Page 72 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

“Brother to a duchess,” Inez answered. “Does Mr. Treen also sell pins?”

Wenna parted ways at Mrs. White’s, for her work was done. Before Inez reached the next stall, word had gone down the shambles. Mrs. Da Costa was housekeeper to the new baronet! Former maid to the Illingworth lass as became a duchess! Mrs. White only let her move on to complete her marketing after promising to share recipes for ale and small beer, clotted cream, and vegetable seeds in the autumn.

Inez’s heart cracked as she moved down the shambles and found eager welcome. She wouldn’t be here in the autumn to share seeds for next summer’s gardens. She would not be bringing the locally famous Penwellen cheese to the harvest festival. She would be gone, carried away like a cottongrass seed on the wind.

She had nowhere in the world she wanted to be, without Joseph Illingworth.

Yet she could not bear to remain near and know he felt so much less than she did. This had broken her again and again in London, and it was breaking her now. So she would do what she had always done.

But she ached to leave this. Finished marketing, arms laden down with every item on Wenna’s list, she joined the couple as Thaker loaded meat in the cart. Wenna haggled for the flour that would last the summer until they had their own grain to take to Haye Mill, and Inez stood stroking the lengths of fabric that had come fresh from the looms of a place called Rosecraddoc, wanting to sob out her misery. The fabric would outfit the new maids at Penwellen, and she would never see them wear it.

“Ye’ve just pins to fetch, aye?” Wenna asked. “Me ansome and self’ll be at the Bull’s Head for a pint and parwhobble when you wants us.”

“I’m told I can find pins at Mr. Treen’s.”

Wenna shook her head. “Geddon, and doan let ’ee jowse you. Ee’s a Devoner, that ’un.”

Everyone Wenna didn’t like was a Devoner—a foreigner. The little maid from the inn in Amesbury, too, had said something about Mr. Treen.

Joseph didn’t like the man, either. But thoughts of Joseph were a spear in her heart, and Inez pushed them aside. She had nothing to drag back to London with her but heartbreak. She might as well leave with a full complement of pins.

Treen’s millinery lay close by the church in an old timber building that had been refaced with stucco and painted to resemble the light gray local stone. Multi-paned windows set out into the street allowed glimpses of the many treasures inside. Two rows of windows looked from stories above, set close enough together to suggest the low, cramped floors of an earlier century. The window settings and cornice were very plain, as was the style of the doorway. Somehow Inez had expected a more extravagant presentation from Mr. Treen.

The extravagance waited inside in the form of the man himself, dressed in a glistening coat of orange silk with full skirts and an extra row of bronze buttons. He wore a powdered toupee with a long pigtail, a lace-trimmed neckcloth, and an unctuous smile. He bowed as if she were a lady of the gentry.

“My dear miss—what was your name, dear? I believe the baronet neglected to introduce us when I called at Penwellen the other day.”

He affected a lisp, like a London dandy, and wore an enameled case for toothpicks and a silver snuffbox attached to the many chains across his heavily embroidered waistcoat. Mr. Treen was a walking advertisement for his trade in fashionable accessories.

“Mrs. Da Costa,” Inez said, and the name became easier each time she said it. As if there were a real woman named Mrs. Da Costa who was a capable administrator of the household of a titled man, a woman of skill and competence, a woman who merited respect from those around her.

“Oh, yes.” Treen’s gaze trailed over her figure, resting with an insolent length of time on her breasts and hips. “The housekeeper.”

His sneer said he meant housekeeper to mean whore.

Inez stiffened her back. “I am in need of pins, Mr. Treen. Steel, if you have them. I won’t trouble you long.”

“Nay, you must not simply run away, Mrs. Da Costa. As if we were merely business acquaintances! When I wish us to be so much more.”

Inez was accustomed to deciphering lecherous hints from men. There was the leer of invitation from the scoundrel who assumed she would be thrilled by the honor of his attentions. There was the shifty side-eye of the man straying from the course of faithfulness to another, the one who would blame Inez for leading his thoughts to wander.

Then there was the man who wanted to draw out the game, who wanted to stalk and survey, to stoke his own appetites while he teased his prey. Lord Wigsby had been such a one. Inez guessed Treen was another.

“I’ve friends waiting for me at the pub,” she said. “Just a small packet of pins, and if you do not have them, it is no matter. I shall look for a peddler to come through.”

Another lie, as she wouldn’t be here.

“As if a woman like yourself should have any business with a peddler.” Treen took her elbow without asking permission. “Mrs. Da Costa, everything about you suggests you are made for the gentlest of circumstances. I cannot think such a green baronet as the man I met at Penwellen has the sense to honor you as he ought. Begging your pardon if you feel any affection for your master,” he added, in an emphasis on the word master that meant protector and not employer. “I hope in time your trust will not prove to have been misplaced. Do come meet my mother.”

“I hardly think she will want acquaintance with a housekeeper, Mr. Treen.”

“I am aware I do you an honor, but I cannot think that a woman of your qualities is destined long for the humble rank of housekeeper, Mrs. Da Costa.”

He lowered his gaze to her bosom with frank appreciation. Inez was very glad she had worn her neckerchief crosswise over her bodice and tucked the ends into her waist. Treen lifted his eyes to hers and winked—winked!—as if they had reached a silent understanding.

“Oliver, watch the shop for a moment, will you? I’m showing Mrs. Da Costa upstairs.”

Inez couldn’t fathom what the man was about as he conducted her upstairs. As was the current custom in England, the receptions rooms were on the first floor, the piano nobile. Three women sat in the parlor, arrayed in the latest of fashionable fripperies along with billows of silk and muslin, towers of powdered curls, and hats large enough to shelter a child’s cradle.