Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He didn’t know what to do with her; that was easy to see.
“My ward will require a separate room,” Joseph told the innkeep at The George in Amesbury.
This was a stately timber-framed edifice crowning Amesbury’s High Street, showing its centuries of age in the wainscoting on the inside, the heavy chamfered beams of the ceiling, and the woodwork on the staircase leading to the rooms on the first floor.
Outside, ivy crawled around the many-paned windows, and the dormers under the eaves stood open, suggesting the rooms were getting an airing now that the dripping clouds had moved away.
“Your ward. Aye,” the innkeeper murmured, her glance at Inez suggesting she was frequently asked to arrange rooms for traveling men and their “wards.” “You’ll be wanting a room close by, I be thinking?”
“Of course, so I might keep an eye out. As she is a young, unmarried woman under my protection.”
Inez closed her eyes briefly and thought about kicking him in the shin to silence him. Her dear Joseph babbled when he was nervous.
Her Joseph. But he wasn’t hers, wasn’t he? He wasn’t her anything.
“She’ll like water sent up for a bath, when you can arrange it,” Joseph went on. “And a private parlor for dining.”
“No private parlor available, I’m afraid. Sir,” the innkeep said. “The Historical and Philosophical Society is usin’ it this evening for their meetin.’”
Joseph perked up at this. “A Philosophical Society? In a town this size? Splendid that there should be an interest in such subjects.”
“That’s as what they call themselves, sir, but it’s an excuse for the men to gather and smoke, and that’s a fact,” the innkeep said. “The wives drive them and they clay pipes out o’ the house, so they comes here.”
“Yes, I had read that Amesbury is famous for making clay pipes,” Joseph said. “Something about the white clay at Chitterne St. Mary Down being the best in the country, they say.”
Inez saw how it would be. He would look for a way to insert himself into this meeting, he would be welcomed, and he would spend the evening smoking and drinking and exercising his astonishing mind for the benefit of utter strangers, and she would be left to sit in her room and stare out the window at the street.
“We could dine in my room,” she said quickly. “If a supper might be sent up.”
“Yes, yes, that will be fine,” Joseph said, preoccupied by the thought of a scholarly convention. Inez saw she would have to strip down naked if she wanted to catch his attention.
And if she did? He’d offered her his hand, and she’d taken it. Her stomach curled around the memory of his large, warm hand holding hers. She could follow him to Cornwall, but what then?
She had to make him see that he needed her. She had to make him need her.
She had to find a way to ensure that she would not be turned out and left homeless again.
The room given Inez was a small, spare chamber on the second floor, tucked beneath the eaves.
It was plain but tidy, the mattress on the cot stuffed with tick and her pillow with goose feathers.
Inez was attempting to knock the dust of the road off the hem of her skirt when the innkeep entered with a servant girl bearing a large wooden basin and a boy behind lugging a yoke with two buckets sloshing water.
“You needn’t have brought it up all this way,” Inez said at once. “I could have come down.”
“His ward, ye say.” The innkeep gave a sidewise glance as she directed her staff where to set the things, and Inez realized she had betrayed herself.
“After a fashion,” she said, conscious she stood in shift and stays, apron and cap discarded on the bed. Her stays were leather, her petticoat much mended, and her battered half boots broadcast that she was no man’s ward, certainly not to a man of stature.
Her worsted socks said she was no one’s courtesan, either.
So what did that make her?
“I serve in his house,” she said. “Have served. His sister, not him. That is to say—”
“I can brush that gown,” the innkeep said in a brisk tone, reaching for Inez’s outer robe, “and Polly can launder yer shift, if ye’ve got a spare. I’ve lavender for your water, and they’s no bugs in the tick.”
She directed the boy to set down the buckets, then shooed him out the door and turned to Inez with a stern face. “But mind he’s not seen a-comin’ or goin’, aye? There’ll be many a fellow below tonight has the ear of a magistrate and will take note of a woman entertainin’.”
“I’m not—we won’t—” Inez bit her lip as the innkeep sent her a sharp look, and wisely fell silent. Polly, gathering up Inez’s apron, held out her hand for the linens with a small smirk.
“I don’t think the gent will be calling on me.” Inez handed over her petticoat first. “He doesn’t want an arrangement.”
The innkeeper’s eyebrows raised with surprise, and her gaze swept Inez from toe to top. “With you? But you’re comely enough.”
