Page 3 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

CHAPTER TWO

“Why the devil would you lock a man out of his own home?” Joseph barked, taking refuge in spleen. Better that than stand on his own stoop gaping at her, pole-axed.

Inez wasn’t her usual tidy self. A riot of dark curls spilled from beneath the white linen cap with its ribbon of red silk. Flour spattered her linen apron, and while it made sense for her to loop up her skirts to keep them from brushing the floor or the dirt of the ground when she went outside, the effect was to make her look like a lopsided pudding.

Thinking of her as a lopsided pudding allowed Joseph to pretend that her dark beauty wasn’t a punch to his belly every single time they met.

Being impatient and surly with her also made certain she would never guess that the mere sight of her left him reeling like a pig brought out for slaughter and knocked over the head with a stick.

“Desculpe, Senhor Illingworth,” Inez snapped, yanking the door wide with not the least apology in her manner. She glanced behind him, then leaned forward to check the narrow street on either side. She smelled of yeast and barley, and Joseph manfully resisted the urge to lean forward and bite her slender neck. Her voice was a low, husky purr, and every time he heard it, every time, he had to shove aside a sudden desire to hear that voice purring in his ear in the dark of his bed.

“Are you in some sort of trouble, Inez? Again?”

Trouble always seemed to loom at his door; Amaranthe had made a habit of inviting it in. Joseph didn’t know Inez’s complete circumstances, only that her father was a sailor and her mother, she never spoke of. She seemed to have difficulty keeping positions, for she never stayed in George Court for any great length of time. But after trying her luck elsewhere, she always turned up again in his hall, her dark hair bound beneath a scrap of lace, a plain gown outlining her extraordinary figure, her beauty a haunting accusation.

Most other gents establishing their standing as tutors of young gentlemen in history and languages, Joseph was aware, didn’t permit their maids to leave and then turn up again whenever they pleased. No one, not even his own employees, thought him worthy of respect.

“Trouble? Why would you presume I am in some sort of trouble?” She smoothed a hand over her cap, discovered the locks of escaping hair, and made to put them in order. Her fingers trembled. “Or are you suggesting I am the cause of the trouble?”

“You behave as if you are hiding from something. Why bar my own door against me?” He stalked into the small parlor, filled with light from the tall, many-paned windows, and threw himself into the upholstered chair. He scowled at Inez.

“Why do you not have your key?” She scowled back.

“I have my misplaced my key.” He leaned his head on the back of the wooden chair and stared at the plastered ceiling. “I have misplaced the key to everything, it would seem.”

Inez stood a moment as if debating whether this was an English idiom she had not yet learned. She left the room with a quiet rustle of her skirts.

Another man might not have heard her. But Joseph, regrettably, was attuned to every movement she made. Every flutter of a dark curl against her silken check. Every whisper of breath that filled and lifted her deliciously curved bosom. Her scent, sweet and earthy, pervaded his house. The maddening fragrance compounded every time she arrived without explanation or notice, and lingered each time she disappeared.

“Eat.” She returned with a tray, interrupting his speculations. “You left without breaking your fast. And you could not have stopped at a shop along the way, because you left your purse here too.”

He had, drat it. Joseph sat up as she deposited the tray on a small occasional table at his side. A golden-brown cake of bread exuded a delicious yeasty smell through its cracked crust, and small dishes held fresh butter and honey. The coffee was dark and hot and black, with a small dish of warmed milk to go with.

Inez didn’t drink tea; apparently, in Portugal, it was a habit reserved for the elite, and that Inez’s mother had not been. Amaranthe had rarely served tea, given the tax, but Inez liked coffee. So did Joseph. He often visited the nearby coffee houses, but Inez knew where to find some rich, delicious blend that showed up in the house when she did.

She’d been showing up for two years, on and off, with no account of where she came from—at least to him—and no account of where she went when she left. When Amaranthe married the duke and went off to live in his many houses, Joseph had kept the premises in George Court. And when Joseph left for his Grand Tour, Inez watched over the house.

He didn’t know how she had become acquainted with his sister, and had never asked. Women’s friendships were their business, and he was well aware that women inhabited a secret world of their own making, one men were rarely permitted to glimpse, much less enter.

Inez’s place in the world seemed even less secure than Joseph’s. She wasn’t his housekeeper, nor was she his guest. She appeared when she needed a roof over her head and worked in whatever capacity his housekeeper required, and she departed as easily as she came. Without leaving information about where to contact her.

She didn’t come to rob him; the housekeeper reported nothing missing following one of Inez’s vanishing acts, not food, not trinkets, not moveable goods. The last time she’d left, he’d inquired after her whereabouts and was surprised that no one knew where she’d gone.

Yet here she was again.

“Join me.” It wasn’t a request.

She curled her fingers into her apron. Her brown skin was a warm contrast against the bleached linen, her coal-black hair a more vivid contrast still. With her full red lips and the deep brown eyes heavy with dark lashes, she was a splash of vibrant color, an unforgettable tumult of a woman.

“Sit.” He pointed to one of the delicate Queen Anne chairs, Amaranthe’s selection, as was most everything in the house. He tipped a mouthful of milk into a cup, then filled it with coffee and passed the dish to her. “Where have you been?”

She sat where he indicated, her face growing guarded. Some veil dropped behind her eyes—not that he could read her under any conditions. She was the most eye-catching and yet inscrutable woman he had ever met—an irritating combination.

“I’ve been taking care of my father.”

That gentleman seemed to be ill often; he was the excuse Inez used often to account for her disappearances. When she bothered to make an account at all.

“And he is well now?”