“You are dithering,” Joshua said. “You’ve nothing to dither about. Your family is ecstatic that you’ve been pardoned. Even Duncan was offering toasts to your continued good health when I left your house, and he’s the next thing to a Presbyterian. Now he can boast that his cousin is a duke.”
Quinn tugged at the cravat that Joshua’s valet had tied too snugly around a brutally sore and abraded neck.
“Are you ecstatic at my continued good health?” Quinn asked.
And how long did one woman need to soak in a bathtub before she’d completed her ablutions? More than an hour ago Joshua’s housekeeper had whisked Jane abovestairs, muttering about daft men and a lady’s nerves.
“What sort of question is that?” Joshua retorted, opening a desk drawer and extracting a deck of cards.
They waited in Joshua’s library, which in bachelor quarters doubled as an office and game room. Joshua pulled out a chair opposite Quinn at an ingenious little table that could be used for chess, backgammon, cards, writing, and several other tasks, depending on which hidden lever Joshua manipulated.
Joshua Penrose liked his intrigues.
“Somebody put my neck in that noose,” Quinn said. “The usual motives are greed, revenge, or passion. I haven’t inspired anybody’s passion for years, I am scrupulously fair in all my financial dealings, and you benefitted the most by my death.”
Joshua dealt cards with the smooth practice of an expert—or an expert cheat. “In your shoes, I’d ask the same question, which is why I won’t lay you out flat for your suspicions. If you’re looking for who benefitted from your death, all of your family members did, but the charities stood to gain the most and I doubt they had any inkling of their impending good fortune. How long can one woman soak in a bathtub?”
“My wife may take as long as she pleases.” Though even Quinn, desperate to wash off the stink of prison, hadn’t been able to linger more than a half hour at his bath.
He’d detoured back to Joshua’s town house with Jane because the Wentworth residence was yet mobbed with reporters. Even that menace would not prevent Quinn from spending the night in his own bed.
A desultory hand of piquet ensued, one of thousands Quinn and Joshua had played when no food was to be had and no fuel was to be burned. Soldiers did likewise, whiling away the evening before battle.
Quinn tossed down his cards twenty minutes later. Joshua was either distracted or he was letting Quinn win.
“What did you tell my family about Jane?” Quinn asked.
“That you had taken a bride and would be bringing her home to them. Shall I deal again?”
A soft tap on the door nearly startled Quinn out of his chair, though he moved not at all. Prison had brought forth the reflexes that had kept him alive as a boy.
The housekeeper, a prim article who likely regarded mud on the carpets as a sign of the end times, opened the door and stood aside so Jane could enter the room. The dress Joshua had found for her was aubergine velvet, suitable for a new widow newly remarried, also suitable for a woman in anticipation of an interesting event.
Quinn stood. “Madam.”
Joshua rose and bowed. “Ma’am.” His manners were a dig at Quinn. They did that for each other, kept one another alert and aware.
She curtsyed with unhurried grace. “Mr. Wentworth, Mr. Penrose.”
“You may be excused,” Quinn said to the housekeeper, “and please have my coach brought around.” The inevitable had been put off as long as possible, and interrogating Joshua would get Quinn nowhere.
The housekeeper remained by the door. “Mrs. Wentworth?”
Jane’s confusion was fleeting, showing mostly in her eyes. She was Mrs. Wentworth, until Quinn found a way to explain that she was Her Grace of Walden.
“You are excused, Mrs. Gaunt. My thanks for your assistance.”
Some sort of alliance had formed between the women in the space of one bath. That was good, because Jane would need allies.
“Penrose,” Quinn said, “my thanks for your assistance as well. I’ll see you at the bank tomorrow.”
Joshua was wearing his harmless, charming look, which meant he was up to no good. “You are newly married and newly risen from the almost-dead. Mightn’t you want to spend some time with your family before resuming your duties at the bank?”
Jane watched this exchange with veiled curiosity.
“I will spend the balance of the afternoon at home,” Quinn said, “and endure as much of my family’s joy as one day can hold, but then I have business to attend to.”
The business of finding and putting period to an enemy, first and foremost.
“I will wish you both good day,” Joshua said, “and extend my sincere felicitations on your nuptials.”
He accompanied them to the front door, and an awkward silence ensued while Quinn waited for his coach to arrive and Jane discreetly gawked at the stormy Dutch seascapes displayed on Joshua’s walls.
