“I saw the Minster in York,” Ned announced. “It’s ever so beautiful, with heaven-windows and echoes and no poor people. Himself said the Minster were there even when the Vikings ran the town.”
Quinn let the child prattle on, because Ned’s chattering provided a moment to study Jane. She was still at the Wentworth town house, which Quinn had not assumed would be the case.
She wore a claret-colored dress high enough at the waist to hide her condition, and her color was good. She’d kissed Quinn’s cheek upon greeting him, but her mood had yet to make itself apparent.
Which suggested something other than jubilation at his return.
Quinn was furious, with himself, with anybody named Pike, with the Great North Road, and with God Almighty. For the Countess of Tipton he reserved a special brand of ire that nearly equaled the hatred he’d felt toward his father.
“You were very kind to take Ned to see the Minster,” Jane said. “Someday I’d like to see it.”
“He didn’t take me,” Ned said, scuffing the toe of one boot with the other. “Mrs. Dougherty took me, and told me all about when himself were in service. He were a footman and a jolly good one. She were the housekeeper, and Miss Camellia were a maid.”
“Ned, take yourself to the kitchen,” Quinn said, as Jane peeled the greatcoat from his shoulders. “Regale the staff with your adventures, but for the love of God leave me in peace.”
“Mrs. D said you were a footman to an earl’s house, and nobody ever looked so fine in his livery as you did before you got old.”
Where were the Vikings when a small boy needed carrying off? “The kitchen, Ned, and you will take a bath tonight.”
“Tim takes baths, claims a young gent shouldn’t smell like a shoat,” Ned said, plucking an orange from the bowl on the sideboard. “Knows his letters, Tim does, and he’s younger than me. Mrs. Dougherty is Tim’s granny and she said nobody ever learned his letters faster than Quinn Wentworth, and it’s a pity and a shame that—”
Quinn hauled the child up by the elbows and held him at eye level, the boy’s feet dangling. “I desire privacy with my wife. Get ye gone.”
“I’m gone,” Ned said, tossing the orange in the air and catching it. “Ned Gone, that’s me.”
Jane stood holding Quinn’s greatcoat, her expression puzzled. “The housekeeper taught you to read?”
“And write.” Thank God. “Shall we go upstairs?” Where Quinn would not take a bath until he’d found a way to do so in solitude.
Jane hung the coat on a hook and joined him on the stairs. “Duncan had the miniature of my mother copied. The likeness is lovely.”
“Has the reverend realized it’s missing?”
“I had the original returned to him, and he’s not paid another call.” They reached the top of the steps, and Jane sent Quinn a measuring glance. She was doubtless gauging whether to inform him of some domestic disaster. Kristoff serving breakfast with gin on his breath, Constance wearing her nightgown to the supper table…
“I missed you,” Jane said, kissing Quinn—on the mouth. “The bed is much larger without you in it.”
Bloody hell, he’d missed her too. In one coaching inn after another, in the narrow bed under Mrs. Dougherty’s eaves, along hundreds of miles of rutted roads, Quinn had missed his wife.
He let her wrap him in an embrace that felt all too right. “If you want to see the Minster, I’ll take you there someday. It’s impressive.” That much, he could honestly say.
“Any edifice that has stood against vandals, neglect, Norse raiders, marching armies, more neglect, more marching armies, fire, reform, pillaging, and time itself has to be impressive—rather like you.”
“My wife has grown fanciful in my absence.”
“Your bath awaits,” Jane said, twining her arm through his. “Come along and tell me if your business was successful.”
Let the lying begin—again. “All went smoothly. My initial financial ventures were undertaken in York, and I keep some investments in the first bank to do business with me.” Quinn had stopped to visit that bank for all of twenty minutes as an afterthought intended to give Ned an honest itinerary to boast of.
In other regards, the trip had been frustrating. Robert Pike was apparently in France, where Quinn could not easily follow him. Determining that much had taken tampering with the confidence of the posting inn’s proprietor, dropping a few threatening hints, and listening to gossip at the pub frequented by Pike’s brother—nothing illegal, fortunately.
