“I never thanked you for summoning Quinn from the bank when Althea and I had our disagreement,” Jane said.
Constance turned a page of her book, though first she had to gently draw it out from under Hades’s paw. The cat reclined on the reading table, the front third of him sprawling over a volume on French portraiture.
“How do you know I summoned him?”
“Althea was too busy arguing with me, Stephen was too fascinated with the altercation, and Duncan clings to the misguided belief that most domestic difficulties will sort themselves out. You acted, and I’m glad you did.”
Constance scratched Hades’s ears, which inspired feline rumblings of contentment. “You are in a delicate condition. Althea ought not to have provoked you.”
Jane was beginning to know her husband, though she’d be decades learning his history. Althea held nothing back, announcing her opinions and intentions to all and sundry. Duncan wished to be left alone, and Jane’s curiosity about Stephen was dampened by caution.
Constance remained an enigma, but by summoning Quinn, she’d sided with Jane against her own sister. Or had she sided with the child?
“Althea was trying to look after me,” Jane said. “I appreciate the motive, if not the method. I also appreciate that you brought Quinn from the bank to resolve the situation.”
“Can’t have a lot of yelling and strife when a woman’s carrying.” Constance slid the book out from under the cat, which put an end to his purring and earned her an annoyed squint. She returned the book to the library shelf and regarded Jane from across the room. “What did you want to talk about?”
So much for pleasantries. “I found a packet of letters addressed to Quinn. Old letters, from a woman. If I stumbled upon them, any chambermaid could chance across them, and yet if I don’t replace them in the same spot, Quinn is bound to realize they’ve been moved.”
Jane put the packet on the table, complete with the green satin garter securing them.
Constance took down another book. “Those are not your letters, but if Quinn were concerned about keeping them private, he should have chosen a different place to store them.”
Constance did not appear the least bit dismayed that her brother was secreting correspondence in his own home, in his own sitting room, when he doubtless had safes, vaults, and strongboxes that would better serve to conceal them.
A man kept letters near because they meant something to him.
“Quinn chose a fine hiding place,” Jane said, “but when I discovered the letters, they tumbled free and I have no idea what order they should be in. If I knew something of the context, or how long they’ve been stashed away…” Something about the enraptured woman who’d sent them…The greetings alone confirmed that Jane had stumbled upon love letters.
“Constance, you will excuse us.”
Quinn stood in the library doorway. Jane hadn’t heard him come in; apparently even the cat hadn’t heard him, because Hades scrambled from the table and shot out the door ahead of Constance. She followed her familiar, book in hand, pausing before her brother.
“If I hear a raised voice, Quinn Wentworth, I will be right back in here, and no lock will deter me. Jane is with child.”
“I am well aware of my wife’s condition.”
Quinn closed the door behind his sister, then turned an icy stare in Jane’s direction. “I’ll take those letters.” He held out a hand, not an olive branch.
She could pass the letters over, apologize for having found them, and pretend she’d never seen them. She did not, because nowhere in the definition of letting bygones be bygones or allowing sleeping dogs to lie did Jane see a requirement to engage in self-deception.
She undid the garter and picked up the first letter. “‘My darling, most dear, desirable, Wentworth…’” She flipped to the next one. “‘My delightful, exasperating, inventive fellow…’” Then the third: “‘To the most well-endowed specimen ever to bring delight to his lady’s bed…’”
She never made it to the fourth. Quinn had crossed the library and snatched the packet from her hand.
“This is personal correspondence, Jane. Shall I start reading your letters?”
She could not discern his mood, but her own was very clear to her—she was angry, and beneath that, unsure of her husband.
“You told me you haven’t kept mistresses. You told me we shared newfound pleasures. You told me you were too busy to bother with affairs of the heart, and I believed you.”
“I spoke the truth.”
His calm mendacity only enflamed Jane’s temper. “My darling, dear, desirable Wentworth? Does your solicitor exercise his alliterative talents thus? Perhaps the fine fellows at the College of Arms open their correspondence to you with such effusions.” She marched up to him and jabbed his chest with a finger. “New. Found. Pleasures.”
He stared down at her, a single furrow appearing between his brows. “Are you jealous?”
That hypothesis clearly pleased him. Jane whirled away lest she start shouting.
