Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Wigsby’s eyes were red-rimmed, and one side of his mouth was swollen around a split lip, giving a slight slur to his words.
The bruise spread up the side of his face, ill covered by powder, with a plaster over the place where Joseph’s fist had cut open his cheek.
He limped slightly as he advanced into the room, and Inez retreated without thinking.
Joseph had not caused that limp, she was certain.
Yet the narrow slit of Wigby’s watery blue eyes as they turned to Inez contained all the fires of hell.
“Papa.” Priscilla shrank against her husband, who put a protective arm around her. There was no one to put a protective arm around Inez.
“You vowed that if I could get the jewels from her, you would not press charges,” Priscilla reminded her father. “You would have no call to report her as a thief.”
“You’ll take Spanish coin every time, won’t you, my adorable little goosecap.” Wigsby sneered on his daughter and son-in-law alike. “’Tis how this gamester won you so easily, I don’t doubt, and how he cozens you to stay and turn over all you have so he may waste it on himself and his mistresses.”
Priscilla lifted her chin, as rounded and dimpled as the rest of her, though Inez noticed that the last years had matured the lines of the other girl’s face to a degree. “Pierre has given me the world, Papa. I am happy, which you said I would never be.”
“How can you be happy, puss, when everything you have goes into this man’s pockets, to be fribbled away at the gaming tables?
” Wigsby’s gaze lit on the ring Pierre wore, and his eyes narrowed further.
“He’ll squander every last one of your mother’s jewels, unless someone takes care to keep them from his avaricious grasp. ”
Priscilla touched the choker at her throat, where it sat very prettily, showing off her pale neck and powdered hair. “Mama meant these jewels for me, Papa. They are my dowry.”
“You get no dowry when you marry a thief,” her father snapped. “I will take these.” He swung his head to glare at Inez. “And I’ll take this bit of muslin as well, and deal with her as I see fit.”
Priscilla clutched her husband’s arm. “Pierre, do something.”
Dervieux cleared this throat. “The jewels will stay, sir. They belong to my wife by right, and our claim will hold up in court, should you force it.”
Wigsby growled low in his throat. “You think any English judge will want to see these pieces in the pocket of a Frenchman? A foreigner? You mistake English justice. No surprise, since your people have no sense of it. I won’t need the assizes or a grand jury to plead my case.
Any magistrate here or in London will acknowledge my claim to these jewels.
And put her in the bridewell for a thief. ”
“You cannot prove…” Inez trailed off her feeble defense.
She knew well enough how justice worked all around the world; the lord would be believed, no matter what he claimed, and the maid would be borne off in chains.
It would take no more than production of her pedigree—daughter of a lascar and a Portuguese whore—to be confirmation of her guilt, no matter the charge.
Also, her words were lost in a sudden storm of knocking that came from the front door. Priscilla murmured to Pierre, a question or plea, as footsteps pounded up the stairs. And then Joseph loomed in the doorway like a messenger from the heavens, the herald of an avenging god.
Inez choked back a wild cry of joy at the sight of him: his coat dusty from the road, his boots caked with grime, his hat brim bearing the smell of the marsh, and his eyes burning.
His gaze went to her first and swept up and down her as if ascertaining every piece of her was in place.
He looked at Wigsby, then the jewels laid upon the table like treasures offered to a queen.
Then at Pierre, and at Priscilla’s hand on her husband’s arm.
His brows drew together, giving him a gloriously fierce aspect.
It was so rare to see Joseph out of temper, and the signs of passion, she would admit only to herself, were thrilling.
“You will not take Inez,” he said, and his voice held a note of command that warmed Inez to her toes. “She is not a thief. She followed the instructions of her mistress and held the jewels in trust. I will vouch for her to anyone who demands, be it the King himself.”
“You!” Wigsby howled. “I’ll have you hauled before the magistrate in irons. I’ll have you hanged like the common riffraff you are.”
“A gentleman’s son, and the Baronet Illingworth of Penwellen.” Joseph raised a supercilious brow. He laid a hand on the hilt of the small sword at his hip. “I think we rather ought to settle this between us.”
Joseph didn’t own a sword of his own, or if he did, Inez had never seen him wear it, scholar that he was.
The sword he wore now must have belonged to his cousin, or perhaps the baronet before him, for it was a small sword of decent size, with silver studs glittering on the hilt.