Silence had always been a friend to Quinn, assuring him his father was away from home or sleeping off another drunk in his filthy bed. Silence had remained an ally in the banking business, because customers who’d mis-stepped prattled of their stupidity when Quinn allowed a silence to last too long.
Silence was uncomfortable now, because it was shared with Jane and Joshua and the butler hovering near the porter’s nook.
“Will you undertake a wedding journey?” Joshua asked.
Trying to get rid of me? “Perhaps later,” Quinn said. “My wife’s health must come before any other consideration.”
Her health and her safety, for somebody’s scheme had been thwarted by that royal pardon, and that somebody had wanted Quinn dead. Such a person might think little of hurting Jane or her child in a second attempt at ruining Quinn.
The coach pulled up and Quinn once again took his place beside Jane inside. To have company in the carriage was different. Quinn’s sisters had their own conveyance, while Stephen preferred traveling on horseback if he had to go any distance.
Jane remained quiet as the coach pulled into the street.
“Did you have anything to eat?” Quinn asked. The new Mrs. Wentworth had had a trying day, and her condition was delicate.
“The housekeeper brought me some ginger biscuits with the tea tray. I was in heaven.”
While Quinn had spent the past month in hell’s family parlor. “We didn’t finish discussing my siblings.” Though where to start?
“I don’t expect them to like me,” Jane said, smoothing a hand over her velvet skirts. “We don’t have that sort of marriage. I’ll be agreeable, Mr. Wentworth. I excel at being agreeable when needs must.”
“You sound determined on your penance.” Also surprisingly fierce. Alas, Quinn hadn’t an agreeable bone in his body.
“You were kind to me when I was in desperate need of kindness. I’ll endure much to repay that consideration.”
She saw the marriage as a bargain, a transaction. Quinn understood business dealings, so a commercial frame of reference ought to suffice.
Except it didn’t. “My family might be unruly when they greet me. Loud, undignified.” Foul-mouthed, if they’d been at the brandy. Constance could swear like a sailor, though she usually exercised restraint out of deference to Duncan’s delicate sensibilities.
Jane took Quinn’s hand. “I was loud and undignified when I saw you, also overjoyed.”
She had hugged him as if he’d been a prodigal son lost in a hostile land during a time of famine.
“I will not be undignified,” Quinn said. “I am disinclined to displays of passionate sentiment.” He could not engage in displays of passionate sentiment was the more accurate admission.
“No matter,” Jane said, stifling a yawn. “In my present condition, I’m the next thing to a watering pot. I’m not half so interested in maintaining my figure as I am in maintaining my dignity, all to no avail. I’ll doubtless be sentimental enough for the both of us.”
“Are you interested in taking a nap?”
Jane looked unwell to him. The dark dress accentuated her pallor and her fatigue, and ginger biscuits weren’t the steak and kidney pie she ought to be eating.
“I have become prodigiously talented at appearing awake,” Jane said. “Before I retire yet again, you will introduce me to your family, please, for they will be my family now too.”
She alluded to some bit of scripture, a laughable source of authority in the life of Quinn Wentworth. As the coach horses clip-clopped along, Quinn turned his mind to the list of suspects he’d pursue starting first thing tomorrow.
Joshua most likely did not belong on that list. He had an abiding respect for money, as would anybody raised in Yorkshire poverty, but more than money, Joshua Penrose had a taste for power. He liked the role of éminence grise, influencing parliamentary debates, bringing down enemies by stealth and indirection.
Having Quinn arrested for a hanging felony was indirect but hardly stealthy. Still, Joshua bore watching.
As did Quinn’s family.
Quinn’s younger half-siblings had withstood Jack Wentworth’s dubious care for years before Quinn had been able to intervene. Stephen, Althea, and Constance lacked a motive to kill him, though, unless resentment qualified. Jack Wentworth was to blame for Stephen’s ill health, and God alone knew what horrors Althea and Constance had borne.
“Are you worried?” Jane asked.
Determined. “Like you, I am plagued by fatigue. Perhaps the relief of a pardon has that effect.” Or the weeks in Newgate, unable to sleep, unable to find quiet, unable to pursue true justice.
“Then I’ll see that your siblings don’t keep you overlong. They must reassure themselves that you’re alive and well, but you shall be allowed your rest.”
