Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
He was just going to send her home again.
And she would just keep coming back.
For one thing, she had nowhere else to go. That was the reason she would give him, Inez decided. If she didn’t belong anywhere, then why not go with him?
She peered anxiously out the window of the chaise, trying to see through the rain that had become a full-blown downpour shortly after the coach departed Hounslow.
Surely the rain would keep away gentlemen of the road, who infamously haunted this well-traveled five-mile stretch of Hounslow Heath.
And not all of them were as courteous as the legendary Claude Duval.
Lord North, the prime minister, had been attacked here a few years ago, and more recently, Lord Berkley had shot his assailant, or so went the reports of the broadsheets and street hawkers.
She didn’t want to imagine what Joseph might do if a robber stopped his coach, given the current state of his temper.
She would have, until quite recently, thought Joseph Illingworth the most mild-tempered of men. She would never have put money on him in a fight, unless it were with words. He was a man who lived almost entirely in his head and had to be reminded to eat on occasion.
Something had happened on his Grand Tour to change and age him.
Like a Madeira wine, he’d matured, deepened, grown complex.
More polished on the outside, and stronger on the inside.
When he’d turned at the call of “baronet,” his back straight, his jaw thrust at that arrogant angle, she’d have believed him a man bred from the cradle to believe he was superior to other people, and thus deserved more.
Perhaps that was why he’d refused to bring her with him, even after their embrace. Perhaps that was the reason he sent her away when she followed, too stubborn to heed his directive. He was a baronet now.
She apprehended British titles somewhat, and while baronet was not the greatest—not a peer, not a position that merited a seat in the House of Lords—it meant he was called Sir Joseph Illingworth.
He would bear a family emblem and motto and a coat of arms and have a genealogy he could roll out to impress the lesser, as had all the great and ancient houses of Portugal.
He would command an estate of his own in the pocket of the island where he hailed from, Cornwall, which both he and Amaranthe spoke of as if it might be the last remnant of the Garden of Eden.
There was no place in his life for a servant girl, a widow, a penniless orphan who was one misfortune away from selling herself for coin.
So why couldn’t she simply walk away from him?
How many times would she allow him to reject her?
This was a terrible idea, she saw that now.
The chaise, though well-sprung and far more comfortable to travel in than the stagecoach, dipped and tilted as its wheel went through a widening puddle.
The road was becoming treacherous, and she was being a fool.
She struggled to lower the pane of the window without letting the rain lash her face.
“Jock,” she called as they passed a stand of tall shrubs, ideal for sheltering thieves.
The words stung her tongue, but she would concede that the groom had been right and they were better off returning to London than, as Jock had put it, raking after her swell in a mud not fit for hogs. “I think—”
“Aye, the rattler’s spilt, that’s what,” Jock called back. “I see it too.”
“Spilt?” Inez pressed her face to the opening in the window. “Do you mean the coach has tipped over?”
“Their knight o’ the whip’s no fly one, iffen he let a rig like that off its wheels,” Jock scoffed. “Well, let’s go see what the lay is, then, and hope we can keep the mumpers and buffers away.”
Mumpers, Inez knew, where those who robbed coaches, and buffers killed horses to sell their skins.
One did not spend time in Dark Lane without acquiring some knowledge of street cant or developing an awareness of the lively and inventive trade of theft, as well as meager ways to guard oneself from it.
She did not fear highwaymen; she had nothing of value to lose, except him.
Inez yanked at the window, attempting to wrestle the recalcitrant pane into submission.
If Joseph were injured—if Joseph were dead—and her last image was of him staring at her as if she were a feast and he a man determined to deny himself…
She had to know why she wasn’t good enough for him.
She needed to know that, and then, perhaps, she could let go.
She jumped from the chaise before Jock had fully halted the horses. “Hey now, mind yerself!” the groom called. “Them nags’ll be gummy after a spill.”
She wasn’t concerned about the horses. The coachman had the team of four corralled at the verge of the road, his whip out as he kept them from bolting.
