Chapter 20 #2
At the time, Inez hadn’t understood why Priscilla Wigsby would abandon her status as a lord’s daughter, her comfortable homes and allowance, her abundance of suitors, and the chance for a secure future to throw away her heart and hand on a French gambler of dubious pedigree and even more dubious prospects.
Yet when Pierre Dervieux strolled into the parlor, dressed to the excess of fashion that would make him a veritable macaroni in London, his gaze went straight to his little wife, and the look of indulgence he gave her, returned with the abject adoration in hers, explained to Inez what she had not previously understood.
Priscilla Wigsby had thrown away her pampered security on the chance that this man would made her happy, and thus far, she had been given no cause to regret her choice.
“My love, allow me to introduce you properly.” Priscilla giggled. “After all, you have both heard so much about one another from me. Pierre, this is Inez, the maid in my father’s house who arranged that I might elope with you. Inez, this is my darling Pierre Dervieux, of the Potevin Dervieuxes.”
Pierre made as elegant a bow over Inez’s hand as if she were one of Priscilla’s peers, and not a former servant.
She knew the man had no more claim to aristocracy than she did; Pierre Dervieux had been making his living, when Priscilla met him, by his luck at the gaming tables in clubs and fancy homes.
The same sure charm that had allowed him to bluff at brag allowed him to promise a life of romantic delights to Lord Wigsby’s daughter, and win her on the strength of them.
Yet sacrifice she had, for despite her happiness, Priscilla was occupying rented rooms in Plymouth, rather than enjoying herself as a guest of the Parkers at Saltram House in Plympton, or invited to join Lady Emma and George, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, whose baronial seat was just across the bay.
She had traded her place of acceptance in what passed for the Polite World, and she didn’t appear to miss it in the least.
So. A woman could fall and not miss a nest that had been a prison.
But a woman who climbed into a nest others judged out of her reach—she would find many a door shut to her.
A man might trespass the social boundaries with impunity, but the women who had committed their lives to upholding those boundaries would never tolerate an interloper.
Amaranthe Illingworth was her example here.
Amaranthe had become a duchess, and the only women in England who outranked her were the Queen and the royal princesses.
Yet Inez had heard certain high sticklers among the London ton reminding themselves that Amaranthe was the daughter of a vicar, whose grandfather had been in trade and whose mother came of Portuguese stock, and whose husband had, for all but the past year of his life, been an acknowledged bastard.
What would they say about a lascar’s daughter taking on a title?
Like a female Robin Hood, or the cinder girl who won the heart of a prince.
Pierre finished his elegant bow, and Inez dropped her hand.
Robin Hood had been a lord’s son after all, so the legend ran, and the cinder girl came from a genteel family.
She’d never been the daughter of a brown man in the land of the fair, and the evil stepmother had never rounded out the household income by selling her body for coin.
“My dear, you’ll join us for tea? Inez and I have so much to catch up on.
I must tell her all about our honeymoon trip in Greece, and I am certain she has had adventures of her own since I last saw her.
After all,” and she sent Inez a coy look, “she has yet to tell me how she came to be housekeeper for a baronet in Cornwall.”
Jock had indeed thoroughly acquainted Priscilla with Inez’s situation, she saw. Heat moved across the back of her neck, prickling beneath the smart kerchief swathing her bodice. She curled her fingers around her bag, as if anticipating the request.
Joseph’s brown eyes held a hint of red, like cognac melted into chocolate.
Dervieux’s eyes were so dark as to seem like black coals, yet bright in his face as he turned back to Inez.
His accent was unnecessarily thick for someone who had made his livelihood in Britain for as long as was said of him.
“I believe I will remain for a little minute of time, mon bijou.” His gaze moved over each line of Inez’s face, as if he were studying her for a sketch.
“But speaking of jewels. Do I recall you believed the mademoiselle had some items of yours that she should most certainly wish to return, as she cannot wish your father to discover them in her keeping?”
Here it was at last, then. All out in the open.
