Page 71 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Good enough to take his pleasure with, but not good enough to carry his babe.

Not good enough to plan a future around.

These were the thoughts that swirled and dipped like old crows, pecking into Inez’s thoughts as Thaker drove her and Wenna in the cart to the market town of Callington.

At last, Joseph had declared what he felt for her.

Oh, he’d made that offhand remark about her running the house as his lady. But that had proven a fantasy, for the moment he realized what their passion could lead to, if it bore the conventional fruit, he’d been shaking with remorse and self-reproach.

To her, their joining had been beautiful, a culmination and confirmation of what she knew in her heart. A nearly religious ecstasy, if it wasn’t sacrilegious to say so. To him, it had been a grave error.

She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t endure wanting him and knowing he didn’t yearn for her the same way. She hadn’t been able to bear it before, all those times she’d fled George Court, and she could not bear it now. Not when her feelings ran so much deeper, twining and choking like many-fingered roots.

Wenna sat on the front board beside her husband as the cart jounced along the rutted road to Callington. Arthur, the carthorse, had shaken off his fright of the day before and stepped with a vigor meant to convey that pulling the nearly empty wagon with a few light humans was hardly a strain on his prodigious capabilities. Wenna kept sending back puzzled, inquiring glances, as if she sensed Inez’s distress and was anxious to ease it.

Inez pressed her lips into a smile and motioned with her hand to indicate that she was contentedly admiring the passing countryside. Gentle hills swelled with green, soft as a mother’s bosom. The dissolving morning fog lifted from the hollows to blur the etchings of occasional humps of trees. White lumps of shorn sheep browsed the pasture, waddling in their leisurely way.

It was all so very different from London, and from what she’d known in Portugal. Cornwall wasn’t just the end of Britain; it was the end of the known world, an escape from the modern day into something far older. It was as if, passing the River Tamar and the rocky outcrops of Dartmoor, one left the Age of Enlightenment for an ancient world, one that straddled the border between human industry and magic.

But still not a place that would welcome her, different as she was. Not even its fantastic history could make this an enchanted wood where the woodcutter’s daughter could win a prince’s love and become the princess of a castle.

She’d been a fool to appoint herself his housekeeper, she saw that now. She would live always a step below his notice, a step below what he could acknowledge. How could she live with this snare around her foot, holding her in a place unworthy of him? How could she live in the grip of this passion, knowing that all of her, heart, body, and soul, was not enough for him to love and cherish, to claim as his own?

Thaker stopped the cart in Fore Street, the main road which led west on to Haye and east toward Tavistock, and far beyond it, London. That was where she would go. She would go today. She would find Jock and ask if he wanted to go with her.

No, she could not leave at once. The stocking bag and its heavy burden lay in the cupboard of her room.

Inez stood on the street, caught in the shadow of the great medieval tower of St. Mary’s Church with its granite stones and battlements, which thrust its spires into the sky like the promise of justice. Or retribution.

That blasted bag. It was a shackle around her neck. A weight that would accuse her, always.

Unless she simply left it behind. Perhaps Joseph would find it. And perhaps there would be a reward if he returned the jewels.

Her moment of indecision cost her, for Wenna slipped a companionable arm around her elbow and pulled her along. Callington had earned its right to a market in the time of the great Elizabeth, and so the shambles were well developed, occupying what Wenna called Back Lane, which eventually stretched north and became the road to Launceston. The town could not be more than a thousand souls, with not above two hundred houses clustered around the triangle of its main roads, but here they could find all they needed.

“Molds for tallow candles.” Wenna counted on her fingers, the way she remembered lists. “A length of linen for aprons and caps for the new maids. A side of beef for the master’s table, and mutton for ours. I’ve my vegetable garden coming on, but we’ll want more flour with the new mouths to feed.”

Thaker signed something, and Wenna nodded. “Aye, and a rooster for the hens. We’ll see ye round and about, me ’ansome.” She blew a kiss in his direction as Thaker moved the horse down the street, then stood looking fondly after him.

A small, cool dart tingled Inez’s arms and shoulders. Envy. Wenna had a husband who adored her and two babes who, in the simple manner of children, thought the sun rose and set about their mother. Wenna went home at night to a snug stone cottage with a thatched roof to shelter her bed, and she sang as she went about her tasks in the kitchen, helped now by the extra hands to aid with the scullery and the laundry and dairy.

Wenna had found her place in the world, and joy in it.

“Yeast, should you want to brew your own beer.” Wenna continued thinking aloud as they moved toward the first of the market stalls. Behind the wooden counter with its heaps of fresh courgettes and radishes, presided over by a matron who looked as if she’d been up since well before cock crow, a cloth was spread on the ground. On it sat a baby in an undyed linen gown, chewing on a wooden spoon, while on a small stool beside him sat a girl of six or seven, sewing a pair of gloves.

“Alright, Mistress White?” Wenna greeted the matron.

“We’ve no need of courgettes, with your garden,” Inez noted. “But those are lovely gloves.”

Mrs. White inspected Inez’s forearms, covered in the knitted mitts she’d found in London. Fine ladies purchased gloves to cover their dainty hands; servants had no need of them during their work. Inez practically saw the woman’s thoughts churning as the other tried to size up her status.

“Mr. Treen is the one as sells the gloves, miss,” said Mrs. White. “His shop is one over, in Church Lane. My Jane’s a proper hand, she is, kid or cotton. He likes her work particular.”

“This pretty party is our new housekeeper at Penwellen,” Wenna said. “Mrs. Da Costa.”

“Ah.” Mrs. White’s face relaxed and warmed. “Penwellen, then? Mr. Joseph—aye, but it’s Sir Joseph now, ee’s the brother to a duke?”