Rain glistened on the harness and their coats of bay and gray and black.
Jock checked his own mounts, then, while Inez approached the fallen coach, he swung to the ground, pulled his crutches from the fender of the chaise, and went to the heads of the coach horses.
In a moment he had all four of the blinkered heads pulled together, the animals quieting as he rubbed noses and fed them grass from his hand.
The man wasn’t simply a skilled groom and jockey; he was a sorcerer.
The coach lay on its side along the muddy road, one axle cracked where the wheel had caught and wrenched in a rut.
Belongings lay strewn along the verge, and some lumps turned out to be passengers, huddling under their coats and complaining.
Moans and curses filled the air, along with the whimpers of women and the wailing of a small child.
A mother sat with her mud-splattered knees drawn to her chest, hugging her infant to her with one arm and a basket of goods with the other, desperately trying to shush the shrieking child.
A young boy with a red welt marking the side of his face helped an elderly gent to his feet, searching for and finding the round hat of black wool that the lad punched back into shape before handing to his elder.
Another young man who had been thrown from the roof staggered to his feet, looked groggily about him, and then took off at a run over the tall grass of the heath, rain splattering his leather coat and workman’s cap. Inez hadn’t time to wonder what crime he was escaping.
Joseph was nowhere in sight.
“I won’t!” From inside the vehicle came the screech of a woman’s voice in the accents of one aspiring to the middling class. “The indignity of it! Right the coach this instant and I will descend in the proper fashion.”
“The coach isn’t going to be righted any time soon, madame.”
That was Joseph’s voice, clipped and frustrated, but full of that new command.
An odd current weakened Inez’s knees, and she leaned a hand on the battered body of the coach to hold herself upright.
One wheel still spun slowly through the air, as if it recalled its function even though it had been parted from the ground.
“Your only recourse is to climb out,” Joseph insisted. “Call for someone above to help you.”
“As if I would allow just anyone to touch me!” the woman exclaimed. “You, sir, have no notion how to treat a lady.”
“A lady would have the proper sense to get herself out of this coach,” came Joseph’s sharp response. “If you wish to remain, then move aside and let me depart.”
A muttering filled the ensuing pause, and then a grudging, “Oh, all right then. Since you must be so uncivil about it.”
A woman’s head emerged from the open door of the stagecoach, now slanted incongruously on its side. Her powdered wig was enveloped in a calash, one of those enormous collapsible bonnets, this one decorated with ribbons and bows of a bilious green.
“I require assistance,” she announced as if she were a duchess commanding help from a footman. Inez almost giggled. Amaranthe, an actual duchess, would never take such a supercilious tone with someone in her employ.
Inez started forward. “I can help you.”
She heard the stillness, the alertness that traveled through Joseph’s body at the sound of her voice. She felt the same prickle of awareness traveling down her spine. She felt the same heightened nervousness, knowing he was near.
“You might call for Jock,” Joseph said after a moment, and she sensed the effort he made to keep his voice even and cordial. “He’ll have the upper body strength required to—er, be of aid.”
“He’s with the horses,” Inez answered. She pointed to the young man with the developing bruise. “You. Take one arm, and I’ll take the other.”
“Ruffians,” the woman moaned. “Urchins. Putting their hands upon my person.”
As if subjecting herself to the rack, she held out her arms. She would not be easy to lever out of the turned vehicle, as Joseph had warned.
Her layers and layers of wool sheathed the form of a woman who enjoyed the luxury of abundant food as well as abundant clothing, along with the luxury of having a laundress to get her linens that glowing white.
“You pull, I’ll push,” Joseph said from inside.
Inez glimpsed a sliver of his face. He was crouched on the opposite door, which had been bent out of its frame by the impact. His cocked hat held a dent she hoped had shielded the precious head within. A gleam of red-gold in his eyes held an emotion she couldn’t decipher.
He was unhurt. He was here. Her insides turned to a mash resembling the cornmeal porridge she had eaten so many times as a child, an inexpensive dish that the cook in the neighboring house often seemed to make too much of for the family breakfast.
