Page 7 of My One and Only Duke
Less than a week away, but before Quinn’s scheduled departure, as it were. “Then you need the ten pounds. Could I interest you in some lemonade and gingerbread?”
He’d given Ned all the strawberries. The boy had lined them up on the windowsill in order of size and consumed them from smallest to largest, one at a time. He’d sniffed each berry before popping it into his mouth, and Quinn had added another regret to the list:
I wish I’d taken the time to enjoy all the sustenance I consumed so absentmindedly, a pencil in my left hand, a column of figures absorbing my attention.
Figures would wait, while strawberries rotted all too soon.
Miss Winston pulled off her gloves. “Lemonade? You have lemonade?”
“And butter. My sister sends me a daily basket of provisions and one for the guards, as well. Theirs includes a bottle of port, which they immediately consume, so mine finds its way to me.”
“She sends a decoy,” Miss Winston said, taking a seat at Quinn’s table. The legs of the table were uneven, so that it rocked when anything was placed upon it. A month ago, Quinn would have had the table burned for firewood.
“I would…give a lot for gingerbread with fresh butter,” Miss Winston said.
I would kill for gingerbread with fresh butter, she’d been about to say. The poor thing was blushing. In light of her familiarity with the criminal element, that blush charmed Quinn.
He set the pitcher of lemonade on the table along with two clean tankards. The gingerbread was wrapped in plain linen, as was the butter dish. Such ordinary fare, and yet Miss Winston was clearly pleased with it.
She used the penknife to cut thick slices of bread and slathered both with butter.
“No plates,” Quinn said. “The chophouse uses pewter, because the ceramic kind can be broken and used as weapons. I send my plates back across the street with each meal.”
Ned had explained that to him. No ceramic, no porcelain, no glass. Wooden bowls or beakers, metal flasks, pewter mugs. Nothing sharp, heavy, or too valuable. Cravats were frowned on, because they had been used to strangle both guards and inmates.
The boy had stoutly ignored the pitcher and basin sitting on the washstand as he’d delivered his tutorial.
“Aren’t you having any?” Miss Winston asked, licking her thumb. “The gingerbread is quite good.”
She’d barely sipped the lemonade—sweet, as lemonades went—while the gingerbread was rapidly meeting its fate.
“Of course,” Quinn said, taking a bite from his slice. “I woolgather now almost as consistently as I used to dwell on bank business.” At Davies’s urging, he’d purchased a quantity of opium, but the considered wisdom of the house was to save the opium for the day Quinn was…the day he died.
The effect would be greater that way when an effect was most needed.
“Have you contacted your sisters?” Miss Winston asked. “Getting Ned out of here is only half the battle.”
“I have written a note to my business partner, Joshua Penrose, and having conferred with you, I’ll have it sent. I’ll tell Ned on Tuesday night.”
Ned would spend a day hiding among a pile of straw so vile even the rats avoided it, and then by night he’d be carried off to freedom. A simple plan, though it required that the escapee fit into the charwoman’s muck cart, which could accommodate only a child or a very small adult.
The warden knew better than to allow the women to use larger carts, and his books would doubtless reflect the sorry truth that children died behind Newgate’s walls all the time.
“I take it Davies can’t be freed.” A true injustice in Quinn’s opinion. Davies had been an innocent bystander when a pickpocket had done a toss and jostle. The victim had set up a hue and cry, and the thief had taken off through a crowd, depositing the stolen money not in his accomplice’s pockets, but in Davies’s. The accomplice had decamped hotfoot, after pointing at Davies and implicating him loudly.
Merry Olde London indeed.
“Mr. Wentworth, I have asked you twice who Davies is. For considerably more than ten pounds, he might be able to improve his circumstances.”
“He’s innocent. Stolen goods were essentially thrust into his hands, but the judge did not believe him.”
Plato sauntered around the door, tail up, not a care in the world. He’d doubtless smelled the butter.
“You have another visitor,” Miss Winston said. “What a fine specimen.”
Plato squinted at her—approvingly, Quinn thought. “He has a reputation for favoring the company of the condemned. Davies and Ned won’t touch him.”
“Now that is ridiculous.” Plato leapt onto the table, and Miss Winston aimed her nose at the cat. Plato treated her to an almost-nose-kiss, then rumbled like thunder when the lady used her left hand to scratch behind his ears.