Inez picked up her bag, letting the regret squeeze her heart briefly.
What this treasure might have done for Joseph, to help him refurbish Penwellen…
But the Da Costas had never been thieves, not even in their darkest moments. They were too proud for that.
Besides, if she surrendered of her own will, that might bear some weight in her testimony if this man handed her over to the magistrate. She hoped.
“La, my old work bag.” Priscilla gave a bright, tinkling laugh as Inez set the item on the table.
The linen-lined cotton bag, embroidered with crewel wools, had been one of the childish Priscilla’s first efforts to create a stocking bag, and discarded after her skills, and her need to be adorned prettily for good company, increased.
“You clever thing, Inez. It was good of her to collect these for us, wasn’t it, my dear?
They would certainly have eased our way in those first few months, if only we had had the luxury of meeting you as we planned.
” Priscilla watched Inez’s hands, not her face.
“And to think she has held them safe for us all this time. Such a clever, darling, devoted girl. You always were so loyal, Inez. It is your best quality.”
“Oui, to hold them all this time.” The black eyes of the gambler still watched Inez.
The prickling about her neck spread to her shoulders and down her back.
The man was too perceptive. Too eager for the riches she was laying out before him, unrolling first the silk cloth in which she had wrapped the precious pieces, to protect them.
He looked hungry and sharp. Inez wondered what kind of trouble Pierre Dervieux was in, that their main goal, upon returning to England, would seem to be the recovery of these jewels.
“And to never sell them to ease her own way. Nor surrender them when your father approached her,” Pierre remarked.
Out of reflex Inex raised a hand to her throat and the faded bruise. There was still a tenderness at times when she swallowed, thanks to Wigsby’s approach.
“I considered them yours,” Inez said. “After all, you, Miss Priscilla, asked me to collect them for you. And deliver them to you at the inn where you were waiting to depart London.”
“Do not forget, she is Madame Dervieux now,”Pierre said, and Inez saw that he considered the jewels his.
The pendeloque earrings with their heavy diamond clusters set in repoussé silver.
The choker with its thick strands of garnet and carnelian, dangling tiny briolette-cut rubies in cannetille rosettes.
A heavy brooch made of pinchbeck with table cut emeralds and citrines in a glass overlay, and the aigrette of small diamonds and aquamarine, made to decorate a lady’s hat.
Pierre took the gold ring with its sapphire set in pearls, the gem a rounded square with many facets, and pulled off his glove to slide the jewel onto his finger. He had the look of a buccaneer opening a chest of purloined treasure.
“Oh.” Priscilla said, her tone hushed. “I had forgotten how many there were.” She touched the earrings. “Those were Mama’s.”
“They are all yours, madame,” Inex said, setting the work bag on the small tea table as if surrendering that item, too.
Priscilla’s eyes filled with tears. “These were Mama’s dowry. She brought them to her marriage, and they were always meant for me. Inez, I thank you for this gift. Words cannot describe how much it moves my heart to have this piece of my mother returned to me.”
Inez swallowed and nodded, unable to speak for the swelling in her throat.
What she would give to have something to remember her own dear mother by, other than struggle and tears because she had fallen in love with and married a man whom her family did not approve for her.
Mariana Da Costa, like Priscillia Wigsby, had thrown off the dictates of society to follow the man she loved, and the world had been harsh to her for it.
But her mother had loved to the depth of her heart.
She had never regretted her choice of a husband—only the choices she was forced to make to preserve her life with him.
To the day she died, Mariana Da Costa had come alive in the presence of Ramesh Shirodkar the way she had no one else.
Not even the presence of her cherished daughter.
Mariana had looked at Ramesh the way Priscilla looked at Pierre Dervrieux. It was an expression Inez felt on her own face whenever Joseph Illingworth walked into a room and illuminated it.
Pierre turned the ring on his finger, his lips curving in a fascinated smile.
