Chapter 5 #2
Inez realized both men could have intervened but didn’t; they believed Joseph had the fight well in hand. Her chest swelled as she sucked in air. She’d been holding her breath all this time.
“What will happen to him?” Inez croaked.
“We’ll let the molls roll ’im, then dump the cull in Smock Alley. Let ’im think ’e got taken by the anglers and swig men,” Titus suggested.
“I say lump ’im in the Spital Market an let the tradesmen have their way,” Nero offered.
“Dump him in the Thames,” Inez said shakily. “Perhaps then Priscilla’s husband can inherit the estate, and do better with it.”
“A bloodthirsty wench, are you? I never knew.”
Joseph put a finger to her chin to inspect her face. Rage and the fight had given his face a cast she barely recognized. His shoulders seemed enormous, his hands were weapons, and the lines of his face seemed sharper, bolder. He looked like a warrior. A king.
“You’re the bloody one.” A trickle of crimson streamed from his temple where his lordship’s signet ring had cut the skin.
Without thinking Inez yanked out the neckerchief tucked at her bodice and pressed it to his head, cupping his other cheek with her palm.
His skin was warm and firm and soft, so soft.
She’d thought men were only ever rough and dark and hairy, but Joseph was a pillow of silk drawn over sturdy muscle and bone. The jut of his cheekbone against her palm felt vulnerable. He could have been hurt. He had been hurt, for her.
His gaze moved over every line of her countenance, then down her neck. Stuttered and stopped at the sight of her breasts, the tops exposed in the tight bodice. She couldn’t slow the rise and fall of her breath, still sharp and panicked as blood beat through her.
He stared, and she wondered if the hot flush she felt everywhere showed on her skin. Joseph Illingworth had noticed her breasts.
He dragged his gaze back up to meet her eyes, and there it was, what she’d longed to see: desire. At long last, he looked at her as a man looks at a woman he covets.
His voice was hoarse and strangled. “Are you—”
She rose up on her toes, pulled his face toward her with both hands, and kissed him.
His lips were as soft as the skin beneath her palms and the curls of hair falling over her fingertips. He tasted delicious. She couldn’t go one more instant of her life without kissing Joseph Illingworth, and if she had to pay for her trespass, so be it.
For a tortured moment he stood completely still, as if she’d delivered the kind of blow he’d given to Wigsby, who even now was being carried down the hall and, Inez hoped, out of her life forever.
Joseph didn’t want to kiss her. He’d appeared out of nowhere, he’d fought for her, he’d looked stunned at the sight of her bosoms pushed up by the tight bodice, but he didn’t want —
All of a sudden her feet lifted off the ground and Inez tumbled backwards, as if the carpet had been yanked from her feet. Joseph’s arms closed around her like the swoop of a hawk’s wings. She felt giddy. His mouth was hot and devouring and pressed to hers as if he meant to swallow her whole.
Her heart jumped into her throat and pulsed there with wild joy. His entire body was pressed to hers and she couldn’t breathe with the shock of it, the heat and firmness of his body when his tongue in her mouth was a silken thrust.
She was going to expire from happiness. Joseph Illingworth, kissing her, finally, and kissing her with a desperation that made her head whirl, as if he didn’t consume all of her, this instant, he would die or disappear.
There was something almost clumsy in the press of his tongue inside her mouth, in the clutch of his fingers close to painful in her hair, in the bruising press of his lips.
She moaned and shifted, wishing she could press herself closer.
She didn’t care if he was all demand and no skill.
She felt the hardness of his arousal pressing between her legs, and need whooshed through her like a catching fire, sucking all the strength from her knees.
She wanted to wrap her legs around him and pull him inside of her.
She wanted him to take her, right here in the hallway against the painted paper wall, as heedless as any whore, so at last, at last she could be fully his.
But she couldn’t breathe with all of him upon her, so much of him all at once, the great gush of need that threatened to engulf her.
Inez tore her mouth away and gulped for air.
He was panting too, his eyes dark with passion, as glassy and dazed as she felt.
For an endless moment they stared into one another’s eyes, breathing in unison, and Inez felt locked into something she didn’t understand, so large she didn’t know how she was to hold it.
Then he stepped back. “Good God.”
“No,” she murmured, reaching for him. He couldn’t pull away now. “Come back.”
