Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“We might find deposits of china clay,” Joseph mused to his companions. “The Penhales found some on their land when I was a boy. They never made a fortune, but the pits produced a decent amount. I wonder if William Cookworthy still has his china factory in Plymouth?”
Thaker signed something, and Wenna translated. “Me luv says there’s tin up near Gunnislake.”
Joseph nodded. “And a tin works near Harrowbarrow, too, I’ve heard. I saw signs of beamworks when we crossed Dartmoor.” In fact the great moor was criss-crossed with gullies that marked centuries of stream mining and past digging, but all the accessible deposits had been taken up long ago.
“Have you seen any likely rocks on Penwellen lands?” he asked Thaker, struggling with the signs but managing to convey his meaning, with Wenna’s help.
Here at the southern edge of Dartmoor there was still granite underlying the green fields, with the occasional rocky outcropping marking the eluvial deposits.
Joseph had grown up around mining talk and knew that the cassiterite which held the valuable tin might be found alongside tourmaline or hematite, such useful elements as arsenic and antimony, or, if one were very lucky, lead or silver.
Thaker shook his head, and Joseph told himself he wasn’t disappointed, because he hadn’t expected anything.
He had been trained his whole life to humility, not ambition.
His parents had insisted on modesty and being content with what God consented to give, whether it was good fortune or bad.
Joseph had been taught to accept that he came from the lesser son, not the greater, and so must harbor smaller goals.
He was taught not to expect fair treatment from those above, not to gamble on any turn of fortune, to work hard to keep himself, and to be content nevertheless if his hard work yielded only a small return, or none.
Amaranthe had tumbled into a great stroke of good fortune, falling in love with a bastard who turned out to be a legitimate duke, but that only proved the family curse had passed over her.
Good heavens, Joseph hadn’t been able to find a proper post since Amaranthe married.
How could he expect to make something of this down-at-heels estate he’d only stumbled into through Reuben’s bad luck, and not his own merit?
He was plain Joseph Illingworth, the boy whom his uncle had thought a weakling, trying on the baronet’s boots.
“Perhaps I’ll find some wolframite,” he said aloud, for his own benefit. “Feldspar, I’m told, could be used in making ceramics. Or mayhap Penwellen holds a vein of quartz. Useful for clock-making, I understand. The Romans thought quartz had great protective properties.”
Wenna nodded. “Mayhap,” she said, her tone masking skepticism with politeness. She was not Inez, who enjoyed hearing his random bits of knowledge and would spur him with further questions.
He swung the stick he held at a thick cluster of broom, shaking the yellow flowers and releasing the scent of vanilla.
Penwellen was destined to yield sheep and, if the growing season proved accommodating, the native grain they called pillas.
Any slim profits they made would have to pay off Reuben’s debts and be invested in improvements to the land and buildings, if he was to continue to charge tenants for leasing the cottages and farmhouses.
If he were very fortunate, he would be able to give Inez what she wanted to spruce up the house and set a fine table.
Inez. His housekeeper. Joseph scowled to himself as he stalked along, finishing this interrupted survey of his property. What was he to do with Inez?
It didn’t feel right to treat her as a servant. And she refused to be a kept woman. Her logic was natural enough, given that currently he could barely keep himself.
A generous man would let her go, send her packing back to London where she could ask Amaranthe for help finding a secure position.
Inez was comely and intelligent and warm in her nature, with a temper that could turn fiery when she was crossed.
It was not out of bounds to think that she might find a deserving man to marry.
A man who could provide for her properly, give her a secure future, and perhaps some little luxuries to please her. Give her a home of her own to order.
Perhaps give her children. His heart pounded at the thought of his error just a few days earlier, when he hadn’t taken proper care of her and stood the risk he might have started a babe outside the bounds of marriage.
His lack of self-control was one more sign of his weakness where was concerned.
He’d not been blind to Eyde’s situation, not with the child being born in his lodgings, not with Amaranthe so fiercely protecting her.
A babe would force Inez to marry him, and he didn’t want her forced. He wanted her glad and willing.
Yet it turned out she was taking precautions, too. She did not want his babe either, and he didn’t know how to take that.
