Page 28 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

“There’s a family estate in Cornwall. Which is mine now. I am going to look after things. You can stay here. As long as you want. It will be safe for you.”

“When will you be back?” she whispered. He would kiss and her leave. He could do that. Their embrace had meant nothing to him.

His gaze met hers briefly and pulled away again, like he’d touched his hand to a fire. “I don’t know.”

“Take me with.” She stepped toward him, buoyed on a tide of something fierce and angry. He couldn’t leave her. He’d finally come for her. He’d finally seen her. “I want to go with you.”

“You cannot.”

“I can. You can bring me.”

“I cannot. Inez. You cannot travel with me alone, and I can’t afford to pay for a chaperone. Besides, what would you do there?”

Be his. Be with him. She couldn’t think through the whole of it; her mind felt like a wet blanket had been tossed over her head, suffocating.

“I wouldn’t be any trouble,” she whispered, and the humiliation of begging made her eyes burn. Why could she never keep her dignity around him?

“Inez.” His face softened, the austere lines smoothed with an expression of gentleness. Pity? She abhorred pity. She refused to be pitied.

“I cannot…”

“Cannot what?”

She was always the one being left. What was it about her that made people leave? Her mother had wasted away, if not by her choice. Her father had gone East without a glance behind. The home Inez had found here with Amaranthe and Eyde and the others had vanished when they all picked up and merrily moved to Hunsdon House, leaving her behind.

She’d been turned out, or forced out, of every position of service. Even her marriage had been an abandonment, as if she didn’t deserve tender cherishing like another woman would. And now Joseph was simply going to leave her here, like she was a wardrobe or part of the furniture, as if he’d never kissed her like a desperate man, as if he hadn’t desired her so much he couldn’t contain himself. Why did she always mean nothing?

He spread his hands wide and raked them through his hair. Powder shook free, and the tousling made him more adorable, not less. She hated his beauty. Hated him.

“You are making this very difficult for me.”

“I’m difficult? I am?” The rage filled and lifted her like the cooler current that would well up around Sagres in the warmest months of summer, the cold water always a shock against the heat. She was the easiest of women. She never asked anything. She never demanded. She never forced her own way. Perhaps that was why she was so easy to leave.

She curled her hands into fists and stalked towards him, her feet shuffling across the carpet. “I am not making this difficult. You are. You are the one who is difficult.”

She was appalled to realize she had raised her fists and was hitting him on the chest. The blows had almost no effect on him, her blows not strong enough to force their way through cloth and muscle, but she swung at him nevertheless, wild with hurt.

“You have been an idiot—a dull, unthinking—” What was the worst insult she could deal a man like him? “Clodpate,” she cried. “Rocks in your head. You—are—so—infuriating. And so dim, you never see⁠—”

He captured her fists in his hands and she realized her blows were like grasshoppers landing, the merest brush, and so easily brushed away. “Inez. I am indeed sorry if I have hurt you. In any fashion.”

As if he had done something. It was what he hadn’t done that was making her mad. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to push him down. She wanted to slap him out of his self-absorption, his complete assurance that the world ran one way, his complete obliviousness to everything else around him.

She wanted to be impossible to leave.

“Just go.” She pushed him toward the door, and he went. He was fully dressed after all. Still wearing his boots.

That put her over the edge into a raw, keening fury. He’d fallen into bed with her, kissed her breasts as if he’d never seen breasts before, spent in her hand as if he were a green lad pushed past his limits of endurance, and the whole time, he’d been wearing his boots.

“I don’t need you.” She shouted in his face and was gratified to see his eyes flare with brief surprise, then hurt. Good. One of her blows had finally landed.

It brought no satisfaction. “I don’t want you,” she lied. “Go.” She pushed him over the threshold into the short, narrow hallway at the top of the stairs. “Go, and don’t come back.”

She gave into the impulse to slam the door in his face. It crashed shut with a smack, but there was no satisfaction.

He was going, and he wouldn’t come back. Not for her. Inez put her hands to her face and for the first time in years—for the first time in memory—she sank to the floor in her shift and stockings and cried till the tears ran dry.