Page 4 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

Her lashes swept over her cheeks. “He will not need me again.”

“Good Lord. I’m very sorry.” Joseph clacked his cup of coffee on the tray, taken aback.

She’d given no sign that she was suffering, no indications of mourning in her attire.

“I had no idea you were bereaved. Shouldn’t you be—are there arrangements that need to be made?”

The lashes flew up, and as always, the attention of her dark eyes, with glints the color of well-aged whiskey, hit him like a smack to the face.

“He is not dead,” she said. “But he left on a sailing ship bound for Macau. I will not see him for over two years, if he ever returns.”

She said this in such a flat tone, Joseph was bewildered. Granted, having been deprived of his parents nearly ten years ago, he was not an expert on filial relations. But if his father had suddenly announced he meant to part from the family for a span of months if not years, some distress would have accompanied this pronouncement, at least on Joseph’s part.

“You will miss him?” he asked cautiously.

She pressed her lips together, a move that did little to tame their fullness. “I will not miss having to provide for him. Surrendering what coin I earn for his keep, or to pay his debts. I will not miss the search to hunt down whatever slum or sty he had taken cover in.”

Her lips turned down at the corners, and a line furrowed her smooth brow. “But he is ill. This is likely to be his last voyage. And I will not be there to bury or to mourn him.” She let her gaze fall to the floor. “He said he has been away from his people so long, he can have no claim to have his passing honored with his customs.” Tears glimmered on her dark lashes. “Would you not think, after more than two score years, I could be considered his people?”

The pain in her expression had Joseph reaching out a hand to her. He caught himself before his bare fingers touched her cheek and snatched the offending limb back to his side.

He had no right to try to soothe. He had no place in her life that gave him the right to touch her, not even as a fellow being who knew how it felt to be left.

Fortunately she did not see his trespass. Joseph cleared his throat and strove for a placating tone.

“Perhaps his illness makes it difficult for him to perceive how you would feel about his departure. Surely, if he knew, he would not abandon you to fend for yourself.”

She clasped her fingers to the sides of her apron. When she lifted her face, her expression was fierce. “I am not abandoned.”

“I only meant—well, of course not.”

“I have been fending for myself for over ten years. Ever since my mother died.”

“No doubt you have.” He wanted to say he had been doing the same, along with supporting a sister, but he had a glimmer of apprehension that Inez would not appreciate this confidence. Also, he had not exactly supported Amaranthe; she, like Inez, had a way of fending for herself, and taking pride in doing so.

Inez rose, the swish of her skirts delivering that subtle, delicious scent of hers into the air. “I did not intend to become maudlin. I should be happy that he has finally found work. It did not suit him, life on shore, and his actions did not make it likely any other crew would want to hire him. He is doing what he loves, what meant more than the world to him, and if he should d-d⁠—”

She couldn’t force out the word, instead took a deep breath. “If he ends his life in the work he prefers, that is no small thing.”

“It always hurts,” Joseph said. “When they leave us. Even if they die. It is the way of the world, and even so, it feels like an abandonment.”

She sat suddenly and blinked at him, her eyes wide. “I had forgotten,” she said quietly. “That you have lost your parents, too.”

His circumstances were quite different, Joseph would admit. His father had been born the second son of a baronet and had lived like a gentleman, though his means were small; the parish of St. Cleer was not wealthy in a country known to be poor. His mother’s father had attained the rank of gentleman by virtue of success at his trade. Joseph’s parents had been much liked and respected in their community, and their connections to the baronet had elevated them to the top of St. Cleer’s social world, or what passed for such. He had never known the insecurity of which Inez spoke.

Yet, given the demand for sailors on merchant ships and the Royal Navy’s resorting to press gangs to find sailors, Inez’s father should have had as steady of employment as he liked. Even being a lascar, which meant he’d be paid less and treated worse in a line of service legendary for its inhospitality, an able-bodied seaman wouldn’t have been turned away. Britain’s sea trade, and its burgeoning Navy, ran on men.

They stared at one another, and the air in the room changed. Waves of sound flowed and ebbed from the streets surrounding them: the clop of shod hooves, the halloos of chairmen, the creak of wheels and the calls of children searching out their playmates. The light slanted in, casting a golden burnish across her cheek and the slender arch of her collarbone. Tiny motes of dust twirled and floated in dazzling combinations.

She was so lovely it hurt his throat to look upon her, yet he wouldn’t, for the life of him, tear his eyes away. That he should be confiding in Inez, of all people! The girl he’d been pulling caps with, like street cats fighting over territory, from the moment they met.

Her face softened, her guardedness giving way to a look almost tender.

“And now you have lost your sister as well,” she said.

“I didn’t misplace her. I know where she is.” The words came out more sharply than she deserved. Joseph took a bracing gulp of coffee to clear his head and shake his brain box out of his fanciful reverie.

He must not think of touching Inez. Kissing Inez. Good heavens, the woman was employed under his roof. Or, if not employed, seeking shelter. He might not have much to recommend him, but he possessed some small scraps of honor.