Quinn had timed his call on Beatrice, Countess of Tipton, for the hour of the day when Lord Tipton was most reliably away from home. The earl was a fixture at his club, and seldom voted his seat. He was solvent—which hadn’t been the case when Quinn had worn Tipton livery—and kept a mistress whom he visited most Tuesday afternoons.
Not every Tuesday, according to the flower girls, and thus Quinn was taking a risk.
No matter. The situation with her ladyship required resolution, lest Jane think her husband a socially backward recluse who was ashamed of his wife, and lest her ladyship get up to more tricks of a lethal nature.
“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”
“Ulysses Lloyd-Chapman.”
The butler’s brows rose. He was a handsome blond about twenty years younger than any other butler of Quinn’s acquaintance.
“I’m playing a jest,” Quinn said. “Or would you rather offend one of her ladyship’s oldest friends and spoil my little joke?”
“Have you a card?”
Quinn folded his arms, as Jane so often did, and remained silent.
“Very good,” the butler said. “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Lloyd-Chapman.”
He showed Quinn to a fussy little parlor that looked out on the garden rather than the street, suggesting Mr. Lloyd-Chapman was one of Bea’s familiars, if not a lover. The window had been raised, and the French doors were open, bringing the scent of scythed grass into the room.
Quinn disdained to take a seat but instead rehearsed his speech, for this wasn’t a social call. If Jane knew he’d willingly confronted his nemesis, she’d be hurt and angry, for which he could apologize. Jane would forgive him in time—he hoped.
Forgive and forget was her policy, after all.
In typical Beatrice fashion, he was made to wait ten minutes for her ladyship’s arrival. She swept into the room in a dress of pale rose with blue fleur-de-lis embroidered on the bodice, cuffs, and hems. Her fichu was cream lace, and her slippers gold.
She was still beautiful, still every inch the lady—to appearances. Quinn waited for some emotion to wash over him. Inconvenient longing, remorse, guilt, anger, anything, but annoyance and impatience were all that stirred. With luck, he could return home to Jane before she woke.
These thoughts skittered through his mind in the time it took the countess to come halfway across the carpet.
She stopped, catching her balance on the piano. “Ulysses, darl—Quinn?” Her shock turned to a hesitant smile that quickly faded to a chilly dignity. “What sort of ill-mannered deception is this? I was told Mr. Lloyd-Chapman awaited me, and in place of a gentlemanly acquaintance, I find…”
Her hauteur faltered as she took a visual inventory. Quinn had dressed as he always did on a workday: Bond Street morning attire, gold sleeve buttons, watch fob, and cravat pin. The only change was the ducal signet ring winking on his smallest finger.
“Do go on, Bea.”
“I am Lady Tipton to you.”
He closed the distance between them rather than raise his voice. “Then I am His Grace of Walden to you, which suits me quite well for a change. I refuse to waste even a single extra instant in your company so don’t bother ringing for any damned tea. Here’s what you need to know: If you ever again attempt to harm me or mine, I will see you jailed and ruined if not hanged.”
The fragrance of attar of roses enveloped him, a signature scent that brought back memories of afternoons when perfume had been all the lady had worn. What a rutting, strutting fool he’d been.
She took a step back and bumped into the piano. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
“I was hanged, your ladyship. Felt the platform drop from beneath me, the noose choke the life from my body. I drew my last breath. But for a chance intervention, you would have succeeded in ending my life. Why, Beatrice? I left you in peace, and if you wanted your letters back, you had only to ask for them.”
Her gaze fixed on his cravat pin, the lion rampant from the ducal crest. “Quinn—Your Grace—I had nothing to do with your arrest or your trial. I never wanted to see you again, but I wish you no ill fortune.”
Even at seventeen, Quinn had grasped that the object of his desire was not a particularly deep individual. Beatrice was easily bored and easily hurt, and now she regarded Quinn not with guilt, but with fear.
Which was puzzling. She’d sent him to his death, a scheme that had taken cunning and confidence in addition to coin.
“If you didn’t fabricate charges against me, bribe witnesses, send Robert Pike to France, and all but put that noose around my neck, then who did?”
She looked away. “You should go. If you’re intent on taking a place in society, we’ll occasionally cross paths. As far as anybody need know, we’re strangers. Unless we’re introduced by some well-meaning fool, you need not acknowledge me.”
That was too easy. “And your letters?”
A soft tread sounded behind Quinn.
“Ask for them back, pet. Demand them back. I know Wentworth plagued you mercilessly and took advantage of your tender female heart, but he really has no need of those letters now.”
The Earl of Tipton stood in the doorway, and abruptly the fear in Beatrice’s eyes made sense.
“Was your mistress not receiving callers this afternoon, my lord?” Quinn asked.