Jane subsided against him, not exactly a cuddle—Quinn wouldn’t know a cuddle if it pounced on him in a dark alley—but something wifely and trusting.
How odd. Of all the people in Quinn’s life—family, business associates, employees, enemies, neighbors, and old acquaintances—Jane alone was free from suspicion.
Perhaps that in itself ought to make Quinn cautious with her, but he could not sustain the burden of such zealous vigilance. She was expecting a child, without means, and all but a stranger to him.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steeled himself to endure his family’s welcome.
* * *
“Pardoned, can you believe it?” Beatrice, Countess of Tipton, crumpled up the handbill, intent on hurling it into the dustbin, then thought better of the impulse. She would read it again, read every word, when she had privacy.
These little announcements—a combination of obituary and lurid fiction passed out at executions—were popular with the lower orders. The printer would be sold out by sundown, and a woman of Beatrice’s station wasn’t likely to come by another copy.
“How can so much resilience and good fortune attach itself to such an unworthy object?” she asked, pacing before the fire. “How can a man who’s earned the enmity of half the good families in the realm, a jumped-up gutter rat in fine tailoring, earn the clemency of the very king?”
A handsome, shrewd jumped-up gutter rat. Beatrice had noticed Quinn Wentworth’s good looks too soon and seen the shrewdness too late.
“Perhaps Wentworth’s wealth played a role?” The Hon. Ulysses Lloyd-Chapman had casually passed over the handbill, as any caller would share the gossip of the day. Ulysses was Beatrice’s favorite sort of man—handsome, idle, venal—but what did he know about her connection to Quinn Wentworth and how had he learned of it?
“Money should have resulted in a verdict of innocence,” Beatrice retorted, “if money had been effective. Might you add some coal to the fire? The afternoon grows chilly.”
The afternoon was no colder than most April afternoons. Beatrice simply liked giving orders, especially to men.
Ulysses rose gracefully, prowled over to the hearth, and put half a scoop of coal on the flames. He was a blond lion of a male specimen, though in later years he might run soft about the middle. He set the scoop back on the hearth stand.
On Beatrice’s next circuit of the room, he made an elaborate, mocking bow.
Subtlety was a lost art. Quinn had been subtle, damn and drat him. “What are they saying in the clubs?” Beatrice asked.
“About Wentworth?” Ulysses lounged against the piano, looking both elegant and indolent. “The usual: He has the devil’s own good luck, he’s the symbol of everything wrong with society today, where did he get his money?”
Beatrice had some suspicions regarding that last item. She wasn’t about to share them with Ulysses.
She patted his cravat, adding a few creases to his valet’s artistry. “If that’s all you know of the matter, then you’d best be on your way. Give your sisters my love.”
Ulysses caught her hand in his and kissed her bare knuckles. “The Fashionable Hour approaches. By the time you’ve donned your finery, I can have my phaeton on your doorstep. The park will be full of the latest news, and Wentworth is bound to figure in several conversations.”
They would be quiet conversations, for nobody admitted to borrowing coin from Quinn Wentworth; nobody admitted to wishing him dead either.
Ulysses kept hold of Beatrice’s hand, stroking his thumb gently over her knuckles.
The wretch was coming to know her too well. “Away with you. My finery is not donned in an instant.”
He kissed her cheek, a small effrontery. “As my lady wishes.”
Ulysses sauntered off, letting himself out of Beatrice’s personal parlor. He wasn’t Quinn Wentworth—the Creator had fashioned only one Quinn Wentworth—but then, Quinn had caused far too much trouble in the end.
And he was causing trouble still.
* * *
“This is where you live?” Jane asked as the coach slowed on a quiet Mayfair side street. The trees were leafing out, though most of the stoops and porches had yet to boast of flowers. A competitive display of housekeeping wasn’t required here, in other words. This neighborhood was built on established wealth rather than the upstart variety.
“I live a short distance away,” Mr. Wentworth said. “My front steps are aswarm with that variety of pestilence known as the London journalist. We’ll make a private approach to the family abode.”
The carriage stopped. The door opened. Mr. Wentworth emerged first, then turned to assist Jane, who felt more like sleeping for a week than trotting all over London. She had barely gained her balance when Mr. Wentworth escorted her across the street to a plain coach drawn by bays whose white socks didn’t quite match.
