Jacaranda’s insides fluttered with the memory of his caresses, a fluttering that had afflicted her all day. She crossed her legs at the knee and encountered a tingling in places a lady doesn’t tingle. She brushed her hair and recalled the feel of his hands sweeping through the length of it repeatedly, like he couldn’t get enough of the sensation. She wiggled her feet out of her slippers and recalled him grasping the arch of her foot and holding her foot in a secure, warm embrace of the hand.
Holding her foot, and she’d wanted to swoon with the pleasure of it.
Angels abide.
Into this muddle of memories and sensations came emotions, heralded by long, gusty sighs, staring spells, and other behaviors Jacaranda had previously seen only in her younger sister, Daisy.
First came a yearning so desperate it scared her, a yearning to be more intimate with Worth than she’d already been, a yearning to share with him the act Jacaranda had experienced only once, years ago.
But following on that honest admission came the realization that what Jacaranda wanted was the entire man, not simply copulation with him, and that—that small, profound distinction—put her on precarious footing.
Worth Kettering was heir to an earl, quite possibly rich as a nabob, and completely unaware of his housekeeper’s true origins. When Jacaranda told him, he’d feel obligated to marry her in truth, when she knew the last person he’d affix himself to was a woman who’d lied to him. He had learned his lesson, just as Jacaranda had learned hers.
Then there was her family, all expecting her to return to their loving, if noisy, disorganized and perpetually impecunious arms.
“There you are.”
Worth Kettering stood in the doorway to Jacaranda’s sitting room, his riding attire showing him off to great advantage, his hair tousled, his faint smile tugging at places low in Jacaranda’s belly.
Even a day later, words eluded her.
“And there you are,” Jacaranda answered, busying herself with afternoon tea. “I’ve wondered if it’s your gaze I felt on me of late.”
“Only my gaze?” He ambled into the room and wandered its small perimeter, stopping to sniff her late roses.
“Need I remind you the door is open, Mr. Kettering?”
He wandered closer and leaned in as if to sniff her.
“The next time I bring you pleasure, I want you to call out for Mr. Kettering in that exact tone, for it arouses me.” He straightened, his eyes dancing.
“You’ve come to torment me. I suppose a day of peace and quiet was too much to ask.”
“Far too much.”
He settled into her rocking chair, and Jacaranda had to admit she liked the look of him there. Relaxed, thoughtful, a gleam in his eyes.
“Tea?”
“Please.” He rested his chin on his palm, his elbow on the rocker’s arm. “What have you found to do with yourself today, Mrs. Wyeth?”
Her name had never sounded so wicked, reminding Jacaranda that she hadn’t even told Worth her true name.
“A little of this and that. Having the family in residence makes the day busier, but more pleasant, too.”
“More pleasant?” He accepted his tea from her hands, cradling her fingers in his as he did. Wretch.
“Meaningful, maybe?” She tried to ignore his nonsense, tried to find honest words. “One doesn’t tidy up and dust and direct the maids and footmen simply for the sake of the house. A house is a building. One cares for the house on behalf of the people who dwell there.”
“For me, you mean?”
“For you, some,” she allowed, and he looked so hopeful she added cream and sugar to her admission. “Mostly for you, because you are the head of this household.”
“I am.” He took a sip of his tea. “I don’t feel like it, but I am. I’m wondering, though, if I shouldn’t offer to spend the winter in Cumberland with Hess and the girls.”
“You haven’t been home in a long time.” This was what came of admitting that she must return to Dorset. Perhaps among sophisticated, worldly adults, such a mention was all that was needed.
Worth had brought her pleasure upon pleasure in the dark of night, and now he casually acquiesced in her insistence that their dealings remain only a summer dalliance.
“Avery should see the family seat,” Jacaranda went on. “Yolanda would feel less banished if you accompanied them.”
“I’d feel banished,” he said, grumpiness creeping into his tone. “Would you come with us?”
