Chapter 21 #3
“A servant?” she cried. “A maid who will bring you tea while you labor? When you never—” She punctuated this speech with small blows of their clasped hands against his chest, giving vent to her feelings— “paid—any—attention to me—”
“Inez! I could not approach a woman under the roof of my household. In the employ of my sister?” He looked incredulous. Shocked, the dear, besotted, supremely aggravating man. “That is what Reuben did. I vowed never to be like him.”
“You tell me this now?” she cried, and communicated her spleen by punching him again with their clasped fists.
She wanted to kiss him, but her mind stumbled over his words.
“You approached me that night after Wigsby—that night in your home. And on the road, when we were traveling. I was under your protection then, too. You said it many a time, to every innkeep and publican.”
“That first night, I knew I was leaving, so you could not be forced to oblige me. You invited me of your free will, I recall.” His gaze on her heated, and Inez blushed. She recalled, only too well.
“And the next day. I told you to return to London. You didn’t. You returned just in time to stage a rescue, and after that—” He shrugged. “After that, I knew marriage would be the end of it, if you would relent on your feelings about the matrimonial state and have me.”
“You oaf!” Inez cried and clobbered him again. “You never told me that!”
“I thought I did!” he exclaimed. “With my words, and with my body. I cannot—I do not—I would not have responded to you as I have, did I not love you already,” he said, and though he didn’t look at Pierre and Priscilla, who were watching them avidly, the blush on his cheeks said he was aware of their riveted spectatorship.
“I am—it is the way I am built, I’m afraid. ”
He’d never touched a woman before her. Never found his pleasure with a woman before her. Inez held that piece of him, all hers. All of him was hers, in whole.
She was the one he chose, the one he gave himself to in the most intimate of exchanges. The only one in the world with the privilege of being this close to him, and knowing his private ways. All the Susannah Pettigrews of the world could go trip themselves with their own garters.
“What a great deal of trouble you would have saved me,” she said softly, “if you had told me any of this a good while ago.”
“I thought it was obvious.” He had the grace to look abashed. “I sought you out for counsel. For company. I confided in you as I confided in no one but my sister. I thought surely you knew my heart.”
Inez sniffled, feeling emotion perilously close to breaking through her composure. That Stoical self-control that he so admired, being of that school of philosophy himself.
“I didn’t,” she said. “You must spell it out for me, scholar that you are.”
They stared into one another’s eyes. Inez squeezed his fingers to urge him on, and he returned a rueful smile.
“I see now why fellows write these speeches out beforehand, and study them,” he said. “I look at you and all but a handful of words fly out of my head.”
“Which ones remain?” she whispered, keeping on her eyes on his face as if he might disappear if she blinked.
He opened his mouth, then paused, as if groping for words.
“Go back to the bit where you said you loved her,” Priscilla put in encouragingly. “There’s a fair start, I’d say.”
Pierre shook his head. “Too many words. What he must do is kiss her.”
“That is how you wooed me, is it not, my—” Priscilla’s speech was ended as her husband demonstrated exactly what he believed was the fit response for the occasion.
Inez stared into Joseph’s beloved face, hoping what she saw written across his features was true, and not merely what she hoped to see.
“You love me,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He kissed her knuckles.
“And you wish to marry me?”
“Emphatically,” he said. “Above all else.”
She faltered. “It will not look well on you,” she said. “Marrying the woman who was your housekeeper. The daughter of a lascar and a—”
“Inez!” Priscilla cried. “Do you love him?”
Inez blinked. “Yes. Of course I do.”
“Then why would you break both of your hearts?” Priscilla demanded. “This is love! Rare and precious! Seize it with both hands. I left my father’s house under dark of night, ran away from all my friends and acquaintance, went to a far and foreign land to be with my love—”
“Paris is not so different from London, monoiseau,” Pierre murmured. “At least, not the Paris you know.”
“Yes, but they all speak French there,” said his impatient wife. “Inez! écoute-moi! Carpe diem!”
Inez sniffled again, not certain whether she wanted to laugh or weep. “Car-pay what?”
“It is a Latin phrase,” Joseph explained. “An injunction by Horace to enjoy the day, for little may be expected from the next. Epicurus has something of the same sentiment, and the prophet of Ecclesiastes, who writes—”
Inez, to prevent him from quoting any Greek or Latin at her, took the expedient of following Pierre’s advice and kissed him.
His mouth opened on hers, and he slipped a hand to the back of her neck, squeezing slightly. His kiss was ardent, a firm declaration, a taking possession, and she needed no other answer than this.
“Very well,” she whispered against his lips. “We might marry.”
“As soon as possible, I hope,” Joseph said, and continued kissing her.
Priscilla wiped her eyes and applauded. “A wedding! I shall be the first to bestow a gift.” She opened the silk cloth and hunted through the tumbled pieces. “This. I am told it is in the Iberian style.”
The setting was foil-backed silver and the stones gleamed pink and red, coral and red topaz alternating along the necklace just large enough to draw attention, but small enough to appear dignified.
Differently sized gems of faceted topaz shone from the main setting, shaped in a slight curve, and three pendants dangled girandole-style from it, the largest the size of a robin’s egg.
Priscilla held the necklace before her like one of Cleopatra’s attendants robing the famous queen.
Pierre coughed. “Are you certain that is appropriate, mon amour? He is only a baronet, and his wife should not wish to appear vulgar. Perhaps a smaller piece—”
“Pierre, my other half, do be silent. Inez risked her life, and my father, to gather and keep my mother’s jewels for me. And when she knew where to find me, she came at once to return them. We owe her our thanks.”
“She has our gratitude, certainly, but a necklace worth several thousand pounds?”
“Thousands?” Inez said, the words strangled.
“This will suit your coloring, and beautiful jewels are never out of place. I shall play the lady’s maid this time, my dear, and fasten it upon you, but look here—you may detach the girandole pendant to make a brooch, or you may wear the whole across a stomacher.
It is a very versatile piece. My mother wore it at her presentation to the Queen. ”
“All the more reason to keep the piece, if it has sentimental value, mon chat,” Pierre said, but his wife would not be deterred.
“Allow me.” Joseph held out his hand, and Inez watched, entranced, as Priscilla poured the gems into his palm.
He fastened the clasp at her throat, and Inez shivered from the brush of his fingers on her skin as much as at the heavy fall of the stones, the gold cold against her breastbone.
She felt cherished, and beautiful, and worthy, finally, of a man like Joseph Illingworth.
Priscilla clapped her hands. “C’est bon! If you are married here, Pierre and I might be witnesses.”
Joseph rose and threaded his fingers through Inez’s. “We will be married in Callington,” he decided, “for that is our new home.”
Tears of joy or the relief at coming home at last to a shore she never thought she would find, a safe haven at the end of the storm; Inez didn’t know the precise source, but she let them fall. “Home,” she echoed, marveling over the word. What she had wanted for so long, he was offering.
If his love indeed was true.