Respectable rather than showy. The larger vehicle drove away, and one footman attached himself to the back of the humbler conveyance. The interior of the smaller coach was spotless and comfortable, though less roomy.
“You live a complicated life,” Jane said as her husband took the place beside her.
Her belly was protesting the coach travel, or the lack of sustenance, or the shock of finding her husband hale and whole.
Or possibly the mixed blessing of leaving the home where she’d dwelled for most of the past five years. Leaving without Papa’s blessing.
“My life is complicated, not by my choice.” Mr. Wentworth lowered the shades on both sides of the vehicle. He’d leaned across Jane to pull down the shade on her side, giving her a whiff of his shaving soap.
Lovely, lovely stuff, that shaving soap. Jane spent the next three streets parsing the scent: clove, cinnamon, ginger, a dash of allspice, and possibly pepper, along with something more masculine. Sandalwood, cedar…a scent with enough sylvan substance to anchor the whole.
“Wake up, Jane. We’re almost there.”
She opened her eyes. “I’m not asleep.” Yet.
The neighborhood had changed; the houses here were larger, the street wider. Not a grand neighborhood, but a fine neighborhood. She was again assisted to alight from the coach, and her husband escorted her to a mews that included a carriage house.
Like most structures of its kind, the building Mr. Wentworth led Jane to had an upper floor over the carriage bays. He took her to a harness room, then down a set of steps.
“I need a moment,” Jane said, as the closer air below street level aggravated her digestion. She breathed through her mouth while Mr. Wentworth waited. His patience was absolute, giving away nothing of restlessness or annoyance.
Jane was annoyed. What manner of bride arrives to her new home through a tunnel?
Mr. Wentworth had taken a lamp from a sconce on the whitewashed brick wall and held it up to illuminate a cobbled passageway.
“That way. Only a short distance.”
Jane set aside her hunger, nausea, and fatigue, and let Mr. Wentworth lead her through the passage. Entire London streets covered underground passageways, and Roman walls and drains were forever making new construction difficult.
She was soon ascending another set of steps and emerging into a well-stocked wine cellar. Mr. Wentworth hung the lamp on a hook, illuminating thousands of bottles all laid on their sides and stacked in open bins. Coaches and matched teams were for show. An enormous and abundantly stocked wine cellar was evidence of real wealth.
“We’re home,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Your trunk will take some time to arrive, but I’m sure my sisters will see you made comfortable.”
What manner of man had a secret entrance to his Mayfair dwelling? What manner of man planned this much subterfuge about a simple trip across Town? What sort of husband…
A wave of unsteadiness cut short Jane’s growing consternation. “If your sisters can see to providing me some bread and butter, I’ll be most appreciative.”
He paused with her at the top of yet another flight of stairs. “I don’t want your gratitude, Jane, though I understand it. You’ve saved me the trouble of locating a woman willing to marry a convicted killer from the lowest orders of society. I’d rather you find some reason other than gratitude to remain married to me.”
In the shadows of this subterranean space, Quinn Wentworth looked of a piece with the darkness. He’d come home this way often, had probably chosen this property for the secrecy it afforded. Jane stirred the sludge of exhaustion and bewilderment that was her mind, for his observation wanted a reply.
“You could give me some other reasons to be your wife.” Friendship, affection, partnership. She’d settle for cordial strangers.
He reached toward her, and she flinched back.
“Sorry. I’m nervous.”
Mr. Wentworth unfasted the frogs of her cloak so deftly his fingers never touched her. “I’m not about to start taking liberties with your person now, when a gantlet of family awaits us. The only sane one is Duncan, who endeavors to be boring on his good days, though I’m not fooled by his pretensions. My sisters and brother had an irregular upbringing and the effects yet linger.”
“I have trouble with my balance lately,” Jane said, as he folded her cloak over his arm. “I am exhausted, peckish, and adjusting to a marriage that requires secret passages and clandestine changes of coaches. If I’m less than the wife you bargained for, then I ask for your patience. I do not deal well with upheaval.”
He smiled, his teeth a flash of white in the gloom. “That’s better. We’ll get some food into you soon.”
“I like the ‘soon’ part.” Jane was glad to be free of the heavy, unfragrant cloak. Better she meet her in-laws in this lovely, soft dress, one free of stains and strained seams. “Could you come near for a moment?”
The smile disappeared. “I am near.”
“Nearer,” Jane said, putting her arms around him.
