Page 78 of My One and Only Duke
“Glad to hear it,” Duncan said, tapping his hat onto his head. “You should be. I’m away to Berkshire tomorrow.”
“You’re jaunting off to the shires now?”
Duncan turned a look on Quinn reminiscent of Jane marshalling her self-restraint. “I’m off to inspect the most neglected of the estates you’ve inherited. I shouldn’t be gone outside of a fortnight, and from our discussion before you jaunted off to see the Minster, I thought you expected this of me.”
Quinn wrestled with a sense of being abandoned, of events spiraling out of control, but Duncan was only seeing to a task Quinn himself had delegated.
“Safe journey,” Quinn said, and…Let me know what you find? Of course Duncan would prepare a report. What else needed to be said? Duncan waited, a look of patient forbearance in his eyes.
“Thank you,” Quinn said. “Don’t leave without saying good-bye—I might have some specific tasks for you to tend to on your travels—and for all that you do, thank you.”
Duncan’s brows rose, a gratifying reaction, however slight. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter Twenty
“I never thanked you for summoning Quinn from the bank when Althea and I had our disagreement,” Jane said.
Constance turned a page of her book, though first she had to gently draw it out from under Hades’s paw. The cat reclined on the reading table, the front third of him sprawling over a volume on French portraiture.
“How do you know I summoned him?”
“Althea was too busy arguing with me, Stephen was too fascinated with the altercation, and Duncan clings to the misguided belief that most domestic difficulties will sort themselves out. You acted, and I’m glad you did.”
Constance scratched Hades’s ears, which inspired feline rumblings of contentment. “You are in a delicate condition. Althea ought not to have provoked you.”
Jane was beginning to know her husband, though she’d be decades learning his history. Althea held nothing back, announcing her opinions and intentions to all and sundry. Duncan wished to be left alone, and Jane’s curiosity about Stephen was dampened by caution.
Constance remained an enigma, but by summoning Quinn, she’d sided with Jane against her own sister. Or had she sided with the child?
“Althea was trying to look after me,” Jane said. “I appreciate the motive, if not the method. I also appreciate that you brought Quinn from the bank to resolve the situation.”
“Can’t have a lot of yelling and strife when a woman’s carrying.” Constance slid the book out from under the cat, which put an end to his purring and earned her an annoyed squint. She returned the book to the library shelf and regarded Jane from across the room. “What did you want to talk about?”
So much for pleasantries. “I found a packet of letters addressed to Quinn. Old letters, from a woman. If I stumbled upon them, any chambermaid could chance across them, and yet if I don’t replace them in the same spot, Quinn is bound to realize they’ve been moved.”
Jane put the packet on the table, complete with the green satin garter securing them.
Constance took down another book. “Those are not your letters, but if Quinn were concerned about keeping them private, he should have chosen a different place to store them.”
Constance did not appear the least bit dismayed that her brother was secreting correspondence in his own home, in his own sitting room, when he doubtless had safes, vaults, and strongboxes that would better serve to conceal them.
A man kept letters near because they meant something to him.
“Quinn chose a fine hiding place,” Jane said, “but when I discovered the letters, they tumbled free and I have no idea what order they should be in. If I knew something of the context, or how long they’ve been stashed away…” Something about the enraptured woman who’d sent them…The greetings alone confirmed that Jane had stumbled upon love letters.
“Constance, you will excuse us.”
Quinn stood in the library doorway. Jane hadn’t heard him come in; apparently even the cat hadn’t heard him, because Hades scrambled from the table and shot out the door ahead of Constance. She followed her familiar, book in hand, pausing before her brother.
“If I hear a raised voice, Quinn Wentworth, I will be right back in here, and no lock will deter me. Jane is with child.”
“I am well aware of my wife’s condition.”
Quinn closed the door behind his sister, then turned an icy stare in Jane’s direction. “I’ll take those letters.” He held out a hand, not an olive branch.
She could pass the letters over, apologize for having found them, and pretend she’d never seen them. She did not, because nowhere in the definition of letting bygones be bygones or allowing sleeping dogs to lie did Jane see a requirement to engage in self-deception.
She undid the garter and picked up the first letter. “‘My darling, most dear, desirable, Wentworth…’” She flipped to the next one. “‘My delightful, exasperating, inventive fellow…’” Then the third: “‘To the most well-endowed specimen ever to bring delight to his lady’s bed…’”
