Worth Lord of Reckoning (21 page)

Worth was glad his schedule allowed for a leisurely midday meal, for old Noonan had done justice to many a pint. Now the game was well and truly on, because Spicer’s sad fate had been toasted vociferously, until a pair of stevedores coming in from a hard morning on the docks had joined in. By next week, shares in the Drummond would be available for a farthing apiece, and shares were held in many, many hands.

Worth wanted to tell Jacaranda what was afoot, but he didn’t dare put such tidings in a letter. He told neither Lewis, nor Jones, nor Mary, nor anybody. Some of his clients had shares in the Drummond, the ones with enough to do a little high-risk investing, and Worth himself had invested heavily. The odds weren’t as long as people thought, for the Drummond was stoutly constructed and the captain both experienced and sensible. The crew was made up of men who’d sailed with him on many occasions.

But still, Worth missed his housekeeper, missed that private smile she’d sent him off with, missed her summery, lavender scent, and her tart, unvarnished rejoinders.

He even missed his niece, and his sister, and the peaceful sense of repose Trysting offered for all who bided there.

When he returned to his town house, he sat at his desk, trimmed a quill pen, and considered what he could say that wouldn’t offend the woman he was missing most.

My Dear Mrs. Wyeth,

That much wasn’t offensive, and she was dear. She wasn’t his, though—not yet. He finished the note anyway, sanded it, and passed it to a groom to take directly out to Surrey. When that task was complete, he contemplated what goal he should set once the Drummond had seen his holdings surpass the million-pound mark.

Oddly enough, that pleasant contemplation did not relieve him from wondering if his note would be answered.

* * *

“Come along, girls, unless you’ve more money to spend?” Jacaranda posed the question brightly, but a normally pleasant day at market had turned into something else.

Thomas Hunter suspected she’d trysted with her employer at that cottage. He hadn’t said anything—he wouldn’t—but already, Jacaranda and the man who
wasn’t
her lover had been indiscreet.

“Please, Mrs. Wyeth.” Avery gave her a big-eyed, pleading look. “May we not visit the sweet stall once again? I can buy Uncle some lemon drops, and maybe you would like some candied violets?”

“I’ll take her,” Yolanda offered. “We can meet you at the livery.”

“Very well, but don’t tarry, and no violets for me. We make our own at Trysting.”

“Miss Kettering is a nice addition to the scenery,” Thomas Hunter said, his gaze following Yolanda’s retreating skirts with a particular male appreciation.

“She’s sixteen, Thomas. She’s not receiving yet.”

“My wife was fifteen and
not receiving
when we started walking out. Don’t worry, I know my place. If you’re headed to the livery, I’ll walk you.”

He winged his arm, and Jacaranda had no choice but to take it.

“About our earlier discussion.” He didn’t have to dip his head to talk to her, because they were of a height. “You must pass along something to Mr. Kettering for me.”

“If I can.”

He kept walking steadily, farther away from the market crowd.

“Tell him…” Thomas glanced around. “Tell him I know a man gets lonely and has needs, but he’d best not trifle with a lady who can’t manage what he’s after. Kettering is a Town man and probably thinks the women here are like all those tarts in London—”

Oh, this was worse, much worse, than if Thomas had been scolding her directly.

“Thomas,” she interrupted him. “You’ve made your point, but Mr. Kettering is the soul of probity with the maids and so forth. He is a gentleman.”

Tom patted her hand as they approached the livery. “Gentlemen are often the worst of the sorry lot.” Jacaranda saw plain as day in Thomas’s dark brown eyes that he knew exactly who’d been in that cottage with Worth Kettering. He wasn’t guessing, he wasn’t surmising. He knew.

“What gave me away?”

He muttered something low and profane. “The sheets bore your fragrance, lavender and mille fleurs. No other lady in this shire bears quite that scent, and himself left behind a fancy monogrammed handkerchief. I’ll call him out, Jacaranda Wyeth, I swear I will if he’s taking advantage.”

