Jacaranda had never heard such talk from him. “Roberts, the last time I considered it, keeping the master pleased was part of the definition of being in service, unless I mistake the matter?”
She let the question hang, but Roberts was an ally of sorts, and she had no wish to antagonize him. The outside staff, grooms, gardeners, groundsmen and so forth all took their direction from Roberts, and Reilly depended on the stable master as well for his animal doctoring.
“You do not mistake the matter,” he said, giving a shrill, two-fingered whistle. “We’ll get the man his note. You’re right: We take his coin, we do his bidding, up to a point.”
“You’ve grown rebellious in the summer heat, Mr. Roberts. Have you something to say?”
His size meant nothing to her, for Jacaranda understood he wouldn’t use it against her. Roberts wasn’t a bully, but he was his own man.
“No.” He gave directions to a skinny groom who’d also come down the ladder from the hayloft, then turned back to her. “Yes. Walk with me a minute while the horse is being readied?”
Walk with him? Perhaps it was the appointed day for odd men to take her arm, except Roberts didn’t, he merely paced off with her in the direction of the pond.
“A lot of excitement brewing up at the house,” Roberts said, his gaze traveling to the manor’s façade. “Having Mr. Kettering in residence, the young ladies, all this coming and going.”
“I’d hardly call it excitement. Activity, perhaps.”
“Activity, then. Now this earl fellow is down from the north to visit.”
“His baggage has arrived, and my note to W—Mr. Kettering is to that effect,” Jacaranda said, keeping her eyes front lest her horror at that slip show in her expression.
“I supposed it was so. You are managing well enough at the house?”
“We’re doing splendidly.” What on earth was he about?
“That’s all right then.” He patted her shoulder, an avuncular gesture that had her even more puzzled. First, Thomas Hunter now Roberts?
She withdrew her note from a skirt pocket. “Please give this to the groom. I expect Mr. Kettering will return post-haste, because he wants to greet his brother in person.”
“He should. They’re family, and Cumberland is a long way off.”
“You’ll be able to accommodate the teams and two more wagons?”
“We’ve cleaned out the whole carriage house and moved the work wagons to the home farm, and yes, we’ll be ready. You?”
“We’re ready but for Mr. Kettering’s absence. I’m sure this note will remedy that situation.”
“We’ll see to it.” He waved, then left Jacaranda standing in the garden, the scent of lavender rising all around her.
* * *
Considering His Royal Highness was tall, quite stout, and leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world, Prinny was deucedly hard to locate. Worth wasted most of the afternoon tracking him to a lawn tennis match, where the Regent was observing casually and flirting madly in the company of his familiars.
In no etiquette book Worth had read did it describe how to part a sovereign from his toadies to discuss delicate financial matters. Worth was thus reduced to whispering in the royal ear, as if imparting a morsel of salacious gossip, at which point the royal brain demonstrated the savvy for which it was occasionally known. The prince dragged his loyal subject off to the buffet, waving the hangers-on away like so many pesky mosquitoes.
Then it took still more whispering, and explaining, and assuring, and reassuring before Worth had the direction needed from His Royal Highness, and the signed documents necessary to carry it out.
By the time Worth returned to his town house, the summer moon was well up in the sky, and Lewis looked to be approaching apoplexy.
“Messenger from Trysting, sir,” Lewis said, taking the documents from Worth’s hand. “Mrs. Wyeth is alerting you to the arrival of a baggage coach. She expects the earl will soon arrive.”
Worth stifled a curse, because his day had been long, hot and trying, but Wyeth would not have sounded the alarm on a whim. “You fed our man and saw his horse stabled?”
“We did.”
“Goliath is saddled?”
“Waiting in his stall, a flask in his saddlebags.”
“You’ve canceled tomorrow’s appointments or shuffled them to the senior clerks?”
“Shuffled. You had only three, and Jones knows all your kitchen clients.”
