George strolled over to the vanity, sniffed the skirt, squatted, and peed on the carpet.
* * *
Worth wasted another blighted rainy day chasing down Prinny and whispering the appropriate warnings into the royal ear. With His Royal Highness, a confidence might be kept, or passed along to titillate the inner circle at Carlton House. It made little difference now, in any case.
Worth had seen to his paperwork, made the last arrangements, given his stewards and clerks the appropriate stern but appreciative lectures, and once again put his tired arse in Goliath’s well-worn saddle.
The shift in his finances would make no real difference. He’d never lived extravagantly, and man didn’t arrive to a half million in worth without suffering both gains and losses. The fate of the Drummond should have mattered to him, but it didn’t.
“So this is love,” he informed his horse, when they’d stopped for a drink at one of the better posting inns between Town and Trysting. Worth swilled his ale while Goliath did his best to drain the water trough.
Mostly though, horse and rider were dawdling. Autumn lurked in the shade, in the mud that made the king’s highway slow going, in the yellowing of the undergrowth along the road. In the north, the season would be well advanced.
“Come along, horse. Your fool master must meet his fate, lest the lady bolt before she’s taken proper leave of me.”
Goliath flicked an ear beginning to grow fuzzy with the approach of colder weather.
Though Worth didn’t travel faster than a relaxed trot, still he made Trysting before tea time. He dreaded the news that Jacaranda had fled, dreaded seeing her, dreaded dinner with his family looking on.
Dreaded the rest of his life without Jacaranda to tease and love and grow old with.
As he bathed and changed, it occurred to him that before, when he’d left Grampion as a much younger man, he’d been this bewildered, hurt and confused.
But he’d been angry, too. He’d been gloriously, righteously angry with everyone he loved, and even with the woman he thought he loved. Somewhere inside, he was angry now at Jacaranda, but he recognized that the anger was driven by hurt and a kind of confused shame that she should reject him.
He was wealthy, relative to her, still.
He was an earl’s heir.
He was not bad looking, if a bit too largish.
He loved her.
Maybe she didn’t want love, he thought as he dragged a brush through his hair. He would have to ask her.
He went to the kitchen, learning that Jacaranda intended to take a tray in her room for dinner. The coward was in the library, cleaning the window next to his desk. The scent of vinegar seemed an appropriate counterpoint to her usual sweet fragrance.
“Mrs. Wyeth, greetings.” He did not cross the room, did not wrap his arms around her.
“Mr. Kettering. I trust your journey was productive?” She didn’t even turn to face him, but kept moving her rag vigorously over the already sparkling glass.
Where the hell were the maids, and why polish a spotless window?
“My journey was an exercise in wasted time, for the most part. You’ll scrub through that glass do you persist much longer.”
She stopped, her shoulders slumping.
“And you’re taking a tray in your room tonight,” Worth went on, “the better to avoid me?”
“Not to avoid you.” She stepped down from her stool. “I’m trying to avoid further aggravation for both of us.”
“By fleeing. I know all about fleeing, Jacaranda. I run off whenever my feelings are hurt, or my pride, or my dignity, but I could not run off this time. I could only run to you, do you understand?”
“Yes.” She folded her rag as if it were pristine linen. “I understand about running, but you must think I’m running from you, when I’m running to something I never should have turned my back on. I’ve finally found the courage to put right some things I put wrong in the past, and you will not lecture or bully me into changing my mind at this late date.”
After five years, this courage just happened to befall her when Worth offered marriage?
“Nobody can apparently change that block of stone you call your mind,” he said, his ire gathering. “Not for love nor money will you consider another’s viewpoint might have more merit than your own.”
She pitched her rag at his chest but missed. “You haven’t the first clue what you ask of me.”
“So tell me,” he said, his voice lowering as he advanced on her. “We’re running out of time, Jacaranda, and I want to know what it is you find so much more compelling than a future with me.”