“I am not jealous, you mutton-headed gudgeon. I am angry. You lied to me, and about an intimate matter. Perhaps you sought to spare my feelings, but we agreed that we’d have honesty between us, Quinn, and then I come across passionate letters. How am I to trust you?”
He set the packet on the mantel. “You married me, I spoke vows. You either trust me or you don’t. I’ve fed you, clothed you, housed you, made love with you—”
“And lied to me.”
Quinn stared off across the library, as if doing sums in his head. “I take it the late, lamented Captain McGowan had an unreliable grasp of the truth.”
“We are not discussing him.” And yet, they were. Quinn’s instincts were, as usual, deadly accurate. “We are discussing a man who assures me his affections have not been elsewhere engaged, the same man who keeps these letters affixed to the topmost drawer of his desk.”
“Have you read them?” Such a casual question.
“One can’t help but glance at what’s in plain view, which was sufficient to establish the nature of the correspondence. I did not read them.” Hadn’t been able to read them.
“You sound like you’re giving a sermon, Jane. If you take to task every man who has a few old letters in his possession, then I daresay—”
“Quinn, you lied to me. We don’t tiptoe around one another’s feelings like the shepherd boy and the goose girl. Why not simply admit that once, long ago, you lost your heart and never entirely regained it? Why not sigh and smile, and allude to a lady you loved dearly in your youth? My expectations of this marriage were honesty, civility, and a certain mutual accommodation. Of the three, you seemed to value the honesty most highly.”
Though those expectations had become augmented by hope on Jane’s part, and where hope flew, fears followed.
“How did you find the letters?”
“The drawer jammed—the lace of the garter was caught in the mechanism. They spilled onto the floor at my feet.”
“Why were you rummaging in my desk?”
Jane took a seat at the end of the sofa and tapped her fingers on the armrest in a slow triple meter.
“In point of fact, Your Grace, that is our desk, I being your wife and having no desk of my own. I was neither rummaging nor pillaging. I must sit somewhere when I draw up the menus and schedules for the maids and footmen. Am I now to ask you where I might sit?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his granite inscrutability slipping to reveal wariness.
Why was he home several hours early, today of all days?
Jane’s ire ebbed, as if somebody had turned down the wick on a lantern. “What’s wrong, Quinn? Something is amiss or you’d be at the bank.”
He took the place beside her, and more of Jane’s indignation slipped away. She could not cling to her anger when Quinn was troubled, though neither could she allow the situation with the letters to remain unresolved.
“I paid a call on the College of Arms.”
“Mr. Dodson was doubtless pleased to receive you. Constance and Althea mentioned him.”
“I wanted to discuss a banking matter with him, the dukedom being in some disarray, but he attempted pleasantries with me.”
Poor Mr. Dodson. “You have exquisite manners, though your patience wants work.”
Quinn took her hand, and the last of Jane’s anger skittered back to where she stored other vexations—Papa’s pigheadedness, Hades’s mating urges. What remained was worry—why had Quinn lied?—and determination.
“My patience wants major repairs,” Quinn said, “particularly since I’ve acquired a wife.”
They weren’t to discuss the letters, though Jane’s immediate problem—what to do with them—had been solved. They were Quinn’s letters, and he’d find a new place to store them.
“Odd, acquiring a husband has similarly tried my own usually placid nature. What did Dodson have to say?”
“Little of any moment, though he did mention that one of his heralds had a lively correspondence with Stephen going back several months. Not the same fellow who researched the Walden dukedom, else Dodson would have known of Stephen’s inquiries sooner.”
Jane was glad for the warm grip of Quinn’s hand in hers. “Stephen knew you were heir to a title?”
“He certainly had inklings, and his intellect is in better working order than most people’s. If anything happens to me, the title becomes his. When were you planning to tell me that he nearly blasted you to kingdom come, Jane? I thought we’d agreed to be honest with each other.”
Jane withdrew her hand. “Did you really? How disappointed you must be. Try counting to three when you’re vexed. I used to find that habit helpful when my patience was tried.”
Quinn had the grace to wince. “The letters are more than ten years old, and I keep them to prove that my attentions were not forced on the woman who wrote them.”
Ye gods, marriage to Quinn was complicated, and that explanation only replaced one worry with another.
“After ten years, you still fret that this woman could cause you trouble?”
