Page 19 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’ve been searching for you for months, you thieving wench.” Lord Wigsby stalked toward her, step by heavy step.

“I-I’m not. I didn’t.”

A lie. If he searched her things, he’d find the jewels in her bag. The reason Inez had run the first time.

Her shoe squelched as she stepped in a puddle of the spilled liquid. Honey formed a sticky crust on her fingertips.

“Hanging’s not good enough for you. I’ll have you drawn and quartered.”

His sweat smelled foul. Dimly, her mind working only on the edges while her brain was preoccupied with fear, Inez wondered how Bessie could stand the smell of him. Did she burn pastilles while she pleasured him? Did she hold her breath?

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t mean any of it.” Without thinking, she switched into Portuguese, the language of her birth.

“Speak English, you filthy foreigner. You’re all the same, and I’m sick of it. Lying beggars who come here to steal from your betters, from honest Englishmen. But only the stupidest of whores would steal from an English lord and think she could get away with it.”

As if English lords were a superior being because they’d been born to the accident of a title, or she any less human because she had been born with dark skin. Inez flushed hot with anger and humiliation.

“You have mistaken me for someone else.” She pressed out the English words, straining to free them of her soft accent, still present after all these years on the isle.

“Oh, I know you. I remember how you tried to tempt me, twitching your tight little arse as you went about your business.”

He stalked her as she retreated. Inez wondered how far until she hit the wall and was trapped. If she bolted for the servant’s stair, would he pursue, or would he find such egress beneath him? He was a man much attached to the privileges of his station, if not the obligations.

She’d never tried to lure this man. She’d been terrified of him.

So had his daughter.

“You’re the reason Priscilla left.” His red-veined eyes narrowed to slits. “You helped her, I know you did. You whores always stick together. You let her be carried away by that jackanapes, and then you stole all her jewels—all my jewels. Cleared out the house, like the filthy, foreign rat you are. My butler told me everything.”

The butler in that house would lie at will if it gained him anything; he was more craven than his employer, and just as greedy and cruel. Inez wondered how much moveable property the butler had absconded with and blamed the servants who fled the house that awful night.

“Which is it you regret more, your lordship? The loss of your daughter, or the jewels?”

Oh, foolish to taunt him, but the words leapt to her lips before Inez could stop herself. Balanced on the edge of death, she was finally bold enough to speak the truth.

“Your daughter left because you were cruel. She escaped you to find love, true love. Priscilla asked your blessing, don’t you remember? She would have listened if you were reasonable. But you were not.”

“You dare speak to me of my daughter! You aren’t fit to pronounce her name. Helping her elope, and stealing from me to boot? I’ll see your hands chopped off.” Spittle spewed from his mouth, so frothed was he with rage. His face mottled red, and veins bulged above the white stock at this throat. If he had apoplexy and expired here on the stained rug, would Inez be held accountable?

She turned to bolt, but Wigsby snaked out a fleshy hand and closed his fingers around her wrist. A low cry escaped her.

“Run, and I’ll have the watch down on you all. I’ll flush the filth from every corner of this wretched place, and your little whoring friends will have nowhere to go.”

Inez fought to tug her arm from his grip. She moaned as the pressure on his wrist threatened to snap the bones.

“Where are the jewels? I want back what you stole from me, you bitch!”

“Priscilla took them. So she could run away and be free of you.”

“I sent a man to hunt down her and her doltish husband. They weren’t smart enough to cover their tracks.” At last, he had her cornered against the small occasional table standing at the end of the hall. The edge pressed into her back. His sneer turned feral. “They have nothing. They’ll always have nothing—I’ll make sure of that for crossing me. But you.”

He wrapped his other hand around her throat. His fingers were thick and fleshy, dirt caked around the nail beds and knuckles.

“I don’t trust the law to deal rightly with you. Think I’ll have to do it myself.”

The scream had no time to rise. Inez grappled at the manacle around her neck, but she was so much smaller. She writhed and kicked out her feet, trying to connect with his swollen belly, his thighs, his groin, any soft part she could injure. He wrapped his hands all the more tightly and squeezed. She gagged, and he smiled. A gleam of lust and madness entered his eyes.