Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Astir came from the direction of the private parlor, and the door opened to emit a cloud of fragrant tobacco smoke.
Two gentlemen dressed in the style of the country, with old-fashioned coats and powdered wigs, tumbled out of the door, arguing.
A third strolled behind them, holding a pipe to his mouth and puffing on it.
“—rests his entire system of classification on chives,” one was saying.
His speech, and the red knobs of his cheeks, hinted that he had already imbibed a great deal.
“He ought to have based his classes on the number of pointals.” He grasped a lapel of his coat with a decisive gesture, as if that closed the debate, and pointed a finger at his compatriot.
“But that too is highly debatable.” The other shook his bagwig, tied up with a large black ribbon. The hair of the wig was yellowed and the whole in desperate need of refurbishment. “He ought’ve considered empalement as the organizing structure of his system.”
The third puffed his pipe with a thoughtful air. “I still say he’s confusing his orders and genera. One would take the construction of the florets into account before the arrangement of the chives.”
“And—oh, I say.” The first stopped short and fumbled with the chain over his waistcoat, producing a quizzing glass, which he held to his eye. “Suffice to observe that the production of perfect seed is the obvious use of the flower!”
“Lord in his heaven,” breathed the second, staring with reverence. “How is such a vision of loveliness descended on the George?”
The third, feeling no need to join the competition, merely mouthed his pipe and stared in obvious appreciation. Joseph followed the direction of the man’s gaze and found he was looking at Inez.
She had pinned her bodice back in place and tied a fresh apron over her petticoat, but she had left off her neckerchief, and the ruffled border of her shift left the full tops of her glossy brown breasts on display.
Her cap was perched far back on her head, accenting rather than concealing the cascade of soft black curls and bringing attention to the proud, elegant slope of her neck.
She walked with a saucy cant to her hips, and when the men of the philosophical meeting paused to gape at her, she fluttered her lashes at them.
Then, noting their rapt attention, she gave all three a sweet, small smile.
The little trollop. She had come downstairs looking so fresh and coy just to bait him, and Joseph rose to the lure with a snap.
“And why haven’t you been serving us?” one of the men said with a smack of his lips. “We came to request more claret. I hope you will be the one who brings it.”
Inez offered a low, throaty chuckle. “I don’t work here, sir. I am a traveler passing through, much like yourself.”
“Oh, we aren’t travelers.” The second man was eager to put himself forward. “We are philosophers here for the meeting. I am Robert Smith—”
“And I am his brother, John Smith. Elder brother.” The first asserted his claim with firmness.
The third blew on his pipe and surveyed Inez with the air of a connoisseur, his gaze lingering on breast and hip. “And you may call me Squire Heath. Where’s such a pretty pet from, might I ask?”
“London,” Inez said primly, smoothing her hair. The gesture drew attention to her lovely profile and also her lovely breasts. “Just this morn.”
“Oh, I know a bit of London,” the first man said. “I was just recently there, put down at the Swan with Two Necks—”
“I travel to London all the time,” the second interrupted. “For my business. I am a dyer of cloth. Quite well off, it may be said—”
“And what brings a Londoner here?” The third man, without appearing to move, placed himself so that he was closest to Inez.
In the perfect position to look down her bodice, or take her arm and steer her away from the others.
He seemed older than the other two, more seasoned and more perceptive, and he had the hawkish stare of a practiced rake.
“Me.” Joseph rose and shouldered his way into the group. “I brought her. She is my ward.”
“Ward!” one Smith spluttered.
“Ward,” the second muttered, with the clear connotation of mistress.
Inez narrowed her eyes at Joseph and pressed together her lips. This gesture only served to emphasize their fullness, and likely she knew that. He could have kissed those lips not half an hour before this. He could have had his mouth on any part of her body, if he hadn’t been an incompetent arse.
“We shall see how much longer I continue as your ward, shan’t we? For I have the sense you weary of me, Mr. Illingworth.”
“Sir Joseph,” he corrected, because he did not want her dressing him down in front of these local men. The curve of her lips said he’d fallen into the first of her traps.
Smith elder cleared his throat. “I say, miss, if you should require assistance—if this man has abused your gentle nature in any way—”
“I can offer you lodging,” Smith the second fell over himself to say. “And unlike my brother, I do not have a wife.”
