Page 84 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

Wigsby wavered. Really, for all his cunning, the man had the worst instincts for self-preservation that Inez had ever seen. It came, she supposed, from being born to what he was taught was a position of superiority, and bred with an undeserved sense of his own importance alongside contempt for anyone beneath him.

Joseph had block-headed tendencies from time to time, but he would never be a tyrant. He was too sensitive, too aware. And he looked a conquering hero of old in his dusty coat and dirty boots, with the civilized ruffle of his neckcloth above his waistcoat and the deadly small sword in his steady hand.

He looked like a highwayman, and Inez discovered a heretofore interest in a fantasy of being kidnapped and carried away by a gentleman of the road.

“I-I won’t stand for this,” Wigsby stuttered. “All of you against me.”

“I am not greatly informed on points of law,” Joseph mused. “But my brother, the Duke of Hunsdon, has some training as a barrister. He might be disposed to advise me about actions available to a persecuted daughter, or a persecuted former maid, when her master brings false accusations to a court of law.”

Wigsby, his hands shaking, set the silk bag of jewels on the table.

“Robbers and thieves,” he swore. “You brought me here merely to steal from me again. I won’t stand for it.”

“You will have to stand for it elsewhere, but not here, unless you intend me to stain this Axminster rug with your blood.”

Wigsby paled beneath his powder. “Threatening a lord! I have witnesses.”

“I heard mention of Dark Lane.” Jock spoke from the doorway. Leaning on his crutches, which he had somehow got up the stairs, he didn’t appear a man disposed to physical combat. And yet Inez suspected that, did Jock intend to bar his lordship’s egress, Wigsby wouldn’t make it down the stairs.

“I heard mention of the Duke of Hunsdon,” Jock added with a careless air. “Meself, I wouldn’t want to get on that one’s hard side. He’s a devil if you poke ’im.”

Joseph sheathed his sword. “Jock, is his lordship’s conveyance below?”

“Ready and waitin’,” Jock confirmed.

Priscilla’s face fell as her father stormed from the room without looking at her, his stare of accusation—and, Inez feared, retribution—focused on Joseph. When he was gone, Inez groped for the back of a nearby embroidered chair and sank down upon it, too overcome to worry about the niceties of being seated when Priscilla wasn’t.

Joseph moved instantly to her side. “Did he hurt you?”

“Only threatened.” She reached out and he caught her hand, and the warmth and solidness of him made her melt. She wanted to curl herself inside his dusty coat, button herself against his heart, and stay there always.

“I suppose that means we won’t get the Meissen figures you wanted,” Pierre reflected. “Nor the last of your clothes, ma belle.”

“Pierre!” Priscilla put her hands to her face. “How can you think of my property at a time like this?”

“It is our property, ma cocotte, and our fortune,” Pierre protested, putting his arms around his wife.

Inez leaned her head against Joseph’s chest. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“Treen very obligingly gave me a horse. A sound, strong hack from the Callington coaching inn.”

“Didn’t founder ’im, neither,” Jock added. “He’s in the mews behind, mendin’ is bellows.”

“Proper done, me ansome,” Inez said with a smile. “As Wenna would say. I assume she told you?”

He stared into her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Inez glanced at the table with the jewels spilling from the silk cloth. It was all out of the bag, so to speak. He would see what she had done. Every argument for her lack of worth, laid before him as evidence.

She’d wanted to mend things. She’d wanted to come to him clean and free and ask him to say, clearly and finally, what she meant to him. But now, surely, she was tainted.

“I didn’t want you to see,” she managed past the knot in her throat. “I wanted it all to be at an end. Over and behind me.”

“Inez. My darling.” Joseph went to one knee beside her, clasping her hand between both of his. She could barely feel his grip through the heavy leather riding gloves. He stripped them off, threw them on the table, and repossessed himself of her hands.

“Don’t you know there is nothing you could do that would alter my esteem for you?”

“Esteem,” she echoed. It seemed a soft word. A word that daintily skirted the fringes of the roaring blaze that grew in her simply at his nearness, at his touch. At the earnest, steadfast way he stared at her, the cognac gleaming in his eyes. His eyes went that color when he was in the grip of passion. Inez tightened her hold on his hands.