Worth smiled at his brother to ensure hostile notions remained only notions. “I overheard her at breakfast. She might as well have smacked your nose with a rolled-up newspaper.”
“So that’s what put you in such a fine humor? Your housekeeper—who referred to you by your given name, by the by—scolding me? Why didn’t you call me out?”
“Same reason I didn’t years ago.” Worth hadn’t foreseen the conversation taking this turn, but neither would he dodge the topic. “The lady makes her choice, we fellows abide by her wishes.”
Hess fixed his gaze on the horse’s ears. “Mrs. Wyeth is choosing you?”
“She isn’t choosing you.” Brilliant, dear, stubborn woman. “That’s enough for present purposes.”
“I know this will sound ridiculous, but I wouldn’t want to see the woman abuse your sensibilities, Worth.”
“From you, who stole my bride, that does sound ridiculous.” Worth lifted his reins free of Goliath’s mane. “Touching but ridiculous.”
“Precisely because I did steal your bride, I’m protective of you,” Hess said. “Then too, you’re my only brother, my only adult sibling, my heir. Humor me and tread carefully around Mrs. Wyeth.”
Hess’s expression was a study in impenetrable, titled dignity, though Worth would never have taken his brother for a snob.
“You mean I’m not to offer her marriage?”
“Offer her marriage on a platter,” Hess said, “but only after she’s offered you her heart. I do not need to tell you women can dissemble, and we fellows, led about by something other than our common sense, don’t wake up until it’s too late.”
“Speaking from experience, Hessian?”
“Do you recall Lady Belinda Evers?”
Worth had a vague memory of a girl who’d briefly been as tall as he’d been, before adolescence had turned him into a compilation of elbows, knees, and peculiar vocal pitches.
“She was plain Belinda Turner when I knew her—a nice girl, not given to airs.”
“I have a daughter with her,” Hess said. “Or I’m almost sure I do. Evers is twenty-some years Belinda’s senior. She presented him his heir and spare, and then he pretty much went shooting for the duration. She told him she wanted more children, and he tried to rise to the occasion, so to speak, but frequently without adequate result. Belinda doesn’t understand I know what she was about.”
“This is quite a tale. How can she think to keep this secret from you?”
And how did Hess feel about not one but two women seeking taking advantage of him?
“Because she doesn’t know Evers shared his woes with me over brandy, complained about having a restless younger wife who demanded children from a man old enough to be a grandpapa, and so forth.”
Life in the north was supposed to be dull. “Then she batted her eyes at you over tea. You could have refused her, but you didn’t.”
“I almost felt as if Evers were asking for my help, truth be known. He dotes on the child. Belinda was miserable to see her boys growing up and nothing in her future but watching her husband age.”
This exchange of honest confidences with Hess had veered into the “be mindful what you wish for” category of business, and yet, this was what Worth had wished for—his brother’s trust and all that went with it.
“You use this situation with the fair Belinda and her aging spouse to punish yourself,” Worth said. “I can’t figure out all the details, but this was self-flagellation, wasn’t it?”
“I undertook a casual affair with a willing party—or Belinda did.” Hess spoke the words as if he’d rehearsed them many times. “We’re friends, all of us, in some way. I don’t pretend to understand it, and I’m not about to embark on such foolishness again.”
Hess could tell him this, because despite all, they were still close in a way known only to brothers. The realization warmed Worth as summer morning sun could not.
“You keep to yourself because of the girl?”
“Yes, because of her. Dallying is one thing, but giving up my children to be raised by other men is quite another. Amy is nearly four and has my eyes—our eyes. I’m still waiting for Belinda to tell me she at least suspects the child is mine, but it has been years, and she’s made no admission.”
Amy was an artifact of grief then, for she’d been conceived soon after the death of Hess’s countess. “Belinda is a loyal wife.”
“Oh, right.”
“Well, loyal and faithful aren’t always a matched pair.”
“This child might be my only progeny, Worth. You’d think Lady Evers might take that into consideration as well.”
