Worth Lord of Reckoning (12 page)

“Where have you put your mite, Wyeth?”

He might have been sliding a hand up her thigh, so silky and intimate was his tone. The topic of her hard-earned coin was in some ways more personal than, well, kissing.

Some ways.

He wasn’t teasing, not about her money. So while he pretended to study the barley fields ripening around them, Jacaranda told him which investment projects had some of her coin, which funds a little more, which ones she’d discarded as poorly managed or too speculative.

“Prudent choices, though if you diversified more, you might see a faster gain with only a slight increase in risk.” He went on to suggest a modest revision to her investment strategy, and before Jacaranda knew it, they were approaching the covered bridge.

“Pull him up,” Mr. Kettering said. “He’s been tooling around like a good lad. He’ll appreciate a chance to blow in the shade.”

“You’re not about to kiss me again, are you?”

Because it would be like him to lull her into lowering her guard with talk of funds and interest and projects, then ambush her with another one of those lovely, devastating kisses.

“
Kiss
you? Why, Mrs. Wyeth, for shame, and me such a virtuous lad and quite timorous where the ladies are concerned.”

He popped out of the gig and came around to hand her down, except when Jacaranda gained her feet, he cupped her elbows and stood entirely too close.

“Would you like me to kiss you?” His eyes were grave, not a hint of humor in them, and his scent came wafting to her on a warm summer breeze. “Don’t answer me with words, Wyeth.”

He dipped his head, and then he was kissing her again, but this kiss was different. The first time he’d kissed her, he’d been making a point. She still wasn’t sure what exactly his point had been, something about her judgmental nature and how much he missed his sister, probably.

This kiss was about mouths, and bodies, and the unholy pleasure of being caught up against his solid, muscular length on a soft summer day. His mouth moved over hers as deftly as an artist’s brush, leaving hues of longing and unnamable sensations in its wake. He worked his kissing slowly, a seductive gentleness to every touch, even as he held her more firmly to him.

Jacaranda tucked up as close to Mr. Kettering as she could get, going up on her toes despite the warnings clamoring forth from her common sense. Those warnings weren’t a matter of conscience, or morals—she was indulging in a mere kiss, and in more-or-less private—what was imperiled was her very survival.

Somehow, though, survival did not weigh in on the side of storming away in high dudgeon. Survival had nothing to do with indignation, but had everything to do with clinging to the man whose tongue was probing along her lips in delicate entreaty.

“You’re too good at this,” she said against his teeth.

“
We’re
good at this, and we’re barely getting started.”

His one arm went around her shoulders, while the other settled low across her back, anchoring her more snugly and angling her so he could get a hand on her derriere and his mouth back where it belonged. He didn’t clutch at her, though, he secured her so she could kiss him back without having to worry about remaining on her own two feet.

He tasted good. Like spearmint and heat, and he had the knack of asking permission with his mouth, of inviting with his tongue, and assuring with his big body. She could kiss him for a long, long—

“Mr. Kettering,
what
are you doing?”

He’d scooped her up and hefted her to sit on the bridge railing, bringing the sound of rushing water closer, which was somehow appropriate.

“I’m experimenting. Such an important matter wants a bit of science.”

Then his mouth was back, but Jacaranda sat a shade higher than she’d stood, so she could wrap her arms around his magnificent shoulders and sink her hands into his dark, silky hair. Then he wedged himself between her knees, and oh, it felt imperative that she bring at least one leg around his hips and show him exactly—

He broke the kiss and captured one of her hands. “We’re at risk for indiscreet behavior, my dear. This is a public thoroughfare.”

She dropped her forehead to his shoulder while he took that hand of hers and stroked it over his falls.

Angels abide!

He was a generously proportioned man in a particular state of reproductive anticipation. His hand dropped away. Hers did not.

“Getting even, Wyeth?”

“Getting acquainted.” She shaped him carefully, telling herself this was the only occasion she’d be permitted to indulge her curiosity. She was tempted to linger, but he drew in a sharp breath near her ear.

“Did I hurt you, Mr. Kettering?”

He shifted his middle back a few inches. “You torment, but I don’t think you understand that. Did I hurt you?”

She lifted her head to frown at him, to fathom his meaning.

“You did not injure me, if that’s what you’re asking, though why such an inquiry is germane, I know not. This was a stolen kiss, and they are not, by reputation, painful.”

“Please don’t tell me this is your first stolen kiss.”