“Good enough. Did anyone think to pack me a supper?”
Lewis ran his finger around his wilted collar. “A sup…per?”
“No matter,” Worth said, heading for the kitchen. “Have Goliath brought around, and I’ll be out front in a few minutes. Tell Jones to get Mary Flannery moved in here by week’s end, will you?”
“Of course, sir.”
Worth ate cheese and buttered bread in the kitchen standing up. He stuffed an extra sandwich in his pocket, drained a tankard of summer ale, mounted his horse and headed out of Town shortly after midnight.
His arse hurt from making the journey into Town a few days earlier. Not his arse, exactly, his hip joints, and the bones upon which he sat. He was too old to be haring about like this, though as a young man, he’d ridden from Cumberland to Oxfordshire several times a year and felt nary a twinge.
So why had he come charging back into Town, when he’d known damned good and well his brother was soon to make an appearance?
To escape the nigh constant ache caused by proximity to one Jacaranda Wyeth, goddess of his rustic hearth. To see her was to desire her, and that unflattering reality had been most of what sent Worth galloping for London. Not to give her time to ponder their dealings, not to tend to the press of business, not to receive old sailors at his back door, and not to have Jones take samples of fancy lacework around to the shops for competitive bids.
And he hated—hated—this effervescent, anxious, hopeful feeling in his chest, the one caused by the thought of seeing her again, of climbing into her bed, pressing his lips to her soft, fragrant skin and having her roll over to wrap herself around him in welcome.
God in heaven, he was far gone. He brought Goliath down to a spanking trot, trying to pretend he wasn’t eager to get home and failing to fool even the horse, who leaned on the bit right up to the foot of Trysting’s drive.
* * *
Jacaranda rolled over in her bed as hoof beats pounded up the drive. A big horse, its footfalls reverberating in the dewy night air outside her open window.
The arrival was either Worth or his brother, but the earl was supposedly traveling in state, and Jacaranda had sat behind Goliath on enough outings to have an ear for the horse’s gaits.
A sensation of relief swamped Jacaranda, of thanksgiving that the man should be safely arrived to his home. Not set upon by highwaymen, not crumpled in a ditch when his horse took a misstep, not retching his life away after partaking of bad ale at the coaching inns, not racketing about London, pursuing women who cared nothing for the man and only for the pleasures he might bestow on them.
Angels abide, where did such insecurities come from?
In any case, she was glad he was home. She rose and grabbed her prettiest night robe. By the time Worth came in the back door, she had the tea steeping and a tray of cold sandwiches assembled.
“There you are.” He paused at the archway to the back hall, dusty, road-weary, and smiling such a smile, Jacaranda was warmed by it across the breadth of the kitchen. He held his arms wide, and she couldn’t refuse such a sincere invitation.
Didn’t want to, didn’t care to know why she should.
“How is it possible to smell as good as you do at all hours of the day and night?” he asked, nuzzling her hair. “I could retire next week as the wealthiest man in the realm if I could bottle your scent.”
“The scent comes in bottles,” she said, not stepping back. “Are you hungry?”
“I am as hungry as a great white bear of the north emerging in spring a
fter months of deprivation, and some food would be nice, too.”
He was being naughty already. She withdrew from his embrace, not wanting to deal in innuendo and prurient double meanings. Not with him, not tonight, probably not ever.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“You said you were in want of food.” She checked the strength of the tea. “I’ve put together some sandwiches and biscuits and sliced a peach from your walled garden.”
“Is the hour too ungodly for a man to have a bath? If it is, I can take a swim, though you will probably slap me when I ask you to join me, won’t you?”
“Not slap you, but I wouldn’t join you, and no, it isn’t too late for a bath. We’ve doubled up footmen on the night shift in anticipation of your brother’s arrival.”
“Which means we have two?” He sat and waited until she’d poured his cup of tea.
“Which means we have four until ten of the clock, then two until morning,” Jacaranda said, bringing him his tray.