“She’s trying to do you a favor, I suspect,” Worth said, battling more than a twinge of consternation on his brother’s behalf. “A damned strange sort of favor. I trust she loves the girl?”
“Belinda would give her right arm for her boys, but she’d give her life for that little girl. I have no doubt of that whatsoever.”
The horses walked along for the better part of a mile, while Worth composed a great philosophical oratory about fate and the Almighty and one’s role being mysterious. A fine speech it was, too, full of long words and poetic allusions. Also impressively boring.
London was still better than an hour away, and beside Worth, the earl remained silent.
“I’m sorry, Hess.”
“For?”
“You seem doomed to lose family. Your wife, your parents, your sister, all dead. Your daughter is being raised by another, your remaining sister can’t stand your household, and your brother and your niece live two hundred miles to the south. I’m sorry these hardships have befallen you.”
He phrased the sentiment as a condolence, but a more accurate description for what Worth experienced would have been…pity.
Commiseration, even, for some of those losses Worth had shared, and his brother was also two hundred miles distant.
A damned nuisance, that.
“I’ve come to treasure my solitude,” Hess said, “and at least my brother and I are no longer estranged.”
No, they were not, though how that had happened, Worth was not sure—nor did he need to be. “Maybe your luck is changing.”
“One can hope.” Hess nudged his mount back up to the trot, and they exchanged not another word before reaching the town house.
Chapter Thirteen
“Grey, you can’t haul Jacaranda home by her hair.”
Daisy Fromm, nee Dorning, scolded her oldest brother quietly as he paced her back terrace. Grey would be handsome if he weren’t always scowling and glaring, but he was scowling now and looking determined, and that always boded ill for someone.
“It’s one thing for Jacaranda to keep house when the owner is off in London, but according to Roberts, this Kettering fellow has brought a pair of children with him, likely his by-blows, and she’s supposed to keep house with them and him underfoot. Francine says it will be the end of Jack’s reputation.”
As if going into service hadn’t already accomplished that?
“She’s been in his employ for five years,” Daisy said, feeling a peculiar pang of envy. “Of course she will occasionally be under the same roof as her employer. Mrs. Dankle dwells with you, doesn’t she?”
“Mrs. Dankle is sixty if she’s a day. She’s wiped my nose and the noses of every little Dorning foal to hit the ground. Moreover, she’s given notice.”
Mrs. Dankle frequently gave notice, then Francine bribed her into relenting.
“We’re not horses, Grey.” Daisy switched her hold on the baby in her arms, for the child was growing at a prodigious rate—just as her brothers had. “Besides, the gentry typically rusticate in summer. You’re here, and you didn’t even stay in Town for the closing ceremonies.”
“Hang the closing ceremonies.” His gaze came to rest on the infant, his glower softening to something approaching wistfulness. “This one’s growing like a weed, Daze. How can Jack miss her own niece and nephews growing up?”
Perhaps because she had no
children of her own?
“Jack is stubborn, Grey, and she says in her letters she’s happy. If we miss her, well, that’s the price we pay for loving her.” The words were prevarications wrapped in platitudes, but Daisy would not burden her brother with the truth. She protected not Jacaranda’s dignity with her falsehoods, but her own.
“Letters, bah.” Grey ran a hand over the baby’s fuzzy head, his gentle touch at variance with his scornful tone. “Little fairy tales written by women to placate men. Jack has said she’ll come home at the end of the summer, but she’s made similar promises and found reasons to break them. Something’s amiss at Trysting. And what sort of name is that for a house? Did you know Kettering is brother to an earl?”
“I know many fine people who are siblings to an earl,” Daisy said, patting the baby’s back. “What is your point?”
“Jack needs to come home.” Grey tossed his long frame into a wrought iron chair, its feet scraping against the terrace flagstones. “When I agreed to this scheme, I told myself she was in a pout because you’d caught your man and she hadn’t. I gave it a year before she came home either towing a husband or finally ready to look for one. It has been five years, Daisy. You’ve three children, and she has, what? Bad knees from scrubbing floors?”