Tears gathered in her eyes, but Worth could not afford to relent. His happiness hung in the balance, and he would have bet his entire remaining fortune that hers did, too.
“For the love of God, Jacaranda, please tell me what keeps us apart. If it’s a dragon, I may not slay it, but I’ll tame the damned beast until it eats from your hand.”
“You’ll hate me if I tell you why I must leave. I’d rather skip to the leaving part and have you merely wroth with me. I’m trying to find my courage, Worth. I don’t want to leave you, but I fear I left the greater part of it in Dorset.”
She believed that convoluted, inverted, inside-out female pronouncement, and yet, Worth also saw hesitation in her eyes, and longing, and—most encouraging of all—love. The dratted, dear woman had somehow determined that she had to leave for him.
“Jacaranda, I’m a solicitor. I solve problems for a living. I thrive on difficulties and averting scandal. I’m resourceful, persistent, and creative. I have means, and more important than all of that—” He loved her, though one shouldn’t hurl those words at the object of his devotion.
A soft tap, and then the door banged open to reveal an entire crowd of big, dark, windblown young men and a mastiff who might have been a near relation to Goliath.
The tallest of the lot strode into the room, murder in his eyes.
“Whoever you are, get the hell away from my sister now.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Grey?” Jacaranda’s brows rose as the pitch of her voice went up. “Grey Dorning? What are you doing here now?”
Worth turned to face his unwanted guests, and he’d be damned if he’d leave Jacaranda’s side. “Are you a housebreaker, Dorning, to intrude on a man in his own library?”
“When that man is bellowing at my sister,” Dorning replied, “I will intrude at Carlton House itself. Stand away from my sister.”
“Excuse me.” Hess came sauntering through the crowd at the door. “Casriel? I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with my brother.”
“Grampion.” Dorning bowed slightly, some of the tension going out of him. “I have no quarrel with you or your brother, but I’ve come to take Lady Jacaranda home. Her step-mother has created circumstances that make Lady Jacaranda’s presence at Dorning House a matter of urgency.”
“Step-Mama didn’t ask you to come barging in here like Blucher at Waterloo,” Jacaranda said. “All I’ve asked for is the indefinite hospitality of Dorning House when I leave here.”
Saints be praised, Jacaranda was not pleased to see this interfering baboon. Better still, she’d been abandoning Worth to go home, not for the pleasure of another fellow’s broom closets. Victory loomed within Worth’s grasp, until one small word intruded on his budding sense of triumph—
Lady Jacaranda. Lady Jacaranda?
Worth’s entire reality came to a snorting, rearing halt. His housekeeper was the daughter of an earl, at least, to have her own courtesy title.
He’d fished an earl’s daughter out of his pond. Importuned her repeatedly for her favors, invited himself repeatedly into her bed—
“Worth, with your permission I will alert the kitchen that we’re to have a considerable number of guests,” Hess said. “Casriel here can make the introductions.”
“I’ll talk to Cook,” Jacaranda cut in. “With your permission, Mr. Kettering?”
Worth
could not read her expression. She was leaving him, but first she was seeing to his kitchen, and she was a lady—a duplicitous lady. He disliked that revelation, and yet, of course she was a lady. Her station had been evident in her generalship of his house, in her inherent dignity, her poise.
He nodded, not the master dismissing his housekeeper, but the intimate, allowing the woman he cared for a strategic and dignified retreat.
“I suppose that leaves me to handle the pretty,” Hess said. “Grey Dorning, Earl of Casriel, may I make known to you Worth Kettering, my younger brother and heir. As to these other fine gentlemen, I’m sure Casriel will enlighten us.”
One by one, Worth was introduced to the forest of young manhood that was Jacaranda’s family. Grey Birch Dorning, the earl, followed by Willow—“call me Will”—Ash, Oak, Hawthorne, Valerian and a sapling by the name of Sycamore.
They were handsome devils, the lot of them, and big. They all sported the peculiar hue of lavender eyes that looked so lovely on their sister.