Inez looked him over, and the man colored profusely at the lewd implication of his generosity.
“You are not going anywhere but back up to your room,” Joseph told her. “Whatever you need, I shall have it sent up to you.”
She faced him down, her chin at a cool angle, her eyes blazing. “Perhaps what I desire is company. It is very lonely up there in the attics.”
“Oh, we can’t have that!” Smith One rushed to say. “Do join us in our parlor. We are the Amesbury Philosophical Society, and we are currently discussing the recent publication by Dr. William Withering. A Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain.”
“Vegetables.” Inez blinked. “The kind you eat? What’s to say about them?”
“Withering has undertaken a survey of all the vegetative matter that grows in Britain,” Smith Two elucidated. “Or I believe that is his aim. We have been discussing the first volume. Marestail to toadflax, with helpful directions in identifying species, and preserving them.”
Joseph’s attention swerved suddenly. “His is the catalogue based on the system developed by Linneus? And he discusses the plants by their common English names?”
“Being an attempt to render them familiar to those who are unacquainted with the learned languages,” Smith the Second quoted. He seemed as eager to impress Joseph as he had Inez, and he furthermore seemed the type to lack a grasp of the learned languages.
“I’ve consulted the first volume,” Joseph said, diverted. “Withering’s. I noted he discusses the medical properties of plants, including poisons.”
“Useful knowledge,” Inez remarked, but the group’s attention had moved to Joseph.
“Then you must indeed join our discussion,” said the Squire, puffing around his pipe.
“You would be the same Joseph Illingworth who wrote on the optative mood for Greek verbs, and gave an explanation of the aorist tense? The essay that appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.”
“That was I,” Joseph said, embarrassed and pleased. “Would you agree with my distinctions about the future optative?”
“Don’t recall a bit of my grammar, for how hard my tutor tried beating it into me.
” The Squire pulled an unused clay pipe from a pocket of his coat and held it out.
“Should be tobacco enough left in there for a scholar such as yourself to edify us.” He nodded toward Inez.
“Bring your gel. We don’t mind the ladies listening in.
Gives us something to occupy our eyes while we exercise our minds. ”
Inez’s eyes blazed with anger, but her voice was honey sweet.
“Oh, how I would adore to listen to the men talk.” She swayed closer to Smith the Second, seeming to have fixed on him as her most gullible object.
Her victory was assured by the look of his face when she fluttered her eyelashes at him again. “Perhaps I might sit next to you?”
She tipped forward slightly, her smile one of supplication. The gesture brought her breasts into full frame in the tight bodice. The edges of her dark aureoles showed in a sliver behind the ruffle of her shift.
Joseph’s mouth went searingly dry, and blood rushed to his groin, leaving his head. In a second he was at her side, hand on her arm. She was warm and firm and her glare ought to have sizzled him like an egg in a pan. He was burning for her already.
“You and I have something to discuss.”
“But the Botanical Arrangement,” a Smith cried, seeing his prize escaping.
“Forgive me, gentlemen, for stealing this one away,” Joseph said without the slightest trace of contrition. “But my ward and I must settle a small matter between us.”
She kept pace with him as he marched up the stairs like a general leading the attack. Her flesh was so warm, and she smelled of some intoxicating blend of spice and florals. At the first landing, a swath of shadow falling between the lamps below and above, he turned to her. “You little, conniving—”
She charged him. More correctly, she kissed him, her lips crashing against his. She pulled his lower lip into her mouth and bit down.
With a groan he pushed her against the wall with his body and held her. She fisted her hands in his hair and pulled as if she could not get his face close enough. His tongue in her mouth tasted of herbs and savory and so, so much sweetness.
She lifted a leg and wrapped it around his hip, fitting his cock neatly between her legs. He thought his head might burst with the jolt of sheer pleasure, his brains spilling out before his seed could.
“Upstairs,” she panted against his mouth. “My room. Not here.”
She didn’t unwrap herself from around him, so he simply carried her, a luscious armful of woman. No one passed them in the hall or stair, and if inhabitants of other rooms heard their passage, they wisely remained inside.
At the door to her room Inez reached behind her and pushed at the wooden portal, banging it against the jamb.