“A proper party,” Polly agreed, eyes wide.
“Thank you. But he tried to leave me behind in London. I don’t think he wants me with him in his new home. We’re going to Cornwall,” Inez said, surprised by this sudden urge to confess. It was unlike her.
“Kernow!” Polly cried. “Where to? Never say Callington.”
“Actually, yes. I believe his estate lies nearby.”
Polly blinked and snapped her fingers, summoning Inez to strip out of her stays. “The only estate thereabout is Penwellen.”
“That is where we—he is going, I believe.”
Polly’s eyes kindled with rage. “Is the old baronet dead, then? Good riddance. A very slawterpooch, ee was. All us maids knew not to work there, couldn’t keep his snib in his breeches.”
“The new baronet is quite the opposite,” Inez hurried to say, wondering whether she might press for more information about the man Joseph was succeeding, and the place he had inherited.
Polly looked to be a handful of years younger than she was, perhaps no more than six or seven and ten years, though a hard world put a woman’s face on a girl early, Inez knew.
“And that Treen.” Polly snapped her fingers again, indicating that Inez was to surrender her shift.
The innkeep handed her a towel to shield her nakedness.
“Tell that’un ee’s a polrumptious, pluffy, pussivanting piggy-whidden.
” The girl’s eyes flared with righteous anger.
“And don’t trust a word that comes out o’ ee’s clunker, neither. ”
Inez nodded obediently. “I won’t.”
Polly sniffed, still bristling. “A pair o’ grammersows, those two. If Sir Reuben is gone, it’s a blessing for every cheel in that town, it is.”
“He sounds horrible,” Inez said.
“Granfer to half the town, ee’d be, all the maids he kindiddled.” Polly curled up her lip as if she meant to spit on the past baronet’s memory, until a sharp look from her employer halted her mid-insult.
“Giss on, and be about your work,” said the innkeep, shooing Polly toward the door.
She turned back to Inez with a businesslike air.
“Speaking of which. If you’ve any need of making certain…
all comes regular-like with the woman’s curse.
She circled a hand before her midsection. “I’ve a tea I can make you.”
“The woman’s—oh.” Inez felt her face draw taut with heat. So much for convincing the landlady she was not a whore.
She oughtn’t be ashamed. Conversations on the preventions for catching a babe were common in Dark Lane; they had to be, for the health and protection of the Vestals.
Inez suddenly recalled the redolent herbs her mother stewed now and again over their small fire, and the bitter concoctions she made herself drink though Inez could tell she hated the taste of them.
“Actually,” Inez said. “I might be interested in such a tea.” She glanced toward the door, lowering her voice as if she feared to be overheard. And yet these were precautions she ought to consider did she wish to pursue certain thoughts she was developing in relation to Joseph Illingworth.
The innkeep tilted her head to the side and regarded Inez with a speculative look. “If ye catch, thas one way t’spring the shackle.”
“I don’t intend to trick him into marriage.”
Her mother had extracted her deathbed promise mainly to keep Inez from disease, because no one should have to die in slow stages or poison themselves with mercury merely to prolong their pain. But a babe was the other consequence, and one that put a hamper on the commerce of Dark Lane.
Inez couldn’t think about marriage, not again.
Marriage was a shackle for the woman, as good as a rope tying her the hearth and kitchen.
Marriage meant her husband could say where she went when she left the house, and with whom she associated.
Marriage meant every coin laid in the wife’s hand ended up in the husband’s pocket.
Marriage meant a woman could not say no when her spouse came to her bed demanding the exercise of his marital rights, no matter how cruel or callous he was in his usage of her, no matter whether he stank of vile dealings and sometimes other women.
Marriage meant that, when a husband died, the wife watched their home dismantled into the hands of those who held his debts, and the little left over seized by those who claimed with however slender a right to be his heirs.
Marriage was to be bound to the stake with a noose around one’s neck and a trap door that could fall open at any time.
She wouldn’t put her head in that harness again.
And yet, as the innkeep sprinkled lavender in her bath water and the sharp, clean scent rose to her nostrils, Inez allowed herself to wonder, for the briefest moment, what marriage to Joseph Illingworth would be like.
His warm smile when she brought his tray of bread and butter and steaming coffee, which he liked hot enough to scald.
Chatting with him in the parlor at the end of a day, hearing of his projects and the ideas that engaged his mind, glimpsing that beautiful and orderly and thoughtful world he dwelled in.