Page 66 of My One and Only Duke
“Very generous of you, Papa, though I’m sure my current husband will be happy to provide for the child whom my previous husband left half orphaned.”
“Your current husband is a barbarian. No grandchild of mine—”
The first cup of tea was sitting well enough, but the conversation was stirring in Jane a long-simmering rage. Papa could no more provide for a grandchild than he’d been able to provide for a daughter, and that was not Quinn Wentworth’s fault.
“My husband might lack couth in your opinion,” Jane said, arranging her toast on her plate, “but he has every bit of my loyalty. Because you are apparently out of sorts today, I’ll leave you to finish your meal in peace. Feel free to call again anytime, Papa, but don’t expect me to listen to you insult my husband.”
Jane gathered up her tea and toast, sent Kristoff a visual warning not to leave the room until Papa was done gorging himself, and took her breakfast up to her apartment.
She had wanted to start the day with her husband, possibly even making love with her husband. She had wanted to apologize for falling asleep. She had wanted to tell Quinn that her rest had been sound for the first time in weeks, and that she would miss him.
Her toast was half gone before she admitted that under ideal circumstances, she would have asked Quinn to write to her—even demanded a note or two from him. York was hundreds of miles away, and the king’s highway was dangerous.
A wife worried.
Jane ate the rest of her toast, mentally composing a letter to Quinn and getting nowhere. Why didn’t you finish what we started? Why not waken me with kisses? When will you come home? Provoking a disagreement with her husband would be foolish and pointless, so she didn’t even try to put that sentiment in writing. Let bygones be bygones.
The maids had yet to tidy up the bedroom, so Jane took her plate to the sideboard to be collected later. She washed her hands behind the privacy screen and reached for the cloth bunched beside the basin.
Somebody had already used it, though not recently. The cloth was half damp, half stiff. Jane shook it out, and a peculiar odor assailed her. Nothing else had the same smell, one she’d come across only after taking a husband.
She dropped the cloth in the basin and wiped her hands with her handkerchief.
At some point last night, Quinn had spent his seed behind this privacy screen rather than make love with his wife. Was that consideration, cowardice, or something else? Jane didn’t like it, whatever the reason.
She rinsed the rag, wrung it nearly dry, and hung it on the towel rack. The day, which had begun with the lovely discovery of Mama’s miniature, turned sour.
Jane got halfway through devising a schedule for the maids. Her progress had been slow, frequently interrupted by the necessity to pace and resent Quinn’s odd behavior, when Stephen wheeled himself through the door, leaving it open behind him.
“Good morning, Jane. Are you ready to learn how to blow out a man’s brains?” His question bloomed with eager good cheer.
An hour ago, her answer would have been different. Now she was more aware of how little she understood about her husband, and how dependent she was on his honor and generosity.
And she was furious with her meddling, posturing father. “I am prepared to learn how to handle a gun. The knowledge is doomed to remain theoretical, though one should not neglect any educational opportunity.”
“Spoken like a Wentworth,” Stephen said, “and Althea and Constance can’t wait to get you started with the knives.”
“I have always appreciated a good, sharp blade. Let’s be about it, shall we?”
Chapter Seventeen
“How can it take years to find the heir to a dukedom?” Joshua asked, tossing a pencil onto the ledger before him. “Dukes die, and old dukes die fairly predictably. The College of Arms can’t say they were taken by surprise.”
“They can,” Duncan replied, “in this case. The old duke had heirs, a trio of second cousins, all between the ages of forty and fifty. One was married without issue, the other two bachelors in good health.”
“What happened to the heirs?”
Duncan rose despite a protest from his right knee, a legacy from too many winter afternoons spent kneeling on the stone floor of Uncle’s church.
“Bad luck happened, or so we are to believe. One bachelor was run down by a runaway team on his way home from Sunday services. The other bachelor had an ingrown toenail that turned putrid, but he refused surgery. The married fellow succumbed to a heart seizure soon after losing both of his younger brothers.”
Joshua pinched the bridge of his nose. “When a dukedom is going begging, bachelorhood is a singularly stupid indulgence, and that is a prodigious streak of bad luck for one family.”
Duncan refrained from pointing out that Joshua, wealthier than many dukes, was himself unmarried, and that Quinn Wentworth had enjoyed an even more prodigious streak of good luck, barring recent events.
“My numbers tally thus far,” Duncan said, “but they are curious numbers.”
He and Joshua had closeted themselves in the partners’ conference room and each taken a year’s worth of the ducal estate ledgers. The family seat was not far from York, though the dukedom held properties in several different counties. Each property had kept its own set of books, and the steward at the family seat—Mr. Harcourt Arbuthnot—had kept a general ledger.
