Chapter 2 #3
Her posture went taut and alert. She was a slim woman beneath the cascade of skirts and apron. She could easily be coerced. Manipulated.
Or, come to that, physically moved about by some man who considered himself superior. The thought made Joseph’s blood thicken to a boil.
“I am bringing you coffee,” she said, her voice quiet, her accent emerging. “I am bringing you bread.”
“But why me? That is to say, you appear without forewarning. There is apparently some arrangement with my housekeeper that I don’t know about.
I presume I am paying you a salary since you clearly perform some household duties.
But what are they? Why are you allowed to come and go as you wish, with no questions and no accounting? Are all my servants contracted thusly?”
“Allowed?” Her shoulders went tense. “Allowed to come and go as I please? Isn’t every free person given that right?”
He brushed away her quibble; she was evading the point. “But why here? Why don’t you have a home of your own?”
She rose and moved to a shelf of small items, oddments on display. Amaranthe’s trinkets, of course; so little in this place was Joseph’s. Inez pulled a scrap of cloth from her apron pocket and began dusting the case with short, jerky movements.
“Why do I not have a home of my own?” Her tone was low and wounded, yet her movements careful and precise.
“Because my father has left for a voyage that will last two years if not longer.
Because my mother is dead. Because I have no other family, which may be a blessing, as there would be no home for them either.
“My place in the world—” here her movements grew jerky, angry— “is wherever I can find employment, usually no better than the scullery or the laundry, and that is if a respectable home will take me. More often I am told to take me to the bagnio or brothel, where they want girls with my color skin. To be sure, if I did work in such places, I would at least receive coin for my services. If I cannot keep a place in a respectable home, it is because there must come along a son or a husband or a friend of the house who believes my services are his for free.”
Whatever bitterness consumed him, hers had a sharper bite.
Joseph sat chained to his chair, horrified by the picture she painted.
Visions assaulted him of Inez being backed into dark corners, whether in the public baths or below stairs in great house, or even approached in the street, as it was a given that women in certain parts of town were displaying their wares for a purpose.
“I-I am…that should not be,” he said finally. Joseph thought himself a man of the world, but the world she hinted at was one he hadn’t known existed. “I— You should be allowed to work and move about without molestation.”
“What a lovely world it would be if all men believed as you do.” She slapped her dusting cloth at a small, enameled music box, one that had belonged to Joseph’s mother, and he feared in her vehemence she would damage the delicate cylinder inside.
He longed, suddenly, for the simple world he had grown up in, one governed by clear manners and morals.
Gentlemen were kind to ladies. Ladies were gracious and demure.
The lower and the very upper classes might turn things about into any muddle they liked, but for a gentleman’s family, courtesy ruled. Respect, dignity, and fair play.
If the world were fair, he would be head of his own bloody household already, with a beautiful wife and three lisping children he was teaching their letters, and a plum position that made him the envy of tutors throughout London and beyond.
Inez whirled to face him and crossed her arms over her chest. Joseph struggled not to let his eyes fall to the press of her bosom against her bodice and the linen neckerchief that swathed her, tied crosswise and tucked at her waist. He would not fall into that class of men who measured women by their potential to yield sexual satisfaction. He was a gentleman, for God’s sake.
“So that is why,” she said firmly, her lips once again making that movement where she seemed to press them together, yet their full shape made him able to think of nothing but ripe fruit, of licking and biting and sweetness.
“Why what?” he said, striving in vain not to think of other places on Inez where he would like to put his mouth.
“Why I am here.” She pointed at the carpet with its complex floral design.
Because his house was a refuge. Because Amaranthe would have taken her in with no questions, giving her a place to be free of persecution, supposing Joseph, who tended to get caught up in his own mind very frequently, might not even notice she was there.
He had noticed. It was impossible to overlook Inez.
“Very well, then,” he said gruffly.
She threw him a glare that would have shredded him, could glares cut. “Well what?”
“I understand now why you are here. And…you may stay.”
“I may stay.” Her eyes narrowed into slits, a golden-red fire deep within. “I might stay.”