“Kisses have been stolen from me,” she said, considering him. “Not with me.” She lifted away from him, but had to keep a hand on his shoulder for balance.

“I’m to be your first in at least this?”

“It’s your height,” she said, turning her head to watch the water below.

“Let’s get you down, and you can explain that remark.”

She hopped off the railing, but his hands were anchored on her hips, and all over again, she endured the strange puddling of heat in her middle that his kiss—their kiss—had caused.

“Naughty woman.” He still wasn’t smiling, but he seemed pleased.

She turned her back to him to study the freshet below. Was she naughty?

“Shall we negotiate now?” He made himself comfortable beside her, elbows on the railing. “Or would you prefer to settle your nerves first?”

“Negotiate?” She rather enjoyed the present state of her nerves.

“Surely it hasn’t escaped your notice we’re suited to a certain type of liaison, Wyeth. I’d compensate you handsomely, enough that you could put off your housekeeping and go about in Town.” He watched the water, not her.

“Were it to our mutual liking,” he went on, “we could even move you into Town, though there’s no telling how long these things will last. I’m a decent protector, though it’s been quite a while since I took on the role. I’d see you got out, to the theatre, Vauxhall, the shops. Life can’t be work all the time, even for me. I suppose that’s rather the point, on my end.”

Inside, where Mr. Worth Kettering’s piercingly blue eyes would not bother to see, Jacaranda’s luncheon took to heaving disagreeably.

“No, thank you, Mr. Kettering. Shall we be on our way?”

“No, thank you,
Mr. Kettering
?” His brows knit, in consternation or indignation, she cared not which. “That was not a
Mr. Kettering
kiss, Wyeth.”

“And I am not a whore. Goliath is sufficiently rested, and I must see to your dinner preparations.”

“Not fair, Wyeth. I did not force you.”

“No, you did not, nor will you,
ever
. I rely on that remaining artifact of gentlemanly sensibility when I ask you to take me home now.”

“You’re not interested in at least hearing the numbers?”

“For God’s sake, I know you are a man, but I did not take you for a very stupid man. I am insulted, you dolt, not by your kiss, which was lovely, dear, sweet, and generous, but by the implication I would whore for another like it. I enjoyed it, I thank you for it, but I have no interest in your
jewels
or in being your fancy piece. Think of your opera dancers, Mr. Kettering.”

She climbed into the gig and sat, hands folded in her lap, forbidding herself to say more. He must have grasped the fundamental point, for he climbed in beside her.

“Shall I drive?” she asked.

He nodded, tersely, and she tried to make charitable allowances, for he was a man and one likely used to getting his way.

Several hundred thousand times over.

And yet, he sat beside her right up to the Trysting front door, silent, unreadable, and looking like he cared not one whit for the fact that a mere housekeeper was driving him around the countryside, and refusing his offer of protection.

* * *

He’d blundered badly—
and with a woman
.

Worth was comfortable making the occasional shaky investment, though less and less as his instincts and information-gathering skills had been perfected.

But with a woman…

He’d made two errors, in fact. At least two. The first was offering Jacaranda Wyeth a more or less permanent position as his mistress, when Worth had learned long ago that mistresses were a tricky lot. They became bored, and even jewels and outings weren’t enough to placate them. Eventually, they resorted to provoking his jealousy, or worse, trying to get with child. No matter their skill in bed, their beauty, their wit or other charms, he parted from them at that point, with stern admonitions to himself to choose more wisely.

Wisely had come to mean temporarily. He sought the short-term, and very short-term, and very, very short-term liaison, and everybody was happier all around.

So he’d blundered and undertaken a negotiation of terms for an extended liaison.

The heat of the moment accounted for that lapse, aided by Wyeth’s kisses, by her boldness, by her hand on his falls,
getting acquainted.

Then the second, worse blunder. He’d offended the lady.

What
had happened?

His housekeeper sailed into his house ahead of him, her skirts swishing. Her magnificent body had
happened
. Her lush, naughty mouth. Her common sense and quietly relentless compassion. Her sweet, summery scent, her phenomenal derriere, those perfect breasts, her heat, her hands…

Then that prim, hurt tone.
Think of your opera dancers, Mr. Kettering
.

He was on his horse and headed for London before the dinner bell sounded.

Chapter Six

Jacaranda was nothing if not ruthlessly honest with herself, and thus she admitted she missed her employer. He’d taken a proper leave of the children, conferred briefly with Simmons, and then decamped.