It was made for the days when a gentleman’s sword was a weapon as well as a mark of his status.
Wigsby groped for his own sword, which was a flimsy blade made for decoration, little larger than a butter knife. His face flushed. “You wouldn’t dare challenge me, you insolent pup.”
“I believe he has grounds, if you are persecuting a woman. And your own daughter, too,” Pierre said coldly. His hand flew to his hip in a practiced gesture, where a small French dueling sword hung from a sash.
“Do not forget Inez, my love,” his wife whispered, tugging the sleeve of her husband’s elegant coat. Dervieux’s attire, Inez noted with a swift and professional glance, unlike his wife’s, was entirely without flaw or sign of mending. “He is threatening Inez, too.”
“I won’t be intimidated by the likes of you,” Wigsby blustered. “And I refuse to meet you on the field of honor when you have no claim to such. You attacked a lord! The Bloody Code demands death for that!”
“And what does it demand for attacking a woman?” Joseph returned. “You have a habit, sir, of preying on those weaker than you. I must say I detest that in a man.”
Wigsby’s eyes bulged. “What would you know about being a man?”
Joseph drew his sword and held it before him in a loose but practiced grip, his pose graceful and rippling with coiled strength. Prepared for attack, but not willing to initiate unless pressed to the point. Something moved over his face then that Inez had never seen but found astonishing.
“I have learned one or two things, just lately, about manhood,” he said, and his voice was low and full of a sureness she had never heard from him.
She knew Joseph Illingworth in all his moods: abstraction when he was transported by a book and his mind traveled through the airy upper realms of Idea.
Joseph densely absorbed in his own muddle and blind to the struggles of those around him.
Joseph frustrated when he went knocking on door after door interviewing for posts and was told he wasn’t fit for any of them.
Joseph with his spirits razed to the ground when a baggage like Susannah Pettigrew, a woman who clearly needed spectacles, declared Joseph was not good enough for the likes of her.
Inez had seen the new side of him, too, when he returned from his Grand Tour. The new polish and ease within himself. An added depth and weight to him, as if the last bit of the pup had been rubbed away and the wolf returned, regal, sure-footed, new-forged.
She had seen him passionate and tender in their time together, traveling with her to undiscovered lands. She had seen him punch Lord Wigsby in the face, not so long ago, when she wouldn’t have thought he had a thread of aggression within him.
And now, she saw him settle something within himself. His shoulders broadened. His chin lifted. So did the sword as he pointed it in Wigsby’s direction. Joseph’s gaze moved briefly to Inez, and his stare lit her like a fuse for a festival firecracker. The very air in the room crackled.
He was a man, finally, who knew his own worth. Who knew what he would fight for to the bitter end. And Inez was among those things.
The top of the list, apparently. Her heart swelled like that air-going sailing vessel that had been legendarily demonstrated at the court of King John of Portugal and his Queen.
“Dervieux,” Wigsby snapped, “take his sword away. This insolent pup is threatening me.”
Instead, Pierre drew his own sword. It was long and slender, in the French style.
Between them, the two men looked prepared to participate in one of those sword dances her father had told Inez the sailors of Marin, in Spain, performed in honor of St. Michael. Joseph had never looked so lethal, so dangerous, and so beautiful.
A man through and through, one who would never display the cruel arrogance or greedy pride of a Wigsby, and who would check injustice wherever he did find it.
Wigsby’s face mottled as his rage mounted.
His jaw worked as he forced out the words.
“Baseborn knaves, the lot of you. I’ll see you both hanged!
You,” he pointed a fat finger at Pierre, “for stealing my daughter and the wealth of a man’s house, and you—” He stabbed the air in Joseph’s direction— “for harboring a fugitive, threatening your betters, and being in general a cur and an insult to the name of gentleman. Tossing up the skirts of a foreigner and a whore.”
He retreated to the table where the jewels lay, and his avaricious eye fell upon them. “I’ll let you all leave me without complaint if you return my things.”
Priscilla stepped in front of the table, gripping its edges behind her. “No. These are Mama’s. You mayn’t have them. Not when you took everything else from me.”
“Took!” His lordship’s eyes bulged further. Between that and the convulsions of his throat above his neck stock, Inez feared apoplexy. “When you stole from me, you ungrateful hussy! And enjoined your filthy maid to abet you in the effort.”