“The statute of limitations on rape is considerably more than ten years.” He offered that observation with such a bleak, remote expression that his earlier claims about having refrained from romantic entanglements in recent years gained credibility.
“Whoever she is,” Jane said, scooting to the edge of the sofa, “she needs to forget her youthful indiscretions and leave you in peace.” This is what happens when a woman clings to her hurts and disappointments.
“Verily.” Quinn’s hand on Jane’s arm stayed her from trying to rise. “But rather than discuss my misspent youth, I’d like to hear about Stephen’s asinine behavior with a gun.”
“Ivor tattled.”
“We agreed to have honesty between us, Your Grace.”
“That we did.” Jane sat back. “Stephen exercised poor judgment, and he apologized. He felt it imperative to warn me that Wentworths aren’t safe, and must never let down their guard. I gather this woman is among those who taught you that same lesson.”
Quinn remained silent, staring at the peacocks and doves patterned into the library carpet. He was an articulate man, but the conversation had apparently taken a turn even he hadn’t anticipated.
Instinct leapt ahead of reason, and dread closed around Jane’s heart. “You think the lady who sent those letters had you arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Who is she, and what happened that, years later, she’d still hate you enough to see you hanged?”
* * *
Nobody save Quinn and her ladyship knew the entirety of his involvement with Beatrice, Countess of Tipton. He’d kept his gob shut, and prayed to whatever god took pity on stupid young footmen that her ladyship had done likewise. Having lent money to many a titled family, Quinn could now see—at a distance of more than a decade—that he’d been embroiled in a silly affair with a neglected aristocratic wife. He’d been an idiot of sixteen, too randy for his own good, and much taken by an older woman’s overtures.
Jane was making no overtures whatsoever. She rose from the sofa and paced across the library, a worried lioness whose claws were sheathed—for now.
“I have no proof that her ladyship is behind my arrest, Jane.”
“Not your arrest, Quinn, your attempted murder and ruin, years after you’ve given any grounds for offense. Tell me the rest of it.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I was sixteen when I became a footman for the Earl of Tipton. I was big, fit, and sufficiently good-looking that a lack of polish could be covered up by handsome livery. Footmen aren’t required to speak, only to step and fetch and endure endless boredom.”
Jane tidied up a pile of books that Stephen had doubtless left on the reading table. “Was her ladyship bored?”
“Bored, lonely, neglected, and angry at her husband. At the time, all I could see was that she…”
Jane organized the books on the table by color—red leather bindings in one stack, brown in another. “She was attracted to you?”
The countess had sought to possess Quinn, to own him like a dog on a leash. “I hate discussing this.”
“I hate casting up my accounts, but sometimes that’s the only way I’ll find relief.”
“Hardly a genteel analogy, Jane.” But apt. Good God, was that analogy apt.
“I am a Wentworth,” she said, coming close enough to pat Quinn’s cravat. “We’re sometimes a little rough around the edges. If you feel like an idiot for becoming entangled with a predatory older female at sixteen, imagine how stupid I must feel for having succumbed to Captain MacGowan’s dubious charms at twenty-three.”
She wafted away when Quinn had wanted to catch her by the hand. “You? Stupid?”
“And desperate. I’d lost my mother to influenza, or to stubbornness, to be more accurate. My father wasn’t getting over his grief and had quarreled with his bishop, and Papa hasn’t been assigned a living since. Month by month, he’s pawned the little treasures Mama brought to the marriage or accumulated over the years. Even the cedar chest Mama left me was sent to the pawnbroker’s.
“Ahead of me,” she went on, “I could see nothing but impoverished spinsterhood, while Papa’s mind grew more vague and our situation more precarious. Then one day, he ‘accidentally’ brought one of Mrs. Sandridge’s teaspoons upstairs. I slipped it back into her apartment, but what if she’d accused Papa of stealing? I was frightened, lonely, and tired of being the only adult in a situation where I was constantly belittled, and yet, I was supposed to honor my father.”
Jane had stroked a hand over her belly, probably a reflex when she was upset.
“You’re human, Jane. To be constantly criticized and mocked by the parent who is supposed to stand up for us makes running away from home a sane choice.” Quinn had debated with himself whether killing a parent was ever justified, though the hand of fate and some bad gin had allowed the question to remain theoretical.
Jane’s smile was commiserating. “Running away from home is a sane choice unless we run into the arms of a jealous countess?”
