Page 35 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

CHAPTER NINE

He was just going to send her home again.

And she would just keep coming back.

For one thing, she had nowhere else to go. That was the reason she would give him, Inez decided. If she didn’t belong anywhere, then why not go with him?

She peered anxiously out the window of the chaise, trying to see through the rain that had become a full-blown downpour shortly after the coach departed Hounslow. Surely the rain would keep away gentlemen of the road, who infamously haunted this well-traveled five-mile stretch of Hounslow Heath. And not all of them were as courteous as the legendary Claude Duval. Lord North, the prime minister, had been attacked here a few years ago, and more recently, Lord Berkley had shot his assailant, or so went the reports of the broadsheets and street hawkers.

She didn’t want to imagine what Joseph might do if a robber stopped his coach, given the current state of his temper.

She would have, until quite recently, thought Joseph Illingworth the most mild-tempered of men. She would never have put money on him in a fight, unless it were with words. He was a man who lived almost entirely in his head and had to be reminded to eat on occasion.

Something had happened on his Grand Tour to change and age him. Like a Madeira wine, he’d matured, deepened, grown complex. More polished on the outside, and stronger on the inside. When he’d turned at the call of “baronet,” his back straight, his jaw thrust at that arrogant angle, she’d have believed him a man bred from the cradle to believe he was superior to other people, and thus deserved more.

Perhaps that was why he’d refused to bring her with him, even after their embrace. Perhaps that was the reason he sent her away when she followed, too stubborn to heed his directive. He was a baronet now.

She apprehended British titles somewhat, and while baronet was not the greatest—not a peer, not a position that merited a seat in the House of Lords—it meant he was called Sir Joseph Illingworth. He would bear a family emblem and motto and a coat of arms and have a genealogy he could roll out to impress the lesser, as had all the great and ancient houses of Portugal. He would command an estate of his own in the pocket of the island where he hailed from, Cornwall, which both he and Amaranthe spoke of as if it might be the last remnant of the Garden of Eden.

There was no place in his life for a servant girl, a widow, a penniless orphan who was one misfortune away from selling herself for coin.

So why couldn’t she simply walk away from him? How many times would she allow him to reject her? This was a terrible idea, she saw that now. The chaise, though well-sprung and far more comfortable to travel in than the stagecoach, dipped and tilted as its wheel went through a widening puddle. The road was becoming treacherous, and she was being a fool.

She struggled to lower the pane of the window without letting the rain lash her face. “Jock,” she called as they passed a stand of tall shrubs, ideal for sheltering thieves. The words stung her tongue, but she would concede that the groom had been right and they were better off returning to London than, as Jock had put it, raking after her swell in a mud not fit for hogs. “I think⁠—”

“Aye, the rattler’s spilt, that’s what,” Jock called back. “I see it too.”

“Spilt?” Inez pressed her face to the opening in the window. “Do you mean the coach has tipped over?”

“Their knight o’ the whip’s no fly one, iffen he let a rig like that off its wheels,” Jock scoffed. “Well, let’s go see what the lay is, then, and hope we can keep the mumpers and buffers away.”

Mumpers, Inez knew, where those who robbed coaches, and buffers killed horses to sell their skins. One did not spend time in Dark Lane without acquiring some knowledge of street cant or developing an awareness of the lively and inventive trade of theft, as well as meager ways to guard oneself from it.

She did not fear highwaymen; she had nothing of value to lose, except him. Inez yanked at the window, attempting to wrestle the recalcitrant pane into submission. If Joseph were injured—if Joseph were dead—and her last image was of him staring at her as if she were a feast and he a man determined to deny himself… She had to know why she wasn’t good enough for him. She needed to know that, and then, perhaps, she could let go.

She jumped from the chaise before Jock had fully halted the horses. “Hey now, mind yerself!” the groom called. “Them nags’ll be gummy after a spill.”

She wasn’t concerned about the horses. The coachman had the team of four corralled at the verge of the road, his whip out as he kept them from bolting. Rain glistened on the harness and their coats of bay and gray and black. Jock checked his own mounts, then, while Inez approached the fallen coach, he swung to the ground, pulled his crutches from the fender of the chaise, and went to the heads of the coach horses. In a moment he had all four of the blinkered heads pulled together, the animals quieting as he rubbed noses and fed them grass from his hand. The man wasn’t simply a skilled groom and jockey; he was a sorcerer.

The coach lay on its side along the muddy road, one axle cracked where the wheel had caught and wrenched in a rut. Belongings lay strewn along the verge, and some lumps turned out to be passengers, huddling under their coats and complaining. Moans and curses filled the air, along with the whimpers of women and the wailing of a small child.

A mother sat with her mud-splattered knees drawn to her chest, hugging her infant to her with one arm and a basket of goods with the other, desperately trying to shush the shrieking child. A young boy with a red welt marking the side of his face helped an elderly gent to his feet, searching for and finding the round hat of black wool that the lad punched back into shape before handing to his elder.

Another young man who had been thrown from the roof staggered to his feet, looked groggily about him, and then took off at a run over the tall grass of the heath, rain splattering his leather coat and workman’s cap. Inez hadn’t time to wonder what crime he was escaping.

Joseph was nowhere in sight.

“I won’t!” From inside the vehicle came the screech of a woman’s voice in the accents of one aspiring to the middling class. “The indignity of it! Right the coach this instant and I will descend in the proper fashion.”

“The coach isn’t going to be righted any time soon, madame.”

That was Joseph’s voice, clipped and frustrated, but full of that new command. An odd current weakened Inez’s knees, and she leaned a hand on the battered body of the coach to hold herself upright. One wheel still spun slowly through the air, as if it recalled its function even though it had been parted from the ground.

“Your only recourse is to climb out,” Joseph insisted. “Call for someone above to help you.”

“As if I would allow just anyone to touch me!” the woman exclaimed. “You, sir, have no notion how to treat a lady.”

“A lady would have the proper sense to get herself out of this coach,” came Joseph’s sharp response. “If you wish to remain, then move aside and let me depart.”