanging it in the wardrobe. “Which staff would that be, for they adhere to no schedule I can fathom, except the bully boys you call running footmen. That lot is always ready to attend you, God be thanked.”
Quinn squatted to examine the mechanism of the bedroom door latch. “Have you quarreled with my sisters?”
Jane closed the door to the wardrobe with a loud snick. “I’m quarreling with you, Quinn Wentworth. My husband. The man with whom I spoke vows. The person who will parent my firstborn with me.”
He rose and his gaze went flat, even taking on a hint of menace. “We can refine on that impossibility later. What is the nature of your present complaint, madam?”
“Stop it,” Jane retorted. “Don’t give me that Yorkshire growl, as if you’d tear me to pieces when I know you feed wild birds, marry stray widows, and work yourself half to death for your family. It won’t wash, Quinn. You can intimidate every rolled-up title in Mayfair with that performance, but I know better.”
A swift knock sounded on the door and Quinn startled.
“Food,” Jane said. “Lest you snack on the bones of your contrary wife.” She brushed past him, intent on going to the door.
He caught her by the wrist, his grip firm without hurting. “The performance is the civilized banker, the considerate husband. The real man isn’t somebody you’d care to meet.”
“How would you know? You keep him hidden from even yourself.” She tugged free and opened the parlor door.
Ivor and Kristoff brought in trays, set them down on the low table, and withdrew on wordless bows. They were learning. Quinn would learn too.
He took a seat on the sofa. “I see two trays. Will you join me, or have you slacked your hunger by taking several bites from my backside?”
“I like your backside,” Jane said, settling beside him. Sitting these days was an act of faith, a matter of descending to the last point where balance and strength controlled, and then casting off onto the cushions, perhaps never to rise.
Quinn paused with a sandwich halfway to his mouth. “You like my backside.” The menace in his gaze was revealed for what it truly was: caution.
“You’re quite muscular. One appreciates a well-made husband. The kitchen forgot the perishing mustard.”
He took a bite. “This is a mortal sin?”
“The sin is venal, but compound it by a hundred, and it becomes another day in the Duke of Walden’s town abode. Twice I have told the kitchen that you prefer mustard on your beef sandwiches. Three times, they have neglected to heed my guidance. In any proper household, somebody would be severely reprimanded for repeatedly ignoring an employer’s preferences.”