Jacaranda had her dignity, a variety of freedom, and a bit of coin to show for it—likely her figure was still comely, too—and she’d have staff to scrub those floors.
“Not all women are suited to marriage, Grey. Not all people.” Though some brothers were more suited to it than they could admit.
“None of that.” He’d growled the words, older-brother fashion. “I looked over this year’s crop in Town. I’m off to a house party in October. I stood up with an entire bouquet of wall flowers at the local assembly.”
Daisy remained silent, tucking the blanket more closely around the baby. She’d caught her man all right, but how much more of the tale Grey knew, she’d never quite fathomed. Because she did value her husband’s continued existence—some days and most nights—she wasn’t about to confide in her oldest brother anytime soon.
“I stopped by Least Wapping on my way south,” Grey said, getting to his feet. He was restless like that, a man beset with too much energy.
“Did you see Jack?”
“I did not. I kept my distance. She seems to be coping, but I have an itchy feeling between my shoulders, Daze. I’ll take some of the boys and go see what’s afoot once we get the ditches cleared. Will has always been able to make her see sense, and he’s confirmed that Francine is getting up to some mischief or other.”
Francine was bored, fretful, and not much of a mother. Daisy could say that in part because she herself was a mother—now.
“Will thinks you should leave Jack in peace.” Daisy didn’t want Grey dashing off, so she did something guaranteed to keep him on that terrace: She passed her brother the baby.
“I think her eyes are changing,” Grey said, peering at the little face peeking out of the blanket. Abrupt shifts of subject were symptomatic of Grey preparing to dart away on one of his queer starts. “They’ll be gorgeous eyes, just like Auntie Jack has, won’t they?”
“Just like Uncle Grey has,” Daisy said, wondering if the ladies in London ever took a moment to admire Grey’s eyes, or were too put off by his brusque demeanor.
He ran his nose over the baby’s cheek, which inspired the little baggage to smiling and waving her fists. “So you don’t think I should retrieve Jack?”
The smile he bestowed on the infant nearly broke Daisy’s heart. Before Jack had left, Grey’s smile had been much more frequently in evidence.
“If you’re asking me, then no,” Daisy said. “I don’t think you should barge into her affairs. You’re being the earl, though, not a sensible brother, and thus you’ll bother Jack regardless. Please give her my love when you go storming up to Trysting.”
“One appreciates honesty from one’s siblings.” He left off cuddling his niece, and five minutes later, Daisy let him see himself out, earl or not.
If she’d been honest, she would have told him she hoped that someday he’d turn that smile on a lady who was old enough to treasure it for the rarity it had become.
* * *
The flesh-pots of London failed utterly to lure Hess from Worth’s town house.
Fortunately, Mary had made significant progress bestirring the menials to spruce up the place, so it wasn’t such a bad spot to abandon a guest.
Worth tracked his sovereign down at a picnic and boating party this time, discreetly offered the requisite assurances, and then stopped by Lloyds to see if the clerks had heard any pertinent gossip.
If they had, they were keeping their lips buttoned, which would be a historic first, given that Worth plied them with not only noontime ale, but also rum and decent brandy before the night was through. He spent the next morning calling upon the lady whose husband captained the Drummond and the next afternoon meeting with opera dancers and shopkeepers, then appearing to laze about in the cleaner dockside taverns.
“And where have you been all day?” Mary took his coat from his shoulders as he walked in the door. “You stink of the wharves, Mr. Kettering. This will not endear you to the laundress.”
“My hard-earned coin will have to keep me in her good graces. Where’s my brother?”
“Reading on the back terrace. That man reads like civilization depends upon it. Hardly touched his lunch.”
“Then dinner had best be enticing, and we can serve it out back.” Worth gave her an up-and-down perusal. “How are you feeling?”
