Page 82 of My One and Only Duke
“I wasn’t a boy, Jane. At sixteen, I was a strutting, snorting acolyte of the god Priapus, and convinced of my own manliness. She looked at me, and I was in torments. She ignored me, and I was in worse torments still. I was seventeen before we became intimate.” Not lovers. Whatever role Quinn had played in the woman’s life, he hadn’t been a lover.
“I hate her,” Jane said, kissing Quinn’s brow. “Even if she didn’t send you to prison, I hate her.”
And I love you. For surely, this affection and liking, this desire and willingness to trust, had to be love?
“I don’t hate her,” Quinn said. “She taught me many valuable lessons. I learned to read and write because of her.”
Jane’s fingers paused. “To read her letters? Oh, Quinn.”
“At first to read her letters, but then I realized that if I ever wanted to be more than her plaything, I needed to better my circumstances, not simply work harder, but work smarter. My father’s rages had grown constant, the girls were getting older, the children never had any food, and something had to be done.”
“Then your father broke Stephen’s leg.”
The words still hurt, still hit Quinn with an inner blow. “Stephen told you about that?”
“No details.”
“He’s never shared the details. He was only four at the time. I assume Papa fell on him or dropped him, that the injury was accidental. In any case, Papa could not afford a doctor. By the time word got to me at the Tipton estate, setting the leg would have been difficult if not impossible, but I vowed then and there to disentangle myself from the countess.”
“Did she let you go?”
No, she had not. She’d raged, pouted, threatened, and promised, until Quinn had been as desperate to escape her as he’d once been to secure her approval. Would that Beatrice was more like Jane, determined to forgive and forget.
“I left, eventually. Took a job with a banker for whom I’d once been an errand boy. With better manners, better speech, some literacy, and clean clothes, I made a passable clerk.”
Jane smoothed his hair back. “You were a brilliant clerk, and your employer noticed.”
“I wasn’t brilliant. I was honest. The old man left a five-pound note on the floor one night. I found it and returned it to him the next morning. He’d been testing me, and of all the clerks he’d tested in that manner, I was the first in twenty years to return his funds to him.”
She traced a fingertip over Quinn’s eyebrows, then down the length of his nose. “Five pounds must have been a fortune to you then. Why didn’t you keep it?”
“Because I am not my father. I do not willingly break the law. I accepted any work, no matter how wretched, because Jack Wentworth had had a trade and refused to ply it. I had no trade, but was determined to be the better man. The banker bequeathed me a modest sum along with advice regarding its use. I made discreet, sound investments, worked hard, had some wildly good luck in the spice trade, and became a wealthy man.”
Jane hugged him. “You’re the best man. I still hate the countess. The very last thing you should do, though, is gratify her need to meddle by giving her any further attention. Ignore her. Her machinations failed, if indeed they were her machinations.”
The baby moved where Jane’s belly pressed against the back of Quinn’s head. A kick, perhaps?
“I cannot ignore a woman who uses her influence to threaten my life and my good name. I’ll at least make a few discreet inquiries.” More discreet inquiries, in France, in Yorkshire, all over the stews and alleys of London.
Jane wrapped her hand around his nape and gently shook him. “If you kick over a hornet’s nest, you’ll be stung—badly. Do you know how my mother died?”
He should know. Should have asked the reverend, if nothing else. “Tell me.”
“She was devoted to the Magdalen houses, or to the women in them. She’d accompany Papa to the prison and sing the praises of those establishments to the fallen women. Papa admired her for this, while I attempted to dissuade her.”
The Magdalen houses were little better than forced labor for the women admitted to them. The task assigned was typically laundry—heavy, uncomfortable labor for females in poor health, though the house made a profit off of their work, despite the stated agenda being the saving of souls. Wages were nominal, the food poor, and the sermons never ending.
“You objected to women being judged and overworked?” Quinn asked.
“If I took up that fight…No, Quinn. I objected to my mother consorting in close quarters with a population carrying every possible illness. When influenza struck Mama’s favorite charitable home, nothing would do but she must tend the sick herself, though she’d already contracted a fever of some sort visiting the jails.”
The lady’s husband had doubtless applauded her kindness, while Jane had gone mad. “Your mother fell ill?”
“Of course, and Mama refused to rest, because she cared so very much about the soiled doves who would not have spared a farthing for her medical expenses.”
Jane twitched the afghan over Quinn’s shoulders, though he hadn’t realized he’d grown chilled.
“I’m sorry you lost your mother thus, Jane. She was clearly a good woman and dear to you.”