“Well, yes. You will be safe here. I will see that you are sheltered. And you might go about as you wish—” He swirled a hand in the air, aware even as he did so that it was an awkward gesture— “without fear of interference, I hope.”
“You will suffer me to stay,” she said again.
“Indeed I shall.” Had he not been clear? Baffled by her sudden guard, and the fulminating fire in her eyes, he searched back through his words for the insult. What had he done?
She planted her hands on her hips, and the belligerent gesture was so at odds with her natural grace that Joseph smothered a smile.
She saw the smile and her eyes snapped into slits. He might have detected a flare of hurt first, but it was gone so quickly, the feeling mastered in a flash, that he might have imagined it.
“Thank you ever so much for your kindness, Master Illingworth. I don’t know how I shall ever repay you for condescending to notice me, poor creature that I am.
But be assured I will not linger to trouble your household.
” She wiped her hands on her apron and then swept up the tray with its bread and butter and half-drunk coffee.
Joseph leapt to secure the pot before she could remove it and only then, when he stepped back and saw the real hurt in her eyes, did he realize what he’d done. She’d more or less given him notice, and he’d made sure to collect the coffee before she left.
“You won’t be going anywhere,” he snapped. It was his regrettable habit to become defensive when he knew he’d done something wrong. “You shall stay here, where you are safe and I can look after you.”
Her snort, too, was a complete contrast to the delicate lines of her face, her beauty that somehow became more intense, and more aggravating, the longer one stood in a room with her. A man could only take so much beating about the head, for God’s sake.
“Look after me. As if you ever have.” She whirled, her skirts flaring to reveal white stockings with cunning little clocks, an absurd point of luxury on a woman dressed like a servant. “Fare thee well, Master Illingworth.”
Master, as if he were a small arrogant boy and not a Mister, lord and head of his own household. Such as it was. He looked about for a place to set the coffee pot.
“He’s in the parlor.” Outside the room, Inez’s impatient voice drifted down the short hall that led to the servants’ stair and below to the kitchen. “Mind your manners, he’s in a temper today. World not bowing to his wishes, per the usual.”
Temper? Joseph barely restrained himself from bellowing a response.
He would not let the minx rile him, though she was the most provoking creature alive.
So many of their interactions ended like this: she flew up in the boughs over some imagined slight when he hadn’t committed the least offense against her.
Then she threatened to leave, Mrs. Frost soothed, and Inez sulked and flounced for a while, throwing him dark looks to ensure he knew she was out of charity with him.
And one day he’d look about and she’d be absent.
She never cared enough to say goodbye. She set him aside like an old hat. Then, when she wanted a roof and a bed and a place to bake her Portuguese bread, she scratched at the kitchen door and Mrs. Frost let her in and the whole merry round began again.
“Not this time,” Joseph said aloud. “D’ye hear me?” He had no idea who he was speaking to, but a solemn vow must be witnessed, even if only by empty air. “By Gad, things are going to change around here.”
He set the coffee pot on a side table with great emphasis, and gritted his teeth when hot liquid splashed onto his hand. Dash it, that had held the temperature. One sturdy serving pot, that.
“Mr. Joseph?”
He looked up, assembling a reproof. Inez never returned so quickly, and never to apologize, but there was a first time for everything, wasn’t there?
“I did not hear the front door,” he said sternly, as if he might blame the girl who stood there for giving him a turn.
“I doesn’t use th’ front door, does I?”
It wasn’t Inez in the door frame but Tamara, the young costermonger whom his sister had befriended and occasionally hired to run errands.
Amaranthe was always finding people in distress and plucking them off the streets.
All of the servants she’d hired into this house had come from some doleful and difficult circumstance.
Who knew how many dozens she’d saved from want or debtor’s prison or abject poverty, how many burdened women she’d offered sanctuary from whatever tragedy dogged their heels.
Like Inez. For whom he was supposed to be providing refuge, and who now meant to turn herself back into the street because she was in a pet with him, and he already knew she had no one to provide for her, shelter her, ensure she was not accosted as a young woman alone—
The girl cleared her throat impatiently, and Joseph scowled at her. “What do you require?”