“I’ll likely need to travel again soon, Jane. A month-long stay at Newgate has left much to do, and a journey to France isn’t out of the question.”
In the middle of the corridor, Jane wrapped Quinn in a fierce hug. “I wish I could travel with you. Women do, you know, despite the approach of motherhood. I’ve always wanted to see Paris.”
A knot gathered in Quinn’s belly to go with the ache in his heart. “I can’t speak French, Jane. Can’t read or write it, and would not regard time on French soil as a holiday. I’ll go if I must. I’d rather not.” His siblings had all learned French, because Quinn had insisted they be educated properly, but he couldn’t put them at risk of harm.
Jane opened the sitting room door. The tub sat by the hearth in the bedroom, with towels, soaps, and shaving kit, all arranged in anticipation of Quinn’s ablutions.
“I’m fluent in French,” she said. “My maternal grandmother was French and spent her last five years with us. She and Mama and I frequently resorted to French when we wanted to spare Papa our opinions. We can travel…”
Jane dropped Quinn’s arm as four footmen, Susan, and Penny all trooped by carrying steaming buckets of water. They filed right back out again, leaving Quinn alone with his wife.
There was lying, and then there was deceiving. “Until this other situation is settled, Jane, you’ll be safer here among my family.”
“What other situation is there to settle?” she asked. “You’ve been pardoned, we’re married, I’m expecting a child, and life goes on.”
She jerked the bow free on his shaving kit and unrolled the length of flannel. His razor gleamed silver in the firelight, as Jane tossed a handful of bath salts into hot water.
“Somebody tried to see me dead and disgraced, Jane. How can you expect me to ignore such a crime?”
The signature Wentworth scent rose from the bathwater, while Jane’s aura of cheerful welcome faltered.
“I don’t expect you to forget your ordeal, but vengeance solves nothing. You are a duke now, and anybody seeking to harm you should know that the peerage protects its own.”
The peerage would rejoice to see Quinn Wentworth fail. “I’d rather not quarrel with you, Jane. We simply view the matter from different perspectives.”
More to the point, Quinn didn’t want to lose her. Didn’t want to see that light of welcome permanently extinguished, didn’t want to weather Jane’s disappointment. She’d been disappointed by Gordie and the reverend, when both men ought to have been devoted to her happiness.
“Let’s get you soaking while the water’s hot,” she said, “and you can tell me about your career in service. Here I’ve been thinking your household wants a guiding hand, while you know exactly how a staff ought to function, because you’ve seen the whole business from belowstairs.”
She wouldn’t leave him to bathe in peace. Weariness that had little to do with hundreds of miles of travel pressed on Quinn, weighting his limbs and his thoughts.
“My stint as a footman was years ago and is best forgotten. I’ve held many, many other jobs.”
Jane tested the blade of his razor against her thumb. “Wearing livery is no disgrace, Quinn. Domestic service is honest work.”
Someday, he’d tell her about the months working at Tipton Hall—the prettied-up version of his youth that Mrs. Dougherty was determined to recall.
Now, the simple sight of Jane, hair swept back in a tidy bun, hands graceful and competent, made him long to toss her on the bed and curl up next to her until her warmth, her scent, and her sweetness obliterated the memories even a few days in York had brought back.
“Domestic service is hard work,” Quinn said, shrugging out of his coat. “I didn’t last long.”
He pretended to focus on unfastening his watch, sleeve buttons, and cravat pin, but he watched Jane in the cheval mirror. She dunked a ball of hard soap in the hot water, then closed her eyes and sniffed at the soap. Despite Quinn’s guilt, frustration, and fatigue, the sight of Jane merely sniffing soap stirred erotic longings.
“When you were a footman, who was your employer?” she asked, unfastening her cuffs and rolling up her sleeves.
Her wrists—her wrists—made him hungry.