Grey would have an apoplexy if she broke her word again, Step-Mama would hunt her down with a press-gang. “I could not, not with any sort of reputation. You know that.”
His stare became broody, his eyes shuttered, and she sensed she’d hurt him.
“I might want to,” she relented and spoke the truth. “But I could not. My family would not tolerate such a great distance between us.”
She thought he would let her answer stand unchallenged, but after a beat of silence, he was still watching her.
“Why not come with us? You could be Lannie’s companion, because Miss Snyder is going back to her little finishing school come Michaelmas. The girls would like your company.”
His eyelids dropped to half-mast, implying something else entirely, and God help her, Jacaranda was tempted.
She thought of Grey, and Will and Daisy, and of the boys. Of her two nephews and her niece, Step-Mama’s pleading and threatening and begging.
Of her cottage.
Of the falsehoods now thoroughly rooted between Jacaranda and the man she loved.
“A housekeeper is not a suitable candidate to be a young lady’s companion.”
“The hell she isn’t.” Worth pushed out of his rocking chair, the lazy innuendo replaced with tension. “I want you to think about something, Mrs. Wyeth.” He shot a glance at the open door and lowered his voice. “We have not consummated our dealings in the intimate sense, and for the next two weeks, given the risk of conception, I would not impose on you even were you willing. It’s August, soon it will be September, and for all the patience I’ve shown, you’re no closer to a decision than you were a month ago. You’re a nervous investor, Mrs. Wyeth. No risk, no reward, though. That has ever been true.”
He kissed her cheek and took his leave, while Jacaranda held her cooling tea and tried to think of a reply to his observation.
She came up with nothing but a cold cup of tea.
* * *
Yolanda’s privacy was disturbed when Worth found her reading on a tartan blanket in the hay mow over the stables, a fat black tom cat asleep in a sunbeam beside her. She came here for privacy, and to revel in the way the scents of hay and horses put her in mind of Mr. Hunter.
Thomas.
“Hello, you.” Worth sat right beside her in a manner that still unnerved and pleased her, as if they were siblings of long-standing, not recent acquaintances trying to rub along in an awkward situation. “I do believe you’ve grown prettier since leaving that school.”
Did Thomas think her pretty?
“Hullo, Worth.”
“You reading a fatuous novel?”
“Sir Walter Scott.”
“I’ve always enjoyed his work.” Worth drew a wisp of hay from the packed pile beneath them and batted the fat black cat on the nose. The beast didn’t stir from its position in exact alignment with the sunbeam slanting through the hay port door.
“Are you hiding from Mrs. Wyeth, or from Avery, or perhaps from Hess?” Yolanda asked, closing her book around a single finger because, like a brother one-quarter his age, Worth was apparently intent on pestering her.
“I’m hiding from my life. Have you and Hessian come to some peace with each other?”
Yolanda stroked a hand over the cat, who yawned and began to purr.
“Some. Hess thought I’d be happy visiting here in the south with schoolmates and doesn’t see why I would rather have spent my holidays mostly traveling to and from Cumberland.”
From home, something a brother who
dwelled there year after year ought to have appreciated.
“You, of course, assured him he was completely in error?”
“I told him there’s a difference between sparing me travel and abandoning me for two years straight. Hess doesn’t seem to need anybody but his hounds and horses. He doesn’t let himself need family.”
At least Worth had Avery, and Avery had Worth. Lucky them.
“Hessian is a Kettering.” Worth scratched the cat’s shoulders, and the beast tried to bite him. “We’re prone to managing on our own, no matter the size of the load. Did you tell him about that cut on your wrist?”
Drat all brothers for being such noticing fellows. Thomas had wondered at the scar, too, but had been gentleman enough to keep his questions to himself. “The injury is healed. What is there to tell?”
“Something, when you’re ready. Hessian is the head of our family, but I’m your brother, too, Lannie. You could tell me if you didn’t want to impose on Hess.”
How delicately Worth could express himself, when he chose to. “There’s little to tell.”
