Chapter 11 #2
Having his big body at her side to protect her from want, from harm, from the Wigsbys of the world.
“I’ve a tincture I’ll bring you,” the innkeep said as Inez took up a cloth and settled her feet in the basin.
“And an oil for yer hair, such lovely locks as ye have. Also a virgin’s milk for yer skin, if you wish to—be a bit paler here.
” She made another motion, this one encompassing her face.
“Unless, of course, yer gent likes ye dark. Some do.”
And just like that, Inez was reminded why Joseph Illingworth would never marry her.
It took her a moment to speak past the obstruction in her throat. She bent her head toward the wash basin, focused on bathing her feet. “The lavender water will do for my face, thank you. But I would be grateful for the hair oil and the tincture you mention. In the event that…well.”
She couldn’t say what she intended by seducing him. She’d never entertained the thought of seducing a man before; she spent too much time trying to elude them.
What did she want from him?
Right now, simply his attention.
That look of hunger in his eyes. The dazed delight when he reached his pleasure, as if her touch brought him to heaven. That need set free in him, when he was so buttoned-down, so correct otherwise.
She wanted to see it again. His desire for her, unleashed. She simply wanted to know it was there, no matter how hard he tried to hide or fight it.
And she wanted him to give in. She wanted to be, for once, with him, the woman who could not be left.
The innkeep sent up the same bill of fare amusing the patrons of the Philosophical Society: a haunch of beef, roasted rabbit, buttered greens and carrots, and a gravy soup, with what Polly called the Duke of Cumberland’s pudding.
This last, a thick red-brown cake, smelled of nutmeg and looked to be studded with currants and apples, and Inez suspected it would be the richest thing she had ever tasted. And she accustomed to scraps from the kitchen of Mrs. Blackthorn, now the chief cook at Hunsdon House.
“Which Duke of Cumberland?” Inez had wondered aloud as Polly unloaded her platter and the serving boy nudged the legs of the folding table into place.
Inez laid out the dining plates, a set of glazed earthenware with a pretty floral design.
It seemed the innkeep wanted Sir Joseph Illingworth, Bart.
, to leave Amesbury with a good report of The George.
“The Duke as killed all the Jacobites?” suggested the boy, speaking for the first time and in an accent Inez guessed was local to this part of the country.
“Or the one now, Prince Henry.” Polly sighed.
The widely distributed prints of Prince Henry, the Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn and younger brother to the King, stirred many a female heart with their depiction of a tall, well-made man with the Hanoverian nose and probing blue eyes.
Female hearts had lifted further when Prince Henry’s romance with a lovely widow led to their marriage, and many a romantic imagination had been inspired by the idea that a royal prince might marry a widow and a commoner, set up a merry and luxurious home in London with her, and carry on with gladness, no matter how strenuously the King disapproved.
The King had disapproved so strenuously that he had passed a law about it, which just showed how careful men in power were about how they bestowed the honor of their hand.
There were the Dark Lane ladies, actresses and dancers at the theaters, well-groomed courtesans to see to a man’s need for companionship, and then there were the ladies with birth and breeding and the fairest of skin to oversee his home and the rearing of children.
The same was true in Portugal; the same was true the world over.
The divides between classes were wide and well-established, and one risked one’s life to cross them.
A prince marrying a commoner had outraged a king to the point that he made up laws to prohibit the practice.
A baronet and a gentleman’s son would never marry the daughter of a whore.
It wasn’t the thought of losing him that pinched her heart like a hawk stooping to its kill; it was the knowledge that she’d never had him.
And when they reached Callington, all her chances to be with him would be lost. He would be Sir Joseph of Penwellen, and she would be left to find her own way back to London and her few friends in Dark Lane, to take up what livelihood she could find, and hope Wigsby did not run her to ground and kill her.
Some wild impulse had made her tell Jock not to set the chaise on course for London but follow Joseph instead. Some sure conviction that he needed her.
But what she needed, Inez thought as she dressed with care in the one change of clothes she owned, was him. She’d run after him with the mad wish to have his arms about her just one more time. Fully and completely, cleaving together like husband and wife.
She had little other pleasure in her life. Was it wrong that she wanted this before they must part?
“Enter,” she called when she heard his knock.