Page 63 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

Jock, in the absence of any other messenger, had dispatched himself to Liskeard earlier, and taken the liberty, after contacting the solicitor, to add what he could find to Penwellen’s kitchen stores from the shops. Joseph feared it was poor fare, and this dinner would set a bar in Hoskyn’s mind that he would never be able to lift, later, to a more creditable standing.

But he needed to know how things stood with his new estate. With his life.

“Ah.” Hoskyn withdrew a pair of spectacles on a chain, polished them with a colorful handkerchief, and put them back in his pocket. “Of course, I do not have the accounts before me, though I welcome you to visit me at my premises in Liskeard. Or I might bring them to you here,” he added, and Joseph saw another of the new distinctions of being a baronet, aside from a grander reception in coaching inns. “But I believe, on the whole, I can give you a picture of where things stand.”

“I hope it is a picture that will please me,” Joseph said, rising as he heard footsteps in the hallway, someone bringing their dinner.

Hoskyn cleared his throat again. “I fear it will not,” he said.

Thaker entered, carrying a platter that Joseph took little note of, because Inez entered the room behind him.

Inez. She had sat across the table from him at their dinners on the road. Or on his lap, last night, as he fed her in between kisses.

If she were the lady of his house, she could have received Hoskyn in the parlor and he would have offered her a bow in greeting, in place of Joseph’s shabby reception. She would be garbed in a fine robe with jewels at her throat and hair, and she would sit down to a dinner service with a pattern she had chosen for her china, and she would fill in the gaps of conversation with clever remarks when Joseph ran out of things to say.

Hoskyn, too, regarded Inez with interest. “Oh, I say. You’ve brought your own staff. Where is your maid from, Sir Joseph?”

“London,” Inez said, stepping forward with wine. She poured it into Joseph’s glass first, meeting his eyes. Something fiery burned in those dark depths; she was angry with him. His gaze slid to her bosom and with great effort he hauled it back to her face. She waited, and he obediently swirled the wine to release the sediment, then sipped.

“My word.” He sipped again. “This is quite good.”

“Your cousin laid in an excellent cellar, Wenna says. One of his several indulgences for himself, while his people went about with less.” Inez turned to Hoskyn with a cordial smile, and Joseph battled a stab of jealousy. “My mother was Portuguese, and my father from Goa. I grew up in Portugal, actually.”

“Lisbon?” Hoskyn waited behind his chair, as if obeying the rule not to seat himself first in the presence of a lady. As if he sensed, from her proud and self-possessed demeanor, that Inez was meant to be the lady here.

She’d turned his rabble-scrabble request for provisions into something orderly and befitting a baronet’s table. Standing at the sideboard, she handed the serving dishes to Thaker, his hands nearly bursting through the too-small silk gloves. He had never in his life of service been called upon to serve in the house, and he was doing his best.

“Sagres.” Inez pointed discreetly where Thaker ought to arrange the dishes, then mimed serving up portions.

“Ah, that is where Prince Henry the Navigator had his school of map makers, is it not?” Hoskyn remarked. “Helping him map his conquests in the Age of Discovery.”

Joseph would bet Hoskyn, with his easy conversation and genial smile, his sense of calm assurance, had never had a door slammed in his face in his life.

“We might serve ourselves,” Joseph said to Inez, suddenly unable to bear the thought of her waiting on him. Calling himself his housekeeper, of all things, as if she were no more than a maid he was amusing himself with, and not the woman he wanted seated across the table from him in his lady’s chair.

He wondered what Hoskyn would do if he invited Inez to join them.

“Sit,” she said gently, and Joseph dropped into his folding chair as if the air had been let out of him. What was he to do with her?

She was correct: He couldn’t masquerade her as his ward and trot her out for parlor conversations or strolls through the shops of Callington. He’d never be able to hide what he felt for her, and ten minutes of conversation would establish for the small but elect sliver of genteel Cornish society that she was not gently born.

And he could not keep her here as his mistress. One might take such liberties in London, where the sheer size and energy of the town overwhelmed decorum. But rural societies tended to adhere more closely to the niceties, at least the ones he’d experienced, for the very fact of their remoteness from fashionable centers. And if she were known to be a fallen woman, she’d be thoroughly shunned. It wouldn’t be fair to her.

Yet to pretend to being his housekeeper. He glared at her across the small table, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes, instead cutting the pudding of baked pillas, the Cornish grain that Joseph had never seen grown anywhere else. Once Hoskyn and everyone established that she was his servant, he couldn’t elevate her beyond that.

He wouldn’t be the first gentleman who had confused the roles of housekeeper and mistress, he knew that much. But gentlemen didn’t marry their housekeepers.

He understood her reasoning. She wanted a wage from him, fair and honest, so she couldn’t be caught whoring. But in so doing she’d erected a barrier thicker than the wall that had separated Pyramus and Thisbe.

Beautiful, proud, glorious, aggravating woman.

“You’ll quite stand out in these parts, a woman of your good looks,” Hoskyn said as Inez spooned pickles onto his plate. “Though there’s many another like you here and about and along the coasts. Falmouth especially, but Plymouth too, I believe.”

Inez looked up swiftly. “Like me?”

“Yes. Erm, that is to say.” Hoskyn waved his hand before his face. “Less…fair of complexion?”

“Oh.” Inez returned to the pudding, looking relieved; Hoskyn was referring to her skin color, not her erotic liaison.