“Do we take it you’re staying again at the local inn?” Hess asked as he distributed the brandy Worth poured.
“Again?” Worth asked.
“Casriel and I shared an enjoyable evening at my final stop on the way to your doorstep,” Hess said. “We served on a committee together in the Lords, or wasted time in the same meetings.”
“We didn’t stop to arrange accommodations this time,” Casriel said. “Step-Mama has planned a house party and invited half the dowered young ladies of the realm.”
“Then she took off for Bath, and the housekeeper quit,” young Sycamore said. “So we thundered up from Dorset because now Jack has to come home. It was fun.”
He downed his brandy like a much older man. What else might this pack of sylvan giants think was fun?
“You are welcome to stay here tonight,” Worth heard himself saying. “The weather is threatening misery, and I can vouch for the readiness of my household to comfortably accommodate you all.”
“Jack wouldn’t have it any other way,” Will said. “I can recall how Dorning House was before she got a flea in her ear.”
“Willow.” The earl’s tone was warning.
Will peered at his empty brandy glass, his expression forlorn. “Jack kept us in line, and she did it without shouting, much. We miss her, and she didn’t come home to visit this summer, not even to see the baby. We worried.”
Worry was something Worth could understand, albeit grudgingly.
“I think she’s been happy here,” he said, praying it was so. “I know she’s kept the house running like a top. The whole estate, actually.”
Casriel ran a hand through thick, dark hair.
“She does that,” he said quietly, almost…sheepishly? “I’ve gone through three stewards since she left. My housekeeper threatened to retire at least a half-dozen times before actually quitting, and that’s after I’ve doubled her wages, twice.”
His admission was followed by a silence, then Will lumbered over to the decanter and helped himself to another drink.
“We can’t keep maids either, and it’s not what you think.” Will passed the decanter to the next brother, and it circled the room until coming back to the sideboard, quite empty. “We don’t pester them, or not much. Grey won’t stand for it, but they don’t stay. They run off with the footmen, or the tenants, or they simply run off.”
“When Jack was around,” the one named Ash said, “they stayed long enough to be friendly.”
Grey frowned. “You weren’t even at university then.”
Ash shrugged. “I was out of short-coats. I’m a Dorning.”
They went on like that, raising a slow, fraternal lament for the sister who’d kept them organized and out of trouble until Worth wanted to scream. These fellows needed their sister, and she would go with them and spend her days running their household, stepping and fetching for them, when they should have been stepping and fetching for her. They arranged themselves all over the room, on the chairs, the table, the sofa, the hearth, the floor, the largest band of orphans Worth had ever seen.
And a house party bore down on them, arranged by this fiend of an errant step-mother, toward whom Jacaranda no doubt felt buckets of loyalty and guilt.
“Don’t you lot have another sister?” Worth asked. “I know Mrs.—Lady Jacaranda mentioned a sister.”
“Daisy.” Sycamore rolled his eyes. “She’s married to Eric and having babies.”
“Shouldn’t Jacaranda be married and having babies?” Worth certainly thought so. Married to him, having his babies.
“She isn’t the marrying kind,” Grey said. “Her heart was broken once long ago, and she hasn’t any interest in finding a husband. She told me that herself, though not the particulars. Why else do you think I’d tolerate this housekeeping nonsense from her?”
Worth searched the gaze of each brother, but it wasn’t until he got to his own brother that he felt some relief. Though Hess’s expression was bland, in his eyes Worth could see his thoughts: What a driveling lot of pathetic fools, kidnapping their only sensible relation so she can rescue them from—horrors!—a house full of heiresses and debutantes.
“I will confer with Lady Jacaranda to see which rooms we’re putting you in,” Worth said, “and then you’ll be free to freshen up for dinner. We dine as a family, and you’ll be introduced to our sister, Miss Yolanda Kettering, and our niece, Miss Avery, as well as Miss Snyder and Mrs. Hartwick.”
He bowed and left the room before anybody could prevent him from conferring with his own housekeeper. Jacaranda was his housekeeper, and he’d trade on that for as long as he could.
