Jane needed to cry. To rage, weep, and curse for the young man who’d been served so many ill turns so early in life, but she instead remained sitting on the sofa while her husband dozed. Quinn’s recounting of his past had only made her respect him more and worry for him more.
Why would a scorned lover come after Quinn now, when he was infinitely more powerful than he’d been as a footman?
Why wait more than ten years to seek revenge, if that’s what this was? Why go to the excessive effort of bribing judges, prison officials, guards, witnesses—
Jane’s thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. She eased herself around her sleeping husband, tucked a pillow under his head, and draped the afghan over him. If vengeance was the province of the Almighty, Jane hoped the countess soon stepped into the path of a celestial crossbow.
She kissed Quinn’s cheek, smoothed his hair, and went to the door.
“Beg pardon, Your Grace,” Ivor said. “Reverend Winston has come to call.” The footman scrupulously avoided peering into the library, though Quinn was fully clothed and merely napping—for a change.
“His Grace fell asleep while reading,” Jane said. “Let him rest. I’ll wake him after I’ve dealt with my father.”
Which ordeal Jane did not anticipate with proper daughterly joy.
“Mr. Winston is in the family parlor. Would you like a tea tray, ma’am?”
Jane would like Ivor to stand at the door of the family parlor, looking formidable and fierce, but if Papa thought he had an audience, he’d likely stay even longer.
“Please bring a tray, and then return here to ensure nobody disturbs the duke.”
“Yes, ma’am. Shall I send Kristoff to attend you in the family parlor?”
Stephen’s words came back to Jane: You need to realize when you’re not safe. You need to realize you’re a Wentworth now.…But what havoc could Papa wreak, besides pilfering knickknacks or overstaying his welcome?
“Thank you, no.”
Ivor’s shoulders tensed, suggesting that Jane had given offense to a loyal retainer. She hadn’t time to smooth ruffled feathers when Papa was unattended on the premises.
When she reached the family parlor, Papa was peering at the underside of a French porcelain bowl that held dried rose petals scented with a dash of nutmeg. Because the bowl was full, he’d had to lift it over his head to read the maker’s mark.
“Papa, good day.”
He set the bowl on the piano. “Jane Hester.”
Filial affection dictated that she go to him and embrace him—Papa had a half dozen sermons on the requirement to honor one’s progenitors—and yet she didn’t. “The tea tray is on the way. Shall we be seated?”
He took the middle of the sofa, leaving Jane an armchair. “You’re looking well, daughter.”
“I’m feeling somewhat better. I’ve been able to catch up on my rest.” Also to stuff herself with red meat, fresh fruits and vegetables, and the occasional sweet.
Papa picked up a gold snuff box that held lemon drops. The lid was embossed with an ornate W, and the formal parlor held others like it.
“He treats you well, then?”
Put it down, Papa. “If you refer to His Grace, my husband, I am abundantly happy under his roof. Help yourself to a lemon drop.”
The reverend helped himself to three. “I have worried for you, Jane Hester. Prayed for you.”
“Prayers are always appreciated. How did your service for Mr. Carruthers go?”
“Carruthers? What has he—? Oh, right. Turn the other cheek. Very well received, as always. A central tenet of faith for the true believer. In that same spirit, I find myself on your doorstep, despite the lack of manners with which you last received me.”
He had been received with a full breakfast buffet. “If my manners were wanting, perhaps your own needed improvement. You taught me not to malign a man behind his back.”
Two more lemon drops were crunched into oblivion. “I don’t malign, Jane Hester. I speak the God’s honest truth. Your husband is a man of dubious antecedents, and you might be blinded by his filthy lucre or the pleasures of the flesh, but you are still my daughter, however wayward your path.”
What answer could Jane give that was both respectful and honest? “I took vows in the eyes of God and man, Papa. My path is not wayward, and I esteem my husband greatly.” Please, in the name of all that’s holy, let the tea tray arrive, so that food and drink might distract Papa from the sermon he was determined to deliver.