“Join me, please?” He didn’t reach for his food, and he had to be starving, but she hesitated. His eyes held no flirtation, only banked patience.
He dropped his gaze to the food as if composing a blessing. “I won’t order you to take a seat, Wyeth, but I am asking. I’ve missed you.”
“For pity’s sake, you mustn’t say such things.” She sat quickly, scowling at him for his indiscretion rather than admit she liked hearing the words.
“I’ll put food in my mouth, then, to avoid the terrible endearments that might slip out.” He reached for a sandwich. “When is my brother expected?”
“We haven’t the first notion.” Jacaranda had missed him, too, mightily. She could say it to herself, now that he was home safely, but to say it to him seemed unwise.
In the kitchen, unwise.
In private, disastrous.
“I would have been here sooner, but a client was in need of immediate services, and he is someone I avoid offending. Have something to eat. You’re making me nervous, glowering at me. I’ll suffer dyspepsia, and you’ll glower at me for that, too.”
He offered the last with a smile, a crooked, subtle version of the earlier great, beaming invitation.
To get away from that smile, Jacaranda rose. How was it she spent three days listening for Worth’s arrival and now she had no idea how to go on.
“I’ll get the footmen busy with your bath.”
He let her go, which was a relief and a disappointment. She also stopped by Worth’s chambers, finding no candles lit, his bed not turned down, not a single window open to the night breezes, and his flowers a tad thirsty.
Someone, or maybe several someones, required closer supervision.
By the time she returned to the kitchen, her employer was finished eating, but still sitting at the table, a cup of tea cradled against his flat belly. Now he looked not only road-weary but exhausted.
“I gather you’d already put in a long day when my note found you?” She bent to take the tray, and his fingers, cradling his tea cup one moment, were circling her wrist the next. She tugged, and he let her go.
“My days were long and my evenings longer.”
She did not ask him where he’d spent his long evenings. She would never ask that, no matter how badly she wanted to know.
“My dear, you are not in charity with me,” Worth said, frowning. “Is it something we can discuss?”
Put like that… She dropped to the bench beside him.
“Your offer?” she began.
“We’re not bringing that up now. It’s the middle of the night. Anybody might come seeking a late-night snack here in the kitchen, and you’re in a mood. It can wait.”
She was in at least eight different moods at the same time. “But your brother will be here, and I want this resolved.”
“Beg pardon, sir, Mrs. Wyeth.” Carl trotted down the kitchen steps, the jacket of his livery buttoned askew. “One of the grooms came staggering home from the pub and says there’s a gent what talks like Mr. Kettering and looks a bit like him had a meal in the private dining room of the Bird in Paradise.”
Worth started to rise, but Jacaranda caught him with a hand to his shoulder and pushed him back to his seat.
“His lordship is five miles away, if it’s even the earl,” she said. “Finish your tea while your bath is filled. Let the grooms know, Carl, and take up your post at the front door.”
“He’s only my brother,” Worth muttered, dutifully draining his tea cup.
“Who has traveled two hundred miles in the summer heat to see you,” Jacaranda replied. “You are here to receive him only because you came out from Town at a punishing pace, if I guess correctly.”
“You do.” He smiled a little. A very little. “You usually do.”
“Then go enjoy your bath. I’ll tidy up here and make sure the state chambers are in final readiness.”
“I bow to your common sense.” He rose and captured her hand in his to kiss her wrist. “I don’t plan to make a habit of it, though, so stop feeling so smug.”
“I do not feel… Oh, be off with you, lest your brother catch you with your hair sticking up in all directions and your feet bare.”
He looked interested in that picture, so she took the tray, carried it to the sink, and began putting the tea things away, only to feel long arms slip around her waist.
“I missed you.” A soft kiss to the place where her neck and shoulder joined, a tender, private, much-taken-for-granted place with a mysterious connection to her knee joints. “Every hour I was gone.” Lips again, soft, sweet, warm. “I missed you.”