She’d driven him off, perhaps with her kisses, more likely with her speeches about his jewels—angels abide!—and his money. A fine, upstanding speech at the time, but it did nothing to help her sleep at night. She took a few nocturnal swims, doubled her vigilance regarding her housekeeping duties, and prompted Simmons to new heights of fussing and clucking over his footmen.

All for naught.

She missed Worth Kettering. Missed the scent and feel of him standing too close to her, sitting too close beside her in the gig, sending her his silent “time to go” look when the neighbors’ daughters took to batting their eyes. She missed him presiding over the dinner table, teasing, entertaining, and gently chiding Avery for her manners. She missed the sound of his solid boot heels thumping along the corridors and missed his voice, bellowing for her when it was time to depart for their afternoon calls.

Missed kissing him and scolding him.

This missing was a bodily ache, different from the way she missed her siblings, or her home, or her departed parents.

All the while she inspected linens, made lists, drew up menus, and supervised the staff, she was aware of a sense of Worth Kettering’s eyes on her—or somebody’s eyes. The sense was strongest outside, when she took cuttings from the scent garden, or the color gardens, but it followed her into the house sometimes.

She wished her employer really had been that aged, diminutive cipher dithering away in the City. That would have been much easier.

Much.

But staying busy had long been her antidote for every ill, so she headed back up to the third floor. She’d yet to make her morning rounds there, and both girls were downcast at Mr. Kettering’s departure. She opened Avery’s door after a brisk knock, only to find Yolanda sprawled on a chaise with a book of Wordsworth’s poetry.

“Avery’s off to ride that pig, or fly a kite, or give the pig lessons in French,” Yolanda said.

“I’m so bored I almost joined her.”

“We haven’t toured the house yet. Would that alleviate your boredom?”

“Touring the house would at least get me off my backside.” Yolanda closed her book and rose. “Has the post come yet?”

“The post arrives by nine of the clock, if the stages are running on time,” Jacaranda said as they left the room. “He didn’t write today.”

How odd to have this small grief in common with a schoolgirl.

“Again.”

“You could write to him, or to your older brother.”

“To tell them what?” Yolanda stopped at the top of the steps. “I haven’t tried to kill myself lately?”

“Did you?” Jacaranda wanted to drag the girl a few steps back, but instead began their progress down the stairs. “Try to kill yourself?”

“No.” That was all, no explanation, no emphasis.

“Well, then, not much to write about there. You might tell your brother what Avery is getting up to.”

“Wickie will do that,” Yolanda said, moving down the stairs at Jacaranda’s side.

“She will do a version of it,” Jacaranda countered. “A version that leaves out pigs and probably emphasizes penmanship. Then too, you might ask your brother to retrieve fripperies or notions from London.”

This was really too bad of her. No man enjoyed trolling the ladies’ shops.

Though Mr. Kettering should have written to his sister.

“Retrieve fripperies such as?”

“You embroider beautifully,” Jacaranda said. “Have him pick up a particular shade of thread or a hard-to-find measure of hoop. Some sketching paper or special pencils.”

“So he won’t feel so badly for abandoning us here?”

“So you’ll have something to do.” So his sister would approve of him, even if his housekeeper could not.

Yolanda paused with her hand on the crouching-lion newel post at the foot of the steps. “He’ll think I’m glad to see the thread, or the hoop, or the lurid novel, not him.”

No, he would not. “He might pretend he’s that thick-headed. You’ll know better.”

“I should make a list.”

Such a Kettering, this one. “I frequently find a list useful. For example, while I don’t trespass in the kitchen, per se, I do keep track of the larder and the cook’s pantry.”

Daisy had had no interest in learning to run a household, and Jacaranda had learned not to expect her younger sister to share those tasks with her. Step-Mama had been more preoccupied with managing her offspring and her torrents of correspondence than with household details.

“There’s a great deal to know. The laundry and the medicinals alone take organization,” Yolanda said as they finished up in the still room some time later.

“A systematic approach is usually best.” Though how did one take a systematic approach to, say, Worth Kettering and his kisses and naughty propositions? “Labeling helps, unless the staff cannot read. If somebody comes to us without their letters, we teach them.”

Yolanda left off counting the jars arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves around them. “You teach them?”

“Mrs. Reilly helps, as does Vicar, but yes. How a maid or footman takes to their schooling helps me assess how they’ll fit in best at Trysting. Now, we should have a peek at the library. The footmen are possessive about it, but they’ll be taking their tea break the better to flirt with the new chambermaid.”