“He’s not taking advantage. How do you know mille fleurs, Thomas?”

“You aren’t the only one rusticating here in Surrey, Mrs. Wyeth, but you’re the one holding my landlord’s estate together, and I can’t have mischief befalling you. I’ll be up to Trysting to meet with Mr. Kettering on Tuesday, if it suits.”

The hustle and hubbub of the town on market day gave them a measure of privacy, for which Jacaranda was profoundly grateful.

“Mr. Kettering may still be in Town on Tuesday, but you mustn’t castigate him, Thomas.”

“Why mustn’t I? You haven’t anybody else to speak up for you.”

“I have many people to speak for me,” Jacaranda countered, though those people were mostly content to dwell in Dorset. “Mr. Kettering does not force his attentions on unwilling women.”

“You tell yourself that.” Thomas untangled their arms, because even walking arm in arm might cause talk now that they neared their destination. “I have little girls of my own, Jacaranda Wyeth, and yet not long ago, I was an overgrown boy full of myself. I know what men are. I am one, and you can’t trust us regarding certain matters. All those people who would speak for you, they’re not here, are they? You’ve escaped their watchful eyes, just as I’ve slipped my uncle’s leash. Now you’re lonely, and Kettering’s crooking his finger.”

“He’s not…” Well, he was, but she could hardly admit to a neighbor she’d turned down marriage to the man. “It isn’t what you think.”

“I would bet my mule it isn’t what you think either.” He stepped back when the grooms brought her gig around. “The day after himself returns from Town, I’ll be on his doorstep, the soul of cordial deference—until you tell me otherwise.”

“Thank you, I think.”

He tipped his hat, and she curtsied in return, but the entire exchange had been disquieting, in several regards.

First, her privacy had already been compromised, though she trusted Thomas Hunter to keep his unsmiling mouth shut.

Second, her other secret—how she operated at Trysting—was also no longer exclusively hers.

Third, she wasn’t entirely displeased about that. She’d seen respect in Thomas’s eyes, liking, and a certain protectiveness that startled her but didn’t disconcert as it might. He was behaving like a brother, and that pattern she understood, could predict, could manage.

Avery came skipping up to the gig, Yolanda a few steps behind.

“We have the lemon drops! And we saw that nice Mr. Hunter, and he had one. He kissed Tante’s hand.” She made a loud smacking sound and clambered into the gig.

“He is a very nice man,” Yolanda said, following more sedately into the carriage, “and he has a lovely smile. He took the lemon drop only to be friendly, though. I know how men are.”

Jacaranda said nothing, for it seemed everybody but she herself knew how men were. As they tooled back to Trysting, it occurred to her that in five years in the shire, she’d never once seen Thomas Hunter truly smile.

Though he’d smiled at Yolanda.

She was still pondering that mystery after supper, when Simmons brought her a note, one he’d apparently been hoarding for a properly dramatic moment.

“From Mr. K, him
self
, and addressed to you, Mrs. W!” He passed along a folded, sealed note, though a flake of wax was missing from the seal.

She didn’t blame Simmons for trying, but neither would she reward his attempt at mischief.

“I’ll wait until I’ve had my tea to read it,” she said, though this prompted a ferocious scowl from Simmons. “His London house steward is likely asking after something Mr. Kettering has forgotten here and needs us to send along to Town.”

“Then hadn’t you better open it?” He smiled, pleased with himself, and made impatient circles with his hand.

“We’ll send a groom with whatever it is.” She set the note aside, out of Simmons’s reach. “We’d never entrust Mr. Kettering’s request to the public stage, now would we?”

“Suppose not.” He turned to go, then inspiration struck. “What if it’s urgent? What if he’s waiting for your reply?”

“The missive bears nothing but an address on the outside, no indications of urgency at all. I’ll be sure to let you know what he says, and thank you for making sure this found me promptly.”

“Yes, well…”

Whatever prevarications and warnings Simmons wanted to pass along, at whatever length, were cut off by Carl, the senior footman, who hung panting against the frame of her parlor door.