I am a man in trouble. “My employer was a mostly absentee lord who liked to roam around on the Continent and call himself a diplomat when he wasn’t in London waltzing until all hours.” Not a lie. “Might you have the kitchen send up a tray? Sandwiches and ale will do.”
Jane used the speaking tube to order Quinn food he didn’t want.
“I’ve eaten more beef in the past two weeks than in the previous year,” she said. “The midwife told me to consume as much red meat as I can tolerate. I’ve become quite the carnivore.”
“You do seem more vigorous.” More at home handling Quinn’s things, more the lady of his house. More married to him, God help her.
Having no alternative, Quinn went about removing his clothes and handing them to Jane, who hung up his shirt and folded his cravat as if husband and wife had spent the last twenty years chatting while the bath water cooled.
Quinn was down to his underlinen, hoping for a miracle, when Jane went to the door to get the tray. He used her absence to shed the last of his clothing and slip into the water. She returned bearing the food, which she set on the counterpane.
“I’m happy to wash your hair.”
“I’ll scrub off first. Tell me how you occupied yourself in my absence.”
She held a sandwich out for him to take a bite. “This and that. The staff has a schedule, the carpets have all been taken up and beaten, Constance’s cats are separated by two floors until Persephone is no longer feeling amorous.”
Quinn was feeling amorous. He’d traveled to York and back, endured Mrs. Dougherty’s gushing and Ned’s endless questions—“Ned Nosy, that’s me!”—and pondered possibilities and plots, but neither time nor distance had dampened his interest in his wife one iota.
Jane’s fingers massaging his scalp and neck didn’t help his cause, and when she leaned down to scrub Quinn’s chest and her breasts pressed against his shoulders, his interest became an ache.
The water cooled, Jane fed him sandwiches, and Quinn accepted that the time had come to make love with his wife. He rose from the tub, water sluicing away, as Jane held out a bath sheet. Her gaze wandered over him in frank, marital assessment, then caught, held, and ignited a smile he hadn’t seen from her before.
“Why Mr. Wentworth, you did miss me after all.” She passed him the bath sheet, and locked the parlor door while Quinn stood before the fire and dried off.
“I missed you too,” Jane said, taking the towel from him and tossing it over a chair. “Rather a lot.”
Quinn made one last attempt to dodge the intimacy Jane was owed, one last try for honesty. “Jane, we have matters to discuss.”
He could not tell her he was on Pike’s trail, could not tell her he’d made a youthful fool of himself over a lonely countess, but perhaps if he told Jane more about life growing up in York, she might grasp why her husband was determined to have justice.
Not vengeance, justice.
“We’ll talk later all you like, Quinn. For now, please take me to bed.”
She kissed him, and he was lost.
* * *
Quinn’s absence had given Jane two weeks to gain her footing with his family and his staff, and to rest. She’d needed the rest desperately and would need more in the months to come. The past year had gone from grueling to disappointing to heartbreaking, the burden of anxiety alone wearing down her energy and her composure.
While Quinn had traveled, she’d slept late, napped, and eaten regularly and well. She had pondered her situation, and made progress with her in-laws, though she was still angry with Stephen. Mostly, she’d missed her husband.
To see Quinn clearly aroused was reassuring and…stirring. To kiss him was invigorating in a way even sleep and good food could not be. Quinn was hale and whole, wonderfully male, and hers.
“Are we in a hurry?” he asked, drawing back half an inch.
Oh, that smile. “Yes. We are in a tearing hurry to get into the bed and…and…”
“Dance the mattress hornpipe?” he said, shrugging into a dressing gown. “Swive, fornicate, make the beastie with two backs?”
He was teasing her with his naughty talk, and Jane liked it. “Become as one flesh,” she countered, turning and sweeping her hair off her nape. “Enjoy the pleasures of married life. Consummate our vows.”
His fingers whispered across her neck, brushing stray locks of hair free of her hooks. “If you’re sure, Jane, then I’m happy to climb into bed with you, but you’re allowed to miss him, you know—your dashing soldier.” Quinn’s arms came around her from behind. “He was your first love. You needn’t pretend otherwise.”