“Muriel,” Yolanda said, opening a jar of vervain and sniffing. “She’s friendly.”

“Also pretty, which is both a blessing and a curse. Have you any questions?”

Yolanda took a pinch of vervain and crushed it between her fingers. “When is Hess coming?”

Of course the girl’s loneliness would weigh more heavily than the niceties of separating spearmint and peppermint, or footmen and maids.

“Mr. Kettering did not specify a date, but all is in readiness.”

“Worth will be back soon then.” Yolanda said, dusting the herb from her fingers. “He won’t leave us here to receive Hess without him. That would look rude.”

“From what I understand—”

“They don’t get along,” Yolanda said, peering at the gray dusting the ends of her fingers. “Except they used to. At home, we have portraits of them together. They were peas in a pod, and in Worth’s diaries—”

“You read your brother’s diaries?” Jacaranda had considered herself the only sister in the history of sisters to exhibit such audacity—and courage.

“If Worth had been about at Grampion, in any sense, he might have stopped me from reading them, or respect for his privacy might have at least slowed me down.”

Jacaranda led the way from the still room, which had taken on a confessional air. Or maybe the scent of vervain didn’t agree with her—it was believed to repel witches.

“Suffice it to say I cannot approve of such an action, Yolanda, and I have seven brothers.”

Yolanda sniffed at her fingers and made a face. “You never read their diaries? Never peeked?”

Jacaranda would not lie, exactly. “Only the oldest has a literary bent, and one doesn’t trifle with him.” Though sometimes one defied him outright.

They pattered on as the rest of the house was duly inspected, but it hadn’t occurred to Jacaranda that Mr. Kettering would have to come home—back to Trysting, rather—to host his brother’s visit, assuming he hadn’t waved the man off or diverted him to Town.

The realization was mortifyingly cheering.

* * *

Less than two weeks at his country estate, and Worth had been spoiled for all other residences. Town was noisy, reeking and hot, and his house, which he’d always found adequately maintained, fell short of the standards at Trysting.

The windows were clean, they did not sparkle.

The carpets were beaten, they remained dull.

The food was nourishing, but its presentation unimaginative.

The house was tidy, but not…inviting.

The shops regularly sent over flowers, but the bouquets lacked fragrance and seemed to sit in their vases like sedate arrangements, not spontaneous offerings from nature.

Mimette raised her gaze from the quarterly statement Worth had drafted for her.

“You’re in a hurry, ducks. You usually go over the numbers with me one by one, until I’m fair to run screaming down the street.”

Mimette, or Mary, was a pretty little dancer between protectors at the moment. Her savings were thus of particular interest to her, and Worth had directed that a cold collation be prepared for their session at the kitchen table.

“I’m getting ready to travel again tomorrow,” Worth said, making the decision as the words came out of his mouth. “Not being at my appointed post here in Town has created challenges.”

Not being at Trysting created other
challenges.

She gave him a genuine smile. “Challenges for you, maybe. Jones says he’s never seen such peace at the office save for right after Waterloo.”

“When did you hear Jones discoursing so disloyally?”

“He comes to see us dance and brings his friends, and they’re a jolly bunch.”

Another well-trained, competent employee would soon be domesticating. “When I’m not wreaking havoc with their fun, to hear Jones tell it. Your money is working almost as hard as you do.”

“I’d take you upstairs tonight without a thought for the money, Worth Kettering, and it wouldn’t be work neither—though something would be hard. You could do with a tupping.” Her smile was tinged with something else now. Speculation, or maybe sympathy?

“I could.” He nearly rose to take her up on her offer, because tupping had certainly been on his mind for the past week. His cock wasn’t surging in its usual gleeful anticipation of a romp, though, so he kept to his chair.

Mary reached under the table and experimentally groped his flaccid length.

She took her hand away. “Whoever she is, I hope she appreciates you. Should I consider maybe taking more out of the three percents?”

“Only if you’re willing to shift the degree of risk as well,” Worth said, grateful for something to talk about besides tupping. Her hand had felt curiously impersonal, almost unwelcome.

He was about to send her home with a footman when he noticed the tray still held plenty of food. Nobody could eat more than an opera dancer when good, free food was on hand. Nobody. He held his interrogation until the moment of her departure.

“Mary, is your digestion troubling you?”

“Of course not.” She swung her cloak over her arm, an unconsciously graceful gesture more captivating than any gratuitous fondling.

