Chapter 8 #2
“’Ad to leave Renwick House of a sudden. Took a job for yer sister. Name’s Jock.” The groom flicked the brim of his cocked hat. “Duchess sent me t’tell you she’s arranged a post chaise and horses. Knew you’d be too cheap to stand the expense yerself.”
“Henry Jock.” Inez stared at the man as if he were a map to buried treasure. “My father bet on you every time.”
The man’s face twisted. “Not th’ last time, I hope.”
Inez spotted Joseph’s puzzled expression. “They called him the King of Newmarket, he won the prize plate so many times. My father wept when he read of your accident.”
“What happened?” asked Joseph, who was only vaguely aware that Newmarket was a place to do with horses and racing, activities he couldn’t afford and had no interest in.
“Lost,” Jock said briefly. “The rig’s in the stableyard, horses fresh. We can leave when you wish. Change at the usual posting stops, but she said I’m to take you the whole way through.”
Amaranthe again, ruling his life as if he were part of her duchessing duties. Trying to manage him as she had from the age of six. Joseph looked from Jock to Inez to the door to the stableyard, a blur of movement and noise.
He focused his gaze on the woman. The disguise wouldn’t have held for an instant if he’d seen her face earlier. No other woman had that gracious slope to her nose, that luscious lilt of cheekbone, those pillowy lips. No other woman—well, very few—would be so daft and determined to plague him.
“When?” he asked. “Were you there before me?”
“Followed you.” She pulled her hat brim closer around her face, aware of the many curious stares upon them. “I didn’t know quite where you were going.”
“And where is your luggage?”
With a sullen hunch to her shoulders, she pulled her ragged work bag across her body. He ached to see how little she had in the world to call her own.
Nevertheless she met his gaze with a defiant lilt to her chin. He couldn’t meet her eyes and the longing laid bare as she searched his face for signs of softening. He steeled himself against any. He had to do what was best for her, whether she agreed with him or not.
“How far did you pay your fare?”
“To Basingstoke.”
Likely she didn’t have coin to go further. She would have been hoping to throw herself on his mercy and hope he could provide for her.
And he couldn’t. He barely had coin enough for his own fare and lodging.
Taking coins from his very slender purse would mean a missed lunch or three, relying on the hope there were kitchens in Penwellen and servants to staff them.
Nevertheless, he was responsible for her, and besides, a man had his pride.
Joseph dug out his purse and tipped out two crowns.
“Here.”
Cautiously, she took the money and slipped it inside her jacket, which was his jacket, an old piece of rubbish he’d kept from boyhood.
The leather held memories of rare afternoons hunting with his father and days dispersed about the parish at various labors that parishioners were supposed to furnish for their tithes and which his father always oversaw, nay, participated in.
His clothes on her lissome frame—for he recognized the scraps from the bottom of his wardrobe, though where she found those awful boots, he wasn’t about to ask.
His coin was in her pocket, and Amaranthe’s groom was here to take her wherever she wished. Joseph stepped back.
Why couldn’t he keep her? Remembered sensation fogged his brain.
The silken slide of her skin, warm and soft.
The heated curve of her body shaping to his, like the twine of honeysuckle.
Pleasure keeling him over like a hammer to the gut, an ecstasy he’d never known but suspected he would feel every time, with her.
Because her friends and her life were all in London, and he couldn’t uproot her to the rocky moors of Cornwall for his pleasure alone.
Because he was Joseph Illingworth, born the son of a poor vicar and a foreign-born woman, and he wasn’t granted what other men were granted, the most banal and ordinary of dreams.
Because he had no sure place in the world to offer her, not yet.
Joseph swung his gaze to the groom, who was far less disturbing to his steadiness of mind than her dark, bottomless, seeking eyes.
“My trunk is on the stagecoach, and I’ll be going with it,” he said gruffly. “Take her back to George Court, if she wants, and to Hunsdon House, if she doesn’t.” He risked a glance at Inez. “Amaranthe can help you.”
“And you won’t.” She held herself carefully still, her voice flat, but the knuckles of her fingers suggested she had a death grip on her bag.
“This is the best way. Go.”
She lifted her chin. “Not even a goodbye. Sneaking off without a word. Like a thief who has stolen something.”
“Doing my duty, as I must.” He scowled. The urge to reach for her was nearly unbearable. The urge to pull her to his side and hold her there. Keep her, as if she belonged to him.
As if she might ever see anything in him that would make her want to stay.
“Fare thee well,” he said, then nodded to Jock and strode toward the stagecoach, hauling himself inside it before he had a chance to waver and break.
From the window he watched as Jock crutched beside her to the waiting chaise and helped her up the step as if she were a fine lady and not a servant girl dressed as a street urchin.
Then he watched as Jock tucked his crutches beneath the front fender of the vehicle and pulled himself on the back of the leader of the pair.
On the ground the man might look broken, but atop the horse, he was a centaur.
Joseph would never have such a commanding presence or such an impressive skill. He had…skill at languages. A college degree. Tales from his Grand Tour.
A sister as a duchess, parents whose memories were starting to dim in his mind, and an estate in Cornwall waiting for him, in what shape God alone knew.
One too many times in his past he had been foolish over a woman, and he’d resolved never to be so again. Inez was better off in London. She would be safe from Wigsby, she would be fed and housed, and Amaranthe would look after her, as she had before.
Nevertheless the image of her crestfallen shoulders, slumping in defeat as she climbed inside the chaise, stayed burned into his mind as his coach rolled into motion down the road toward Staines. It was all he could think about.
Right up until the attack.