He didn’t deserve her, and it wasn’t fair to keep her. But sending her to London might deliver her straight back into the clutches of Wigsby, and that was the excuse Joseph clutched at to excuse his selfish want. Keeping her at Penwellen meant keeping her safe. He wasn’t the worst thing for her.
He wanted to be the best thing for her. He, Joseph Illingworth, wanted at last to be enough.
To be worthy of the love of this remarkable and unparalleled woman.
His father had somehow contrived to be worthy of his mother, though he knew some would never see past her ancestry.
Malden Grey, the great clodpate, wasn’t the least bit deserving of Amaranthe, God knew, yet he’d won her heart anyway.
Could Joseph win Inez?
She’d been quiet and subdued yesterday when she and Wenna returned from market, tending to the stores in the kitchen while Joseph helped Thaker wrangle the new rooster into the pen where he would be contained until he could be introduced to the hens.
She’d been quiet that evening, when he asked her to dine with him in the small parlor.
It seemed she’d forgiven him, as she’d come to his bed the same as always, and he’d been more careful, knowing that she shook him beyond the bounds of restraint.
Their touching was tender and playful, and she moved him to depths he hadn’t known he had in him.
But something was missing. Something about their joining was yet incomplete. She held herself back from him in the deepest ways. He knew her body, but he didn’t know her mind, nor the desires of her heart, and he yearned to be the man she would trust in those gifts.
What could he offer that could be equal to the transformation she’d made in him? How could she ever find him worthy of her, when he had so little to give?
Joseph felt like that rooster: everything depended on having his lady accept him. Of course, she might reject him, same as Susannah Pettigrew. Susannah Pettigrew had wounded Joseph’s pride, but if Inez did not want a future with him, Joseph would be crushed into dust.
There was a cowardly part of him that didn’t want the reckoning to come yet. He wanted to go on a while longer inside the illusion that Inez wanted him, and that he alone could be enough, for the time being.
A dog barked in the distance, and Thaker cocked his head.
Joseph had a brief, absurd thought that Thaker had heard the animal, but then he sensed what the other man had detected: hoofbeats pounding the earth.
It was what they called in Cornwall a dummity day, the light low and the sky overcast, and Joseph squinted across the lumps and slopes of the fields.
Some distance away, beyond the line of trees that marked a small rivulet crossing one of the lower fields, a lone horseman rode away from them, flushed out by the hound, who followed it a ways, barking, until the boy walking with the hound called it back.
“Why, thas Dashel,” Wenna said in surprise.
The Southern Hound, winded from its short run, trotted toward them, the dappled spots on its coat changing as it passed beneath the fringe of trees. Joseph saw briefly the scene from over a decade ago, the hunting dog on the ground, Reuben standing above it with his gun and his contemptuous sneer.
Joseph was not Reuben, to be careless with another creature. He had to speak with Inez directly. He had to tell her what was in his heart. If she crushed him to powder, so be it. It was time to be the man his father had raised him to be.
“Areah, ’ee’s all dappered, ’ee is!” Wenna cried as the muddy dog reared up in greeting. “Put yer cabby paws on the ground, ye great burster.”
“I thought Jock was off to sell the whole pack,” Joseph said. “Were there no buyers?”
Thaker looked abashed, and Wenna grinned at him as she signed. “Didna want to part with the buzgut, did ye, me ansome? Dashel’s proper attached to me luv, ’ee is, and better fit ye let them go on together, I think.”
“And Thaker is proper attached to the hound in return,” Joseph guessed, conveying as much to the other man with his gestures. Thaker tousled the hound’s ears as the beast leaned against his leg, panting happily.
“Where’s Jock gone to?” Joseph asked as the lad approached, one of the new stable boys that Wenna had canvassed for his staff from a local family.
“We need him to take Arthur and see if he can intercept that gent taking a stroll across my property. Warn him that someone was shooting here a day or so agone, without my permission, I might add.”
Wenna looked at him, and Thaker looked at him, and Joseph made the same connection: the fleeing man might very well be the trespasser, and had declined to shoot at them this time because there were four of them to his one, plus a dog.
“The jockey?” the stable boy piped up. “’Ee’s taken Miz Da Costa away south to see ’er people. Plymouth again, I think ’ee said.”