Constance was tipsy and hiding it well, Althea was furious—she went through life in a perpetual state of annoyance—and Stephen had been fascinated with Jane on sight. Duncan, as always, was lending a veneer of sanity to the family interactions.
Quinn had endured thirty minutes of interrogation about everything from prison conditions, to the estates conveying with the title, to who benefitted from his death—dangerous ground, that—when Duncan sent him a look: Constance will soon reach the end of her tether.
As would Quinn, and yet, his family was owed this time with him.
“I must excuse myself,” Jane said, shifting to the edge of her chair. “I am easily fatigued these days. Mr. Wentworth, if you’d see me to my quarters?”
Quinn shamelessly took his cue, drawing Jane to her feet.
But where to take her? “The bedrooms are upstairs,” he said when they’d left the family murmuring among themselves in the parlor. “Stephen uses a lift, if you can’t manage the steps.”
“Now, you ask me about steps. I shall contrive, Mr. Wentworth.”
He’d spent years earning the right to be addressed as Mr. Wentworth rather than “boy,” “ye little bastard,” or “the Wentworth whelp.” Jane’s form of address was familiar, but not comfortable, and yet, the idea of becoming His Grace of Walden to her chafed like the abrasion on Quinn’s neck.
Jane took the steps slowly, her hand wrapped around his arm. He’d had the kitchen send up beef sandwiches, which Jane had nibbled between sips of tea. He wasn’t imagining her pallor, nor the lavender half circles beneath her eyes.
“You don’t know where to put me,” Jane said, as Quinn paused at the top of the steps. “I’m not particular. Clean sheets and some privacy will suffice.”
He’d have to do something about her habit of guessing his thoughts. “I was giving you a moment to catch your breath. My quarters are this way.” She was his wife. Where else could he stash her but in his own rooms?
His apartment had been kept clean, as if he’d simply been at the bank for the day, not rotting away in Newgate for a month. The window in the parlor was open, as he preferred if the temperature was above freezing, and the fire in the hearth had recently been built up.
“A bed,” Jane said, marching straight through the doorway to Quinn’s bedroom. “Ye gods, a bed. My kingdom for a bed, and such a magnificent bed it is too. If you’d unhook me, please.” She swept her hair off her nape and gave him her back.
The gesture was disconcertingly married, but then, Quinn was not her first husband, and hooks were hooks. He undid the first half dozen, and still Jane stood before him, hand on the back of her head, holding her hair away.
He undid another half dozen. “That should do.”
“If you could assist with my boots, I’d appreciate it.”
Her boots. “Of course.” He knelt before her when she sat on the hassock. “You have difficulty getting them on?”
“Some days, I manage quite well. Other days, bending to any degree upsets my digestion and leaves me light-headed.”
He eased off one battered boot, then the other. “Your garters?”
“Please.”
Quinn had not touched a woman beneath her skirts for years. What allowed him to exercise that familiarity now was Jane’s utter indifference to the intimacy. She was exhausted, uncomfortable, and desperate for rest.
“If we have a daughter,” she said, as Quinn untied the first garter, “I’ll not tell her the fairy tales.”
Quinn’s mind tripped over the first part—if we have a daughter. As a father, he expected to write out bank drafts and pay bills, though Jane’s ideas about parenting apparently involved something more.
“I thought children liked fairy tales.” Quinn wouldn’t know, having had no one to tell him pretty stories when he’d been a child.
“Some children do. I’m referring to the pernicious falsehoods told among women: When you hold that new baby, you’ll forget the misery you endured for nine months, and the hours or even days of travail that brought the child into the world. That fairy tale. Our daughters will know that conceiving a child opens the door to indignities without number, and they go on forever.”
Quinn draped two worn, mended stockings over the battered boots. “Let’s get you into bed.”
He hauled Jane to her feet, and watched while she wiggled, twisted, and muttered her way out of the aubergine dress. Something like panic rose inside him as she handed him the frock.
She wore neither stays nor jumps, but stood in only her shift, the slight protuberance of her belly obvious beneath the worn linen.
“We must have an awkward discussion, Mr. Wentworth,” she said, climbing the step to the bed, “about conjugal intimacies.”
They were up to three awkward discussions in less than a day, doubtless a record for newlyweds. “Must we have that conversation now? I was under the impression your sole objective at the moment was sleep.”
