Page 10 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

“Because I am teaching him a lesson. Now go.”

Reluctantly Reuben left with the baronet, who had walked away from the scene, leaving others to clean up the destruction made by his son. With a whistle Reuben set the second hound after the hare, which shot from its scrape and set off with its lolloping gait, hopping sideways now and again attempting to throw off the dog.

The shot echoed off the trees. Dirt flew as his father fired into the ground. Joseph nearly choked on his relief.

His father gave his spent gun to the keeper in return for another that was loaded and primed. “We will take the dog with us, Cobb,” Jonas said. “If you can keep him at your cottage until we leave.”

“Aye, I’ll tend’un an keep’un from sight.” Cobb rose soberly with the dog in his arms, the game sack wrapped around the animal. The hound stared mournfully at Joseph with its large, dark eyes, dull with incomprehension.

“That’un is a heller,” Cobb said, his face dark with anger. “And the baronet coaches it inee. Mark me, some day that lad will turn and bite the hand that feeds ’im.” He cradled Wolfe. “This’un hound is worth ten of that boy.”

“We’ll take care of him. I am sorry to benefit from your loss.” Jonas laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder, squeezing slightly. The baronet hadn’t addressed the keeper, his own trusted servant, but Joseph’s father knew the man’s name, and took the time to console him.

His father put an arm around Joseph’s shoulder as they both watched the keeper walk back toward the house. “Don’t ever become that, son,” Jonas said quietly. “Don’t you ever strike at a weaker creature.”

“No, Papa.”

“Use your strength to do good, Joseph. Not harm.”

“Yes, Papa. But why will no one punish Reuben?” If Joseph had done such a thing, struck at another, man or beast, he would have gotten a sound thrashing, and a moralizing lecture to boot.

“We must trust in the Lord to work his will in his own way, and turn our sorrow to his good,” his father said.

Joseph knew from that moment that whatever career he pursued, it would not be with the Church, because he would never be able to counsel people to accept the world as it was. He could not accept a world where the strong preyed on the weak, and some men were given power who did not deserve it.

Reuben had bagged a hare that day, but Joseph had killed nothing, not then nor any day after. Wolfe became a steady companion in the years that followed, accompanying Joseph on his treks, but adoring his father above all. Shortly after Jonas died, days after his wife, Wolfe laid down in the chicken pen with his heads on his paws and quietly finished the task Reuben had begun years before.

Perhaps this was the justice his father had meant, Joseph thought as he surfaced from that long-ago memory into his own parlor—well, Amaranthe’s parlor—the vellum stiff in his fingers. Reuben had indeed become the baronet, but he had not managed to produce an heir of his own. And so it all went to the lily-livered cousin—whatever was left that Reuben hadn’t managed to poison or destroy.

“Oh, it’s herself, then!” The cheerful voice of the little costermonger sounded from the hallway. “Gave him a turn, I think I did. He’s just been sitting there an age, staring into the air as if he seen a specter.”

“No doubt Mr. Joseph has as many fond recollections of our cousin as I do.” That was Amaranthe’s voice. “You might stop by the kitchens, Tamara, and have Mrs. Frost pack a basket for you. How are your sisters faring today?”

“Fair blooming, on all counts,” Tamara said proudly. “I’ll be by with your violets tomorrow morning, mum.”

“I shall look for them.” A rustle of fabric announced Amaranthe’s approach. Her dark hair was fashionably powdered and she wore a simple open robe, the stomacher laced lightly over her swelling middle.

“Well, Sir Joseph? I would have brought the letter myself, but I had to arrange to close the shop for the afternoon, and Tamara wanted an errand.”

Joseph set the letter on the table. It had no more to tell him. “Shall we go into mourning? I suppose there ought to be some notice of the niceties.”

“It seems a bit of a sham, since we won’t actually miss him nor lament his loss, but it is the proper thing to do.”

Joseph rose from his seat and prowled about the small chamber, which was tidy and sparsely furnished, and held almost nothing to indicate his possession of it. He tried to bend his imagination around the news that he would have a home to call his own.

A grand home. An estate. A title to append to his name. Nothing approaching the honors of a dukedom, and baronets were not considered peers, but they, and knights, were in a class of their own above the common run of gentlemen esquires.

“All my life—my adult life—I have worked and studied, studied and worked my tail off to get precisely nowhere. And now, dropped in my lap—all this. When I haven’t done a thing to earn it.”

His sister nodded and lowered herself into an upholstered chair across the room, then tucked a cushion behind her back. Most women went into confinement when they were Amaranthe’s size, and she could have easily taken to one of her many decorated parlors at Hunsdon House and summoned people to her. But she still went about her days, making calls and looking in on her bookshop, and the Duke had reported Amaranthe as saying that she wanted to stay on her feet until the babe was ready to drop out of her, as if she were a hardy peasant woman in the field.

Their breeding would show and continue to show, Joseph thought, even if they both had titles to decorate their names.

The Duchess indicated her person with a sweep of her hand: the expensive gown, the velvet cloak, the wedding ring sparkling on her finger. “I haven’t deserved my place, either. But Father would say some things in this world cannot be earned, only granted by the grace of God.”

“I thought it was Mother who said that.”

“How pleased they would be to see you settled, Joseph. Though not at Reuben’s expense. And, if Father were alive, he would be accepting the estate and title of course,” she reflected. “But nevertheless I am sure they are happy in heaven to see you come into some security.”