“You never played.”
“And then you refused to play, though you were barely breeched. Constance and Althea learned to break the crust in half, and Jack took to eating the food in front of us instead. His own hungry children stood before him, ragged and shivering, and he’d eat half a loaf of bread bite by bite and laugh at us and tell us we should be out looking for work. Jane has likened him to a mad dog, one that menaces all other creatures and is deserving of a bullet to the brain.”
“Jane said that?”
Quinn stared into the fire, doubtless seeing memories of his own childhood. “Jack was an order of evil for which not even the Bible has a description. I had planned to kill him myself, but as the most likely suspect, I hadn’t devised a way to evade blame. I wasn’t about to leave you three without an older brother to fend for you. How ironic, that I should end up in Newgate for murder anyway.”
Stephen wanted this conversation to be over. He wanted to bury his face against Abigail’s hair and breathe in her scent. He wanted in some vague way to grieve and rage, not as a small boy succumbs to a tantrum, but as a grown man rails against the world’s fallenness.
The whole of York had known what a monster Jack was, and not a soul had lifted a hand against him. A father’s right, they’d murmured. Spare the rod…
More remained to be said, though. “Jack threatened to break my other leg if I warned Althea or Constance about the brothel.”
“He would have done it, Stephen. He would have thrown you down a well and laughed while you drowned, if he could have got by without the money your begging brought in.” Quinn was blessedly sure of that conclusion.
And—now that Stephen considered the proposition—so was he. “Jack wanted to sell me along with the girls, Quinn, but the buyer wasn’t interested in a lame boy. Jack couldn’t sell me as a climbing boy, he couldn’t sell me as a molly boy. Other than the begging, I was no earthly use to him except as a target for his fists and his hobnailed boots. I wanted to die. I wanted a benevolent angel to strike the lot of us down, but then I thought: Why us? Why not strike down bloody Jack Wentworth? He hadn’t lamed my brain, only my leg.”
Quinn patted Stephen’s leg, an awkward and unprecedented familiarity. “God be thanked for your brain, and for your stubbornness. Does Duncan know?”
“He doubtless suspects. He was so determined to see the good in me, no matter how relentlessly I showed him the bad. He wore me down, and I eventually admitted a stalemate.”
And what an exhausting struggle that had been.
“Duncan will approve. We think of him as a man of logic and reason, but he’s passionately opposed to blind respect for corrupt authority. Talk to him, when the moment is right. He would cheerfully kill anybody who threatened Matilda, or as cheerfully as Duncan does anything.”
Duncan had become obnoxiously cheerful since marrying Matilda. He was simply subtle about it. “I have never said anything to Althea and Constance, but they probably suspect too. You will doubtless mention this to Jane, and Duncan and Matilda have no secrets.”
Quinn’s lips quirked. “Jane had her suspicions, and as usual my duchess was correct. The Wentworth family will have a secret, though. How appallingly aristocratic of us. I cannot say emphatically enough that you did the right thing and the only thing.”
He grabbed Stephen by the nape, shook him gently, then brought him into a fierce, brief hug. “You know that, don’t you?” he said, not letting Stephen go. “You made a hard choice, but the only choice, and one no eight-year-old should have been faced with.”
Stephen managed a nod.
“Good.” Quinn thumped him once on the back and let him go. “And now I will join my slumbering duchess.” He rose and stretched, a specimen in his prime, and a damned fine brother. “Will you ambush Stapleton with Miss Abbott’s copies of the letters?”
“I was considering something like that.”
Quinn picked up his glass and set it on the sideboard. “Whatever you do, don’t execute your plan without consulting with Miss Abbott first. Duchesses frown on their menfolk going off half-cocked.”
“Right. Good night, Quinn.”
He padded to the door but paused with his hand on the latch. “She’s in the peacock apartment, and the dog sleeps in her sitting room. Damned beast you gave her will soon eat its way through Smithfield Market.”
Babies had a way of disrupting the most prosaic of marital routines, and the smaller the baby, the worse the disruption. Jane had no sooner returned from a nocturnal visit to the nursery and lain down in the ducal bed than the mattress shifted—or so it felt. She might well have been sleeping for an hour.
“Missed you,” she murmured, feeling her husband’s weight settle beside her. “Was it awful?”
From the earliest months of their marriage, Quinn had been sparing with words and lavish with physical affection, at least in private. Jane usually fell asleep with Quinn spooned at her back and woke curled against his side.
“The evening was long without you,” he said, moving closer. He rested his head on her shoulder. “The baby was asleep when I looked in on her.”
“Sleeping off her latest banquet.”
Normally, Quinn would offer at least a cursory report: Some retired admiral had been in his cups before the dancing opened, a dowager countess had been accused of cheating at cards. He kept track of the trivialities because often, those on dits had financial repercussions and his banks served many titled families.
“Is Stephen all right?” Jane asked, for polite society had doubtless remarked Stephen’s presence with more curiosity than compassion.
“Stephen is…” Quinn sighed, the sound profoundly weary. “Stephen is…Hold me, Jane.”
Never in more than a decade of marriage had Quinn asked that of her. She threaded an arm under his neck and pulled him close.
“Quinn, are you well?”
“I am heartsick for my brother.”
Jane waited, because surely even Quinn would embellish such an admission.
“All these years,” he said, “I’ve thought Stephen spoiled—a contrary, self-indulgent, arrogant, difficult fellow who simply could not put behind him an injury that resulted in nothing more than a bad knee. Jack Wentworth scarred us all, and Stephen spent less time around Jack than any of us.”
Ah, well then. In Jane’s opinion, Jack Wentworth was capable of greater evil than Old Scratch himself. Mention of him would turn any conversation melancholy. Jane stroked Quinn’s hair and drew the covers up over his shoulders.
“You and Stephen were discussing the past?” A difficult topic for any Wentworth.
Quinn hitched closer, and Jane was glad the candles were out and the fire was banked. This was not a conversation to have in daylight.
“All along,” Quinn said, “I thought: My brother is so disgustingly smart. From the kites he makes for the girls to the modifications he’s designed for his saddle, to the cannons and rifles and even a bedamned crossbow. Everything he touches is brilliant. Stephen has so much intelligence, I thought, why must he be bitter about an unreliable knee? Get the hell over it and move on. I was jealous of him. He can read in any language he pleases to, he’s charming, he’s stylish.…”