Page 88 of My One and Only Duke
“Please, Stephen. I had a brush with death, a misfortune, an unpleasant ordeal. You’re a lord now—try to find some damned delicacy.”
Stephen fell silent, which was delicacy enough. All too soon, the horror that was Newgate came into view.
“You’ll stay with the horses,” Quinn said.
“Because I can’t hop down and chase you. Sometimes, I hate you.” Said without heat.
“Sometimes,” Quinn replied, “I hate myself.” As when he sneaked away from Jane’s side, because he didn’t want her to worry needlessly. “I’m here to question a guard.”
Stephen crossed his hands on the pommel and regarded the bleak façade. “Imagine that. You’ve come back to the scene of your misfortunate brush with death by the ordeal of hanging to question a guard. This has to be the ugliest piece of architecture ever to house mortal man.”
And women and children. “That’s the intention, to intimidate and frighten.” Quinn did not want to be here, but the person he needed to speak with dwelled on the premises.
He dismounted at the entrance and passed his reins to Stephen. “Don’t go far.”
“Don’t stay long. Duncan is up to something.”
“About damned time he got his head out of the learned tomes. I’ve asked him to look into a few delicate matters for me.” Among them, a ducal estate in Berkshire that stewards and solicitors had picked cleaner than bleached bones. The family seat in Yorkshire was in no better condition if the new steward’s reports were to be believed.
Stephen peered down at him, which was disconcerting when Quinn was accustomed to looking down on his baby brother.
“You sent Duncan on his present errand? But then, why should I be told what my tutor has got up to. I’m merely his only pupil, his cousin, and the closest thing he has to a friend. No need to keep me informed.” Having concluded his lamentation, Stephen led Quinn’s horse away, hoofbeats ringing against the dew-slick cobbles.
At the street corner, the shadow Quinn had acquired shortly after returning from York pretended to read the bill of fare set outside a pub. A slow reader, apparently, or a footman new to the business of spying.
Getting inside Newgate was simple—a hard stare, a name—and then Quinn was again enveloped in the stench and filth that had been his temporary home. He’d been lucky to get into a state room, because the alternative was eventual death for most who dwelled too long in the common wards.
He was led up a set of steps to a dormitory portion of the prison. The smell wasn’t as bad, and the noise was muted. Sounds from the street hinted at normalcy while iron rings anchored in the stone wall confirmed that nothing in this place was normal.
Quinn was left outside a partly open wooden door. He knocked and pushed the door open.
“If it isn’t our Mr. Wentworth.” The guard had yet to shave and was without his coat. His beard was a mix of gray and flax, his eyes the blue of northern summer skies. He rose from a battered table and smiled, revealing good teeth. “You’re looking well, sir.”
“I’d like to stay well.”
“Wouldn’t we all. Easier said than done. You wanted to talk.”
Quinn closed the door, though it made him uneasy to do so. The chamber was small: one window, one door, a tiny hearth. The furnishings consisted of a bed, a table, a chair. Six pegs had been jammed into the wall opposite the hearth, and a worn Bible sat on the mantel.
Once upon a time, Quinn would have regarded these snug, dry, secure quarters as palatial.
“I want to live,” he said. “To do that, I need to know who put me in jail.”
The guard unrolled a shaving kit on the table and wrapped a tattered towel across his throat. He brought a basin of water from the hearth and resumed his seat, propping a speckled mirror against the side of the basin.
“You put yourself in here, guv. Took a man’s life. Happen it might have been by accident, but the cove’s just as dead.”
“In point of fact, he is not dead. Mr. Robert Pike is kicking his heels in Calais, and has written at least twice to his brother in York. He’s no more dead than you are.”
A steel blade was held up to the meagre morning light. “Good for Mr. Pike. You’re a free man, a wealthy free man with a royal pardon. Why can’t you let well enough alone?”
Exactly what Jane had advised.
This rough, aging man had once been kind to Quinn, and he’d had a brutally sharp knife and quick reflexes when those had been the difference between life and death. He was trying to be kind now.
“I haven’t the luxury of leaving well enough alone,” Quinn said. “My wife is in a delicate condition, my sisters are unmarried, my brother spends most of his time in a Bath chair. If whoever had me arrested should attempt any more mischief, my family will not survive, my bank will fail, and then everybody from shop girls to courtesy lords will suffer. I would take the law into my own hands only as a last resort, but I cannot allow an enemy to threaten my family.”
The guard opened a tin of shaving soap, swished a brush in the tepid water, and worked up a lather. The scent of bay rum wafted across the small chamber.