She threw back the covers on Quinn’s side of the bed—he always slept closest to the window—and scooted beneath the sheets, then snuggled down into his pillow with a great sigh.
“We are man and wife,” she said. “I will accommodate you if you insist on consummating our vows now, though I will be fast asleep all the while. I don’t require awkward professions or pretty words, which we both know you cannot sincerely offer. I love this bed.”
She looked small amid the pillows and covers, like a hedgehog burrowing in for the winter.
“I will not trouble you now in the manner you refer to.”
She regarded Quinn from amid a sea of pillows, snowy linen, and soft quilts. “You’ve had a trying day. Your neck has to be sore. Why not take a nap? This sumptuous abundance of a bed has room for half a regiment.”
She was in love with his bed—or his shaving soap—while mention of Quinn’s neck reminded him of a constant, burning ache.
“I typically sleep on the side of the bed you’re occupying.”
She thrashed to the other side of the mattress, a beached fish determined to reach the waterline.
“Now will you come to bed? Your siblings won’t intrude or I’ll swoon on them—or worse—and you probably haven’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks. We’ll face your family again at dinner.”
And at breakfast, and again tomorrow evening. Abruptly, Quinn was ready to drop. Mentally, physically, and in every other regard, he’d hit the limit of his reserves, the end of his tether.
“You won’t mind if I grab a nap?”
“I’ll be asleep. I promise you, Mr. Wentworth. I’m asleep now, in fact.”
Jane might be comfortable with marital familiarity, but Quinn needed the modesty afforded by the privacy screen. Because Jane had said the scent of his soap soothed her digestion, he gave himself an extra wash in a few obvious locations, and got a wretchedly stinging neck for his troubles.
Better a stinging neck than a broken one.
Jane lay on her side, her breathing slow and regular, as if she’d settled in until the next change of season.
Quinn locked the parlor door and the bedroom door, opened the bedroom window, and climbed beneath the covers. He was aware of Jane, but she was so still that her company was more of an idea than a presence.
He hadn’t shared a bed with a woman in years. Hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t seen the need. He was married, though, had spoken vows and taken a wife. They could sort out the details later. For now, Quinn gave himself up to the miracle of sleeping once again in his own bed.
His and Jane’s.
* * *
“She’s pretty,” Stephen said. “Leave it to Quinn to find a wife in prison who’s not only proper but pretty.”
“I don’t care how pretty or proper she is,” Constance retorted, “Jane’s on the nest. How does a preacher’s daughter conceive a child then cadge an offer of marriage from one of the wealthiest men in England?”
Duncan Wentworth called these people family, but they were as much a tribulation as they were an entertainment. Most days, they were very entertaining.
“Jane is a widow,” he said. “Conception likely occurred in the usual fashion, and this is not a fit topic for a lady.”
“You’ve taken tea with many ladies to know their conversational habits?” Constance replied, reaching for the decanter.
Althea moved the brandy aside before Constance could serve herself more spirits. Ladies also did not take spirits, except for the occasional medicinal serving, but Althea and Constance had likely imbibed their first taste of gin while still at the breast.
“I do wonder how she gained Quinn’s notice,” Stephen said. “He’s had plenty of options where the fair sex is concerned.”
Althea rose to set the brandy on the sideboard. “We can’t know what it was like for him to face such a death. He was supposed to die for somebody’s convenience, despite his innocence, despite his wealth. That could change a man’s heart.”
Quinn had no heart, beyond a wild beast’s devotion to its pack. Duncan reached that conclusion without judging his cousin. Quinn had been raised in hell and managed as best he could. The damage was lamentable but permanent, and the resulting lack of sentiment had made Quinn an enviably successful banker.
“You are certain of his innocence,” Duncan pointed out. “Most of London is certain of his guilt.”
“Fine thing,” Constance said, rising and shaking out her skirts. “You put your feet under Quinn’s table, take his coin, and call him cousin, but you don’t defend him.”
What need had Quinn of a defense when his siblings were on hand to pour boiling oil from the parapets? “I merely make an observation, and you have never once heard me condemn or criticize Quinn Wentworth.”
