Page 90 of My One and Only Duke
Jock studied the card. “You’re not about to bribe me, are you?”
“If your word can be bought, then it’s not trustworthy.”
“Precious. Don’t find many who see it like that.” He folded the battered mirror and set it beside the shaving kit. “Up home, a man’s word is still his bond, not here.”
Homesickness colored that observation, while Quinn never wanted to see Yorkshire again. “You were raised in York?”
“Out on the dales. Had a wife, a baby girl. Lung fever got ’em the same winter. Tried to find work at one of the fancy estates, but a shepherd boy who took the king’s shilling isn’t much use in a household like that.” No rancor colored these words, merely the soldier/shepherd’s stoic acceptance.
“I wore livery once myself. Longest two years of my life.” And the most confounding and regrettable.
The guard smiled. “Bet you looked a treat, all done up in lace.”
Quinn was happy to leave on that note—he had looked a treat, damn it all to hell—but instead he asked one last question.
“I don’t suppose you noticed the livery on the coachman or grooms?”
The guard folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Happen I did. More foolishness if somebody’s trying to keep their business quiet. Grooms wore pale blue and silver with black stockings. You’d think we were holding a fancy dress ball here. I recognized that livery because the earls of Tipton have fancied it for as long as I can recall, and their domestics have been strutting about York in that finery just as long.”
“So they have.” Finery Quinn himself had once been proud to wear, right down to the black stockings and silver shoe buckles.
* * *
The baby was growing, almost as if the good food and rest Jane enjoyed in the Wentworth household were going straight to the child, and that was lovely.
Her regard for her husband was growing as well. Quinn Wentworth was an affectionate man, though Jane suspected only Constance’s cats had been privy to that secret. Behind a closed bedroom door, Quinn became a warm blanket of husband by night, and an inventive lover at all hours.
When Jane couldn’t find sleep, she found Quinn, and he loved her into dreams and peaceful slumbers. If she asked it of him, he escorted her and his sisters about the shops, though she knew he’d rather be at the bank. Because she did ask it of him, he tolerated the company of footmen, siblings, Ned, grooms, or Joshua rather than let Jane fret that he was without the safety of numbers.
He explained complicated financial instruments to her—trusts, deeds, mortgages, promissory notes—though Jane found his recitations baffling. To Quinn, these documents were so many forms of sport, challenges to craft and enforce, works of art to admire. She came to understand that banking had provided a sense of order and predictability to a young man who’d grown up amid chaos and violence.
Jane’s worries were growing as well. Papa had come by again, and Jane hadn’t the heart to refuse him entry to the house. Stephen had stayed by her side while Papa had discoursed at length on the quality of mercy, confusing Shakespeare and holy scripture while swilling tea and gobbling cakes.
To Stephen, that recitation had likely been a mind-numbing bore. To Jane it had been laced with alarming innuendo. Papa clearly intended to have the raising of her child, proof positive that her surviving parent had become a candidate for Bedlam. By the time the courts found in Papa’s favor—a theoretical possibility—Jane would be approaching old age.
But how to explain that to Papa, or how to put the situation to Quinn without Papa ending up in Bedlam?
The library door opened and Quinn entered. Jane rose to kiss his cheek, because such was a wife’s privilege.
“You’re home in the middle of day,” she said. “Is something amiss at the bank?”
Quinn kissed her back—on the mouth. “Something is terribly wrong. I missed my wife and couldn’t concentrate worth a damn. Joshua is in a temper over the clerks squabbling, the auditor is in a temper over Joshua’s bad mood, and I bethought myself: I have a perfectly lovely wife at home and it’s a beautiful spring day. Why am I subjecting myself to this drudgery, when I might instead be enjoying Jane’s company?”
The house was quiet, it being half day and the sisters having retired to Constance’s studio. Stephen was closeted with a new translation of Dante, and Jane had been contemplating composing a letter to Papa’s bishop, begging for word of a congregation Papa might serve.
How much more agreeable to spend time with her husband.
Quinn came down beside her on the sofa. “What are you reading?”
“Dr. Smellie’s treatise on childbirth.” Constance had given it to her, a strange offering, but then, everything about Constance bordered on the eccentric.
Quinn propped his boots on the hassock and put an arm around Jane’s shoulders. “I anticipate your travail with something approaching panic.”
“Women give birth every day, Quinn. I’m healthy, I’ll have good medical care. Please don’t worry.” Jane was worrying enough for them both. She slid down against him, pillowing her head on his shoulder.
She worried about giving birth as all women did, and she worried about her father’s increasingly odd notions. In the wrong mood, Papa might try to physically appropriate an infant—the accurate term was kidnap—and Quinn would be unable to overlook such behavior.
Should anybody overlook such behavior?