“The Duchess said you mun see this.” The girl held out a scrawny hand. In it was a vellum envelope, the seal broken, the edges inked black.
A black edge meant mourning. Someone had died.
Joseph’s throat closed with panic. Anth—one of the children—not that robust, arrogant, aggravating Duke— “Who?” he croaked.
“A cousin, she said?” The girl waited.
A cousin…but they had no family. It had been him and Amaranthe, on their own, the last ten years. No one but…
Dash it all. “Reuben.”
Joseph took the vellum and fumbled it open.
Indignation surged first. The letter, while its news might concern both the remaining Illingworth relations, involved mainly Joseph, and yet the Illingworth solicitor had sent it first to Hunsdon House, because Amaranthe was a Duchess and Joseph was a nobody.
Or, had been a nobody up until this moment.
Now he was the 5th Baronet Illingworth, apparently.
He sat and read again, the vellum trembling slightly as shock set in.
After a brief and unpleasant illness, Reuben Illingworth, the 4th Baronet Illingworth of Penwellen, had died, leaving no issue.
By terms of the entail, the estate and title should pass to the nearest heirs male.
And Joseph, the grandson of the 2d Baronet and nephew to the 3rd, was the legitimate successor.
Assuming his birth would be validated as legitimate by the baptismal registry in the parish of St. Cleer, there would be the small matter of confirming the line through the pedigree chart and family tree held by the Herald’s College, but since all of these documents were in order following Reuben’s recent request to elaborate on the family’s coat of arms, the solicitor felt confident to inform Joseph that he might take possession of the title, the estate, the house, and all other assets appertaining at his earliest convenience.
Joseph could hardly sort out the roil of emotions.
How like Reuben to squander good money on attempting to register an Illingworth coat of arms, which no one used or cared about anyway.
An obscure, fairly young baronetcy in the corner of Cornwall was nothing to brag about in London, though perhaps in his corner of Cornwall Reuben enjoyed playing lord of the manor.
The next roiling emotion to surface was a wish that Joseph could vindicate himself regarding the Aldthorpe situation.
That he might write the solicitor who’d shoved him out the door and say regretfully he must turn down the offer for a position as tutor to the Earl of Aldthorpe’s sons as he had inherited an estate and must take up his title and duties.
It would serve as a tart reminder that Joseph was overqualified in truth.
Reuben’s death, on its own, stirred no sense of loss. Joseph wondered at his own hardness. A man’s life had ended, and not well, from the sounds of things. But Reuben had been an unpleasant man, unlikeable, unliked.
How horrifying to think one could leave this life and not be mourned. Joseph resolved at that moment that he must leave someone to mourn him when he shook off this mortal coil.
He set his hand with the letter in his lap and stared across the room at the small shelf with its music box that Inez had just dusted.
His grandmother had doted on music boxes, had a collection of them at Penwellen.
He remembered a house with dark walls, heavy-browed ancestors glowering from backdrops of shadow.
Under his aunt’s reign, the parlors and sitting rooms had been in a constant state of renovation, and he might not sit on the upholstery or touch anything because he was a boy and likely had dirty hands.
He had not lived at Penwellen under Reuben’s tenure.
He’d hied himself off to Oxford as soon as the tuition could be paid.
He’d never much cared for Reuben’s fretful, fussy wife, who behaved as if every element and person of the outside world had been specifically placed there as a trial to her nerves.
Penwellen was his now, a stately house with good grounds and extensive lands.
Amaranthe had reported that the place was growing rather shabby when she visited there last summer, but a shabby manor was quite a step up from rented premises in George Court, and ever being run down by carters from the Blue Posts.
He would have a house of his own. Properties. Tenants. Servants in his own employ, not another’s.
And he was no longer a mere Mister Illingworth. He would be styled Sir Joseph Illingworth of Penwellen, Bart.
He recalled his earlier vow of change and winced. Everything in his life had changed already, whether Joseph was ready or not.