Page 91 of My One and Only Duke
“Joshua says we ought to move to a larger house,” Quinn said.
“Why?”
“I’m a duke. I’m supposed to involve myself in the House of Lords now, and ensure banking laws remain sane, because the present crop of titled buffoons will just pillage the exchequer in the usual fashion if left to their own devices.”
Quinn’s fingers started a slow massage on Jane’s nape. Tension she’d held all day eased away, and she considered telling Quinn of her father’s scheme.
“Does Joshua want you to take your seat, or is that your conscience talking?” Even after a morning at the bank, Quinn still smelled of his lovely shaving soap.
He toed off one polished boot with the other. “I was absent from the bank for weeks, Jane. Joshua had no warning I’d be unavailable, and he not only managed without me, he managed well. We’ve increased the number of depositors by twenty percent since I was arrested, and now that my title is becoming common knowledge, our customers include peers as well as shopkeepers.”
Jane took Quinn’s free hand. “And?”
“Joshua is delighted. He’s hired more tellers, another amanuensis, two clerks…while I’m wondering if I cheated the hangman merely to keep a larger ledger book.”
For Quinn, that was an expression of fundamental doubt. “You have doubtless worked just as hard as Joshua for just as long to make the bank succeed. You have been through hell, taken a wife, been saddled with a title, and will soon have an infant underfoot. You’re due a little time to sort out your thoughts.”
He nuzzled her temple. “So sensible. When you’re all prim and proper I get bothered.”
Quinn had a naughty streak, much to Jane’s delight—a lusty, naughty streak. She sensed in his more exuberant overtures a newfound glee, a relief at being spontaneous and physical that was new for Jane as well.
“I like it when you’re bothered, Quinn.”
He rose and held out a hand. “Come upstairs with me, Jane. Help me sort out my thoughts.”
When he smiled like that, his thoughts needed no translation. Jane took his hand, struggled to her feet, and let him escort her to their rooms.
She’d bring up the situation with Papa only if circumstances made that discussion imperative. By the time the child arrived, Papa might have a congregation again, preferably on a remote island to the west of Scotland.
* * *
“Where could he be?” Althea tossed herself into the reading chair by the hearth. All the comfortable furniture seemed to end up in Constance’s studio, though how and when it migrated here only Ivor and Kristoff knew.
“Davies says Duncan is in Berkshire,” Constance replied around the paintbrush sticking out of her mouth. “When Davies passes along gossip, it’s usually trustworthy. He knows we rely on his reports. Perhaps our cousin came across a librarian flaunting a first folio of the Bard and became passionately distracted. Hand me that rag.”
Constance was not an artist so much as she was a caricaturist. Her paintings were emotionally accurate—revealing character, motive, sentiments—while her physical representations were interpretative. She’d shown a respectable talent with watercolors by age fifteen, and then…
Then she’d taken up oils, which ladies were not supposed to do. Althea handed her a rag that was stiff with myriad blotches of paint and redolent of linseed oil.
“Duncan should be back by now,” Althea said. “Berkshire’s not that far.”
Constance took the brush from her mouth and the brush in her hand and tucked one behind each ear, paint end out.
“Duncan deserves a break from us, Althea. He never chastises or criticizes, but in his very silence, I hear volumes of long-suffering. If he were a better man, he’d pray for us, but he’s a Wentworth, so he simply endures. Stephen would have been lost without him.”
Stephen would have been dead without Duncan. Five years ago, Ivor had found one of Quinn’s cravats fashioned into a noose in Stephen’s dressing closet. A further search had revealed a note—“The pain defeats me.”—and enough arsenic to kill an elephant-sized rat. Quinn had left the evidence undisturbed. He reasoned that a twelve-year-old’s melancholia need not be complicated by humiliation, and he’d sent a pigeon to Duncan in York the same hour.
Duncan had resigned his post as a schoolteacher and boarded the next stage for London.
“Of all of us,” Althea said, “Duncan strikes me as the loneliest. He’s a Wentworth who doesn’t fit in among Wentworths.”
“I like him for that. He’s also brilliant, and doesn’t lord it about, unlike certain younger brothers.”
“You’ve never liked anybody.”
The two paintbrushes jutting from Constance’s hair made her look like a fanciful bull with one red-tipped horn and one black.
“I like my cats.” Constance poured another inch of ale into both mugs, passed one to Althea, and perched on her stool. “Are you hiding in my studio?”
