Page 9 of My One and Only Duke
“Are your father’s circumstances that limited?” Preaching and penury did not necessarily go hand in hand.
“His tolerance for anything other than necessities is limited. We were comfortable once. We’re on appallingly good terms with the pawnbroker now.” She put her hand to her throat again. “The lemonade is disagreeing with me.”
Sickness was rampant at Newgate. Jail fever, consumption, venereal diseases, bad food…Misery concentrated here, and it spread.
Quinn came around the table and put the back of his hand to Miss Winston’s forehead. “You’re not fevered. Does only your digestion trouble you?”
“I’m sure it will pass.” She rose and braced herself against the table, but made no attempt to reach the door.
“If you’re unwell, then you’re better off staying here.”
She wasn’t coughing, wasn’t hot to the touch, didn’t appear chilled, though many illnesses began slowly and gathered momentum until suffering reached a crescendo that made death welcome.
“I’m not ill.” She hunched her shoulders and leaned over, as if winded. Her weight was on one hand, while the other hand pressed to her belly.
No. Not her belly. Lower.
Her hand pressed against her womb, which bulged slightly, now that she’d smoothed the billowing folds of her cloak.
“Sit down.” Quinn nudged the chair closer with his foot. “Sit down, and tell me who the father is.”
She didn’t sit; she swayed into him. Quinn wrapped his arms around her, and for the first time in years, embraced a woman of his own free will.
Chapter Four
“Sir, I’ve found another small problem.” Timmons had ambushed Dodson outside the College offices, right on the London street, where more privacy was to be had than under the noses of a lot of scribbling clerks.
“Life is nothing but problems,” Dodson replied as Timmons fell in step beside him. The week had been productive, though disappointing. A duke was facing the hangman, a doleful thought. Dodson consoled himself that Mr. Quinn Wentworth would go to his death with that much more regret if he knew he was also saying good-bye to a lofty title.
Though Dodson had stumbled upon one very significant problem where His Grace of Walden was concerned: Quinn Wentworth had technically become the duke three years ago and should have been tried in the House of Lords. They’d have sentenced him to death too, quite possibly, Wentworth being not of their ilk. Yet another reason to let the matter resolve itself quietly.
“About the Walden situation,” Timmons said, keeping his voice down. “I fear I must report a development.”
“You couldn’t let it go.” Tenacity in a subordinate was a wonderful quality, when preserving the interests of the Crown. Contrariness was hard to overlook. “I told you how we’ll proceed, Timmons, and the sovereign is yet enjoying the restorative pleasures of the seaside. Unless this development is another legitimate adult son in great good health, I doubt it’s relevant.”
“The development is relevant, sir. Mr. Wentworth—His Grace of Walden, rather—is a banker.”
“We do not hold that against him. He’s also a condemned felon, which is rather more problematic.”
They paused on a street corner to allow a hackney to rattle past.
“A banker,” Timmons said, “would have his affairs in order. I bethought myself to have a look at those affairs.”
“Bethinking yourself is not what the Crown pays you to do, Timmons. We had that discussion last March.” Timmons had bethought himself to see about any afterborn Elizabethan heirs in a situation where the Crown had very much wanted an estate to revert. Timmons’s bethinking had cost King George a lucrative viscountcy that had gone—God save the realm—to a Cheshire farmer.
“I do apologize for my wayward impulses, sir, but in this case—a wealthy banker, a dukedom nearing insolvency—I could not stop myself. Wentworth’s younger brother will inherit little.”
Dodson came to a halt in the middle of the street. “How is that possible?”
“Stephen Wentworth, the boy of seventeen, will inherit an enviable competence to go with the ducal honors. He can live as a comfortable gentleman of means, assuming his guardian does not squander his funds.”
Guardians were always trouble. “Who is the guardian?”
“Wentworth’s business partner, Joshua Penrose, and a second cousin who serves as the young man’s tutor.”
A fishmonger’s donkey cart went by, perfuming the air with haddock. “What does the cousin inherit?”
“Mr. Duncan Wentworth will have mementos, guardianship of the boy, and an old horse.”