“Your hands, sirrah!” the woman shrieked as Joseph disappeared behind her massive skirts.
“It’s a rump pad anyway,” came Joseph’s muffled voice. “Heave, ho!”
The woman sprang free of the aperture with a scuff of damp wool and the fumes of a toilet water heavily scented with attar of roses.
“I shall never recover!” she wailed. “My husband the brewer shall have something to say to all of you. The coachman. The innkeep. The owner of this shabby, unfit vehicle—”
“Anyone else in there?” Inez called down once it was clear to peer inside.
His strange expression was acquiring more definition. It wasn’t annoyance. It wasn’t resentment or long-suffering forbearance. He looked a man who had been served his favorite pudding and could not bring himself to believe it was all for him.
Inez sat back as he levered himself out of the door, the last of the occupants to clear. He did not need her assistance; the flex of his shoulders and arms in the greatcoat said he possessed the required upper body strength.
The cries and calls and imprecations around her fell away. The low moans of the wounded and indignant were the murmur of insects in her ear. Joseph slid to his feet on the road, then turned and held out his arms for her. Without a word, Inez tilted into them.
And this, finally, was what she’d been waiting for. What she’d wanted all along. His arms around her.
“What will happen next?” she asked to keep her mouth occupied, because it wouldn’t do to kiss him here in the middle of the muddy road with all these people about them.
“The coachman sent a boy to run for help. He’ll ask for a wagon at the gunpowder mill, I expect, or go on to Feltham to see if they can spare a conveyance. Come to the worst, Bedfont is only a mile or two ahead, I think. Most will be able to walk it.”
He was tall, his shoulder at the level of her ear, and she felt safe in the circle of his arms. He eyed the brewer’s wife, who was busily dressing down the coachman for his inefficiency and threatening all the ways the brewer was destined to demonstrate his disapproval of how his fair lady had been treated.
“Lud, what a clutter yer makin’!” the coachman griped at her.
“Want you bring out the gemmun of the road? They’d be happy to relieve ye of yer baubles, and mayhap that nugging dress.
Sure and go on to draw their attention, won’t ye?
Whyn’t ye flash the King’s picture and set all the Tyburn blossoms upon us while yer about it. ”
He sneered as the woman promptly screwed her lips shut and set off in a huff in the opposite direction, bemoaning the rudeness of the help.
“They won’t set on us when we’re primed and ready,” Jock observed.
“Ye want the clapper claw at ye?” said the coachman, incredulous. “I’d nip’er bung meself iffa thought it wouldn’t land me in college.”
Inez turned from this lively conversation to Joseph, who was observing the passengers as they sorted out their various aches and woes and, in some cases, their belongings.
“And what will become of us?”
She held his gaze, her insides feathering at the look in his eyes. Not disdain. Not reproach. Something she hadn’t seen yet from him.
“I must have you safe, Inez.” His voice rang low, roughened by emotion.
“I’m safer with you,” she said.
The moment twirled between them like a figure on a musical box, measuring out the beats of her heart. She stood on a bridge between one part of her life and another. Between the woman she was, and the woman she wanted to be.
Between the woman who could tempt Joseph Illingworth, and the one he could leave behind.
She very nearly reached out to kiss him anyway, forgetting she was clad as a boy, forgetting they stood on a public road with coaches nearing from one direction and a cart and horse plodding toward them from another.
She ignored the rain pelting her cap and shoulders.
She ignored how she couldn’t seem to draw a breath.
She held his gaze and tried to reach inside him, to peer into his heart and see if there was anything, anything there for her at all.
He held out his hand. “You’ll just get into more trouble without me, won’t you?”
“Very likely,” she said, catching a great surge of air into her lungs.
“And I’ll only be obliged to come rescue you again.”
“Most assuredly.” She held back the sob of relief.
“You’d best come with me, then.”
She laid her hand in his, and he closed his fingers around her palm.
The bridge had been crossed, and there would be no returning.