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 modern.”
“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.
What a relief, after years of animosity, for Worth to experience genuine protectiveness toward his brother.
“Will you allow me to help?”
Another question gently put, and another silence, while Worth considered that single question might mean he spent the rest of his life wishing his brother would resume speaking to him.
“God, yes, Worth, I will allow you to help. I will be grateful for your help. I know I don’t deserve—”
“We haven’t much time,” Worth interrupted, “but a particular opportunity lies in the offing now that could set you up nicely. How bad is the bleeding?”
Darkness had fallen before they went inside, moving their discussion to the library. Before Worth let Hess go up to bed, Worth had worked out the rudiments of a plan to not simply get the ancestral estate out of debt, but to turn it into a profitable venture. Putting Grampion on solid footing could take five years, but a few shares in the Drummond would shorten that estimate considerably.
Worth was content with that scenario when he considered their father had likely inherited a dismal situation fifty years ago, and done little to turn it around.
Hess refused to borrow from his brother, though, so it would be only a few shares of Drummond stock purchased, and that money was from Hess’s dwindling personal wealth. Like many of his peers, he was pouring personal money into an increasingly unprofitable agricultural estate, too hidebound or ignorant to diversify his revenue sources.
“This venture with the Drummond is high risk, isn’t it?” Hess asked as he rose to leave for his bed.
“That depends on how you view it, but high reward, too, and we should know in the next fifteen days which it is.”
“So I’ll have to stay in the south for another few weeks.” Hess did not look pleased with this possibility.
“Is my hospitality so lacking?” Worth said, purposely goading his brother, because hospitality wasn’t the problem.
“Your hospitality is superb, but the thought of Yolanda glaring daggers at me for weeks, then having to haul her, muttering and cursing, the length of England… One would like to have such an ordeal behind one.”
“Perhaps you’ll be able to turn her up sweet, or we can come to some other arrangement.”
“I know my duty, Worth.”
“Your duty now is to get a decent night’s sleep.” Worth got to his feet, fati
gued to his bones, but also lighter in spirit. Setting another’s financial house in order often did that for him. “Mine as well.”
“About that.” Hess pinned his gaze on a painting of a mare and foal, an early Thomas Lawrence.
“Hessian?”
“You seem to have the knack of acquiring young, pretty housekeepers.”
“Each of whom,” Worth said, “is entirely her own woman.”
Hess looked sheepish, but pleased. “That’s what she said. Your Mary is quite forward.”
“She’s also carrying another man’s child. If she told you you couldn’t get her with child, it was the God’s honest truth.”
“Little brother, the life you live is incomprehensible to me.” Hess gathered up his boots and stockings. “Though you seem comfortable in it.”
He left on that observation, and Worth went in search of his housekeeper, but only to tell her he’d be leaving for Trysting in late morning.
* * *
“Hell, yes, I’ll sell you my shares.” James Murphy’s boots thumped onto the carpet of his office. “The Drummond is accounted a complete loss, and I know what you’re about, Kettering. You’re trying to keep me from selling to somebody else for a farthing to the pound, so your own pile of shares won’t be worth even less when you try to dump the ones you still have. It’s an old trick.”
“Or perhaps I believe in my captain, and the Drummond will come sailing in here one of these weeks.” Worth injected a note of defensiveness under his rejoinder, though one did want to play fair—within reason.
“The captain hasn’t been born of woman who can control the weather, my friend.” Murphy’s smile was sympathetic, but he signed over his stock certificates at face value. Worth paid him in cash, gathered a witnessed receipt, and thanked his associate very cordially.
He made six similar stops, which left him and his investors the sole shareholders in the venture, then collected his brother at the town house and once again headed back to Trysting.
* * *
“This is a sorry day, Mrs. W.” Simmons shook his head like a dog with a flea in his ear. “A sorry, sorry day. The young lady snatched from our very halls, and not one witness. A right tragedy, you ask me. What will Mr. K say?”
Perhaps Mr. K would allow Jacaranda to pension Simmons off at last.
“We’ll soon know Mr. Kettering’s view on the matter, Mr. Simmons. I sent a note to Town, and I don’t doubt he’ll be here by moonrise.”
“Moonrise!” The eyebrows rose to unprecedented heights, and beneath the dismay lurked a nasty element of glee to have such drama befall the house.
Jacaranda’s hand formed a tight fist in her skirts.
“Mrs. Wyeth?” Carl stood a safe distance away as he addressed her. “We’ve searched the outbuildings and found no sign of Miss Yolanda.”
“Thank you, Carl. What about the attics?”
“We’re up there now, ma’am, and the cellars, too.”
“Very good. Keep me and Mr. Simmons informed.”
“Oh, this is dire,” Simmons moaned. “What if she’s not in the attics or the cellars? We’ve searched the grounds, her room, the outbuildings and gardens. She’s not asleep in a hammock or reading by the stream. There’s no note. She hasn’t taken a horse or cart, and nobody has seen her since luncheon, and that was hours ago. Hours!”
“So it was, Mr. Simmons. I suggest you start praying.”
He was so stunned by that pronouncement, his mouth snapped shut fast enough to have his turkey wattle shaking.
What was there to do except pray? Yolanda had been infernally quiet since the earl had come to visit, wafting around the house like a pretty ghost, holing up in the library, taking trays for lunch and breakfast.
Boot heels rang in the corridor, and Jacaranda had to hope it was a groom arriving with news, good or bad, any news at all.