“You’re wrong about all of London thinking him guilty.” Stephen’s comment embodied an adolescent’s oblivion to conversational subtleties. “The lords and MPs who owe Quinn money were doubtless happy to see him brought low. I don’t think the real people—the people who work and worry and strive—feel that way about him. They know he’s pulled himself up from nothing, and they respect him for it.”
“I respect him too,” Duncan said, lest Stephen’s ferocious loyalty be stirred into a passion. “Apparently the king does as well.”
Constance tipped her glass to her lips to shake a final drop into her mouth. “I was rather looking forward to having my own property, truth be told. I could get away from you lot and from Quinn’s infernal hovering.”
“Constance.” Althea’s tone was chiding rather than dismayed. The Wentworths raised blunt discourse to dizzying heights, a refreshing change from the hypocrisy of the academics and clerics with whom Duncan had come of age.
“Don’t let us keep you,” Stephen said cheerfully. “If you’re determined to leave London, talk to Quinn. The brandy will last longer without you here.”
Nasty boy, but then, Constance was a bitter young woman, and Stephen could not afford to be tenderhearted.
“I’d miss you,” Duncan said. “You keep us honest.” Such as the Wentworths could be honest.
Constance set her empty glass on the sideboard. “Quinn doesn’t know what to do with her.”
She refused to say Jane’s name, which spoke volumes about this desire to leave the household.
“Quinn will get her sorted out,” Stephen said, finishing his drink. “He’s resourceful.”
“We shall all adjust,” Althea snapped. “Jane is family now and Quinn’s wife. She married him thinking to be widowed again today, and she’ll have some adjusting of her own to do.”
“Truer words…” Duncan murmured, getting to his feet. “I have translations to work on, so I’ll leave you three to dissect Jane’s character in peace. You might consider that she faces the daunting prospect of childbirth among strangers, and the woman does not look well to me.”
“She looks uncomfortable,” Constance said. “Hard to hate somebody who barely nibbles her biscuits.”
And hard to know how to go on in the absence of enmity. Duncan often wondered who lived with the greater pain: Stephen with his injured leg, Constance with her injured heart, or Althea, buffeted between love for, and exasperation with, her siblings. And then there was Quinn, who had doubtless lost the ability to admit any suffering before he’d been breeched.
“Perhaps Jane will be a good influence on us.” Duncan left his cousins snickering at what had been a sincere hope, rather than a jest. He’d tried for years to exert a civilizing influence on his family, to no avail whatsoever.
So he’d given up trying, and they’d all been happier as a result.
* * *
Jane drifted amid the blissful comfort of a well-stuffed mattress, clean linen, soft blankets, and the soothing scent of her husband. In sleep she’d shifted closer to him, her belly to his back. The rhythm of his breathing suggested he slumbered on, a comforting presence, as opposed to Gordie’s pawing and thrashing.
And snoring.
And worse. Jane’s first transition to married life had consisted of that wild trip to Scotland—accomplished one rocking, jouncing mile after another—a few seedy inns, and Gordie rocking and jouncing on top of her at those seedy inns.
Eloping had been expedient rather than romantic. She saw that with the perfect hindsight of regret. No banns, no opportunity for the naïve bride to give in to second thoughts, crawl home, and beg her papa’s forgiveness.
And then, just as she’d been reeling with the enormity of the mistake she’d made—Gordie drank, he consorted with other women, he squandered his half pay—he’d died.
Relief, sorrow, and guilt had had a moment to compete for the status of greatest source of misery, then had come a period of futile bargaining with the Almighty: I’m simply upset, I’m grieving. I’m dealing with too much upheaval. This is a digestive ailment. I cannot possibly be with child. Somewhere in the past several months, Jane had lost her bearings, such that life had become a matter of coping from moment to moment.
Mustn’t be sick.
Must eat something.
Must find a chamber pot.
Why must Papa pawn Mama’s cedar chest when she was very clear that chest was to be mine?
Must lie down.
In the last six hours Jane had acquired a new and far safer address, and with that development had come one conviction: The whirling in her life had to stop, and before the child arrived. Jane’s best estimate was that she had another five months before she’d become a mother.
“You’re awake,” Mr. Wentworth rumbled. He remained on his side of the bed, lying on his back, his arms folded behind his head.
“For now. This is a lovely bed.”