“I beg the Almighty nightly to forgive me for ever allowing you to come with me to minister to the less fortunate, Jane Hester. I get on my knees and fervently importune Him to expunge that guilt from my soul. Had I not permitted you to aid me, then you would never have—”
“You did not permit me to come with you, Papa. You insisted. You berated me for wanting to stay home and rest, for not measuring up to Mama’s standards. You harangued me about God’s distaste for the slothful. What you thought I could accomplish in such an environment still eludes me.”
Jane knew better than to react to his provocation, but the past weeks of rest, good nutrition, and being a Wentworth had put some of the fight back in her. Papa was not honest, not with himself, not with her, not with the world.
Papa turned loose of the snuff box and bowed his head. “Jane Hester, you wound me.”
Before Papa could elaborate on the mortal nature of his injury, Ivor brought in the tea tray, and Papa revived miraculously. For a few minutes, tea, shortbread, cakes, and oranges delayed further sermonizing.
Ivor hovered by the door and pretended to ignore the look Jane sent him.
You are a Wentworth. You aren’t safe.
Stephen had been so serious with that warning, so sure of his point. Had Jane been a tea cake, she might have agreed, for Papa had consumed them all, and yet, she wanted her father out of the house. Talk of scheming countesses with long memories had made her uneasy, particularly when Quinn’s nature was to confront rather than to ignore a slight.
“How is Mrs. Sandridge?” Jane asked.
“A bit more tea, if you please,” Papa replied around a mouthful of shortbread. “Mrs. Sandridge is well, though you might call upon her yourself, if you’re truly concerned. I’ve asked her to look about for a wet nurse when the time comes.”
Jane did not expect her father to make a great deal of sense, but that pronouncement baffled her. Mrs. Sandridge was well past childbearing age.
“I beg your pardon?”
“For the child,” Papa said, gesturing with his shortbread. “Though of course there’s time to sort all of that out.” He held up his teacup. “The tea, Jane Hester. A guest should not have to ask twice.”
Jane poured out as foreboding filled her belly. Either Papa had lost his last claim to sanity, or he’d found a new way to plague his only child.
“What do you mean, ‘for the child’?”
“Thank you, Jane Hester. I want to be entirely prepared to receive MacGowan’s offspring into my household, of course. His will was very clear: I’m to be guardian of any afterborn heirs and see to their welfare. I can’t very well see to the welfare of a child being reared by a convicted felon, can I?”
On his best day, Papa was not a fit guardian for a well-trained lap dog.
“You have taken leave of your senses if you think I’ll surrender any child of mine into the keeping of a man who can’t pay for his own coal.”
“Temper, Jane Hester. The female mind is so easily overset. Thank heavens that men of sound faculties can make arrangements for innocent children, lest a mother’s frailties condemn the child to a wayward path. Might we have more tea cakes? They’re quite small.”
Jane rose to tug the bellpull, mind whirling. Gordie had left a will—officers were required to—and she had no idea what the will said.
“Do you suppose Uncle Dermott will allow you to raise a MacGowan, Papa?” Though as to that, Jane would rather the child be raised in London than on some godforsaken Scottish moor.
“Dermott MacGowan refused to make any provision for you or the child. I’m not about to consult him on so significant a matter as my grandchild’s well-being.”
Ivor brought more tea cakes, Papa maundered on about the expenses of raising a child, and the baby kicked at Jane’s insides. Quinn would never allow Papa to have custody of the child, and Papa would never let this issue drop. He’d go to the courts—a certain path to scandal. He’d drag all of Quinn’s past into public view, tarnish Gordie’s memory, and hold Jane up to public scrutiny as an example of an ungrateful, stubborn, selfish woman.
How on earth was any daughter to honor such a father? To forgive and forget this degree of hypocrisy?
“Papa, I am ashamed”—bile rose in Jane’s throat—“of…” You. You and your pious cowardice, your righteous arrogance. Your failure to live up to Mama’s image of you.
“Well you should be ashamed, Jane Hester. Your mother, God rest her, encouraged a certain independence in you that I have come to regret, meaning no disrespect to the dead.”
Jane pushed to her feet when she longed to defend her mother’s memory. “You will excuse me, Papa. I’m about to be unwell. Ivor will show you out.” She snatched the bowl of dried rose petals and managed a dignified exit—only just. Then she was on her knees in the linen closet, retching into the antique French porcelain.