“I miss the girls,” Mary said, taking his hat, gloves and walking stick. “I do not miss breezing around in the altogether for a bunch of drunken louts to leer at.”
“Have you talked to Jones?”
She looked away, and Worth wanted to bellow for his head office clerk then and there.
“Never mind,” he said. “It isn’t my business. The house is looking much improved. For that I’m grateful.”
Her smile was heartbreakingly bashful as she nodded her thanks for the compliment. Worth took a surreptitious glance at her tummy and was relieved to see she wasn’t showing. But then, her full apron was long and loose, and he was hardly in a position to assess changes to her figure based on personal knowledge.
Though he might have been.
He shook off that uncomfortable thought, grabbed a decanter, glasses and tray from the library, and made his way to the terrace.
Where Hess was indeed poring over a book. “Poetry, Hessian?”
“Miss Snyder claimed I’d miss a treat if I didn’t make time for Byron. The man is brutally funny.”
“Or simply brutal. May I offer you a drink?”
“Sit you down,” Hess said. “I’ve been swilling lemonade all afternoon. Your terrace is peaceful, Worth. Do you ever spend time out here?”
“We’ll be eating out here,” Worth said, easing off his cravat.
“Did you complete your appointed rounds today?”
“Not entirely.” Worth propped his boots on a low wrought iron table and cradled his drink on his belly. “His Royal Highness moves about when one wants him to hold still and can’t be budged when one wants him to move. A vexing fellow.”
“You’re solicitor to the Regent?”
“Of course not. Prinny and I chat from time to time, about this and that.” Worth took a gratifying swallow of his brandy.
“That’s quite an honor, Lord Mayor of the Regent’s Chit-Chat.”
“It’s quite a pain in the arse when I lack the requisite magic wand and secret incantations. He expects high return and low risk.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
Worth thought his brother was joking at first, but Hess was completely serious. What followed was a tutorial on investment practices, with Hess asking cautious, basic questions and Worth answering as best he could without being insulting.
“It all sounds very complicated,” Hess concluded. “Very mode
rn.”
“Investment strategy is as old as China in some senses. I’d be happy to invest something for you…” He let the offer hang in the air, but sensed this was perhaps the primary objective of Hess’s journey south. Not Yolanda, not reconciliation, not meeting Avery, but money.
Though, quite possibly, Hess himself hadn’t realized his own agenda.
Coin of the realm, blunt, cash… Money had as many names as did the male reproductive organ, and sensible people were more interested in coin than coitus.
“How much would I need to get involved with some of the more profitable ventures?”
The question was carefully, casually posed, and Worth had heard it a thousand times. Nobody looked him in the eye when they asked, and everybody hoped the answer was some insignificant amount.
Which it was not. Not by the standards of an opera dancer, not by the standards of an earl. For the dancers, Worth put together their coin and purchased a share between five or six of them, sometimes between as many as a dozen small investors. Such an undertaking was tedious and meant a flood of paperwork and a great deal of time, but he did it willingly.
“Is Grampion in financial trouble?” Worth asked gently. He and Hess had made progress with their past, and maybe this was a form of progress as well.
Hess propped his feet beside Worth’s on the low table.
“I believe so, yes.” He might have been commenting on the probability of rain, so bland was his tone.
“Are you in trouble?”
Hess’s gaze remained on their boots, Hess’s shiny, Worth’s dusty.
“I will be. I give it less than five years. I expect I’ll remarry sometime before disaster strikes.”
A silence wafted by, while Worth poured them both a tot more brandy. This discussion with his brother in the lengthening shadows of day’s end was like galloping a steeplechaser for three miles at top speed, then slamming into the final jump of the course.
Worth was stopped cold, stunned. Grampion had always been so gracious, so lovely.
So expensive, though a boy would not have realized that.
Hess had married once on impulse, or perhaps in a convoluted exercise in sibling rivalry. He shouldn’t have to marry again for duty. Even Hess should have one shot at some happiness.
My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes Page 67