Chapter 10 #2
“My father’s ship was sold and he couldn’t sign on with another crew, so he was stranded here. My mother arranged for us to join him.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“Ten years.”
“Do you miss Portugal?”
“Every day,” she said softly. “Not the life we had there, but the people. The sea. The warm winds, and the sun always shining, and the way it seemed you could see for miles in any direction. The food, and our neighbors, and the sight of the Infante Henry’s fortress jutting over the water…
” She fell silent for another long moment. “There is nothing like it.”
Joseph felt touched by a similar longing, not for the place she envisioned in her memories, but to bring that expression of softness, of wistful joy, to her face. He cleared his throat.
“Cornwall is surrounded by sea. Land’s End, they call the tip of it.”
“Oh, I am sure I will find it much the same.” Her eyes flashed, and it took him a moment to understand the glint was a merry one. She was becoming playful.
“Little but rocks and sheep,” he cautioned. “Heather and gorse, at least on the moors. Near Penzance there are palm trees, I’m told, but I’ve never seen them.”
“You might take me there, in that case.”
“I might.” He stared straight ahead, curling his hands into fists on his thighs. The rocking motion of the coach as it moved meant he couldn’t avoid the press of her hip against his.
How would he take her anywhere? What was she to him? A woman who served now again in his employ but who was also a friend to his sister. A whore, or friend of whores—he knew the business of Dark Lane—who hobnobbed with a duchess.
He was going to arrive at Penwellen with her in tow, and then what was he to do with her?
“When did you lose your parents?” she asked quietly.
The question took him by surprise, and Joseph blinked quickly, gathering himself. “Ah. I was seventeen and left for Oxford shortly thereafter, so, ten years.”
Ten years since he had seen Penwellen and realized he couldn’t live with his cousin and his new bride, seeing their happiness and their comfortable life when he had lost everything.
Ten years since he and Amaranthe had assembled their meager belongings—it was barely enough to fill a coach—and left the quiet vicarage of St. Cleer empty for the next tenant.
Ten years since he had stood at the graves of his parents in the St. Cleer cemetery, the patch of earth he had looked at every day of his conscious years of life as meaningless scenery and now did not think he could bear to see again.
He wished now he had thought to ask Reuben that his parents be laid to rest in the small family graveyard at Penwellen.
Joseph’s father had been the son of a baronet, even if in life that status had never accorded him much in the name of wealth or esteem.
He had lived and died on the edges of dignity, earning just enough from his vicar’s stipend and the parish tithes to support his family.
Jonas Illingworth had never demanded special accord for being the son of a gentleman or the town’s cleric. He had asked for little in his life and expected less, but he had always taken joy in his family.
And that was what Joseph had been searching for in the past ten years: family.
Amaranthe was, or had been, a pleasant enough companion, someone to talk to in the evenings and stroll with through a garden or museum or exhibit.
He had never taken for granted—well, not much—her quiet, steady good sense and the way she had anticipated his needs.
But he longed for the kind of affection he had witnessed daily between his mother and father. A partner in life’s trials. A helpmeet. Someone with whom to share the joys and sorrows.
He’d been so eager to find that, he’d thrown his heart again and again after women who turned out not to want it.
Susannah Pettigrew, for instance. He’d been certain he’d found a kindred soul who believed in justice and right and God’s love for all creatures, but who also cared particularly for Joseph.
Instead, it turned out she cared particularly for what Joseph could give her, but only in the sense that these gifts increased her stature and influence among her friends.
His heart wasn’t the prize she’d wanted, which is why he’d been left standing in a Gloucestershire church a year ago with a marriage license and his best suit, broken hopes and no bride.
“What did they die of?” Inez asked softly.
Joseph hauled his mind back to the present. “My parents? Ah, typhus fever. Very sudden.”
And brutal. Typhus was not an easy way to pass on to one’s Maker.
For some reason, no one else in the household had caught it.
Joseph had been on a holiday with his tutor, Amaranthe visiting a friend when the visiting soldier came through the vicarage, on home for leave and bringing with him, unknowingly, the contagion of his barracks.
Both children had returned home to witness the fevers, the rash, the wasting away.
The helplessness and the weariness and then the sudden, awful quiet when it was over.
“My mother caught the smallpox,” Inez said quietly.
“Ah. I’m very sorry.”
“It was a mercy. The smallpox killed her body. The Spanish disease was taking her mind.”
“The Spanish—oh.”
The Spanish disease was the great pox, syphilis.
Inez’s mother had supported herself the same way as the ladies of Dark Lane.
Inez was the daughter of a whore.
He probed his reaction to this. An upright, moral man who cleaved to chastity and cleanliness of body and mind ought to be horrified.
Instead he felt a great sympathy for what Inez had endured. He understood now her distaste at the idea of trading her body for coin. She’d seen, up close, the most punishing of consequences.
They were both of them orphans in the world, although he had the advantage of a duchess for a sister who still thought it her duty to smooth Joseph’s way.
Just as he felt it his duty to smooth the way for Inez.
She was safe with him, for the time being, but what came next for them, he couldn’t imagine.
He had learned his lesson, with a lash that still smarted when he thought of the fool he’d been.
He would not be such a sapskull again, throwing his heart after the Susannah Pettigrews of the world.
He would be careful and thoughtful in his selection of a companion.
He would take the time to see a woman truly and know she was his match in temperament, in beliefs, in what she wanted from a shared life.
But first he had to put Penwellen in order.
And he had to decide what to do with the woman beside him, who baffled him, challenged him, was unlike any woman he’d ever met. And who lived in such a world apart from his, he didn’t know how—or to what—he was meant to return her.