“You ladies.” Worth tormented the cat again by tickling its nose with the hay, but the tom was again intent on ignoring him. “Why can’t I be more like this fellow? Happy to pounce on mice, and be on my way after the occasional trifling scuffle?”
Safer ground entirely, and good of Worth to offer it. “Mrs. Wyeth has given you your congé?”
Worth’s expression was perplexed, while the cat made a half-hearted swat at the hay, which Worth failed to notice. “Sixteen isn’t so very young, is it?”
Yolanda’s finger remained between the pages of her book, which was fortunate; otherwise, she might have patted Worth’s hand.
“Mrs. Wyeth cares for you. That might be why she’s not falling into your arms.”
“I fear one shouldn’t discuss such matters with a younger sister.”
She paged through her book, for Worth apparently wanted to discuss his situation with somebody. “Hess certainly wouldn’t discuss it with me, just as he doesn’t discuss Belinda Evers with me.”
Whom Hessian seemed to regard with equal parts bewilderment and wariness.
Worth smacked her nose with his stalk of hay, entirely the brother, but also affectionate. “Explain your female reasoning to me. Why would Mrs. Wyeth reject my suit if she cares for me?”
“Your suit?”
“Yes, my suit, brat. I’ve asked her to marry me more than once.”
Good for Mrs. Wyeth. Yolanda had the sense few women refused the Kettering brothers anything of value. “Are you such a bargain, Worth?”
“See how many swains flock to your side when word of the dowry I’ve set aside for you gets out. I’m not exactly shoddy goods, Lannie Kettering.”
How she loved the nickname he’d given her. “You’re a good bargain,” she said, in part because of that nickname, “but a husband is a complicated proposition.”
“A long-term investment.” He stroked his face with the straw the way Yolanda often touched a quill pen to her cheek when puzzling over some Latin. “One gathers you ladies view the long-term investments warily.”
Warily, and incessantly. Most of the girls at school had been obsessed with Debrett’s for the information it held concerning possible husbands.
“You have to offer her something she doesn’t already have, Worth. She has a roof over her head and meaningful work and people to care about.”
The notion intrigued him, for he ceased fussing with his bit of hay. “I can offer her wealth, an honorable before our name, all the entrée in Town she wants. She could be Hess’s hostess, clothed in silk and jewels, own all the cottages in England.”
He could also give her babies, though Yolanda did not point that out to him.
“I’m not sure what cottages have to do with it.”
“Neither am I, but it’s important to her. More important than I am.”
How well she knew that feeling. “Don’t sulk. While I was stuck in a cottage with Mr. Hunter for most of an hour, he had to remove my boot and wrap my foot with his bare hands, and he didn’t permit himself the smallest liberty.”
What a delight that had been, to be treated so properly, so carefully.
Also a towering disappointment.
“He had better not take any liberties.” Worth tossed the hay at the sleeping cat and missed. “Do you fancy this yeoman, Lannie?”
Thomas smelled a great deal better than any yeoman Yolanda had stood downwind of. He quoted poetry, and he loved his children.
“I’m sixteen. If I say I do fancy him, you’ll laugh at me. If I say I don’t, you’ll accuse me of lying. Brothers are awful.”
“You didn’t laugh at me,” Worth pointed out. “If this is the fellow you want, Lannie, then do the pretty in Town next Season, but know that you’ll be welcome to spend your summers here at Trysting.”
Yolanda’s exact plan, though she’d been unsure how to manage the part about summers at Trysting. Worth’s generosity was too convenient not to be a little suspect, though.
“You aren’t saying he’s beneath my notice when I’m the daughter of an earl, my brother is an earl, and I’m generously dowered, for which I do thank you.”
“You’re my sister. Of course you’ll have a decent portion, and I will not lecture you about your station. You’re the acknowledged illegitimate daughter of an earl, and if you haven’t already sensed it, the tabbies of Polite Society will ensure the distinction is noted by all.”
Yolanda turned an idle page, though Worth’s blunt acknowledgement of reality was comforting in a way his generous dowry could not be.