“This means a great deal more than a family heirloom, my treasured one. This means we need not go begging to any of our friends, and you need not crawl to your father asking for his good graces.” He straightened his shoulders, a man burdened with new purpose.
“Choose a special piece, mon bijou, to hold to your sentimental heart. With the rest of these, I will win you the fortune you deserve.”
“Oh, Pierre, my dearest love.” Priscilla’s lip trembled as she tried to affix the choker. Her fingers trembled too, and Inez, out of long habit, rose to help her with the clasp, pushing a few powdered curls out of the way.
Priscilla’s attire was as smart as ever, but Inez’s trained eyes caught the details.
The lace ruching at the bodice of her open gown had a tear that a skilled lady’s maid ought to have fixed with invisible stitches.
Her linen cap edged with lace had frayed ribbons that begged to be replaced.
And while her gown was indeed cut to the latest fashion, the seam at the back showed a dark line along the stitching; the fabric had been reused from another gown, carefully taken apart and then remade to suit the style.
It was commonly done among the thrifty; Inez turned and turned her gowns until the fabric wore holes.
But in her father’s house, Priscilla had never had other than new gowns handmade for her, and when a cap needed new ribbons, it went to the housekeeper—or Inez—and she to the milliner’s to purchase a new one.
“Pierre, my one joy.” Priscilla’s voice turned caressing. “Perhaps we might hold onto these few baubles, and I might wear them? Need they go to the tables, like the others? Like everything else?” she said softly.
“My love. My glorious angel.” Pierre crossed to his wife and caught up her dainty, pale hands. Priscilla had pulled off her silk gloves to touch the jewels, and her fingers looked very small, clasped in his.
“You knew you married a working man, oui? And this is the work I do. This is how I will provide for us. To give you the things you deserve, the riches with which I promised to drape you, the luxuries that will set off your perfect beauty. I will give you the world, ma cherie, but it will be a little while yet. I did not expect this streak of bad luck to turn against me. You have always been my, how do you say, lucky charm.”
He kissed her hands, the backs, then the palms, a lazy, lingering kiss. Priscilla shivered. Inez stood behind her chair, embarrassed by the ease with which the lovers forgot she was there, simply the maid, support and decoration to their self-absorbed lives.
The girl drew in a shuddering breath. “I know, my darling Pierre, all that you do is for me. You have said before. But also, remember, my angel, you said there would be a time where…where we…” She faltered and resorted to sending a gaze around the room, pleading and remorseful.
Inez understood. The petite salon, as Priscilla had so gaily named it, was rented lodgings, not her own roof.
Those oils on the walls were not Wigsby or Dervieux ancestors looking down with benevolence on their patrimony, nor were they portraits and landscapes she had commissioned from the painters of famous friends.
The color scheme of the parlor, indeed the entire house was not what Priscilla would have chosen; the furniture was not hers; and the room lacked the little adornments that English travelers so loved to acquire and display as proof of their taste and leisure.
“Soon, my precious one. I promise you it will be soon. You will have a little nest of your own, filled with pretty things to surround your pretty self, and all your friends will come to admire and envy you. I have no aim in my life but to make you happy. You know that, oui?”
“Of course, Pierre. You have told me so many times.”
“And, mon bien-amiée. I make you happy, do I not?” He pulled her from the chair into his arms, an easy strength in the gesture, but also a possessiveness that had Priscilla melting against him, turning up her face for his kiss.
“Oh, you do, my only one,” she moaned. “You do.”
Inez stepped away, her face heating. A year ago, two, she would have scoffed at a woman melting so easily to pretty lies and a caress.
But that was before she had done the melting of her own. Before she had encountered the man whose touch was alchemy, whose very presence transported her, and whose desires she had no wish to deny.
“Oh, this is a pretty sight. My ungrateful daughter, being pawed like a common trull in her very own drawing room.”
Inez froze. An icy wave coursed over her, as if she had been thrown into a current of cold water. For a moment, she could not breathe.
Wigsby. Only the devil himself could have found her so easily, or a man who had made a pact with Old Scratch.