How to Catch a Duke (Rogues to Riches #6) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,55

inspire Jane to frowning, it was Stephen. “My brother is generous,” Quinn said. “That’s one of his three fine qualities, but don’t ask me what the other two are.”

Jane gave him a your-wife-is-not-impressed look over her embroidery hoop. She’d brought her workbasket out to the back terrace, and Quinn had brought some draft bills to read, though he wasn’t making much progress with them.

“Stephen is loyal,” Jane said. “He’s hardworking, he’s kind.”

“Kind? The man who seeks to patent a repeating pistol is kind? I grant you Stephen is loyal, but Wodin is loyal and causes much less drama.” Quinn loved his brother, truly he did, but he did not understand Stephen. From a young age, Quinn’s challenge had been to find paying work, no matter how filthy or miserable. He’d dug graves, he’d carried night soil, he’d worn livery and toadied to the wellborn. His pride hadn’t mattered half so much as his ability to keep his younger siblings fed.

He no longer labored with his hands, but he worked long hours both at the bank and in the House of Lords. Stephen had been injured too early in life to have any experience of brute manual labor. He tinkered and sketched and flirted his days away, coming up with brilliant mechanical devices as more of a hobby than a vocation.

“Wodin is a canine,” Jane said. “I hadn’t realized he’s lonely.”

The dogs emerged from the hydrangeas, both tails waving happily. Wodin nipped at Hercules’s shoulder, and Hercules dodged off down the garden path.

“Wodin is…” Wodin gave chase, looking much younger than he had five minutes earlier. “Why do you say that?”

“Look at him, Quinn. He’s acting like a puppy. He’s not watching you to make sure you are watching me. He’s being a dog.”

Hercules chose that moment to lift his leg on a rosebush.

“What else would he be?”

“A bodyguard. Stephen keeps his distance from Wodin.”

Stephen again. Stephen, who for some reason found the prospect of taking a wife and starting a family unfathomably burdensome. Quinn was losing patience with his brother’s delicacy, because it wasn’t as if Stephen had the sexual habits of a monk.

Far from it. “Stephen is vain about his appearance,” Quinn said, “and dog hair does not comport with a dandy’s notion of acceptable turnout.”

“I never took you for a dunderhead, Quinn Wentworth, but consider that your brother requires a cane for locomotion.”

“He does, and sometimes he uses two, though they are generally weapons in disguise. What does that have to do with buying Miss Abbott a canine coach horse?”

Jane jabbed her needle into a corner of the pillowcase she was working on and set aside her hoop.

“Dogs don’t understand about canes. Wodin might cross a room to come to my side and accidentally knock Stephen over. Something as casual as jostling Stephen’s cane can send him to his knees. I’ve seen it happen.”

So had Quinn. “When Stephen falls, I’m torn between wanting to put him in a Bath chair for the rest of his life and wanting to kill whoever so thoughtlessly bumped his elbow.”

“And how do you think Stephen feels?”

Quinn avoided wondering how Stephen felt. Stephen had barely survived his adolescence, so given was he to histrionics. Only Duncan’s timely intervention with a great lot of book learning and scientific twaddle had distracted Stephen from his self-pity.

“I think Stephen feels resentful when he takes a tumble. Any man would.”

Jane closed the lid of her workbasket. “No, Quinn. Any man would feel ashamed to go sprawling to the cobbles while his family looks on. A two-year-old can walk upright with reasonable assurance. Not Stephen Wentworth, but he hasn’t given up trying.”

“Stephen is determined. I’ll grant you that.”

“How generous of you.”

Jane was by nature sensible and kind. She did not resort to sarcasm often, which suggested to Quinn that he was Missing The Point.

“Jane, have mercy. What subtlety am I not seeing where Stephen is concerned?”

“Spend a day in a Bath chair, Quinn. Force yourself to carry two canes at all times. Trip on the bank steps while half of London is passing on the walkway. Though you are smart enough to take firsts in every subject, pass up Eton and Oxford because you can’t manage the steps, can’t manage the schoolyard brutality. Can’t manage the mud. You think Stephen is so different from you, but he’s not.”

“He’s proud.” All the Wentworths were proud, and God be thanked for that, else London society would have eaten them alive.

“He’s proud, and he’s stubborn. His stubbornness makes your determination look