“Mr. Simmons, sir, a wagon’s coming up the drive, and it’s loaded with baggage.”

“A wagon?” Simmons’s white eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Loaded?”

“Perhaps it’s the earl’s baggage arriving in advance of his entourage,” Jacaranda suggested. “His chambers are prepared. The footmen need only shift the goods to the proper location.”

“A wagon,” Simmons repeated. “Such doings, such doings.”

“I’m sure Carl will round up enough strong backs to see it done right,” Jacaranda said, “provided you’re on hand to supervise, Mr. Simmons.”

“Oh, depend upon it, Mrs. W. Depend upon it.”

He bustled off at Carl’s side, leaving Jacaranda some much-needed privacy to read her note. She closed her sitting room door, retreated to her bedroom and closed that door, too.

The note bore none of Worth’s fragrance, but it was written on thick linen paper, a crest of some sort embossed at the top, a lion sitting and a unicorn bowing and a Greek-looking female standing between them, a hand on each.

My Dear Mrs. Wyeth,

I trust this finds you well, though I know the household yet anticipates my brother’s arrival. I must impose on you for a written version of that tutorial you offered my house steward. Inspired by your example, I have hired a housekeeper here in Town, a young lady who like yourself had a great deal of responsibility for younger siblings and shows a penchant for putting things to rights domestically. My candidate for this post is named Mary, and life has not always dealt kindly with her, but she will benefit from correspondence with you, and perhaps later can make the journey to Trysting to learn at your figurative knee.

Like other propositions I have put before you, this is not an urgent request. Nobody will steal the dust from my parlor, will they? I will soon be underfoot at Trysting again, and we might discuss this situation in more detail. Until then, I remain

Yours,

Worth Kettering

Should she be flattered? He’d noticed his town house and his country house were not maintained to the same standards. Of course, in some ways, housekeeping was more challenging in Town—the dust was awful, the city smells, the noise.

In other ways, Town was simple. Help was easy to hire, supplies and services were close at hand, and the markets, oh Lord, the markets in Town were a housekeeper’s delight. Flowers, citrus fruit, spices, soaps and all manner of exotic and wonderful goods fresh from the docks.

Jacaranda put the letter down.

She hated Town. She’d always hated Town. She’d all but screeched that to her father and Step-Mama, her brothers, anybody who’d listen, that she hated Town, but in hindsight, she saw that what she hated was the Season.

Not Town.

Interesting, but hardly of any relevance.

Jacaranda took herself up to the state chambers on the second floor, where the footmen were arranging a small mountain of baggage.

“Well done, Mr. Simmons,” she said, though the butler was fingering locks and straps, as if he was about to get himself into considerable trouble.

“You don’t suppose we should unpack for the great man, do you? He can’t be bothered to fold his own linen.”

“He’ll have staff, Mr. Simmons, a valet, a secretary, and perhaps even his own footmen. They’ll take umbrage if we presume to know how his lordship likes his things set up.”

“Take what? Umbers?”

“They will be offended,” Jacaranda clarified. “I’m sure the trunks could all use a dusting, because the road between here and Cumberland is long. Then too, you might alert the stables that the baggage has arrived, and the coaches will likely follow soon. You did put the coachy and his porter in the kitchen, didn’t you?”

He flapped a hand. “Yes, of course, in the kitchen. These be brass locks and hinges. Brass and shiny as a new button, they are.”

He was still fingering the locks under Carl’s watchful eye when Jacaranda left to interrogate the new arrivals. The baggage might have arrived days ahead of the traveler himself, or mere hours. In either case, she was ready for the earl’s arrival, while her employer was not. The coachy was no help at all, though, knowing only that he’d accepted this load at the way station just north of London and driven it out to Surrey on hire.

Jacaranda penned a swift note to Mr. Kettering and took it down to the stables.

“Roberts?” She peered around, seeing not one soul, which wasn’t that unusual, it being after sunset.