Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“The Duchess,” Inez said, because if they were going to talk about ways to refortify the estate, that was an obvious source of income.
“No,” Joseph said at once, in that stubborn and immediate way of his.
He handed her the leather ribbons to hold the horse while he hopped down from the wooden plank that formed the driver’s seat of the farm cart.
His boots sank into the grassy field, and he shifted slightly to get his balance.
He unrolled the parchment and looked about him, and a needle sank into her chest, as if someone were embroidering his name on her heart.
He looked the lord of the manor, in a wide-brimmed hat that Thaker had loaned him and a sturdy frock coat with steel buttons, the skirts caught back for riding.
“She would help if you asked.”
Inez wasn’t certain how to hold the reins; she’d never handled a horse before.
She imitated what Joseph had done, looped the straps of leather around her gloves and held her hands on her knees, gently.
If Joseph were to be a farmer and she a farmer’s lady, then she must learn things like how to handle animals and know the seasons and the weather and the rhythms of country life.
Not his lady in the sense of being a baronet’s wife, of course.
He couldn’t marry her, foreign born, dark-skinned, the daughter of a lascar and a woman who had turned whore.
A very great lord might be allowed to be so eccentric, but not a man of the gentry.
Tradesmen might not extend him credit or merchants decline to work with him if they doubted his judgment.
Laborers would try to cheat him and vagrants take advantage of his land.
They would see it as justice to defraud a man who didn’t uphold the time-honored decrees of class and nation and purity of blood.
She knew what it was like. It had been so in Portugal, and it was the same here. The prejudices were hard drawn, and they ran deep, like etchings in a copper plate.
“I won’t ask,” Joseph replied. “I spent six years, seven, being supported by my sister, when I ought to have been supporting her. I’m not coming to her with hat in hand when I ought to be able to look after myself.”
“She would be happy to help you regain your feet, and you could pay her back when the estate is in heart,” Inez said mildly.
The sun was shining and the day was warm, and the cranesbill and clover were blooming.
The hedges were twined with dog rose and elderflower, and carpets of bluebells and violets spread over the far prospects.
She didn’t want to quarrel, especially not with this beautiful land stretched out before them.
But if he wanted to keep this land and live upon it, they had to find some source of funds.
Inez thought of the heavy weight at the bottom of her stocking bag, still wrapped in cloth, undisturbed through her travels and now tucked in the cupboard in her room.
The room in the attics that she called hers, which was not the same room where she slept.
Spending the night in Joseph’s room, Joseph’s bed, was a wonderful luxury, and it would end as soon as the staff with which she had equipped the house began to suspect she was not adhering to her proper place in it, for thus would she lose all her authority.
“If nothing else will do, I’ll go begging to my sister,” Joseph said. “But I’d rather show her, and Hunsdon, I can solve my own problems.”
Inez guessed that of the pair, the Duke of Hunsdon was the personage Joseph most strenuously did not want pitying him. But she said nothing.
“Besides which.” He pushed hat back on his head, surveying the terrain. “If Hunsdon supplies funds to renew me, he’ll think he might have a say in the governing of Penwellen. And I won’t have him butting his nose in.”
Inez didn’t know the source of Joseph’s grudge for the Duke.
She’d met Malden Grey when he was a luckless would-be barrister, raised as the bastard son of a duke in a coaching inn in Bristol.
He’d met Amaranthe Illingworth, fallen flat on his face for her, and had begged her to marry him well before anyone knew Grey’s father had properly married his mother and it was the duke’s second and third marriages that were bigamous and his later children illegitimate.
All three of the duke’s half-siblings lived at Hunsdon House, Amaranthe having taken them in hand with her usual brisk ease at telling people how to go on.
If London society thought it odd that a peer of the realm should house his bastard siblings under the same roof with him, London society wasn’t about to say so to a duke.
Inez thought again of her stocking bag, again steered her thoughts away. It would make her a thief in truth if she revealed her secret. And what would Joseph think of her?