Beatrice winced. The earl smirked. He made a deceptively harmless figure in a rumpled jacket, but the malice in his eyes was formidable.
“My schedule is none of your business, Wentworth. Give her ladyship those letters and be on your way. You really ought to be ashamed of yourself, preying on a lonely woman, then threatening her with scandal. Not well done of you, but considering your upbringing, one shouldn’t be surprised.”
Beatrice spared Quinn one desperate glance, which was explanation enough. She’d spun a tale for her husband, painting herself as the wronged party, taken advantage of, threatened even. If Quinn passed the letters over to Tipton, then Beatrice’s role in the affair would become obvious, and Quinn’s defense against allegations of wrongdoing toward her ladyship would be destroyed.
This was what came of kicking over a hornet’s nest. “And if I don’t have the letters with me?” He did, tucked into an inner pocket of his coat.
“Then the time has come for you to die.”
Tipton withdrew a tidy little double-barreled pistol from his pocket. The distance was such that he stood a good chance of hitting Quinn, particularly with two tries at his target. Doubtless Tipton would have drawn that pistol even if Quinn had produced the letters.
Quinn stepped in front of Beatrice. “Put that damned thing away. The noise will bring a half dozen servants running, and you will be the only suspect in my attempted murder, unless you’d like to see your wife arrested for that crime.”
Tipton’s smile was downright merry. “Oh, my dear fellow, how little you know of the company you seek to keep. When an earl, a peer of the realm, uses deadly force to defend his wife from the untoward advances of a brute who has already been convicted of taking a life once, then that earl is not a suspect. He’s a bloody hero.”
“Quinn, he’s not bluffing.” Beatrice spoke softly, pleadingly.
“He’s not a hero either. Go ahead and shoot me, Tipton. I am a brute, but I’ve survived more misery, cold, pain, and hunger than you can imagine in the worst of your pampered nightmares. I am also a duke, and I will not give quarter to a cowardly blackguard.”
Quinn watched Tipton’s eyes for the telltale shift that would presage a squeeze of the trigger. Tipton was quietly furious—perhaps with his wife, definitely with Quinn.
“Must you remind me?” the earl snapped. “Had you been content to remain wallowing in your wealth in Yorkshire, or even kept to your counting house in London, I might have allowed you to live. But no, you had to inherit a title, and not just any title. Your land all but marches with mine, and when the College of Arms came around asking pointed questions about the village gravestones, I knew where the answers would lead. It isn’t to be borne.”
Behind Quinn, Beatrice made a sound that conveyed dread and grief.
“At least you didn’t get a child on her,” Tipton said, “the smallest of mercies, that. Beatrice, step away from him, or all of London will soon know that your gowns and jewels were purchased with rents owed to the Walden dukedom.”
The irony was exquisite: For years, Quinn had carried guilt and regret about his liaison with Beatrice, while Tipton had probably enjoyed having the leverage the affair gave him over his countess. All the while, Tipton had been stealing Quinn’s birthright, and that—the earl’s theft, not Quinn’s lack of restraint with the countess—had put Quinn in danger.
Tipton was prepared to shoot an unarmed man when sending that man to the gallows had failed. What would the earl do to an unarmed woman?
“You are the reason my dukedom is in such disarray?” Quinn asked. “The reason an old and respected title has fallen into ruin? You put Arbuthnot up to pilfering the Walden coffers, you warned him when the College of Arms was asking too many questions.”
The pattern made sense now, though the insight wasn’t likely to do Quinn much good. The aristocracy was inbred, and the old duke would naturally have turned to a titled neighbor for support when advancing age made managing the ducal properties difficult. Tipton doubtless had encouraged the late duke to bide in Berkshire while the Yorkshire family seat was plundered by Tipton’s minions.
“You stole from an old man who had no family to look out for him, and then you tried to have me killed,” Quinn said. “My duchess says I should forgive and forget, but that—”
“I’ll hear no talk of your duchess,” Tipton retorted. “That you, of all people, should inherit the Walden title is insupportable. I’m glad I was able to all but bankrupt the estate you inherited, Wentworth. You deserve penury at least for poaching on my preserves. Beatrice, for the last time, get away from him.”
“Stay where you are, my lady.” Quinn considered distance, angles, hard surfaces, and his own reflexes, but if he managed to dodge two bullets, he’d be leaving Beatrice at risk. Even as he weighed odds and options, he spared a thought for one more regret.
He should have listened to Jane sooner. He should have heeded her sense of caution, should have let her legion of nannies keep him safe, because he was about to do something very, very stupid—even stupider than confronting Beatrice under her husband’s roof—and kick over yet another hornet’s nest.
“Go ahead and shoot me, Tipton, and my duchess will see those letters published in the Times.”
* * *
“Told you he were in trouble,” Ned whispered.