“School was no different. If I’d been the illegitimate daughter of a mere baronet, it might have been worse. Coin does seem to open doors.”
“You are not like any sixteen-year-old of my acquaintance, Lannie Kettering. Next you’ll be reading the financial pages.”
Yolanda put her book aside, because he’d given her the opening she needed.
“I saw a piece in the Times about the Drummond being late for its scheduled return and you being a major source of investors. Are you in trouble, Worth?”
* * *
“Had I not been quizzing Avery on her fairy tales”—Hess handed his brother two fingers of brandy—“we would have had no conversation at dinner to speak of. Are you and your housekeeper feuding?”
“We are.” When had Hess become Worth’s drinking companion? “My thanks.”
“Is this feud over the menus, perhaps?” Hess took the second of the library’s two largest, most comfortable chairs. “Or maybe she wants a raise in her pay?”
“She deserves a raise in her pay.” Though Jacaranda, in her contrary fashion, would regard a pay raise as an insult. “I asked her about traveling north with us next month, serving as Lannie’s companion for the winter months at Grampion.”
“Miss Snyder isn’t willing to serve any longer?”
The question was posed casually, but Worth had been watching the glances exchanged at dinner. “You find Miss Snyder attractive?”
“Her papa is heir to a barony.” Stated even more casually.
Worth set his drink on the low table. One Kettering brother in perpetual rut was one too many. “Go back to Town, Hess. Avail yourself of what Mary freely offers and settle your nerves.”
“I did.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I did avail myself of what Mary so delightfully offered, and my nerves are settled.” Hess took a contemplative sip of his drink, and indeed, he did appear to be more relaxed than he had upon arriving from the north.
Rotter.
“Settle them again. The activity bears repeating in the right company.”
“Up to a point,” Hess allowed. “Then it is merely an activity, and as pleasant as it is, I found my nerves adequately settled by the one occasion.”
“Pleasant.” Life had been simpler before Hess had resumed being a brother—also lonelier. “If it’s merely pleasant, the
n you’re going about it wrong, brother mine.”
“I was never afflicted with the passions affecting the rest of our family.” Hess retrieved Worth’s drink and handed it to him. “Back to your Mrs. Wyeth. What is the problem?”
The question of the hour.
“I delivered her an ultimatum,” Worth said, “or as good as, and that after telling her she could have between now and forever to make up her mind.” Though every half-witted, spotty legal clerk knew a decently drafted contract specified an exact period of performance.
“What did your ultimatum regard?”
“What do you think it regarded?” Worth paced to the window—the sparkling-clean window, which he was tempted to put his fist through. “I offered her marriage, she politely laughed in my face. Why should she give up all this freedom, the endless adventure of warring with the dust and the mice and the gossiping menials when all I offer is a ring? So I offered something less weighty—my heart on a platter—and she dithered. She’s still dithering and talking about going to visit her family.”
“Well, there’s your answer, isn’t it?”
“Must you be so honest?”
Hess rose and put a hand on Worth’s shoulder. “I cannot fathom women, never have, never will. You’ve more than the normal complement of sense, though, Worth, and a Kettering’s portion of pride. Why do you persist when the reception is feeble?”
“Because it isn’t feeble, damn it. She nigh devours me when we’re private.”
“And you devour her?”
No, that was the question of the hour.
“I haven’t yet.” Worth traced his finger down the lattice-work of the mullioned window. “It’s a near-run thing, Hess.”
“You’re in unfamiliar waters?”
“Deep, shark-infested unfamiliar waters with cross-currents and undertows.”
“Then it’s time for a strategic return to dry land, old man. You’re the only brother I have, and I refuse to stand by and watch you dragged out to sea ever again.”
Worth stood, staring out the window, long after Hess had sought his bed. He considered getting drunk, something he hadn’t done for a decade or so, but if he imbibed, he was more likely to talk himself into visiting Jacaranda’s boudoir.
My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes Page 71