Page 36 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

A muttering filled the ensuing pause, and then a grudging, “Oh, all right then. Since you must be so uncivil about it.”

A woman’s head emerged from the open door of the stagecoach, now slanted incongruously on its side. Her powdered wig was enveloped in a calash, one of those enormous collapsible bonnets, this one decorated with ribbons and bows of a bilious green.

“I require assistance,” she announced as if she were a duchess commanding help from a footman. Inez almost giggled. Amaranthe, an actual duchess, would never take such a supercilious tone with someone in her employ.

Inez started forward. “I can help you.”

She heard the stillness, the alertness that traveled through Joseph’s body at the sound of her voice. She felt the same prickle of awareness traveling down her spine. She felt the same heightened nervousness, knowing he was near.

“You might call for Jock,” Joseph said after a moment, and she sensed the effort he made to keep his voice even and cordial. “He’ll have the upper body strength required to—er, be of aid.”

“He’s with the horses,” Inez answered. She pointed to the young man with the developing bruise. “You. Take one arm, and I’ll take the other.”

“Ruffians,” the woman moaned. “Urchins. Putting their hands upon my person.”

As if subjecting herself to the rack, she held out her arms. She would not be easy to lever out of the turned vehicle, as Joseph had warned. Her layers and layers of wool sheathed the form of a woman who enjoyed the luxury of abundant food as well as abundant clothing, along with the luxury of having a laundress to get her linens that glowing white.

“You pull, I’ll push,” Joseph said from inside.

Inez glimpsed a sliver of his face. He was crouched on the opposite door, which had been bent out of its frame by the impact. His cocked hat held a dent she hoped had shielded the precious head within. A gleam of red-gold in his eyes held an emotion she couldn’t decipher.

He was unhurt. He was here. Her insides turned to a mash resembling the cornmeal porridge she had eaten so many times as a child, an inexpensive dish that the cook in the neighboring house often seemed to make too much of for the family breakfast.

“Your hands, sirrah!” the woman shrieked as Joseph disappeared behind her massive skirts.

“It’s a rump pad anyway,” came Joseph’s muffled voice. “Heave, ho!”

The woman sprang free of the aperture with a scuff of damp wool and the fumes of a toilet water heavily scented with attar of roses. “I shall never recover!” she wailed. “My husband the brewer shall have something to say to all of you. The coachman. The innkeep. The owner of this shabby, unfit vehicle⁠—”

“Anyone else in there?” Inez called down once it was clear to peer inside.

His strange expression was acquiring more definition. It wasn’t annoyance. It wasn’t resentment or long-suffering forbearance. He looked a man who had been served his favorite pudding and could not bring himself to believe it was all for him.

Inez sat back as he levered himself out of the door, the last of the occupants to clear. He did not need her assistance; the flex of his shoulders and arms in the greatcoat said he possessed the required upper body strength.

The cries and calls and imprecations around her fell away. The low moans of the wounded and indignant were the murmur of insects in her ear. Joseph slid to his feet on the road, then turned and held out his arms for her. Without a word, Inez tilted into them.

And this, finally, was what she’d been waiting for. What she’d wanted all along. His arms around her.

“What will happen next?” she asked to keep her mouth occupied, because it wouldn’t do to kiss him here in the middle of the muddy road with all these people about them.

“The coachman sent a boy to run for help. He’ll ask for a wagon at the gunpowder mill, I expect, or go on to Feltham to see if they can spare a conveyance. Come to the worst, Bedfont is only a mile or two ahead, I think. Most will be able to walk it.”

He was tall, his shoulder at the level of her ear, and she felt safe in the circle of his arms. He eyed the brewer’s wife, who was busily dressing down the coachman for his inefficiency and threatening all the ways the brewer was destined to demonstrate his disapproval of how his fair lady had been treated.

“Lud, what a clutter yer makin’!” the coachman griped at her. “Want you bring out the gemmun of the road? They’d be happy to relieve ye of yer baubles, and mayhap that nugging dress. Sure and go on to draw their attention, won’t ye? Whyn’t ye flash the King’s picture and set all the Tyburn blossoms upon us while yer about it.”

He sneered as the woman promptly screwed her lips shut and set off in a huff in the opposite direction, bemoaning the rudeness of the help.

“They won’t set on us when we’re primed and ready,” Jock observed.

“Ye want the clapper claw at ye?” said the coachman, incredulous. “I’d nip’er bung meself iffa thought it wouldn’t land me in college.”

Inez turned from this lively conversation to Joseph, who was observing the passengers as they sorted out their various aches and woes and, in some cases, their belongings.

“And what will become of us?”

She held his gaze, her insides feathering at the look in his eyes. Not disdain. Not reproach. Something she hadn’t seen yet from him.