Page 68 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

“Can I mine gravel and sell it?”

“Perhaps?” She didn’t know.

Joseph looked about him, shoulders slumping. “The first baronet enclosed what common land he could to make sheep pasture, so there’s not more land for further enclosure. The leaseholds are all in order and properly conveyed, so there’s no more income to be got there. Hoskyn said I could farm the fields on the Norfolk system, and that might yield more, if I can keep the sheep from eating the turnips and clover.”

He put a hand on the side of the wagon, levering himself back onto the plank beside her. Inez leaned into the comfortable weight of his leg against hers, as if she could offer support. The work horse, a glossy Suffolk Punch, snorted and stomped the ground as Inez handed over the reins. Joseph passed her the map and she studied it, matching the landmarks depicted on the rough sketch to what she could see in view.

“There’s not a lot of waste that could be made arable,” she noted. “The moors end here, though you’ve got a bit of river bottom over there, along the Lynher.”

“Which my tenants use for fishing, and if I want to keep good relations, I’ll give them access,” Joseph said. “I’ve a mind to try fishing myself. I might like it.”

“Then there’s the forest at the back edge of the property. Your own piece of Lendra Wood, which Wenna says is quite ancient, so it seems a shame to cut it down to raise grain.”

“We ought to explore Lendra Wood one day,” Joseph said. “Pack a basket. Spend the afternoon. It feels like it could have been made a thousand years ago, or even earlier. It was trod by people who were here before the Romans came. Inside of it, one can believe in fairies and elves and hobgoblins.”

Inez smiled to see him becoming fanciful. This was what she loved: when Joseph became speculative or erudite, talking to her of the things he imagined or read. “If we come across a friendly Puck who is a hand at the household chores, I won’t mind help churning the butter.”

“That is what that Treen was after the day before last,” Joseph remarked. “Asking me if I had any notion of selling. He seemed particularly interested in the wood and the land around it.”

Inez sorted through the visitors she’d shown inside in the several days since they’d arrived. Many were gentlemen of the neighborhood coming to call on the new Baronet, making certain to mention how welcoming their wives and daughters would be should Sir Joseph choose to call on or dine with them. Merchants offered their trade; tradesmen offered their services.

A card came from Lady Edgcumbe, wife of the Baron Edgcumbe, who invited them to call when the family summered at Cotehele, their manor in Calstock, which was only a few miles away. Swift inquiries on Inez’s part confirmed that Lady Edgcumbe, though gracious and comely, had no children but a lively boy of thirteen, and her husband was a vice-admiral rising through the ranks of naval and political service. They would be valuable neighbors for Joseph to cultivate, and it seemed Reuben, and Favella, had done their best to be ingratiating.

“Treen.” Inez recalled him now, a gentleman with large mother-of-pearl buttons on his coats, several chains tucked into his waistcoat, and a white-powdered physician’s wig more suited to men of the professions. Inez would not swear to it, but she suspected the man wore face powder and rouge. When she opened the front door, he had surveyed her up and down like she was a trull showing off her wares, then gave her an openly appreciative leer.

She hated men like that—men who assumed the right to evaluate every woman for her sexual allure, and then thought it a favor to inform the woman where she fell in his ranking. “He’s the one as runs the shop in Callington?”

“Along with several other interests, some which he shared with my cousin, according to the solicitor. I’ve yet to see that any of the speculations they engaged in together yielded a real profit. At any rate, he was keen to make an offer, and assured me he was the only interested buyer hereabouts who had the means to pay me a fair price.”

“Would you sell?”

“Not unless I must. If I’m lucky, there will be roes and rabbits in those woods, to add occasionally to your table.” He slid her a sidewise gaze. “If, that is, you insist on continuing as my housekeeper.”

“I believe I will.” Inez soothed her mittens over her linen apron, white and crisp and ironed just that morning, along with her cap and kerchief. “It suits me to have a say in the running of things. In George Court, you know, I always had to submit to the cook. But here, Wenna defers to me.”

“And you’ve been very frugal about managing so far. Thank you.”

“It is my pleasure,” she said, glowing at his praise, and yet disconcerted by the compliment. It was true she had taken on less staff than a house like this perhaps required. Aside from her and Wenna, she had hired a kitchen maid, a scullery maid, a chambermaid, and a hall boy who could be put to work outside when the occasion warranted. She could hire a footman and make Joseph impressive to his friends and neighbors, but she feared a footman would be cheeky to a housekeeper who was young and foreign-born and, he would soon learn, sleeping in the master’s bed.

Besides, a proper footman would want to report to a butler, and that was an extravagance the house could currently not support, given there was now to be an extra tax on indoor manservants. There was already the window tax to consider, the tax on any bricks they used to repair the outer buildings, and the taxes on the sheep, the carriage, and the silver plate.

“Though in truth,” Joseph said aloud, “you could govern the household just as well were you the baronet’s lady.”

She went absolutely still. The sunshine, which had not seemed intense otherwise, not the way it could be in Portugal, now beat down on her plain straw bergère hat. Pinpricks of sweat filled her cotton gloves.

“It isn’t done.” Her voice came out a whisper, the low haunting whistle through a reed. “It isn’t. A man of your stature marrying…a woman like me.”

He watched for ruts and pocks in the lane that led along the stream, really no more than a ditch that was currently filled with water. It made a convenient boundary, and neither of them needed to consult the map. Her heart jumped about in her chest as if were a treehopper, one of the strange brown bugs Joseph had pointed out to her.

“A woman like you,” he said slowly, turning the phrase over in his mouth. “Strong-willed, you mean. Beautiful. Clever, determined, passionate. A survivor. A woman who will not suffer a wrong to be done in her sight.”

“I fear it.” The words gusted from her. “I fear what your neighbors would say. Lady Edgcumbe, the mistress of Cotehele— She is the daughter of the Archbishop of York, remember. She may not at all approve of a baronet marrying his housekeeper.”

And the rest of the neighborhood would follow the lead of their great ones; their tastes and opinions were the law of the land.

“You are not my housekeeper.”

“But I am.”