Page 81 of My One and Only Duke
“I hate casting up my accounts, but sometimes that’s the only way I’ll find relief.”
“Hardly a genteel analogy, Jane.” But apt. Good God, was that analogy apt.
“I am a Wentworth,” she said, coming close enough to pat Quinn’s cravat. “We’re sometimes a little rough around the edges. If you feel like an idiot for becoming entangled with a predatory older female at sixteen, imagine how stupid I must feel for having succumbed to Captain MacGowan’s dubious charms at twenty-three.”
She wafted away when Quinn had wanted to catch her by the hand. “You? Stupid?”
“And desperate. I’d lost my mother to influenza, or to stubbornness, to be more accurate. My father wasn’t getting over his grief and had quarreled with his bishop, and Papa hasn’t been assigned a living since. Month by month, he’s pawned the little treasures Mama brought to the marriage or accumulated over the years. Even the cedar chest Mama left me was sent to the pawnbroker’s.
“Ahead of me,” she went on, “I could see nothing but impoverished spinsterhood, while Papa’s mind grew more vague and our situation more precarious. Then one day, he ‘accidentally’ brought one of Mrs. Sandridge’s teaspoons upstairs. I slipped it back into her apartment, but what if she’d accused Papa of stealing? I was frightened, lonely, and tired of being the only adult in a situation where I was constantly belittled, and yet, I was supposed to honor my father.”
Jane had stroked a hand over her belly, probably a reflex when she was upset.
“You’re human, Jane. To be constantly criticized and mocked by the parent who is supposed to stand up for us makes running away from home a sane choice.” Quinn had debated with himself whether killing a parent was ever justified, though the hand of fate and some bad gin had allowed the question to remain theoretical.
Jane’s smile was commiserating. “Running away from home is a sane choice unless we run into the arms of a jealous countess?”
Quinn’s world shifted with that smile and became a brighter, lighter place. He traveled the distance from a youth hauling a wagonload of self-recrimination to a man with a few regrets. His childhood home had been a hell of hopelessness. Of course he’d been bedazzled by a sophisticated woman who’d pretended to see something special in him.
Of course he had.
Jane came around the table and into Quinn’s arms, though he hadn’t made a decision to reach for her. He held her—held on to her—unable to say what exactly the conversation had accomplished, though Jane was no longer jabbing him in the chest and hurling thunderbolts.
“I thought she liked me.” Quinn’s admission was foolish, pathetic even, but Jane’s honesty—or her courage—was apparently contagious.
She nuzzled the lace of his neckcloth. “Imagine Stephen embroiled with some lordling’s castoff wife. Would you expect him to know liking from manipulation?”
“That’s…”
“Different? I suppose so. Stephen has had years to observe polite society at close range, to tip his hat to the ladies in the park, to smile at them in church. He comes from wealth, he’s exquisitely turned out, and can likely keep up in French, Latin, Greek, and German. You were the veriest lamb, by comparison.”
On his most innocent day, Quinn had not been a lamb, but when it came to women—to ladies—he’d been staggeringly ignorant.
“One doesn’t like to admit to having been seduced.”
Jane peered up at him. “One doesn’t like to admit to having married a handsome buffoon simply because he looked dashing in his uniform and had such a charming accent. I like your accent too, by the way.”
Quinn had spent years with elocution tutors trying to eradicate that accent. “I hope my speech is that of a gentleman.”
“Of course it is, but when we’re in bed, it’s the speech of a gentleman from Yorkshire. Tell me about this daft countess.”
Jane led Quinn by the hand to the sofa, and he allowed it—not because he was a lamb, but because she liked his accent. Or something. Why had the notion that a gentleman could sound as if he’d been raised in Yorkshire never occurred to him?
“Beatrice was kicking her heels at the earl’s estate, which was to say she was going mad while he played at diplomacy on the Continent. I’d worked my way into a position in the stables, and she noticed me and promoted me to footman.”
“Get comfortable,” Jane said. “This tale will take some telling.”
How was one—?
Jane shoved at his shoulders, and Quinn realized he was to stretch out on the sofa with his head in her lap. He accommodated that suggestion, because she was right. This tale—which he’d never shared with another—would take some telling.
“She smiled at me, she took me with her everywhere. She casually brushed against me, had me carry her parcels up to her private parlor. She took my arm in public and asked my opinion when I escorted her from shop to shop. Then one day, when I had delivered some purchase or other to her sitting room, she kissed my cheek.”
In hindsight, Quinn could see the progression, could see how calculated the dance steps had been. Too late, he’d learned that he hadn’t been her ladyship’s first little project, though he might well have been her last.
“What a disgraceful woman,” Jane said. “She couldn’t be bothered to frolic with one of her own class; she had to prey on a boy.”
Jane’s fingers stroking Quinn’s hair were gentle, her tone disgusted.