* * *
Stephen had learned years ago how to take apart and reassemble his Bath chair. He regularly oiled the metal surfaces, because any fellow with three older siblings needed to move quietly about his own home.
He was thus proceeding silently down the corridor when an odd noise from the linen closet caught his ear. Either one of Constance’s cats had eaten a mouse that disagreed with it or somebody was in distress.
He opened the door and the scent that assailed him ruled out the mouse theory. “Jane? Are you well?” Inane question. Quinn’s wife was on her knees, a porcelain bowl before her.
“Go away.”
Not dying, then. “Shall I fetch Quinn?”
“I will kill you if you don’t close that door immediate—” She fell silent and put a hand over her mouth.
Stephen rose from his Bath chair and knelt by her side. “The sachets and soaps probably aren’t helping. Ruddy stench permeates everything. Let’s get you to bed and find you some ginger tea, and—” And what? Quinn would know what to do—Quinn knew what to do with aggravating reliability—but where was Quinn when Jane needed him?
“Stephen, every moment you remain in this linen closet you risk your continued existence.”
He got a hand under her arm and lifted her to her feet. “I’m a doomed man, then, but hold off annihilating me until we get you down the corridor, hmm?”
She leaned on him, which felt awkward and good. Good because he had the height and strength to support her. Awkward because Jane was soft, feminine, and not at her best. If Stephen had it to do over again, he’d probably not have shot the honeysuckle from above her head, but he didn’t have it to do over again, and he and Jane hadn’t spoken much since.
“Are you able to walk, Jane?”
“Of course.”
He waited, and she remained for a moment right where she was, against his side. Of all people, Stephen did not associate “of course” with the ability to walk.
“I hate this,” Jane muttered.
Tarrying in an odoriferous linen closet with a dyspeptic sister-in-law wasn’t high on Stephen’s list of ways to spend a day.
“I got drunk once,” he said. “Felt like the devil the whole next day. If it’s anything like that…”
She left the linen closet, still leaning on him, and shuffled with him past Satan’s chariot.
“It’s exactly like that, while you have no energy and your figure comes to resemble that of a…a heifer on summer grass. I’m whining.”
“You’re also making progress toward your bed, so don’t stop on my account. I really ought to fetch Quinn.”
“He’s napping in the library. I’ll nap in my bed.”
Quinn never napped. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t chase women, he didn’t waste a day reading the paper or playing cards. He was a bloody paragon, as long as lack of imagination was a virtue and loneliness a high calling.
He also avoided the library. “You left him asleep in the library?”
They paused outside the door to Quinn’s suite of rooms. Jane shook herself free and peered up at Stephen. Lovely that, to have a woman looking up at him.
“You don’t have your canes.”
Shite. Shite, bollocks, and bother. “I have good days and bad days. Damsels in distress inspire me to heroic feats.” He was blushing, damn it all to hell, and Jane wasn’t buying his load of goods. Quinn never blushed, may he be condemned to a purgatory full of other humorless paragons.
“If you have too many good days, Duncan will be out of a job, is that it?”
Stephen peeled away from her to rest his back against the wall. “Do you do that to Quinn? Fire off insights without warning?”
“Yes, and he returns the favor. Shall I fetch your chair?”
Stephen’s stamina was improving, slowly, but he paid for his excesses, and he needed a moment to gather his wits.
“Please.”
Jane returned with the Phaeton of the Doomed and held it steady as Stephen settled onto the cushion.
“You’re feeling better?” he asked.
“One often does, physically. My dignity is another matter.”
Stephen had considered his regard for Jane, and decided that he liked her but he wasn’t at risk of falling in love with her. She was too much Quinn’s, too clearly devoted to her husband. Then too, she was expecting a child. A daunting prospect.
“Was that your father I saw coming up the walk?”
She straightened a painting hanging above the deal table—drooping roses and green apples. “Yes. He’s probably still in the family parlor appraising the portable goods.”
“Quinn will march him off to the magistrate if he steals.”
Rather than upset the lady, this seemed to interest her. “Quinn would be that unforgiving?”
“That scrupulous. Quinn does not bend rules. He has a little speech that he gives all the courtesy lords and dowagers who seek to borrow money from him. He warns them not to go in debt to him unless they understand that he will see them jailed and bankrupt should they default. They smirk at him, but he’s sent the sponging houses a lot of custom.”
