Chapter 15 #3
“Then what, Joseph?” She froze, cold coursing through her. Slowly, fearing the truth, she lifted her eyes to meet his. A bronze fire burned in those chocolate depths. “You mean to send me back?”
He dropped his gaze. “It would be best for you,” he muttered.
She wouldn’t do it. He could set her outside, front door or back, and she would merely circle around and climb in the window. The need for him to hold her was so overwhelming it nearly blotted out her mind.
She took the edge of her apron and focused on polishing the brass buttons of his coat. Her chest ached as if it were a window and someone had thrown up the sash to let the wind blow through.
“I won’t go back,” she said. “There is nothing for me in London.”
“Amaranthe will take you in.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to work in a great house.” She moved to the buttons on his sleeve. “Perhaps I want to keep my own house for once.”
“I could give you George Court. You could live there.”
“And do what?” She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Read. Sew. Entertain callers.” A long pause unspooled as she polished his buttons, slowly, taking every opportunity to touch him.
“As what? A merry spinster, all my life long?” The prospect didn’t sound terrible, and once she might have relished such independence. Before she tasted Joseph Illingworth and realized he was hers.
“Unless you marry. But you said you did not want to marry again.”
She knelt to polish the buckles of his shoes so he couldn’t see her face.
No, she didn’t want to marry, not anyone else.
But if were him— The thought brought a lump to her throat as if she were trying to swallow week-old bread.
If she were his cherished bride, the lady of his home, his companion at table as they had been these days, the woman he shared his hearth and his bed with.
Tears blurred her vision. She wanted that so badly she could not speak the words.
He had this house now, was lord and master of his own estate. He had a title. He would have standing in the neighborhood. He was young and of sound mind and good health, full of vigor, sinfully beautiful to look upon. Every girl within leagues would want to marry him.
And he would choose one, because for as long as she had known Joseph Illingworth, all he had wanted from his life, after a respectable position and cakes with his tea and good books to read, was a house and a family of his own.
So much had he wanted that, he threw himself again and again after a Susannah Pettigrew, a vain, silly girl who couldn’t see past the end of her nose.
And he could not choose Inez, because every dictate of class and custom said she was not suitable for a man of his rank. When he married, he would cut all ties to her. And what future would she have, alone and without the man she loved?
Loved. It was too soon to tell him that.
He hadn’t brought himself to properly swive her yet, as if it spelled a commitment he wasn’t prepared to make.
She rose and took up the clothes brush, scrubbing the velvet of his coat to a smooth nap.
Another excuse to touch him, to admire the fine shape of him beneath her hands.
To leave her prints upon him, or press into him the knowledge that held her: You are mine.
Even if she wasn’t his.
“I wish to have you with me,” he said, his voice rattling like the wind through dry husks of maize after harvest. His chest beneath her hand was hard as forged iron. “I would keep you here, Inez, if I could.”
“And dole out gifts and trinkets as my lover?” She attacked his coat with more vigor than was warranted, wishing she could beat sense into him. “I’m to dine at your table and loll on your couches, paying for my keep with your pleasure? I won’t do it, Joseph.”
Nor could she bear to be so idle. She’d never been idle a day in her life.
“You can’t stay here as my servant.”
This again. She smacked the brush on his shoulder, attacking one last crease. “I won’t be a pretty thing to use at your whim, like a lapdog or toy. I want a wage from you, good and proper, so I can support myself when you’re through with me.”
He snaked an arm about her back and yanked her to him. His manhood pressed into her waist. She bit back a moan of satisfaction at the signs of his ardor. At least he felt that for her.
“I’ll never be through with you,” he muttered against her lips, and then he smothered her retort in a hot kiss.
She would never be through with him, either, even when he married and could no longer be hers. A low cry fluttered in her throat as she pressed herself against him, and she shifted her hips slightly so he could push between her legs, stirring that ever-present ache into instant need.
He plunged his tongue into her mouth, dominating, plundering, then hitched a hand behind her bare knee, lifting her leg so he could press against her all the more firmly.
His fingers wandered up her thigh to the place between her legs, bare and open to him, and he slid a finger through her folds, already moist with wanting.
She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, astonished at how quickly she responded to him, how his boldness and his claiming made her weak.
She pulled away. “You’ve to dinner.”
“I’ll be waiting for it to be over so I can have this.” He yanked her back to him, bent his head, and licked his tongue between the breasts pushed up by her bodice. She groaned at how possessive he was with her, and how much she responded. An arc of heat flamed through her nipples and to her core.
He set her on her feet and headed to the doorway, then paused to look back at her, standing there trembling and inflamed by desire, one hand on the writing desk for support.
“You are more than a housekeeper, Inez,” he growled before he left.
She nodded at the empty doorway. She was more than that. She was.
But when would the dratted man say what she meant to him, beyond this delicious passion that swept up and shook the both of them until all sense rattled free from her head?
And could she live with what he decided?
She faced the mirror and picked up one of his neckcloths, tucking it into her bodice to disguise the flush over her breasts. She patted her hair into place beneath her cap, retucked her skirts so her hems didn’t drag, and took the servant’s stair down to the kitchen.
She was the housekeeper for now, there was no other staff but Wenna, and there was a meal to serve.
And the man she loved to rescue from himself.