But he dropped his arms, stepping away, and cold air rushed all around her. Her feet on the floor had to hold her up on their own, and she didn’t think they could. She didn’t want them to.
“Inez. I’m so sorry.”
“No,” she cried hoarsely. He must not regret this. There must be a promise of more of this later. There could be no sorry.
He turned away. Titus and Nero had carried out Wigsby’s body, but girls stood at their doors all along the hallway, some of them in stages of dressing for the day, one or two still in wrappers and nightcaps. They hooted, applauded, clamored for information. Inez hadn’t heard a thing.
Another maid came through the servant’s door with a mop and bucket. Her cheeks blazing with heat, Inez reached for a cloth. “Let me help.”
Joseph ignored all the Vestals calling to him, demanding to know his name, some inviting him into their room to make a closer acquaintance. The light in his eye was embarrassment.
“We must get you away from here,” he said to Inez. “That man will come back, or send a constable. You can’t stay.”
“Wigsby.” Inez twisted her hands in her apron as the consequences of what he’d done fell into her mind. “His estate is in Monmouthshire, I think.”
“Then he is a lord.” Joseph flexed his battered fingers. “The Bloody Code will call for an execution, I don’t doubt.”
There were any number of crimes that were capital offences on the English law books, Inez had learned. And she had thought Portugal, where the favored capital punishment had long been the garrote or burning at the stake, a savage country.
“More like the judge’ll try to transport you,” Bess reasoned. She stepped into the hallway holding her stays to her bosom, unconcerned about her state of dishabille. “Sentence you off to fight in the American Colonies, fine strapping ’un as yerself.”
She surveyed Joseph’s frame with frank appreciation, and Inez battled the urge to claw out the eyes of this woman who had been nothing but friendly to her. “How bad did ye hurt ’im?” Bess asked. “’Cause he’s one as pays us well, though he be a bit dirty, come down to it.”
“I wants to know what our Inanna did.” Another young woman came forward, a pretty redhead they called Freya. She wore a loose nightgown of nearly sheer linen, but Joseph, to his credit, kept his eyes in the area of the enormous cap protecting her wig.
The sudden rush of gratitude for him made Inez bolder than she ever had been with these girls.
She might also still be dizzy because Joseph Illingworth had kissed her.
“I worked in Wigsby’s London house as a lady’s maid for a time, and I helped his daughter elope.
His only child, and he objected to the marriage. He was understandably upset.”
She wouldn’t mention her other crimes, not before Joseph. He’d kissed her. Inez’s entire being was comprised of two urges: escaping the wrath of Wigsby, and finding a way to coax Joseph Illingworth into kissing her again.
“Oy, well done. An ’ere I thought you the veriest mouse.
” Bess gave Inez a frank smile, bestowing her appreciation, and again Inez wanted to snap at her.
She wasn’t a violent person! Seeing Wigsby, being nearly choked to death at his hands, then watching Joseph so valiantly defend her had set up a roil of emotions she didn’t know how to tame.
“How did you find me?” she finally thought to ask.
The blood had turned to a slow seep at his temple, and Inez dabbed the wound one more time, not caring if the blood never washed out of her linen. She’d carry the scrap as a kerchief beneath her dress if it held a part of Joseph Illingworth, she was that much a fool.
Her knees were as liquid as a chocolate cream. Her belly sloshed with dread and desire. And that place deep within, that place Joseph Illingworth had awakened—after his kiss it burned bright as the morning star, shining through the fog of everything else, a brilliant, true beacon to guide her.
“The costermonger.” His steady gaze was a snare, and she would never be free.
He studied each line of her face as if she were a priceless painting on exhibit by the Royal Academy.
As if he had never seen her before, in all the days and months she had moved in his orbit.
Her heart slowed and swelled to one enormous throb of longing.
She wished his body were pressed against his once more.
“Tamara,” he added, as if Inez wouldn’t recall the little costermonger who regularly visited George Court, bringing news from the Big House—what she called Hunsdon House, the ducal townhome—or from other parts around town.
“She heard you say something once, apparently, that made her guess you knew this…area. It seems she knows it as well, for her directions were quite accurate.”
Inez still held her hand to his temple. She didn’t want to stop touching him. The gesture lifted her breasts to his awareness, and his gaze swept there again, but then back to her throat, where the imprint of Wigsby’s fingers burned into her skin.
