“You will not have cousins of me,” he murmured against the baby’s downy crown. “I told your sisters the same thing. Look to Althea and Constance for that madness.” Or to Duncan and Matilda. Duncan was a cousin to Stephen and Quinn, and Duncan, like Quinn, seemed capable of fathering only females.
“Whom he spoils shamelessly,” Stephen added. To the casual observer, Duncan appeared all serious and academic, but put an infant in his arms and he was about as scholarly as fairy dust and spotted unicorns.
“The Wentworth menfolk are easily besotted,” Stephen said, more quietly still. “See that our womenfolk have more sense than that, for I will call out any young swain who offers you dishonor.”
The nursery door creaked open, and Stephen prepared to hand the baby over to her mother or father. A mere nursery maid would not be able to pry the child from his arms, for Jane’s labor had been difficult, and the infant’s survival a domestic miracle.
Quinn settled into the second rocking chair. His temples sported a few threads of silver, and he was within hailing distance of his fortieth year. Jane said he grew only more handsome—about which Stephen had no opinion—but clearly, Quinn grew happier with each passing year.
About which, Stephen was torn.
“Promising her ponies and peppermints?” Quinn asked, leaning his head against the back of the chair.
“Promising to kill anybody who brings her dishonor.”
“That’s my job, though Jane will usurp that honor from both of us. Why are the children always so good for you?”
Because I love them. Of course, Quinn and Jane loved their children, but Stephen never envisioned having progeny of his own—what sort of father couldn’t carry his own toddler up to the nursery at the end of the day?—and thus Stephen’s love was gilded with desperation.
These children had to be happy, they had to thrive, or he would go mad.
“The children are simply children,” he said, “and that wonder bedazzles me whenever I behold them.” The girls were the antidote to Stephen’s memories, tonic for the constant pain of a leg that would never be straight or strong.
“You are a fraud, Stephen Wentworth.” Quinn pronounced sentence gently. “You travel the world leaving a trail of lordly disdain and casual brilliance. You build heavy artillery and small arms, you destroy any business that you take into dislike, but in your heart, you were meant for domesticity.”
The baby sighed, the softest, most contented exhalation ever to soothe an upset uncle.
“I am about as well suited to domesticity,” Stephen said, “as you are to be a duke.”
Quinn’s gaze shifted from Stephen to the baby. “Jane says I’ve grown into the title, and my duchess is never wrong. She sent me to retrieve yon hooligan, and when it comes to Her Grace’s whim, I am pleased to step and fetch.”
Stephen’s every instinct clamored to keep the baby close and safe, to guard her from even the loving attentions of her own parents, and yet, he could not safely rise with the child in his arms.
He could not manage the baby, a cane—much less two canes—and a door latch.
This limitation, previously acknowledged mostly in the abstract, had consumed his awareness since he’d kissed Abigail Abbott that very morning.
He passed the child to her father. “Perhaps you’ll have better luck with the next one.”
Quinn cradled his daughter with the practiced ease of a father of four. “Wee Mary and her sisters are all the luck I could ask for, Stephen. I will not subject my wife to childbed again. Jane was in agony for the better part of two days. Only her great fortitude and determination brought about a happy result, and even if she is willing to risk another pregnancy for the sake of the succession, I am not.”
Truly, Quinn had become a duke, for he delivered that blow in the most casual tones, rising easily to tuck his daughter against his shoulder.
“Jane will change your mind.” A desperate hope.
“Jane changed my mind last time and this time, and my capitulation nearly killed her. I will not be talked around again, even by Jane.”
Jane’s fixity of purpose made Toledo steel look like so much crumpled tin. Quinn, however, was the one force of nature whom Jane could not and would not cozen, cajole, or command when he’d settled on a course. Stephen did not understand how marital differences were resolved between two such people, but he did know that trading Jane’s life for a male child was no bargain at all.
“Is the duchess receiving?” Stephen asked, gathering up his canes. Some women still observed the tradition of forty days lying in. With previous confinements, Jane had begun short excursions from the house in less than half that time.
“Jane will want to see you,” Quinn said. “Give us half an hour, and join us in our private parlor.”
“You will allow me to buy that child a pony,” Stephen said, trying for a light tone. “If I can’t teach her to shoot or smoke or drink, I must be permitted at least that boon.”
“You can teach her all of those things, but it still won’t make her or any of her sisters male, Stephen. Reconcile yourself now to the fact that you will be the next Duke of Walden.” Quinn opened the door, and who should be on the other side but Duncan.
“Another man seeking to call upon my daughter,” Quinn said. “Alas, her mother has summoned her. You can keep Stephen company as he contemplates his gloomy fate. He’ll be a wealthy and powerful duke one day, poor sod.”
Quinn left, closing the door quietly in his wake. Stephen remained in the rocking chair and Duncan took the seat Quinn had vacated.
A silence ensued, broken only by the soft crackling of the fire in the hearth. Jane ordered wood burned in the nursery, declaring that wood fires were better for the children’s lungs than coal. That was only one of the myriad decisions required of her as a parent, and Jane made them with the confidence of an experienced general bivouacking over familiar terrain.
Duncan had powers of contemplation that rivaled the sagacity of the ancients. He and Matilda had traveled to Town from their Berkshire estate in honor of the nursery’s newest arrival. For years, Duncan had been Stephen’s constant companion, first as a tutor, then as a traveling companion. Matilda had come along and spoken for all of Duncan’s waltzes, as it were.
“You haven’t been out to see us for months,” Duncan said. “Are you in love again?”
Another man might have asked how the crops were faring, how the harvest went on at the Yorkshire properties. Duncan had faced demons that made Jack Wentworth look like a passing inconvenience. Prying into Stephen’s non-existent personal life thus passed for small talk with Duncan.
“I gave up falling in love when I turned five-and-twenty. Put away my childish things, as it were. When will you and Matilda have a son?”
“Never.”
Et tu, Duncan? “The Almighty has given you those assurances?”
“I am older than Quinn, and Matilda has a year or two on Jane. We are well blessed with our two girls and refuse to court disaster by asking for more. You will make a fine duke.”
Nothing frightened Duncan. His sangfroid was equal to highwaymen, irate dukes, squalling infants, and self-destructive adolescents. He’d studied for the church and drew on a well of moral fortitude Stephen could only envy. Duncan had taught a surly, adolescent Quinn to read. When Stephen’s mind had been caulked shut with rage and despair, Duncan had pried it open with books and riding lessons.