He swept his fingers over her jaw, and then he was gone, and Jacaranda had to brace herself on the counter to remain upright.
Chapter Ten
Worth’s plan had misfired spectacularly.
Instead of giving Wyeth breathing room, time to accustom herself to courtship—to having an affair, if her crack-brained perspective was to be humored—leaving her to her own devices only had her doubts in full charge.
Women, vexing creatures, were strangers to logic.
A hot bath was not vexing, but having no one to share it with…
Worth had filled the hours in the saddle with daydreams of Wyeth attending his bath; Wyeth, waiting naked in her bed for him—she couldn’t very well wait in his bed, not at this stage of the proceedings. He’d wanted another of those secret smiles from her, but she’d blessed him with one welcoming hug and a little shyness before she’d pokered up and turned housekeeper on him.
He shed his clothes as the last of the hot water was dumped in the tub and directed the footmen to be ready to empty the bath within the hour. His footmen were moving smartly, and he didn’t doubt Jacaranda Wyeth had put the fear of dismissal in them should they shirk.
Jacaranda, not his butler, the estimable Simmons of the Fussing Eyebrows. Why Worth should suspect this to be the case, he couldn’t say, but he more than suspected it. Hell, she had him second-guessing himself and tearing about the realm in all directions.
He lingered at his bath, hoping some calamity, such as his brother’s arrival in the dead of night, would necessitate that his housekeeper interrupt him, and then he lingered out of sheer fatigue.
Given the hour, the Regent being in charity with his princess was a surer bet than Hessian’s arrival, so Worth climbed out of his tub, toweled off, brushed his wet hair down—thank you very much—and put his feet into house slippers.
Then, of course, a knock on his door.
Jacaranda stood in the hallway a decorous two paces away from the door. “If you’re through, the footmen can take the tub away.”
“I’m through.” He stepped back and opened the door wide. “Perhaps you’d join me in the library, Mrs. Wyeth?” He’d used his best condescending, lord-of-the-manor tone, the better to impress the footmen.
“If you insist.” She spun on her heel, and he was left admiring the view while the footmen offered him sympathetic smiles, and did a little admiring o
f their own.
He didn’t blame them. She was too magnificent not to admire.
“Look at her again like that, and I’ll fire the lot of you.”
The smiles became outright grins, so he left his insubordinate staff wrestling with the tub and trying not to lose their composure entirely.
It was a near thing, no doubt, because the lord of the manor was now occupying the same position with respect to his housekeeper as every other male on the property: right beneath her sturdy heel.
She’d gone to the library, as requested, and that had to count for something. When Worth joined her, she was standing by the long windows with her back to the room.
“I had enough moonlight to travel by most of the way,” Worth said. “I saw not a single highwayman on my way here.”
“You don’t cross any heaths, and Goliath could likely outrun most any highwayman’s horse.”
“Then you don’t worry when I’m on the king’s highway in the dead of night that harm will befall me?” He did not lock the library door, the better to inspire his own good behavior.
“I worry.”
She even tossed him a fulminating over-the-shoulder glance when she said it. She worried; she didn’t like that she worried, but she wouldn’t lie about it either.
God bless an honest woman. “Jacaranda.”
Another glance, this time for presuming to use her name, he supposed, but it was late, he’d ridden to exhaustion to see her, and they would be disturbed only if his blighted brother showed up.
“What has you in such a state, Wyeth? Matters are no different from when I left, and if you’re not interested in my company, you have only to say so.”
“Your company?”
“My company, as in, my person sharing the same surrounds as yours. To wit, the present situation. You might as well tell me what burr is under your saddle, or I’ll stoop to interrogating the children, and children see and hear everything. You know this.”
Another look, exasperation tinged with misery.
“Your company, proximate to my own, was all but observed by one of your tenants at the cottage during the storm.”
My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes Page 61