Quinn’s world shifted with that smile and became a brighter, lighter place. He traveled the distance from a youth hauling a wagonload of self-recrimination to a man with a few regrets. His childhood home had been a hell of hopelessness. Of course he’d been bedazzled by a sophisticated woman who’d pretended to see something special in him.
Of course he had.
Jane came around the table and into Quinn’s arms, though he hadn’t made a decision to reach for her. He held her—held on to her—unable to say what exactly the conversation had accomplished, though Jane was no longer jabbing him in the chest and hurling thunderbolts.
“I thought she liked me.” Quinn’s admission was foolish, pathetic even, but Jane’s honesty—or her courage—was apparently contagious.
She nuzzled the lace of his neckcloth. “Imagine Stephen embroiled with some lordling’s castoff wife. Would you expect him to know liking from manipulation?”
“That’s…”
“Different? I suppose so. Stephen has had years to observe polite society at close range, to tip his hat to the ladies in the park, to smile at them in church. He comes from wealth, he’s exquisitely turned out, and can likely keep up in French, Latin, Greek, and German. You were the veriest lamb, by comparison.”
On his most innocent day, Quinn had not been a lamb, but when it came to women—to ladies—he’d been staggeringly ignorant.
“One doesn’t like to admit to having been seduced.”
Jane peered up at him. “One doesn’t like to admit to having married a handsome buffoon simply because he looked dashing in his uniform and had such a charming accent. I like your accent too, by the way.”
Quinn had spent years with elocution tutors trying to eradicate that accent. “I hope my speech is that of a gentleman.”
“Of course it is, but when we’re in bed, it’s the speech of a gentleman from Yorkshire. Tell me about this daft countess.”
Jane led Quinn by the hand to the sofa, and he allowed it—not because he was a lamb, but because she liked his accent. Or something. Why had the notion that a gentleman could sound as if he’d been raised in Yorkshire never occurred to him?
“Beatrice was kicking her heels at the earl’s estate, which was to say she was going mad while he played at diplomacy on the Continent. I’d worked my way into a position in the stables, and she noticed me and promoted me to footman.”
“Get comfortable,” Jane said. “This tale will take some telling.”
How was one—?
Jane shoved at his shoulders, and Quinn realized he was to stretch out on the sofa with his head in her lap. He accommodated that suggestion, because she was right. This tale—which he’d never shared with another—would take some telling.
“She smiled at me, she took me with her everywhere. She casually brushed against me, had me carry her parcels up to her private parlor. She took my arm in public and asked my opinion when I escorted her from shop to shop. Then one day, when I had delivered some purchase or other to her sitting room, she kissed my cheek.”
In hindsight, Quinn could see the progression, could see how calculated the dance steps had been. Too late, he’d learned that he hadn’t been her ladyship’s first little project, though he might well have been her last.
“What a disgraceful woman,” Jane said. “She couldn’t be bothered to frolic with one of her own class; she had to prey on a boy.”
Jane’s fingers stroking Quinn’s hair were gentle, her tone disgusted.
“I wasn’t a boy, Jane. At sixteen, I was a strutting, snorting acolyte of the god Priapus, and convinced of my own manliness. She looked at me, and I was in torments. She ignored me, and I was in worse torments still. I was seventeen before we became intimate.” Not lovers. Whatever role Quinn had played in the woman’s life, he hadn’t been a lover.
“I hate her,” Jane said, kissing Quinn’s brow. “Even if she didn’t send you to prison, I hate her.”
And I love you. For surely, this affection and liking, this desire and willingness to trust, had to be love?
“I don’t hate her,” Quinn said. “She taught me many valuable lessons. I learned to read and write because of her.”
Jane’s fingers paused. “To read her letters? Oh, Quinn.”
“At first to read her letters, but then I realized that if I ever wanted to be more than her plaything, I needed to better my circumstances, not simply work harder, but work smarter. My father’s rages had grown constant, the girls were getting older, the children never had any food, and something had to be done.”
“Then your father broke Stephen’s leg.”
The words still hurt, still hit Quinn with an inner blow. “Stephen told you about that?”
“No details.”
“He’s never shared the details. He was only four at the time. I assume Papa fell on him or dropped him, that the injury was accidental. In any case, Papa could not afford a doctor. By the time word got to me at the Tipton estate, setting the leg would have been difficult if not impossible, but I vowed then and there to disentangle myself from the countess.”