“Gather your things, Inez. We are leaving.”
The command did something strange to her insides, turned them to melting wax. She didn’t even care that he had used her real name, in this place where all went veiled.
“With you?” Instead of activating her stubbornness, as would a command from everyone else, she found herself cravenly eager to comply. If he’d held out a leash, she might very well slip it around her wrist. Anything if it meant she might follow him. Be tethered to him.
When had she lost her mind for this man?
“Yes. We’re going home.”
His home. With her in it. As if they belonged in the same place.
“You’ll come see us again, won’t ye?” Bess called. “Wee Inanna. And bring yer great gorger along, if ye wish.”
The ruddy glow in Joseph’s cheeks as they descended to the kitchens told Inez he wasn’t accustomed to invitations or flattery from women.
He blushed as if he’d never been valued, appreciated, sought after by a girl.
But how could he not, a man who looked as he did?
Whole, unscarred, with his well-cut visage and well-knit frame.
He had to have had maids throwing their caps at him from the days he exchanged his boy’s gown for breeches.
Inez could hardly be blamed for falling victim.
“Leaving so soon, are ye? A right shame, that is.” Ceres winked from her place turning the roast on its spit. “But yer gravy is doing up fine, and we’ll drink to your health tonight, dearie. Not every day a girl gains herself a fine protector.”
Now it was Inez flushing with embarrassment, but she only mumbled a quick thanks as Joseph, with a courteous salute to the cook, drew her out the door. If only he wanted to be her protector. If only.
Mother Vesta waited in the courtyard, the afternoon breeze stirring the heavy arrangement of feathers and flowers on her hat. She held the cloth stocking bag, and for a moment Inez’s heart forgot to beat. Did Mother know?
“You certainly didn’t stay long.”
Mother’s shrewd stare evaluated Joseph, but not as the other Vestals had. Mother was placing his age, his station, his means, and his temperament in a glance, deciding what kind of john he would make. “And I’m to trust him with you, Inanna, when you came here fleeing him?”
“It wasn’t him, Mother,” Inez admitted. “He would never hurt me.”
At least not deliberately. Joseph Illingworth caught mice and spiders and transferred them out of doors when he found them. He couldn’t take the life of an insect, much less a person.
Though he had defended her rather splendidly against Wigsby, and Inez wanted to ask where he learned how to fight.
“And what am I to say when his lordship comes back with the watch?” Mother spoke to Joseph, still taking his measure.
“You will tell the watch he laid hands on a woman in your employ. That he accused her of crimes without due process, and attempted murder by his own hand.” With a finger he lifted Inez’s chin, showing her bruised throat.
Inez sucked in her breath at the silken touch.
The contact was a small coal, branding her.
“And you have witnesses. Your bully backs. Several of your girls. Your chambermaid, if they’ll take her testimony.
” Likely they wouldn’t, nor that of the Vestals, for the word of women and servants counted less in a court of law than the word of a man, especially a lord or a gentleman, even in this enlightened age.
But Mother was not without her own resources. She simply nodded and held out the bag. “I’ll find a way to soothe Wigsby. A free night or two with his favorites, or one of my special banquets. I’ve never allowed him one before.”
Her gaze snared Inez’s as their fingers touched. “But you’ll come again if you’ve need, child. You are safe here.”
Her breath caught on her reply, so Inez simply nodded. Wax melted about her insides again. She’d known she would find refuge here, but to have it stated so frankly, as if she were welcome—the words meant more than she could say.
Joseph slid an arm around her waist. Her waist. Inez went entirely still, as if the gesture were accidental and, were she to remind him, he might withdraw the caress.
“She is safe with me also,” he said firmly.
Inez felt the bottom of her bag, seeking the familiar weight and bulk with her fingers. Mother might have searched it—would have searched it—but the jewels were there.
Mother knew what she’d done, if Joseph didn’t. Yet she handed the spoils back as if the bag and its contents belonged to Inez.
“Your horse is in the mews.” Mother pointed. “That way.”
And Joseph pulled her away as if Inez belonged with him. As if she were his in truth, and his home was hers also.
It was possible Wigsby had killed her, and this was all a dream. If so, Inez didn’t want to wake up.