“So you’ve said. We needn’t share it if you’d rather have this bedroom to yourself.” He made his announcement without doing her the courtesy of looking her in the eye.
And here she’d been so comfortable. “Are you about to offer me another annulment, Mr. Wentworth?”
He darted a glance at her in the gloom created by the bed hangings. “And if I were?”
“I’m told you don’t go back on your word, so why re-open this discussion?” Did she want him to renew this offer? On the one hand, he wasn’t at all what she had planned, and Jane set very great store by her plans. On the other hand, he was warm and he smelled good. His hands didn’t wander uninvited, and she liked him.
Mostly. She would very much like another beef sandwich. She did not like this conversation.
“You’ve met us,” he said. “Duncan is the only Wentworth with pretensions to gentility. The uncle who raised him was a vicar, and Duncan was educated accordingly. He ended up as a teacher after a failed attempt at the church. Don’t ask him why he changed course, for the tale is unhappy and even I am vague on the details. The rest of us…”
Mr. Wentworth was self-conscious about his family, which Jane understood all too well. “You met my father. Your family might take a while to warm up to, but Papa is a trial to the nerves, for all he means well.”
Mr. Wentworth sat up, resting his back against the headboard. His chest was bare, and a fine chest it was, all sculpted muscle with a dusting of dark hair. The occasional scar nicked at his anatomical perfection, making him human as well as handsome.
“We should resolve this before the child is born, Jane.”
Resolve? Insight struck as if the child had kicked her. “You are a duke. You’ve realized your heir might be Gordie MacGowan’s son.” This was what Mr. Wentworth had meant when he’d referred to changed circumstances. He was a peer, and not just any peer. Dukes were rarities and their lineages ancient.
Mr. Wentworth—or rather, His Grace of…what was his title?—laughed, a single rusty guffaw.
“I don’t give a stinking goddamn who gets stuck with the title after me so long as Fat George doesn’t get his hands on my money. The easiest way to assure that outcome is to have sons, and you’re apparently willing to be their mother. The issue for your firstborn, however, is that your current husband is a convicted killer.”
Jane struggled to a sitting position and tucked the covers under her arms. “If you don’t care about your succession and you aren’t ashamed of marrying a preacher’s disgraced daughter, then why not try to make something of this union?” The question was for herself as much as for her bedmate. “I ask myself, What are the options? Should I go home to Papa and resume being Miss Jane Winston of the inexplicably gravid shape and uncertain digestion?”
“Don’t be daft.”
That gruff rejoinder assured her that Mr. Wentworth would not abandon her. He might annul the marriage, but he’d honor the obligation to support her. Jane should have been relieved rather than resentful.
“So,” she said, “that leaves either making a go of this situation, or annulling the marriage and doing what with me and the child? If you cast me off, I’ll be doubly disgraced, and the child will be a MacGowan rather than a Wentworth. I suppose you’d put me in my own establishment, like a former mistress? Doubtless some MacGowan will appear claiming to be the child’s guardian and getting his hands all over whatever pin money you grant me.”
Mr. Wentworth likely had a mistress. He was wealthy, unmarried, and stunningly handsome. Of course he had a mistress. A slender blonde with limpid blue eyes and a tinkling laugh.
Jane didn’t like that thought at all.
“You’ll not be left for a MacGowan to prey upon.”
Prey upon again, though that was unfair to Gordie’s memory. Jane smacked a pillow and arranged it behind her back. “All manner of developments occur despite probability to the contrary, Mr. Wentworth. You never expected to end up in prison. I never expected to end up widowed and with child, but here we are.”
Here they were, having a disagreement in the same bed on the first day as man and wife. Jane would find a credible explanation for that bizarre state of affairs after she’d had another serving of perfectly salted sliced beef.
And buttered bread. She was abruptly mad for buttered bread.
“Here we are. Where do you want to be, Jane?”
“In the kitchen eating fresh bread with butter.”
He left the bed and crossed the room to use the bellpull, then he spoke into a cone-shaped copper tube protruding from the wall near the hearth. Black silk trousers moved over powerful muscles and rode low enough to reveal dimples at the base of a long, strong back.
Also another crop of scars, these more conspicuous than the ones on his chest. Old injuries, some casual, some nasty. Quinn Wentworth hadn’t always been a well-dressed, well-to-do banker. Jane suspected he was making the point for her on purpose.
