Page 21 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

She’d thought men were only ever rough and dark and hairy, but Joseph was a pillow of silk drawn over sturdy muscle and bone. The jut of his cheekbone against her palm felt vulnerable. He could have been hurt. He had been hurt, for her.

His gaze moved over every line of her countenance, then down her neck. Stuttered and stopped at the sight of her breasts, the tops exposed in the tight bodice. She couldn’t slow the rise and fall of her breath, still sharp and panicked as blood beat through her.

He stared, and she wondered if the hot flush she felt everywhere showed on her skin. Joseph Illingworth had noticed her breasts.

He dragged his gaze back up to meet her eyes, and there it was, what she’d longed to see: desire. At long last, he looked at her as a man looks at a woman he covets.

His voice was hoarse and strangled. “Are you⁠—”

She rose up on her toes, pulled his face toward her with both hands, and kissed him.

His lips were as soft as the skin beneath her palms and the curls of hair falling over her fingertips. He tasted delicious. She couldn’t go one more instant of her life without kissing Joseph Illingworth, and if she had to pay for her trespass, so be it.

For a tortured moment he stood completely still, as if she’d delivered the kind of blow he’d given to Wigsby, who even now was being carried down the hall and, Inez hoped, out of her life forever. Joseph didn’t want to kiss her. He’d appeared out of nowhere, he’d fought for her, he’d looked stunned at the sight of her bosoms pushed up by the tight bodice, but he didn’t want —

All of a sudden her feet lifted off the ground and Inez tumbled backwards, as if the carpet had been yanked from her feet. Joseph’s arms closed around her like the swoop of a hawk’s wings. She felt giddy. His mouth was hot and devouring and pressed to hers as if he meant to swallow her whole.

Her heart jumped into her throat and pulsed there with wild joy. His entire body was pressed to hers and she couldn’t breathe with the shock of it, the heat and firmness of his body when his tongue in her mouth was a silken thrust.

She was going to expire from happiness. Joseph Illingworth, kissing her, finally, and kissing her with a desperation that made her head whirl, as if he didn’t consume all of her, this instant, he would die or disappear. There was something almost clumsy in the press of his tongue inside her mouth, in the clutch of his fingers close to painful in her hair, in the bruising press of his lips. She moaned and shifted, wishing she could press herself closer.

She didn’t care if he was all demand and no skill. She felt the hardness of his arousal pressing between her legs, and need whooshed through her like a catching fire, sucking all the strength from her knees. She wanted to wrap her legs around him and pull him inside of her. She wanted him to take her, right here in the hallway against the painted paper wall, as heedless as any whore, so at last, at last she could be fully his.

But she couldn’t breathe with all of him upon her, so much of him all at once, the great gush of need that threatened to engulf her. Inez tore her mouth away and gulped for air. He was panting too, his eyes dark with passion, as glassy and dazed as she felt. For an endless moment they stared into one another’s eyes, breathing in unison, and Inez felt locked into something she didn’t understand, so large she didn’t know how she was to hold it.

Then he stepped back. “Good God.”

“No,” she murmured, reaching for him. He couldn’t pull away now. “Come back.”

But he dropped his arms, stepping away, and cold air rushed all around her. Her feet on the floor had to hold her up on their own, and she didn’t think they could. She didn’t want them to.

“Inez. I’m so sorry.”

“No,” she cried hoarsely. He must not regret this. There must be a promise of more of this later. There could be no sorry.

He turned away. Titus and Nero had carried out Wigsby’s body, but girls stood at their doors all along the hallway, some of them in stages of dressing for the day, one or two still in wrappers and nightcaps. They hooted, applauded, clamored for information. Inez hadn’t heard a thing.

Another maid came through the servant’s door with a mop and bucket. Her cheeks blazing with heat, Inez reached for a cloth. “Let me help.”

Joseph ignored all the Vestals calling to him, demanding to know his name, some inviting him into their room to make a closer acquaintance. The light in his eye was embarrassment.

“We must get you away from here,” he said to Inez. “That man will come back, or send a constable. You can’t stay.”

“Wigsby.” Inez twisted her hands in her apron as the consequences of what he’d done fell into her mind. “His estate is in Monmouthshire, I think.”

“Then he is a lord.” Joseph flexed his battered fingers. “The Bloody Code will call for an execution, I don’t doubt.”

There were any number of crimes that were capital offences on the English law books, Inez had learned. And she had thought Portugal, where the favored capital punishment had long been the garrote or burning at the stake, a savage country.

“More like the judge’ll try to transport you,” Bess reasoned. She stepped into the hallway holding her stays to her bosom, unconcerned about her state of dishabille. “Sentence you off to fight in the American Colonies, fine strapping ’un as yerself.”

She surveyed Joseph’s frame with frank appreciation, and Inez battled the urge to claw out the eyes of this woman who had been nothing but friendly to her. “How bad did ye hurt ’im?” Bess asked. “’Cause he’s one as pays us well, though he be a bit dirty, come down to it.”

“I wants to know what our Inanna did.” Another young woman came forward, a pretty redhead they called Freya. She wore a loose nightgown of nearly sheer linen, but Joseph, to his credit, kept his eyes in the area of the enormous cap protecting her wig.

The sudden rush of gratitude for him made Inez bolder than she ever had been with these girls. She might also still be dizzy because Joseph Illingworth had kissed her. “I worked in Wigsby’s London house as a lady’s maid for a time, and I helped his daughter elope. His only child, and he objected to the marriage. He was understandably upset.”

She wouldn’t mention her other crimes, not before Joseph. He’d kissed her. Inez’s entire being was comprised of two urges: escaping the wrath of Wigsby, and finding a way to coax Joseph Illingworth into kissing her again.