“No exceptions? That seems harsh.”
Stephen agreed, but then, the Quality squandered fortunes on gaming and vice. “Quinn says he gives his word, they give theirs. Exceptions and special cases only muddy the waters. It’s all in writing, so they know exactly the terms of the loan.”
Jane left off fussing with the furnishings. “Quinn is nothing if not logical. If you’d see my father out, I’d appreciate it. If Duncan were here, I’d ask him.”
“Are you well, Jane?” Stephen was no judge of the fairer sex, but Jane’s indomitable air was like Althea’s temper and Constance’s discontent: always there, just below the surface. Jane was trying to get rid of him—all the siblings did—and yet, she seemed off to him, daunted.
“I’m well, considering.”
The corridor was empty, and another opportunity to converse with Jane privately was unlikely. “I’ve learned something you should know.”
“I should know many things.” Her smile was wan. “Such as why you hide your strength from your family.”
“I’m honestly not that strong. I do my exercises, and…maybe someday. You mentioned Duncan.”
“He’s away to Berkshire to look in on one of the ducal estates, or so Quinn told me.”
Meaning Duncan had lied to Quinn—had gone out of his way to lie to Quinn. “He’s not off to Berkshire, Jane. He’d have taken the coach for a journey of that length. He’s on horseback, and he took only a pair of full saddlebags.”
“Perhaps he’ll stay with friends along the way.”
Jane was only half listening, one hand on the door latch, the other on her belly. How many more months did this go on, and where the hell was Quinn?
“Duncan doesn’t have friends, Jane. He has books. He has ideas.” Stephen doubted Duncan even had a mistress.
Jane pushed the door open and leaned on the jamb. “You must excuse me, Stephen. I’m truly not feeling well. You’ll tell Quinn what you’ve told me?”
Stephen had been hoping Jane would pass this development on to Quinn. Tidier that way. “I’ll tell him.”
“My thanks, and do look in on the reverend. I left him rather abruptly.” She withdrew and softly closed the door.
Stephen wheeled himself down the corridor, nearly running into Quinn outside the family parlor.
“Have you seen Jane?”
“She’s in your sitting room, not feeling quite the thing. She asked me to keep her father company.”
Quinn scowled at the door to the family parlor. “He’s back?”
“His daughter lives here. Some fathers do this, I’m told. Look in on their offspring, not that we’d know.”
Quinn aimed his scowl at Stephen. “Don’t turn your back on him. He’s every inch the respectable parson, but he cites scripture for his own purpose and hasn’t done an honest day’s work in years.”
No greater transgression existed in the gospel according to Saint Quinn, which left a brother in a wheeled chair feeling ever so decorative.
“If you have a moment, I’ve a few things to talk over with you, Quinn. The reverend can stuff himself with tea cakes in solitude.”
“No, he cannot. We’ll talk when next we hack out in the park. I need to see to Jane.” He stomped off down the corridor more purposefully than Moses had crossed the Red Sea. Perhaps he’d noticed the traveling coach sitting in its bay, perhaps Jane would mention Duncan’s odd behavior.
And perhaps she wouldn’t. “Quinn!”
He turned outside his door, expression impatient. “Not now, Stephen.”
“Let’s ride out tomorrow.”
“If the weather’s fair.” Then he slipped through the doorway and left Stephen to the thankless task of entertaining company.
“I want them to treat me as if I’m normal,” he said to nobody in particular. Not exactly the truth. Stephen wanted to be normal. A slight, manly limp would be acceptable, but not the ungainly lurching that meant he’d never turn a lady down the room. “Dealing with inconvenient callers is normal.”
On that cheering thought, he let himself into the family parlor. The reverend set down the little gold snuff box, a guilty expression suggesting that the Eighth Commandment had been in jeopardy, or perhaps the Tenth.
Quinn hadn’t the patience for the old twattle-basket. If life in a Bath chair taught a fellow one thing, it was patience. Tomorrow, Stephen would share his observations regarding Duncan with Quinn. Now, he’d defend the family’s monogrammed snuff boxes, and wonder where the hell Duncan had got off to, and why he’d lied to Quinn.