Page 88 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

She looked away.

“Inez—”

“Oh, my goodness, that rise over there. Is that the henge you spoke of? Shall we go examine it? We can compare it to what your father wrote.”

“I don’t know what my father wrote, since he gave his friend all his papers,” Joseph grumbled. But he did not press her, and she wondered if it was because he was aware as she of the resistance he would meet when he tried to introduce his former housekeeper and a foreign-born woman as the new Lady Illingworth.

“Jock,” Joseph said suddenly, “turn here. We will examine the henge. And then cut above Coombe and come at Penwellen from the south. I want to show Inez—and you also—what I have discovered.”

She knew he must see it too, the great yawning gulf that stretched between them. And she wondered if marriage truly could bridge such a gap, or if they would both tumble into the abyss.

Joseph brooded as Jock drove them across the fields.

He’d claimed his woman. He’d followed her to Plymouth, he’d wrested her from the grasp of Wigsby—again—though it seemed less of a heroic gesture given he’d had Dervieux and Wigsby’s own daughter to second him on this occasion. Inez might feel that swords were somehow not as sturdy a fighting means as fisticuffs. Yet here she was beside him—had agreed to marry him, at that!—but he hadn’t won her yet, not entirely.

There was still some final barrier he hadn’t breached, and until he knew was that wall was, he couldn’t bring it down.

They passed the cottages of Doublepools, then the lone, crooked stone that marked the east boundary of his property. The land was at last under cultivation, thanks to Thaker’s help, but he would have to pray to all the powers for a good growing season, and a long one, for his own farm and the ones he leased.

He didn’t want to worry Inez with those concerns. He wanted her to believe he could provide for her. That he had something to offer her in return for the gift of her hand and her faith and her fealty.

She turned to him suddenly, her face partly hidden beneath the brim of her broad straw hat so all he saw was part of her cheek and the firm line of her jaw. Her beauty was a blow to him, always. When he’d come into the parlor at Plymouth and saw her standing there, so proud, so alone, he’d wanted to fall to his knees in homage then and there.

“Joseph,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Whose horse is that?”

He followed the direction of her pointing finger. A horse in saddle, with his reins trailing, trotted across the field toward them. The Hackney put in harness with Arthur, the one Joseph had ridden south, neighed a greeting, and Joseph wondered if the trotter were a fellow from the White Hart’s stables.

“I hope the rider hasn’t been thrown and is injured somewhere,” Inez remarked after Joseph had secured the horse to the back of the cart, where it ambled along behind them in an agreeable way.

“I hope someone isn’t on my property that should not be,” Joseph said grimly, thinking of Treen.

She watched his face carefully. “Are you regretting your offer of marriage to me?”

Had he been driving, he would have fumbled the ribbons.

“To you? No. Not in the least. I am only…”

Here it was, the chance to see the last barrier before him. To know how large, and how high, it truly loomed. He was not a man who would shrink from a challenge, and never would be again. Not when she was the prize.

“I fear you will think me too hasty,” he said quietly. “I can only offer you an estate in need of repair, and my hopes. And whatever virtues you might see in my humble self, though I am not aware there could be many.”

She laid her hand upon his. As always, her touch stirred the fire that lay banked within him, that hunger, that need for her.

“I do not wish to wait, unless you do,” she said.

“I do not. I wanted to carry you to Penwellen as my bride on our very first night together.”

“At Amesbury?”

“At George Court. The first day I kissed you, and knew for certain you were the companion I had searched for.”

Her gaze searched his. He saw her longing, and he saw her question. “I⁠—”

The impact came a half-second before he heard the sound, the thunder of a gunshot. His hat flew off his head, and he would swear later, with the precise attention that came from extreme peril, that he heard the quiet thunk as the round hit the thick felted wool.