Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
“So you grew up in Sagres.” They would have hours together on the road, Joseph reasoned, so he might as well make conversation.
“Yes. It’s a beautiful town, surrounded by water.
Prince Henry the Infante had holdings there.
King Sebastian liked to walk the cliffs, they say, and listen to the music of the winds.
My grandmother worked for the Convent of S?o Vicente do Cabo, and my mother, too, before she met my father.
My grandfather was a fisherman, in the manner of his family.
I think my mother’s ancestors lived in that area since before the Christians came. ”
They’d never spoken like this, Joseph reflected, not with such honesty, and as equals.
He knew nothing of Inez’s history. He’d confided in her now and again, or rather updated her on his activities.
But he’d never asked her about her past; he’d never been sure she would talk to him.
Yet she spoke with him freely as their chaise rolled on the road from Basingstoke, where’d they’d paused for a midday nuncheon of cold meats, local cheese, and bread baked fresh that morning with the same yeast the innkeep’s wife used in her ale.
The food tasted surprisingly good to Joseph, who normally paid no attention to what he put in his mouth.
He wondered if it were the exercise of the morning, the apprehension of what awaited him in Cornwall, or the stimulation of his companion that had sharpened his appetite and his general awareness of his circumstances.
They traveled in easy stages, pausing often to rest or change the horses and give themselves a stretch.
Jock seemed tireless, unconcerned that the day continued to mizzle, but Joseph appreciated the chance to warm himself now and again before a fire and take a moment to clear his head from the intoxicating effect of sitting near Inez for long stretches.
At the Swan in Staines, Jock spent a great deal of time interrogating the groom who would escort the Hunsdon horses back to London, taking such care with the negotiations that Joseph offered to vouch, with his life, that the matched set would turn up in the Hunsdon mews without a scratch or a single hair from a mane missing.
Jock had sent him a look suggesting Joseph didn’t understand the gravity of the matter, but Joseph was too busy dealing with the sight of Inez in petticoat and bodice to mull much over Jock’s feelings.
The disguise of boyhood had allowed him mental distance enough to deal with her as a fellow human, his charge and responsibility.
In a skirt, she was again the temptress, the woman who charged his senses past bearing.
Though she wore a cloak over her bosom, he knew her breasts were there, beneath the layers of linen and wool, and so was the delicious rest of her, all the complicated curves and silken shadows.
He dragged his mind back to Sagres. “And your father was from—somewhere else?”
“Goa,” she said quietly. “In India.” She said no more, as if she didn’t want to talk about her father—or, he guessed, about her foreign birth and darker skin, which made her stand out among pale English women like a hollyhock among wood anemones.
“Goa,” Joseph said. “That’s been a Portuguese colony for, what, a hundred years now?”
“Over two hundred,” she said. “My grandfather’s family served in the court of the viceroy, or so I’m told. My grandmother’s family were traders.” She ran her fingers along the fringe of her shawl, woven in a bright pattern.
“Shirodkar,” he said, remembering her father’s name and finding it rolled easily from his tongue. “Does it have a meaning?”
“Someone from the village of Shirod.” She smiled. “To hear my father tell it, his family ruled the village for centuries. But the family name or traditions meant little to him. He found, once he left, they meant little elsewhere also.”
Joseph nodded. He remembered how grand his uncle, and then Reuben, had behaved once they wore the mantle of baronet. And how little such a paltry title meant outside their own sense of self-importance. He had never held the title in reverence, and didn’t suppose anyone else should.
“My father left Goa before the king made the decree that would have made him a Portuguese citizen, but I doubt even that would have made him stay,” Inez reflected.
“He was always restless, full of ambition, my pai. He fought against the Maratha armies for a while, but he always said he was not born for land. Though my grandfather thought it a demotion that he would serve on a ship and not command it, my father went to sea.”
She fell silent for a moment. “He was right about himself in the end. He was never happy on land. Nor for long.”
“He met your mother in Sagres?”
Traffic was steady on what was still called the London Road, though they were nearly a day from London now.
