Page 59 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

If she were the lady of Penwellen, she wouldn’t use the dark, drab parlors but would sit on this sunny porch, taking her tea and catching up on correspondence, chatting with callers and planning with the housekeeper for dinners and holidays and small parties now and again for her and the baronet, to provide amusement and keep good relations with their neighbors.

But Penwellen did not have a lady. Nor a proper staff, from the looks of things, and had not in some time, if this lovely room had been given over to storage.

Four bedrooms occupied the upper floor, one suite with a large powder room useful for dressing, and a nursery with a small cupboard off the side with a bed for a nurse. Inez denied the pang that shot from her heart to her belly at the sight.

She had never longed for a child, never imagined herself with one. But the thought of Joseph’s children asleep in this room, their brown curly hair spilling over these pillows, coals in the grate as their mother rocked in the chair and read to them⁠—

She turned away. “The kitchens?”

The kitchens sat empty, the tables bare and waiting. The great hearth smoked quietly with a smothered fire, banked and ready to be stirred to life. Wenna set the broomstick in the scullery and wiped her hands in her apron as she looked around.

“I suppose the new sir will want his supper,” she said, “and it’s I and Old Jupe to make it. Just as well, as the stores’ll be going pindy soon if we don’t use ’em.”

“I’ll help.” The words popped out before Inez could consider their wisdom.

Wenna raised an eyebrow. “You being⁠—?”

She’d done it before, hadn’t she? Worked her way onto his staff to be under his nose and look after him. Watched and longed for him from afar while he went about his Joseph-like ways, not seeing more than an inch of the way before him.

There was something, too, about the dignity of the woman beside her, confiding in Inez as if she were the overseer of the house already. Inez wanted to be her confidante. Her equal.

This was the way to fix her position here.

“I am his housekeeper,” Inez said.

“You are not my housekeeper.” Joseph faced the dressing mirror with a frown and flipped his neckcloth a different way.

“Then what am I?” She focused on folding the stack of white linen she’d unpacked from his valise.

Inez and Wenna had spent an hour earlier preparing the master’s chambers for Joseph. Together they’d aired the drawers of the cupboard, tugged the embroidered coverlet off the bed, turned the goose down tick and beat it to a light airiness. Wenna knocked the dust from the rich brocade canopy that hung atop the four posters, catching what fell in her apron. Inez swept the rug and did her best to polish the windows. The dressing room was broad and airy with a window of its own and a writing desk, the flap tipped up and locked.

“Gad, I can’t even do this right!” Joseph tugged at the band of linen and threw it on the desk.

“Let me.”

She stepped close with a fresh length of linen in hand. Hiring a valet would be a necessity if he wanted to live the life of a country gentleman, but there was a whole host of things the house needed first. His meeting with the solicitor tonight would better reveal the state of things, for good or for ill, and Joseph was nervous as a cat on hot bricks about it.

He didn’t answer her question, only studied her face as she twined the cloth gently about his neck, arranging the folds as he liked them. “You cannot pretend you are my housekeeper,” he said at last, his voice low.

He was close enough that she could rise on her toes and press her lips to his. She wanted to. His mouth was pressed in the firm, worried expression he had worn since his first survey of the house and grounds with Thaker, and the report on the animals from Jock.

She wanted back the delighted, rumpled Joseph she’d found in her bed the last two nights, the one who grinned at her with brown curls tumbling across his brow, his eyes dancing with mischief, his mouth moist from kissing her. An ache traveled through her breasts and belly, a pain she feared would be her constant companion now.

The former Baronet had been a vain man, and mirrors stood all over the dressing room. Inez saw herself reflected back, so close to being in Joseph’s arms, yet not held. Not bound by oaths or duty, only mutual desire.

She’d found the only way she could to hold him to her, to keep from being sent back to London with Jock. Would he allow her to stay?

“You’ve need of a housekeeper,” she reminded him. “Mrs. Wadge didn’t keep the place up as she ought have done, Wenna says.”

“I am not going to behave as if you are a servant.”

Then what was she to him? Why could he not say?

She twisted the ends of the neckcloth and tucked them among the ruffles of his shirt, then smoothed the deep lapels of his waistcoat. The heat of his skin, his neck, his strong chin, curled around her fingertips. She’d shaved him that morning, an office she’d performed for her husband and knew how to do well. Hours later, the stubble shadowed his splendid jaw, accenting rather than hiding the arrogant shape. She wanted to follow the line of that jaw with her lips.

“You mean to advertise me as your mistress, then?”

His thick eyebrows drew together. Had he not given this any thought? They’d had days on the road together. Had he truly brought her all the way to Cornwall with no notion of what to do with her when they arrived?