Jane brushed a rhododendron frond aside. “I will kill him.”
“Quinn?” Althea murmured from Jane’s left.
“That puling disgrace of an earl. How dare he?”
“You won’t have to kill him,” Stephen said. “I’m happy to oblige.”
“That leaves the countess to me,” Constance added.
Ned had led them to this garden, but the next step was up to Jane. Inside the little parlor, Tipton was holding forth again.
“You all but imposed yourself on my wife,” Tipton said. “Beatrice confessed all when certain rumors reached me on the Continent. Thank God somebody had the presence of mind to notify me of the goings on in my own household or there’s no telling how many of your brats I’d be supporting.”
“Himself will do the killing,” Ned murmured. “Has a fearsome proper temper, he does.”
“You sent an innocent man to the gallows.” Quinn spoke from the depths of an arctic fury. “You brought scandal down upon my house, abused the privileges of your station, and broke the law, all for the sake of your stupid, stubborn pride. So you can’t live as extravagantly as some. You still live better than most. And if your neglected wife grew lonely, what of it? Is that worth having murder on your conscience? Why couldn’t you let it go?”
The hairs on Jane’s arms raised. “Ned, you stay here, Stephen and I will lead. Quietly, now.”
“Have you any idea who so kindly summoned you from the Continent to your family seat all those years ago?” Quinn went on.
“Of course not. Gentlemanly honor demands discretion, not something you’d grasp. Beatrice, step away from him.”
“Stay put,” Quinn retorted. “Two little bullets from that peashooter won’t bring me down. I’m not about to oblige yon titled arsewipe by dying when my duchess expects me home in time for supper.”
Jane paused immediately to the left of the French doors. Stephen waited behind her, leaning heavily on a cane. Jane held up three fingers, then two, then one, and marched through the door.
“Your Grace,” Jane said, coming up on Quinn’s right side. “Introductions are in order.”
Tipton swung his gun from Quinn to Jane, then back to Quinn. “Madam, I know not who you are, but you’ve chosen a very unfortunate time to break into my home.”
“Timing is so important,” Stephen drawled. “Lovely day for a social call.”
Quinn’s smile was positively menacing. “I see my sisters refused to be left out of the gathering. What say you now, Tipton?”
“I say I have the only loaded gun.”
Quinn shook his head. “Stephen?”
Stephen raised the pistol he’d been holding in his free hand, a stout, ugly firearm capable of bringing down a…a pompous arsewipe.
“Althea?” Quinn added. “Constance?”
Two bright silver blades appeared in the ladies’ hands.
“All very barbaric,” Tipton said, “and my bullets might not kill a hulking specimen like you, Wentworth, but they will do the lady here grievous injury.”
Oh, no they would not. Jane dipped her hand into her right pocket while the countess remained cowering behind Quinn.
“You’d take the life of an unarmed woman?” Jane asked, using her left hand to link her fingers with Quinn’s. “An unarmed duchess? Who do you think summoned you home from the Continent, my lord?”
For on this point, because Quinn himself had raised the question, Jane was certain.
“I neither know, nor do I—”
“My lord,” Quinn recited. “I regret to suggest that your lady wife has formed an irregular association with a footman in your employ. Your immediate return to the family seat would be well advised. I sent that letter myself. Labored over the penmanship for days. Debated my obligation to you as my employer. I also fretted over my obligation to her ladyship as a woman who’d been treated cavalierly by the man who’d vowed to honor her. Then I considered that a child could all too easily result from my continued folly, and the way was clear.”
Quinn took a step closer to the earl. “Damn you, Tipton, damn you to the dungeons of Newgate, for giving my family cause to worry, for jeopardizing the financial well-being of every customer at my bank.”
Quinn’s indignation took up the entire room, but his confession—he’d summoned the earl home himself—put confusion in the earl’s eyes.
Jane squeezed her husband’s hand slowly. Once, twice, three times, then flung the fistful of sand from her pocket into the earl’s eyes.
Quinn was on him in the next instant, the gun skittering across the floor. Stephen caught the countess as she sagged against the piano, and two apples went sailing at the earl’s head.
“Got him!” Ned crowed as one missile connected with its target.
“Hold your fire, Ned,” Jane said. “His Grace has the matter in hand.”
The matter was on the floor, Quinn towering over him. A butler hovered in the doorway looking helpless and agog.
“Bugger off,” Stephen said, gesturing with his cane. “We’re busy here.”
The countess, who’d draped herself against Stephen, fluttered a hand. “Do as he says, Parker.”
Parker cast a glance at the earl, facedown on the floor, Quinn’s cravat knotted around his wrists. The butler smiled, bowed, and withdrew.
“Get up, Tipton,” Quinn said. “Get up, and if you are very lucky, the ladies will allow you to live.”