Which might be for one more day, give or take a few hours.
He found her in her room, where she seemed to be spending increasing amounts of time. Her pretty gentian eyes were haunted, and all the ire Worth had felt toward her receded behind genuine concern.
“You weren’t expecting the entire tribe, were you?” he asked, closing the door.
“I haven’t seen them since last year. They seem to keep growing.”
Worth took a seat beside her on the settee. She was hunched forward, so he could only see her face in profile.
“You must have been in a very great rage to leave so many helpless men behind you.” His words were soft, so was his touch as he smoothed back her hair. “They miss you terribly.”
“They miss having their every need met without them thinking about it,” she said. “They’re dear, and I do love them, and Grey especially tries, but Step-Mama knew I’d never leave the boys to deal with a house party. You see that, I hope. I can’t allow them to flounder along before half the gossips of Polite Society, bankrupting Grey’s coffers, preyed upon by heiresses, wrecking the house—”
“Who broke your heart, Jacaranda?”
She scooted as if to rise. Worth put a hand on her arm.
“You can tell me. I’ve wondered why you ran away from home, and that was before I knew you were an earl’s daughter.”
He said it for her, because apparently, she’d never intended to say it to him herself. Some purveyor of confidences, he.
“An impoverished earl.” She settled back, and when Worth put an arm around her shoulders, she let him have her weight. “Papa had more kindness than sense, and more amateur botanical inclinations than money. I had a small portion left me by a grandmother, though.”
“Go on,” Worth said, stealing a whiff of her hair.
“My younger sister, Daisy, was sickly—my half-sister. Of all of us, she’s the only one who isn’t a giant.”
“You’re not a giant.” Nor was she his housekeeper. The simple sight of those buffoons in the library, and she’d already on some level abandoned her post at Trysting. She’d get them organized for this house party, see that the staff acquitted themselves as if serving foreign royalty, and by then that cottage would have wrapped its ivy tentacles around her heart.
“Daisy’s lungs were weak as a child,” Jacaranda went on as if Wort
h hadn’t spoken. “For several winters we feared we might lose her. Papa had the solicitors put my portion in Daisy’s name, because Step-Mama convinced him no man would want a sickly wife.”
Kind, botanical, and none too bright. No wonder Jacaranda felt she had to fend for her menfolk.
“Let me guess,” Worth said. “Dear Daisy used her portion to snabble a swain, and she’s been in the pink of health ever since, while you’ve been slaving away here in Surrey for a man who doesn’t even bother to learn what his housekeeper looks like.”
“You rather know what I look like.”
“So now you leave me?”
She turned her face into his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you. Well, I am, a little, maybe. We were only dallying, Worth.”
“We weren’t even dallying.”
She fell silent, and again, he wanted to kick something fragile and bellow obscenities, but he knew when to let a negotiating opponent stew, and this little tale was more complicated than Jacaranda had disclosed.
“I did dally, once,” she said. “I do mean once. One time.”
“Not a memorable occasion?” Whoever he was, Worth wanted to kill him, not for despoiling Jacaranda—she was free to dally where she chose, thank the Deity—but for disappointing her.
She tucked closer, as if to hide. “Eric was so sweet, not loud and ribald like my brothers, but mannerly and soft-spoken. When he kissed me, I felt pretty. He’s handsome, Eric is, refined.”
The bastard was shrewd, too. “He had the sense to pay you some attention.”
If Jacaranda tucked herself any closer, Worth would give in to the temptation to haul her into his lap.
“His attentions befell me when no one was about—I thought he was exercising gentlemanly discretion. My brothers trusted him, because we’ve known the family forever. They trusted me because no man in his right mind would bother flirting with me.”
“In God’s name why not? You’re gorgeous, brilliant, tireless—”
She kissed his cheek, a scolding, hushing kiss, and Worth had the uncomfortable suspicion his words wounded her.
My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes Page 74