Page 93 of My One and Only Duke
“Shall I ring for more ale?”
“Of course.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Making love with Jane was the reward for every effort, the antidote to every ill, and—with her—simply another part of being married.
Quinn pondered that conundrum in odd moments at the bank, while staring at the estate ledgers, and in the quiet interludes after lovemaking. He’d spent the first eighteen years of his life scrabbling for survival, spent his entire adulthood amassing wealth from nothing, dodged the noose, been handed a failing dukedom, and left parts of himself scattered from York to London.
Jane was putting him back together. With her smiles and scolds, her shopping expeditions, her affection, her presence at his side, she was bringing a sense of normalcy to a family that had never been normal.
“Would you rather I’d stayed at the bank?” Quinn asked, as he closed their sitting room door. “I am a creature of routine. Perhaps you are too.”
Jane led him into the bedroom. “I’d rather you do as you please, and I cannot imagine a circumstance where climbing into bed with my husband would not please me too.”
She avoided addressing him as Your Grace or Duke, and used his name, or “husband.” Occasionally, she referred to him teasingly as Mr. Wentworth. Even that small domesticity soothed Quinn, and reinforced the notion that with Jane, he could be himself.
Almost.
He tended to her hooks, she took his sleeve buttons. He opened the window, she folded back the covers. They had a rhythm about even this, though when it came to lovemaking, Jane was anything but predictable.
Quinn finished undressing, giving Jane the use of the privacy screen. She emerged in her shift, her hair a single braid draped over one shoulder.
“I’m getting fat.” She regarded her belly as if the fairies had bestowed it upon her the previous night. “I’ll soon lose sight of my feet.”
She wasn’t getting fat, but the swell of her middle was noticeable when she was unclothed. “You’re growing luscious. If you lose sight of your feet, I’ll find them for you.”
Jane leaned against him, all soft, sweet woman. “How did you learn to be so attentive? You describe your father as a parental horror and barely recall your mother. Where did your considerate nature come from, Quinn?”
Considerate? “In all of creation, you are the only person who regards me as considerate, though I suspect my father’s bad example played a role in forming my character. He treated my mother and my stepmother abominably, and when Step-Mama was too exhausted to deal with the children, I did what I could. I cannot ignore a crying baby.”
Jane shifted closer, looping her arms around him. “I treasure this about you. You notice what’s amiss and do something about it, but what if that baby isn’t yours to comfort?”
What an odd question, though technically, the baby Jane carried wasn’t Quinn’s to comfort. He’d consulted with solicitors and barristers, and their opinions were mixed. Gordie had sired the child but hadn’t known Jane had conceived. He thus hadn’t had an opportunity to acknowledge the baby as his. In the normal course, Gordie would have had little choice, because marriage obligated a man to support all children born to his wife during the period of coverture.
Which obligation, Quinn’s father had chafed against at every turn.
“I’m not concerned about the babies who belong to others, Jane. At this very moment, I’m not exactly focused on the baby you’ll have either.”
He kissed her, lest she launch into a conversational flight about which room to convert into a nursery. He could taste the pre-occupation in her, the retreat into that place from which only an expectant mother regarded the world. She had secrets there—fears, physical sensations, hopes—and Quinn allowed her that privacy.
He had secrets too, and his reason for ambushing Jane in the middle of the day was one of them.
“Come to bed,” she said, after a lovely, lazy spate of kissing. “Come to bed and love me.”
He did love her. Loved her courage and her intriguingly complicated female body, her pragmatism and her generous heart. The words remained lodged in his heart, so he tried to show her his feelings with touches and tickles.
When Jane swung her leg over him and straddled him on the bed, Quinn was already having to do sums in his head to restrain his desire.
“You look so serious,” Jane said, drawing a finger between his brows. “And yet, you make me laugh in bed.”
“You’re the one who referred to yourself as a rutting heifer.”
Jane mooed against the side of his neck bearing the scar, then bit his earlobe. She had a curiosity about his body that went beyond the sexual, and suggested to Quinn that to her, he wasn’t simply attractive, he was interesting.
“Shall we name the child Bossy?” Jane asked, straightening to lift her shift over her head. “Or perhaps I’ll deserve that appellation.” She studied her breasts quizzically. “I have never considered myself well endowed, but my proportions are changing.”
“Will you use a wet nurse?” Quinn hoped not. This was ungenteel of him, a relic of his upbringing, but the notion that a stranger would nourish the baby sat ill with him. Some women nursed a child for a few months, then hired that stranger. Others never put the child to their own breast—others who could afford that choice.