“Did she let you go?”
No, she had not. She’d raged, pouted, threatened, and promised, until Quinn had been as desperate to escape her as he’d once been to secure her approval. Would that Beatrice was more like Jane, determined to forgive and forget.
“I left, eventually. Took a job with a banker for whom I’d once been an errand boy. With better manners, better speech, some literacy, and clean clothes, I made a passable clerk.”
Jane smoothed his hair back. “You were a brilliant clerk, and your employer noticed.”
“I wasn’t brilliant. I was honest. The old man left a five-pound note on the floor one night. I found it and returned it to him the next morning. He’d been testing me, and of all the clerks he’d tested in that manner, I was the first in twenty years to return his funds to him.”
She traced a fingertip over Quinn’s eyebrows, then down the length of his nose. “Five pounds must have been a fortune to you then. Why didn’t you keep it?”
“Because I am not my father. I do not willingly break the law. I accepted any work, no matter how wretched, because Jack Wentworth had had a trade and refused to ply it. I had no trade, but was determined to be the better man. The banker bequeathed me a modest sum along with advice regarding its use. I made discreet, sound investments, worked hard, had some wildly good luck in the spice trade, and became a wealthy man.”
Jane hugged him. “You’re the best man. I still hate the countess. The very last thing you should do, though, is gratify her need to meddle by giving her any further attention. Ignore her. Her machinations failed, if indeed they were her machinations.”
The baby moved where Jane’s belly pressed against the back of Quinn’s head. A kick, perhaps?
“I cannot ignore a woman who uses her influence to threaten my life and my good name. I’ll at least make a few discreet inquiries.” More discreet inquiries, in France, in Yorkshire, all over the stews and alleys of London.
Jane wrapped her hand around his nape and gently shook him. “If you kick over a hornet’s nest, you’ll be stung—badly. Do you know how my mother died?”
He should know. Should have asked the reverend, if nothing else. “Tell me.”
“She was devoted to the Magdalen houses, or to the women in them. She’d accompany Papa to the prison and sing the praises of those establishments to the fallen women. Papa admired her for this, while I attempted to dissuade her.”
The Magdalen houses were little better than forced labor for the women admitted to them. The task assigned was typically laundry—heavy, uncomfortable labor for females in poor health, though the house made a profit off of their work, despite the stated agenda being the saving of souls. Wages were nominal, the food poor, and the sermons never ending.
“You objected to women being judged and overworked?” Quinn asked.
“If I took up that fight…No, Quinn. I objected to my mother consorting in close quarters with a population carrying every possible illness. When influenza struck Mama’s favorite charitable home, nothing would do but she must tend the sick herself, though she’d already contracted a fever of some sort visiting the jails.”
The lady’s husband had doubtless applauded her kindness, while Jane had gone mad. “Your mother fell ill?”
“Of course, and Mama refused to rest, because she cared so very much about the soiled doves who would not have spared a farthing for her medical expenses.”
Jane twitched the afghan over Quinn’s shoulders, though he hadn’t realized he’d grown chilled.
“I’m sorry you lost your mother thus, Jane. She was clearly a good woman and dear to you.”
A good, foolish woman. What sort of mother leaves a daughter half orphaned for the sake of strangers? But then, what sort of woman abandoned her five-year-old son to be with a paramour, when that son was left in the care of Jack Wentworth?
“Mama would be alive now, Quinn, if she’d not been determined to take on the evils of the world. Papa said she died a saint’s death. I say she died of misguided stubbornness. My compassion for women in need is genuine—there but for your proposal I might have gone—but Mama wouldn’t listen, she wouldn’t give up, she wouldn’t take the prudent course even long enough to see to her own health.”
And thus, Jane’s personal commandments included avoidance of anything resembling a dangerous quest.
Or a dangerous countess. Good God, what a coil, and what a motivation for seeing Lady Tipton held accountable sooner rather than later.
Quinn meant to ask Jane why her father didn’t simply apologize to the affronted bishop and exchange the charms of Newgate for ministering to some rural flock, but Jane stroked his brow, and her silence suggested further interrogation would pain her.
Instead, he mentally drafted pronouncements about family safety, women in a delicate condition, and husbandly authority, but Jane’s caresses beguiled him, and then he was asleep.