“Bread and butter,” he said into the tube, “strawberries, ginger biscuits, and ginger tea.”
“And roast beef,” Jane said.
“And roast beef.” He took a chair behind a large desk that managed to be both masculine and elegant. “You did not answer my question, Jane. Where would you like to be? If we make a go of this situation, as you term it, you’ll be a duchess, regardless of my criminal past. Certain obligations accompany the title.”
He lounged casually in exactly one article of clothing—even his feet were bare—and yet, Jane felt as if she were being interrogated by a banker: And when was the appraisal done? By whom? Any fixtures or appurtenances? What about fungibles or livestock?
“My first obligation,” Jane said, “is to the child. I must situate myself however I can to give the child the best chance of a happy, healthy life. If that means being a duchess, then a duchess I shall be.”
He studied the branches of the maple tree outside the window. The leaves were unfurling, from pink buds to softest green leaves. In a few weeks, the tree would provide shade. Now the gauzy foliage seemed to reflect the afternoon sunlight and spread illumination.
“Your commitment to the child does you credit,” he said. “I assure you that you will have material security, regardless of how we arrange the legalities.”
Jane wanted to close her eyes again and this time to sleep for a week. “I am a female. I cannot arrange any legalities, sir. My father refused to recognize my marriage to Captain MacGowan and if you declare this marriage void, by Papa’s reasoning, I will remain under his authority. Despite my age, despite Scottish marriage lines, he will press his position upon the courts and I will have no practical means of thwarting him.”
The last thing—the very, very last thing—Jane wanted to face was protracted litigation in courts famed for inquisitiveness rather than speed, not that she could afford a barrister and not that any respectable lawyer would take her case.
Mr. Wentworth retrieved an afghan from the foot of the bed, and draped the soft wool around Jane’s shoulders.
“You have no idea what a burden a disgraced father is to a small child, Jane. You could establish your own household and keep your finances in a trust. Then the child would have my money and the guiding hand of an ordained grandfather.”
For an instant, she was tempted. Perhaps such an arrangement could return to Jane the kind, if distracted, parent she’d known before Mama’s death.
And perhaps not. “Trusts take time to set up,” Jane said, sniffing the wool caressing her shoulders. “Where would that arrangement leave the baby if something happened to me?”
Mr. Wentworth hadn’t an answer for that, which was just as well. Jane was trying not to stare at the red weal gouged into the side of his neck. She resented this conversation for the uncertainty it brought, but she also resented that injury.
Hadn’t life put enough mementos to pain and suffering on her husband’s body? The king’s pardon had come at the very last possible instant. How was Mr. Wentworth dealing with that? How was he dealing with the torment of the whole last month? With the notion of having taken a life?
Though seeing him all but naked, Jane had reason to doubt the court’s judgment. Only a fool would engage Quinn Wentworth in a physical altercation, and his nature would not allow him lethal intemperance.
“Wait here,” Mr. Wentworth said.
He padded to the parlor and came back bearing a tray. The scent of ginger wafted across the room, a sweet, smooth ginger free of the bitterness found in the coarser varieties. Mr. Wentworth set the tray on the desk and carried a heavy chair to the side of the desk as if the chair weighed nothing.
“You’ll catch a chill,” Jane said, climbing from the bed and taking a dressing gown down from a hook on the bedpost. “Fresh air is lovely, but if you sit in a draft wearing less than nothing, you’ll soon regret it.”
Then too, she wanted to think about his scars later, after she’d done justice to the tray. She stretched up to drape the dressing gown around his shoulders, careful that the collar didn’t touch his injury. Her movements put her close enough to her husband that her belly nudged against his side.
The child chose that moment to reposition itself, delivering a poke to Jane’s innards.
“What the hell was that?” Mr. Wentworth stared at her belly as if he’d only now noticed her condition.
“The baby,” she said, arranging the collar of the dressing gown and stepping back. “When I lie down, he or she wakes up. Shall we have some tea?”
“The tea is for you,” he said. “We’ll continue this discussion later.”
A fine suggestion. Jane did justice to the food, while Mr. Wentworth—what was his title?—sat across the desk, nibbling a ginger biscuit and sending dubious glances in the direction of her belly.