Page 55 of My One and Only Duke
He opened his sandwich, which bore not a dash of mustard, then put the slices of bread together again. “I’ll have a word with Althea.”
The ginger biscuit Jane had been holding crumpled to bits before she could count to three.
“You will not have a word with Althea. Althea has ceded the domestic field to me, and properly so. She has discovered, ten years later than most females do, that attiring herself in flattering styles is enjoyable. She has closeted herself with her harps by the hour, she has read an entire Radcliffe novel and pronounced it ridiculous.”
Finally, Jane had his attention. “Althea read a novel? Next you’ll tell me Constance and Duncan have taken up pall-mall.”
“We all played a round the day before yesterday, which is simply a normal family activity on a fine afternoon. In a duke’s household, for the staff to forget the mustard is not normal. For the housekeeper to carry a flask of gin is not normal. For your brother to offer to teach me to shoot a pistol is not normal at all.”
Jane swept the crumbs off her front—she would soon lose a lap altogether—and tried to rise, but the sofa was low and the baby was growing, and nothing, nothing, was going right about the whole dratted day.
The whole dratted marriage.
Quinn’s reply to her diatribe was to pluck her up in his arms and carry her into the bedroom.
“Stephen needs to feel competent and safe,” Quinn said, settling with Jane into the reading chair. “He taught himself to shoot and he’s quite good at it. You’d be doing me a kindness if you’d let him show you around a lady’s pistol. Constance and Althea are proficient with knives.”
Jane was too tired to take umbrage at Quinn’s high-handedness and too happy to be in his arms. He seldom touched her unless she made the first overture.
“Stephen beat us all at pall-mall. He stood to take his shots, which clearly pained him, but his accuracy was deadly. I don’t want to learn to use a gun, Quinn. Guns kill people. Better to have a firm knowledge of reason and civility than a passing acquaintance with weapons.”
His embrace grew more snug. “Guns can kill bad people. I need for you to be safe, Jane.”
Not exactly a stirring declaration, but Quinn meant well. “If you arm me—and I’m not saying I’ll allow that—my first victims will be your domestics. That they forget mustard means they forget to whom they owe their loyalty.”
“You’re upset about mustard?”
“Yes.” Though now that Quinn was sharing a chair with her, Jane could be more honest. “And no. Are you trying to forget you’re married? The midwife was very clear that normal marital activity will present no risk to the baby and is even good for me. When will we consummate our vows, Quinn, or are all your long hours at the bank about some problem you are trying to keep from my notice?”
He remained silent, his lips pressed to Jane’s temple.
* * *
Every sin Quinn had ever committed, and there were many, every mistake he’d made, and those were even more numerous, haunted him in the person of his wife. Jane was bustling, scolding, and quarreling her way into his heart, the last place she should hope to be.
The town house had always oppressed Quinn, with its relentless geometry of portraits hung perfectly straight, carpets running down the exact center of the corridors, wallpaper patterned to precisely match, panel by panel. Who could thrive amid such endless, purposeless order?
And yet, the house had a musty smell in the corners, reminiscent of pets, dirty laundry, and winter damp, even in spring. The windows were seldom clean, which Althea attributed to London’s coal smoke, and if somebody recalled to put flowers in the front foyer, just as often, the bouquet was left to disintegrate before it was replaced.
As if the squalor of the Yorkshire slums had followed Quinn hundreds of miles south, and would follow him all the way to the grave.
In the past week, the house had been thoroughly aired.
The windows sparkled, the flowers were fresh. The carpet in the formal parlor had been taken up, and the oak parquet floor polished to a high shine. Jane had done this—Jane had known how to do it—and she’d softened the pointless order of Quinn’s home.
He’d first noticed her efforts in his apartment. The afghan folded over the back of the sofa was now laid at an angle, the pillows piled at one end rather than arranged symmetrically. The windows weren’t open to the same degree, and the decanters no longer stood in order of height.
Jane was making his house a home, and he was helpless to stop her, for she apparently needed to domesticate and organize to be happy, and he needed for her to be happy. His penance for all transgressions past, present, and future was that one day—if he survived the next attempt on his life—she’d realize what manner of man she’d married, and look at Quinn with either pity or disgust.
Or turn her gaze from him entirely.
“Do you know how long it has been since Althea read a novel?” Quinn asked the wife so agreeably occupying his lap.
“I can’t possibly know.”
“Althea has never read a novel, to my knowledge. She learned her letters kicking and screaming. I had to bribe her with music lessons.”
“Another stubborn Wentworth,” Jane replied, removing the pin from his cravat. “Why am I not surprised.”