She turned in Quinn’s embrace, plunged into a depth of emotion she’d been ignoring. “It wasn’t like that.” She’d wanted her marriage to Gordie to be a romantic tale, more fool her.
Quinn put his lips near her ear. “He turned your head, filled your heart with foolish fancies. I envy him that.”
Now was not the time to marvel at Quinn’s perceptivity, or to explain to him that mostly, Gordie had filled Jane’s head with nonsense. For he had, and only his death had allowed her to admit as much.
Lovely nonsense, and all the worse for being lovely. Then he’d been offended by some dandy’s drunken insult, and his manly honor had cost him his life.
“Don’t envy him,” Jane said. “Don’t even speak of him, please. Unlike you, he couldn’t move past a bad moment and get on with life. You are my husband now, and it’s you I’ve been missing.”
Quinn regarded her, not the cold, analytical scrutiny she’d seen from him on other occasions, but an inspection tinged with concern. Then he enfolded her against the warm plane of his naked chest.
“I tried not to miss you,” he said, fingers working at her hooks. “We’ve been married barely a month. I shouldn’t know you well enough to miss you, and yet, I did. I missed the sound of you humming behind the privacy screen. Missed the way you keep the mattress bouncing all night. Missed the pretty, lacy, lady-clothes you leave draped about the bedroom.”
Jane burrowed closer. “I slept in one of your shirts. I wanted your scent on me, and I think it helped settle my stomach.”
“I’m a tisane for a dyspeptic expectant mother,” Quinn said, giving her bum a pat. “My most interesting job yet. Let’s get you out of this dress.”
He was an aggravatingly competent lady’s maid, and Jane could only imagine the coin in which he’d been paid for exercising those skills. He hung her dress in the wardrobe rather than draping it over a chair, her stays presented no challenge to him, and his touch with a hairbrush was gentle and soothing.
She was soon tucked under the covers while Quinn moved around the room blowing out candles.
“You are not to pleasure yourself behind the privacy screen,” she said. “Not on my behalf.” The heat of her blush should have ignited the bed curtains.
Quinn came to stand beside the bed. He hadn’t banked the fire in the hearth, and thus he was illuminated in flickering shadows.
“Pleasure myself?” He opened his dressing gown and grasped himself in his right hand. “Like this, ye mean?” He stroked his arousal in slow, upward caresses, and Jane forgot all about blushes.
“You look wicked when you do that—wicked and luscious.”
He laughed and climbed into the bed so he was crouching over Jane beneath the covers. “I am wicked, and you are wonderfully honest. Shall you be wicked with me, Mrs. Wentworth?”
He took her hand and wrapped it around his cock, which was new territory for Jane. Her knowledge of marital intimacy had been formed with a man who’d had more enthusiasm than self-restraint—or more selfishness than consideration.
“Do you like this?” she asked, sleeving Quinn’s shaft, “or are you humoring me?”
“I’m not humoring you.”
His voice had dropped to a growl, and when Jane would have asked another question—what did it feel like, to be caressed this way?—Quinn kissed her. He took her hands, lacing his fingers with hers and pressing her knuckles to the pillow on either side of her head.
“I want to touch you too,” Jane said. “I need to touch you.”
He trailed his open mouth along her shoulder and freed her hands.
Jane went exploring, down the smooth contours of Quinn’s back, over lean hips and taut buttocks, up the stair-step of his ribs. He was everywhere masculine power, though with her fingertips she also traced the scars he’d collected.
A long, thin ridge across one shoulder blade, a puckered star on his biceps, a dent at the base of his spine. The wounds were many and varied, and she wished he’d trust her with each one’s story.
Quinn bore her investigations, bracing himself over her on all fours, his forehead against the crook of her neck. His hair was damp and cool, his breath warm.
She had the sense her curiosity pleased him more than any erotic cleverness might have. “I am your wife,” she said, kissing his temple. “Make me your lover.”
