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.
Stephen would cheerfully die for Duncan, and Duncan would never allow him that privilege.
“I will make a terrible duke,” Stephen said. “I am bad-tempered, enthralled with commerce, frequently in company with opera dancers, and unable to waltz.”
Duncan set his chair to slowly rocking. “Dukes keep company with whomever they please, they generally own vast swathes of commercial property, and have been known to be difficult. Ergo, it’s that last—the waltzing—that renders you unfit for the title?”
Well, no. “Go back to Berkshire.”
“Matilda is having too much fun doting on the older girls, and that leaves the field clear for me to dote on my own offspring. What is it about the title that truly bothers you, Stephen? You have many of the attributes that should characterize the nobility. You are wise, tolerant, hardworking, loyal to friends and family, and kindly disposed toward humanity in general. You will be an asset to the Lords precisely because you were not born to privilege. You are already a reproach to the cits who use their wealth only for their own indulgence.”
“An occasional charitable donation is expected of the wealthy. Quinn would thrash me if I were to neglect that duty.”
Quinn would never thrash him. Once, long ago, Stephen had pilfered a currant bun—the most delicious, delectable, delightful currant bun ever to be consumed by a famished boy. Quinn had learned of the misdeed and swatted Stephen once on the bum. The pain had been nothing, but the reassurance to Stephen, that