He knew he found pleasure in her body, but he wasn’t experienced enough to know that lust was not love, that passion was not a promise of enduring affection, that cravings could fade and surfeit could dull the appetite. And she didn’t know what they had beside the wanting, at least for his part.
She knew what she felt. Hers was a craving that would not cease.
“Does Jock have ideas?” she asked.
The groom hadn’t yet returned to London and, while not formally in Joseph’s employ, had not quite the status of a guest, either.
Wenna reported that he had taken lodgings in one of the cottages, he took his meals in the kitchen with her and Old Jupe, and he had awarded himself oversight of the stables and horses, a task he saw to quite aptly despite his twisted legs.
This left Thaker to look after the other animals for the nonce, and Thaker was enjoying the respite.
“Jock went to Plymouth to see if he might find a buyer for the racehorse. I don’t expect he’ll get enough to pay off what Reuben still owes on the beast. I hope he can get a good price for the hounds.”
“Have you considered keeping them?” Joseph loved dogs; she’d been able to ascertain that from his first meeting with the late baronet’s pack.
“No,” he said shortly. “Hounds eat a man out of house and home. The only service they supply is for hunting, and I do not intend to hunt.”
The clipped tone of his voice said the matter was closed, but she also sensed the pain of a memory.
She decided not to probe, not yet. She often saw a strange expression cross Joseph’s features when he looked about him inside the house, as if he detected some unpleasant memory lingering atop the inoffensive furnishings and gracious design.
As if, despite the genteel look of the home, shadows lingered in the corners with the dust.
Perhaps one day, he would see fit to confide in her.
Perhaps one day, she would mean more to him than a bedmate.
Joseph peered at the parchment unscrolled in his hands. “Haye Lane to the gravel pits,” he read, then looked up. “Is this the gravel pit, do you suppose?”
“It would appear so.” They were walking the boundaries of his estate, trying to ascertain from the rough survey Hoskyn had given him what land properly belonged to Joseph.
“Can I mine gravel and sell it?”
“Perhaps?” She didn’t know.
Joseph looked about him, shoulders slumping.
“The first baronet enclosed what common land he could to make sheep pasture, so there’s not more land for further enclosure.
The leaseholds are all in order and properly conveyed, so there’s no more income to be got there.
Hoskyn said I could farm the fields on the Norfolk system, and that might yield more, if I can keep the sheep from eating the turnips and clover. ”
He put a hand on the side of the wagon, levering himself back onto the plank beside her.
Inez leaned into the comfortable weight of his leg against hers, as if she could offer support.
The work horse, a glossy Suffolk Punch, snorted and stomped the ground as Inez handed over the reins.
Joseph passed her the map and she studied it, matching the landmarks depicted on the rough sketch to what she could see in view.
“There’s not a lot of waste that could be made arable,” she noted. “The moors end here, though you’ve got a bit of river bottom over there, along the Lynher.”
“Which my tenants use for fishing, and if I want to keep good relations, I’ll give them access,” Joseph said. “I’ve a mind to try fishing myself. I might like it.”
“Then there’s the forest at the back edge of the property. Your own piece of Lendra Wood, which Wenna says is quite ancient, so it seems a shame to cut it down to raise grain.”
“We ought to explore Lendra Wood one day,” Joseph said. “Pack a basket. Spend the afternoon. It feels like it could have been made a thousand years ago, or even earlier. It was trod by people who were here before the Romans came. Inside of it, one can believe in fairies and elves and hobgoblins.”
Inez smiled to see him becoming fanciful. This was what she loved: when Joseph became speculative or erudite, talking to her of the things he imagined or read. “If we come across a friendly Puck who is a hand at the household chores, I won’t mind help churning the butter.”
“That is what that Treen was after the day before last,” Joseph remarked. “Asking me if I had any notion of selling. He seemed particularly interested in the wood and the land around it.”
Inez sorted through the visitors she’d shown inside in the several days since they’d arrived.
Many were gentlemen of the neighborhood coming to call on the new Baronet, making certain to mention how welcoming their wives and daughters would be should Sir Joseph choose to call on or dine with them.
Merchants offered their trade; tradesmen offered their services.