Page 44 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

CHAPTER TWELVE

Inez was glad she was sitting and could not betray the weakness in her knees at the sight of Joseph when he stepped into her room. He’d tidied himself, leaving traces of damp in the hair that tumbled across his forehead and the sideburns that framed his lean, carved cheeks. He’d brushed his coat and changed his neckcloth. He traveled with no less than three so he always had fresh while one was being laundered and one lay ready and waiting in his valise.

The man would forget to polish the buttons on his coats—someone else must have done it for him, she thought, seeing the gleam—but he was meticulous about his neckcloths. The knowledge was yet another tender shoot curling about her heart, to be yanked free in a day or three when they parted.

He gave her a small bow. “You look lovely. Refreshed.”

“The bath was just what I needed. Thank you.”

She smelled lavender on her skin and the blend of jasmine and sweet oil she had combed through her hair. The innkeep had also delivered a tooth powder, which smelled of alum and myrrh. The woman was her own version of Mother Vesta, beautifying Inez for her night and sending up their meal accompanied by elderflower wine, her own, she had sworn, which tasted very like Frontiniac.

Inez didn’t know the least thing about French wines, but she could affirm that Mrs. Truckle’s wine was delicious. The warmth curled her toes and sent exploratory fingers of giddiness around her sides and into her belly.

Or perhaps that was due to Joseph.

He tugged at the back of one of the carved oak folding chairs that the boots boy had delivered, shortly after the table. Inez supposed such pieces of furniture were reliably handy for inns regularly used as meeting places.

“I could have dined with the Philosophical Club and saved you the trouble.” He flared the tails of his coat over the sides of the chair as he sat, his posture as erect as if he were at a military drill. His knees lightly tugged at the cloth laid over the table. He picked up and examined his fork, tapping the ends of each of the three tines with his finger.

For some reason, that gesture, his noting the old fashioned style of the silver, when more modern forks had four tines, made Inez acutely conscious that they sat in a pub nearly two centuries old in a town that was said to have been founded by the Romans, but which boasted, not far away, the silent soaring henge of a much earlier people. They sat together, sharing a meal, inside a tradition that stretched back to the dawn of Creation, man and woman together, she made for him as companion and lifemate.

Bedmates.

Joseph was nervous. She could tell by the way he lifted and examined his knife, then put that down too. She pushed the platter of beef his way with a gentle nudge.

“Will you carve?”

“Of course,” he said, clearly grateful for the task. Inez watched his hands. He had left off his gloves for dining, as had she, and the intimacy of his bare fingers made her think of how those hands might feel sliding across her skin.

“When do we reach Callington?” she asked, to give him something more to occupy his mind.

“Two more days on the road, I’m afraid. Tomorrow night, unless we wish to stop somewhere else, we’ll stay in Honiton. There’s a coaching inn there Jock likes, run by a friend of his, apparently. He says everyone in Exeter is a shark or a snaffler, which I believe means he is apprehensive they will steal his purse.”

Inez smiled and accepted the plate with its slab of beef. It was more than she was accustomed to eating, a man’s portion, and the small gesture—that he would give her as much as he would take for himself—fed those small tendrils sprouting about her middle. She’d be choked by them before the meal ended if she weren’t careful.

She poured wine for him into one of the goblets, glass, not pewter. This was the finest table she’d been at in some time, and that spoke to her unworthiness of him, didn’t it? What was stooping to traveler’s lodgings for him, making do with earthenware plates and homemade wine, was to her as fine as a feast.

Aye, she couldn’t keep him, not one as she was. But she could have him for a night or some, couldn’t she? Did she not deserve a bit of comfort and tenderness, and didn’t he as well? Mrs. Truckle had as much as assumed that they were intimates. She saw no reason Joseph wouldn’t want Inez, even with her past, even with her dark skin.

“The wine is well enough?” Her smile widened as he drank from his cup, then looked into the goblet with surprise.

“As good as any that I had in France, though I admit I could not afford the very best wines. Rabbit?”

“Yes, and some greens as well, please.”

Her heart softened like a bruised fruit as he arranged her plate, though all was well enough within her reach that she could select her own fare. He didn’t serve himself first and expect her to fend for herself; he fixed her plate first, then his. She slid her fingers against his palm as he handed her the heavy earthenware, and he startled slightly.

Revulsion, or something else?

“Isn’t it your purse?” Inez asked, cutting her meat. “That Jock is carrying, I mean.”

Joseph scowled at his plate. “It’s Amaranthe’s bit. She sent a purse with Jock. I’m fortunate she didn’t send the Hunsdon traveling carriage. That would call down the snafflers for certain.”

“Your own coach would ease your travel considerably, I should think.” And most men would want that. Joseph Illingworth was indeed very much unlike other men.

He shuddered. “And make us a spectacle. People turning into the street to watch a ducal carriage go by. Children running ahead of us into the inn, hoping to get a glimpse of a duke or duchess. And then to find it is only my plain self. And you, of course.”

She lifted one eyebrow. She had learned this early on, how to raise only one brow, and she enjoyed the intimidating effect it generally had on men making her offers she did not wish to accept. “I am a disappointment too, you are saying?”