“Mary Flannery, you’re dissembling with your man of business. This is not done. Lie to your priest or your protector, but not to me.”

She sat back down at the table, eyeing the cold, sliced meat, buttered bread, and sliced cheese with something less than appreciation.

“Mary?”

Her hair was flaming red, her skin flawlessly pale, and her figure curvy and fit enough to haunt a man’s most intimate dreams. She was one of seven, the oldest daughter. The boys would get the bulk of the family resources, buying apprenticeships in various trades. She sent money home for the girls, but her papa had a fondness for the bottle and for using his fists on his womenfolk.

“You’d best tell me who the father is.” He sat beside her and slung an arm around her shoulders, wanting to howl with the infernal wrongness of the situation.

“He said he’d keep me,” Mary said tiredly, leaning into him. “He kept me fifteen bloody minutes, tossed me a few coppers, and since then I haven’t been able to… Well, money has been tight.”

“Do you know his name?”

“One of Jones’s friends, but don’t involve yourself. His papa’s a lord, and I was foolish.”

“Does he know?”

“Nobody knows, though I think Estelle suspects and maybe Fleur.”

“Then everybody suspects,” Worth said, thinking through the options. “Are you feeling well enough to keep dancing for now?”

“Until I show, I can dance. That’s the rule, but I’m not tall, or fat like Hera, so I’ve only a few weeks’ work left.”

“Take the rest of this with you,” Worth said, gesturing at the tray. “You’ll be ravenous later. Promise me you won’t do anything silly while I think this over.”

“I’m not the dramatic kind. Mostly, all I want to do is pee and nap.”

“And shock your solicitor,” Worth added, though he applauded her forthrightness. “Before I leave Town tomorrow, I’m to make some purchases for my sister at the shops. Will you be at rehearsal?”

“Miss rehearsal, and you get docked,” Mary reminded him. “I’ll be there.”

She’d made no move to leave his side, and that more than anything else left Worth feeling inadequate, and somehow ashamed. Avery was in the country, it was a pleasant night, and Mary wouldn’t have hatched any ambitious or possessive notions had he taken her up on the offer of a simple tumble between friends. A month ago, he would have blithely tripped up the stairs with her—at least until he guessed about the baby.

Hell and the devil. Fifteen minutes was a simple tumble. Worth’s own record was well under that, and he hadn’t even parted with a few coppers for the privilege.

Think of your opera dancers, Mr. Kettering.

“I will give thought to your situation, but you must not worry,” Worth said. “Thomas will see you safely home and carry the leftovers so they don’t go to waste. But tell me, Mary, can you tat lace?”

* * *

Because Jacaranda’s employer had not the courtesy to send a simple note warning her of his return, she did not rouse herself to greet him when she heard his boots thumping outside the girls’ rooms farther down the hallway.

“I have come to apologize,” he said, pausing in her sitting room doorway, the dust of the road still on his person.

As opening lines went, that traveled some distance toward mollifying her. To proposition one’s housekeeper merited at least a personal apology. It did not merit belaboring.

“Apology accepted,” she said, setting aside the first decent cup of tea she’d had all day. “Shall we send a bath up to your chambers?”

Now that he’d apologized, she wanted to devour him with her gaze, also to ignore him. Staring at her tea cup was a nice compromise, but really, to think such a scandalous proposition was to be forgiven with a few meaningless words...

“I should have sent a note,” he said, inviting himself into her sitting room and appropriating the middle of her sofa. “Mind if I have a cup?”

“You apologize for the lack of a note?”

“Not well done of me, I know.” He poured for himself, and Jacaranda was compelled to stare at his hands. Long, elegant fingers and broad, strong palms. They were warm, those hands, and knowing.

But their owner hadn’t the sense to apologize for his brazen overtures.

“Not well done of you, indeed,” she managed. “Help yourself to cream and sugar.”

“I don’t suppose you could order us a tray?”

“It’s tea time.” She rose and went to the door to signal a footman. “I am the housekeeper, I can conjure a tray of victuals on occasion. Your sister and your niece will want to greet you.”

While Jacaranda abruptly did not.

“I want to greet them, too, but first I wanted to inquire as to how soon we can accommodate my brother.” He downed his cup of tea in one swallow, his throat working while Jacaranda tried not to stare at that, too.

He was the most aggravating man.

“I’m ready now,” she said, not liking the sound of the words as they hung in the air.