He hitched nearer, and his cock brushed her belly. His kisses were soft and meandering—a failed attempt at distraction—and by lazy little nudges he eased inside of her.
Jane was sorting through ways to urge him on—she wasn’t a blushing virgin—when she realized there was more of him than she’d anticipated. Much more.
“Breathe, Jane. We’ll get there if we go easy.”
She let out a breath, and Quinn sank deeper. He was diabolically patient, pausing to brush her hair from her brow with gentle fingers, to tug at her earlobe with his teeth. She was ready to pull his hair when it occurred to her she needn’t remain passive.
She met his next languid thrust with a roll of her hips and Quinn gathered her close.
He liked when she moved with him. The tension in his body told her that; the slight rasp of his breathing confirmed it. His loving consumed her, narrowing her awareness to movement, pleasure, sensation, and him.
With the sliver of her mind that could still reason, she realized Quinn was waiting for her, monitoring her reactions even as he pushed her more and more deeply into yearning. He was being intimately considerate, and Jane was infinitely frustrated.
“You too, Quinn. Together.” Four words was the limit of her coherence. She locked her ankles at the small of his back and went after his monumental self-control with every physical argument she could command. Hips, hands, mouth, breath—everything.
The joining became fierce, and mutual, as pleasure cascaded through Jane in a roaring torrent. Quinn never sped up, never gave quarter, and thus Jane could not relent either. He groaned softly against her shoulder, then shuddered and shook as he hilted himself inside her. When Jane was convinced the storm had passed, Quinn ambushed her with another series of powerful thrusts, and she soared again, high and hard.
He was making a point, for which she’d thank him once she could form sentences again. In the absence of words, Jane settled for letting her legs fall open as she stroked his backside.
Quinn stayed with her for long, sweet moments, breathing in counterpoint, keeping her warm.
“I’ll fetch you a flannel,” he said, easing away.
Jane rolled to her side, the better to watch her husband prowling across the bedroom in the altogether. He was a magnificent specimen of manhood, though she suspected he didn’t see himself that way. While he wasn’t self-conscious about his nakedness, he also had none of the swagger Jane had seen in her first husband.
As if Gordie had invented the marital act himself, clever fellow, and bestowed its blessings on all of creation.
A cloth sopped in water, then Quinn was frowning by the bed, a damp flannel in his hand. “I was trying to be considerate.”
He was unhappy—after that?
Jane took the cloth and used it beneath the covers—awkward business—but she wasn’t about to flip the covers back so a brooding, scowling Quinn could watch her wash.
“You were very considerate,” Jane said. “If you’d been any more considerate, I’d be witless and panting into next week.” She tossed the cloth in the direction of the privacy screen. “Get under the covers, Quinn, and explain what has you in a swither.”
He remained silent by the bed, likely his version of a protest at being told what to do, then he obliged by walking around to his side of the mattress.
“You are with child,” he groused. “I’m not a rutting bull.”
Oh, for the love of…Jane bounced across the bed and insinuated herself against his side, which was like cuddling up to a block of granite.
“Maybe I am a rutting heifer,” she said. “I hadn’t realized one can move. Two can move. Gordie hadn’t your…he couldn’t last, and I wasn’t to move lest I cause him to spend too soon, and it was all very awkward when it went awry, which it usually did, and now you’ve made me blush.”
This marriage would doubtless involve a deal of blushing. “You’ve demanded honesty of me,” she went on, “and by heaven you shall have it. I liked being passionate with you, I liked being free to touch and talk and let go. I liked that we pleased each other. I liked it a lot, Quinn.”
He wrestled her over him, so Jane was straddling her naked husband. His sex was cool and damp against her tender flesh, which seemed to bother him not at all.
“A rutting heifer? I married a rutting heifer?”
“Apparently so.”
Quinn snorted, then rumbled, until he was laughing outright. Jane smacked him on the shoulder, then tucked herself against his chest and smiled herself to sleep.