“Mrs. Wyeth?” Worth Kettering stood framed in the doorway, his brother at his shoulder. “My dear, the house is in an uproar, the grooms say Yolanda is missing, and we’ve no footman at our front door. What on earth is going on?”
“Worth—” She took a step toward him, then realized she’d just used his name before his brother the earl.
And did not care. “Yolanda hasn’t been seen since luncheon, and we’ve looked everywhere.”
“This is my fault,” the earl said. “She’s run off because she thinks I’ll dragoon her back to Grampion in chains.”
“We can debate her motivations later.” Worth didn’t look angry, so much as focused. “Assuming Yolanda has decamped purposely, we can also take turns whacking at her backside for causing such anxiety to my staff. Let’s have some tea, and Mrs. Wyeth can tell us what’s been done so far to locate our sister.”
“Tea?” Jacaranda wanted to beat the bushes herself, and Yolanda’s brother was thinking of tea?
“I’ll see to it,” the earl said, spinning on his heel and leaving the library.
“Now come here.” Worth kicked the door closed and held out his arms. “We’ll find her, don’t doubt it. She’s a Kettering and made of fortitude, resourcefulness and determination. Hess is likely right, and this is a fit of pique, that’s all.”
“I am so worried,” Jacaranda managed, and then she was weeping against his shoulder, so glad to see him, so relieved for once to not have to be the one who organized, and thought ahead, and encouraged everyone else.
“Young ladies loose without supervision are worth worrying about.” Worth tucked his chin against her temple and held her until Jacaranda eased her grip on him. A knock at the door heralded the earl, followed by a maid bearing a tea tray. The newest maid, who would have been limited to upstairs duty under normal circumstances.
“Thank you,” Worth said. “That will be all.” He sat himself on the sofa and patted the place beside him. “Sit you, Mrs. Wyeth, and start from the beginning. Your lordship, butter the lady a scone and stop castigating yourself.”
Jacaranda sat between them, finding the tea and sustenance helped—she hadn’t eaten for hours—but so, too, did Worth’s methodical approach to the entire situation and his simple, calm presence.
“When was she last seen?”
“By whom?”
“Did she receive any correspondence this morning?”
“Has she formed any particular friends in the area?”
“Has she caught the eye of any of the local swains?”
Jacaranda could answer accurately, but at the last question, she paused.
“I don’t know that she exactly caught his eye, but Thomas Hunter caught hers at market. He was most gallant.”
“Gallant?” The earl was on his feet. “I’ll shove my gallant fist down his presuming throat if he’s enticed her to folly.”
“Hessian.” Worth held up a cup of tea to his brother. “Yolanda would have left a note if she were eloping. She wouldn’t want Avery to worry, and she wouldn’t want the scandal exacerbated by a foolish alarm to the whole parish.”
The earl accepted his tea, then took to staring at a portrait of some ancestor sporting lace, hose, and collar. “You’re saying she was carried off against her will?”
“I’m saying I don’t think she eloped with somebody she’s known only a span of weeks. She has more sense than that. What does Avery say?”
“We haven’t wanted to alarm her,” Jacaranda replied. “She’s in the nursery with Mrs. Hartwick.”
“I’ll fetch her.” His lordship was out the door before Jacaranda could ring for a maid.
“Let him go,” Worth said. “He will blame himself until she’s found, and if this is a stupid stunt, Yolanda will regret it to her dying day. Eat your scone, love, and stop blaming yourself.”
“If she was unhappy, I should have seen it. I was a miserable girl once, too, and I know how foolish they can be.”
“You?” He held up a plate with the buttered scone on it. “Foolish? I must hear this tale, for I can’t imagine such a thing.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “
For courage. We’ll find her, and she had better have a good excuse for this nonsense. I don’t like to see you upset, much less my brother suffering paroxysms of undeserved guilt.”
That little kiss did give her courage, as did Worth being himself, flirting a bit despite the circumstances, tending to the basics—food and drink—and taking the whole matter in stride.
What would she have done if he’d still been in Town?
“I’ve got Avery,” Grampion said as he crossed the threshold, and he did, literally, have the child. She was affixed to his back and looking around from her perch with a hesitant smile.
“Uncle Worth! I saw you come home on Goliath.” She held out her arms as if she’d hug him from his lordship’s back.
“My dearest niece.” Worth plucked her off the earl, hugged her, and deposited her on the sofa. “Join us for a cup of tea. We’ve a mystery to solve.”
“I’ve seen the footmen scurrying everywhere, and I hear them up in the attics. They never go up there. Neither do the maids.” Avery looked perfectly composed as she sat beside her uncle on the sofa.
“We’re hunting a treasure,” Worth said, fixing her a cup of tea that was more cream and sugar than tea. “Your aunt has gone missing and you keep a close eye on her, so we’re hoping you might be able to give us some clues.”
“Clues?”
“Hints, ideas about where she might be.”
“May I have a scone with jam?”
“You may.” He tended to her request and passed her the plate. “You saw Yolanda at lunch, didn’t you?”
“Of course, and she brings her book, and Miss Snyder gives her the don’t-read-at-table look. A bit more jam,” she said. “It’s very good, the jam.”
Worth dutifully took the plate back and added another dollop of jam.
“Where did Yolanda go after lunch?” he asked.
“She comes here to look at the maps,” Avery said, taking the plate and managing to bite off a corner of scone without getting jam all over her fingers. “She likes the maps and said she would explore the estate. It belonged to an aunt, a long time ago, all of this.”
Worth; Lord Of Reckoning Page 24