They’d stopped on the road twice, once near Oakley to let a flock of sheep draggle across their path, the shepherd boy shooing and the sheepdog snapping at hooves to keep the animals moving.
At Laverstoke he asked Jock to pause the horses to show Inez the mill that produced the paper for England’s banknotes.
She wasn’t terribly impressed, which led him to wonder if she’d ever held a banknote in her life.
The road edged the southern side of the North Wessex Downs, the green-clad slopes and valleys of chalk for which Joseph suspected the term “rolling hills” had been invented.
The sight agreed with him, and Joseph felt his breath deepening, growing steady in the clearer air, now they were away from the constant industry of London.
Inez, too, seemed to settle, growing quiet and contemplative at his side as they rocked along.
They’d stop in Whitchurch, then again in Andover to rest the horses after a hilly stretch before pressing on to Amesbury for the night.
Jock spoke well of The George inn there, and Joseph had a notion of driving by the great stone circle to see what Inez thought of it before setting out for another long day of travel.
Yet the days need only be as long as they wished.
They had Jock and the chaise, and the purse that Amaranthe had sent with Jock, which he kept possession of.
So far, the combination of Jock’s expertise and reputation, the Hunsdon livery, and the ducal purse had contrived to ensure that at every inn, fresh and well-tempered horses were available for their chaise, and there was mutton or ham on offer along with small beer and sometimes coffee.
At the Maidenhead in Basingstoke, a commodious inn with stabling for one hundred horses and common rooms where the local magistrate held court, Inez had been served a French claret that made her eyes widen with appreciation and that she sipped as slowly as she could, as if she never wanted the experience to end.
He wasn’t bound to the schedule of the coach and coachman, trying to shovel cold meats and bread into his mouth, down a cup of ale, and visit the necessary all in the few minutes required to change the team of horses.
He wasn’t subject to the common room at all unless he wanted; Sir Joseph Illingworth of Penwellen, whom Jock made certain to announce at every stop, was offered a private parlor if there was one.
His graceful companion was only eyed with some askance rather than outright disdain, and when Joseph explained that she was a ward of his sister’s, practically a sister of his own, she was served as graciously as he.
Never mind that a man oughtn’t look at his ward, his sister, or his sister’s ward the way Joseph stared at Inez.
His eyes caught continually on the curves and shadows of her face, the features delicate on their own yet coming together in an aspect that promised strength of character and determination of spirit.
He couldn’t look away from the swells of bosom and hip beneath her plain but tidy attire.
And he couldn’t forget the taste of her. The heat of her skin. The lushness of her breasts in his hands, in his mouth.
“My mother and father met in Sagres, yes.” She hadn’t let her thoughts wander, as he had.
He watched her face as she looked out at the countryside, catching the sorrow that hitched her brows, pulled at the corners of her generous lips.
“She dreamed of more than her tiny village, and he carried stories and the scent of the sea.”
She sighed. “Do you think, if we fall in love with the dream of a person, there is any way it cannot be a disappointment when we find our idol is real flesh and blood? Flawed and human?”
Was she talking about her parents still? “Who was the idol in their relationship?” he asked cautiously.
“Both of them, I think, fell in love with the dream. He saw a lovely young woman with the sun of a distant land in her eyes and who wanted to be more than a fisherman’s daughter.
She found a man who had been weathered by the sun of the Arabian Sea, who had tasted the food of the Far Orient, who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
But he wasn’t prepared to put down roots, and she wasn’t allowed to sail with him. ”
“But they were in love once.”
“And remained so, I think. But love does not always demand you are kind to your beloved. He was gone so much, and she—” She pulled her full lip between her teeth.
“He did not like what she did to keep us during his time away. But we had to eat somehow, and with no family to offer aid because they did not approve of her marriage to an Indian, what else could she do?”
Joseph wondered mightily what compromises her mother had made, but feared to press her and lose this fragile connection. “Were you their only child?”
Her mouth twisted. “The only one who lived.”
Ah, that pierced his heart. Her mother had walked a hard road, it seemed. “What brought you to England?”