He held the cloak, which meant he couldn’t effectively shove her away. She leaned on him shamelessly and breathed through her nose.
“Your scent calms my belly, or my nerves. Something. I need to breathe you in for a moment.”
He draped the cloak over the railing and cautiously wrapped his arms about her. “Take your time. We’re in no rush, Jane.”
No roosh. A hint of Yorkshire in the vowel, and in the high contours of the consonants. Perhaps he was tired as well.
Jane allowed herself five deep breaths, and the magic of his scent worked wonders for her internal upheaval. She liked that her husband could hold her without his hands wandering, without pushing unmentionable parts of himself against her.
“I’m ready now.”
“You aren’t, but you’re as ready as you can be to meet the rest of the Wentworth family.”
He left the cloak in the passage and led Jane by the hand through a warren of pantries. A startled scullery maid rose from her stool near a great hearth, her plump features wreathed in joy. Mr. Wentworth put a finger to his lips and winked, and the girl subsided back onto her stool.
“The servants are all in the hall,” she said. “Miss Althea said half holiday, but it’s a double holiday according to Mrs. Riley. Is that your duchess, sir?”
“I’m not a duchess,” Jane said, “but I’m very interested in getting off my feet.” Desperately interested.
“This is my wife,” Mr. Wentworth said, “whom you will be formally introduced to at a later time.”
The maid bobbed a curtsy. “Welcome to Wentworth House, Your Grace.”
I’m not Your Grace. Jane had no time to offer that protest, for her husband was towing her toward yet another set of steps.
“Mr. Wentworth.”
“Almost there.”
“Mr. Wentworth.”
“I can carry you,” he said without stopping. “I believe there’s some tradition to that effect.”
Jane was about to faint, about to heave up two cups of tea and some ginger biscuits, and about to raise her voice. This was not a moment to silently count to three and pray for patience. She couldn’t pit her strength against her husband’s, so she knocked his hat off his head.
“I am not a load of coal to be hauled about at your whim,” she said, as he slowly turned to face her. “Why did that girl address me as Your Grace? I have no title, and neither, as far as you’ve told me, have you.”
He looked guilty. Chagrinned. Bashful.
Imprisoned and facing a death warrant, Quinn Wentworth had been self-possessed, even mocking. Now, in his London finery, in his own home, he looked like a small boy caught with his hand in the governess’s personal tin of biscuits.
“I have inherited a title,” he said, “which is the primary reason I was pardoned. We’ll discuss it later.” He made a production out of retrieving his hat from the carpet and brushing nonexistent dust from the brim.
He was leaving something significant unsaid—something else that was significant—or Jane’s mind was going the way of her balance and her figure.
“You regard this title as the price of your freedom?”
He tugged on his collar with his right index finger. “The title is sunk deeply in debt. Old George wanted no part of such a liability, and I and my fortune were in a position to aid his interests. I also happen to be the legal heir, which is ironic given that my father assured me my paternity was irregular. I had planned to tell you, though a title honestly didn’t signify compared to being able to walk out of that prison.”
A dukedom did not signify?
As it happened, Jane agreed with him. “I cannot tell if you thought I’d leap at the title or away from it, when in truth I can’t see that it makes any difference.” She stepped closer and removed Mr. Wentworth’s cravat pin, a plain gold sword in miniature. “I married you, not your title, not your fortune. We shall discuss our circumstances in greater detail when we are assured of privacy. Do your siblings know?”
“They do. Penrose told them, the rotter.”
Jane retied the neckcloth in the same elegant Mathematical, but looser than it had been. “Mr. Wentworth, might I offer a suggestion?”
He brushed a glance at the small golden sword Jane held near his throat. “You’re angry.”
“I am hungry, queasy, tired, and”—Jane slid the pin through the lace and linen—“in need of a retiring room, if you must know, but I am not angry. We can rejoice in our good fortune, and still admit we face unusual circumstances. Might we face them as man and wife? As people who regard one another as allies if not friends?”
The looser cravat revealed the edge of a bright red weal on his neck. His expression was stoic, though the neckwear had to have been paining him.
“Mine is not a confiding nature,” he said, “but you have no reason to regard me as an enemy. As for the rest of it…I will try to be the best husband I can be to you.”
“Fair enough. I shall try as well.” She kissed his cheek, mostly to take in a solid dose of his shaving soap, then ascended the steps with him, arm in arm.