Worth; Lord Of Reckoning

by Grace Burrowes

  “Dankle has to come back. She loves us.”

  The hound looked worried again—smart dog.

  “No, she does not. Between my muddy boots, your hounds, Cam’s mischief with the maids, and Ash’s mechanical experiments, Dankle would probably prefer Bedlam to another month at Dorning House.”

  “At least she won’t have to put up with Francine,” Will said as they reached the double doors opening on the family wing. “That should be good for morale among the domestics.”

  An itching that had started up between Grey’s shoulder blades weeks ago, nagged at him.

  “What do you mean, we won’t have to put up with Francine?”

  Grey stayed where he was, because forewarned was forearmed, and he had every confidence Francine was behind Dankle’s defection to the ranks of contented grannies.

  For which, he would make his dear step-mama pay.

  “Some baron fellow is pacing about the front parlor,” Will said, “clearing his throat, and muttering about fetching his bride. I told the footman to bring him the very best brandy we’ve been able to hide from Cam, because any fellow who’s meeting Franny at the altar is a friend of mine.”

  The dog remained obediently by Will’s side, her tail still waving gently as if she shared her owner’s sanguine outlook. Behind Will, a mirror with a crack across the bottom hung slightly askew, and a bouquet of roses had long since needed replacing.

  “This is not good, Will. Without Dankle, Francine might have at least tried to hold the staff together until I could hire a replacement.”

  Though the baron was welcome to Francine, for she created a lot of work for the staff.

  “This is not bad, either,” Will said, streaking a finger through the dust on the mirror. “Francine is unhappy, and an unhappy female is the definition of trouble.”

  True enough. While an unhappy earl was the definition of one whose damned roses wouldn’t cross.

  Or something.

  “Come with me,” Grey said, resuming his progress. “We can ask Francine about this fiancé she neglected to let anybody know she’d attached.”

  When they reached her ladyship’s suite of rooms, they were met by footmen hauling a series of trunks from the room.

  “Those are my trunks,” Will muttered.

  “Think of your friend in the parlor,” Grey replied, leading the way into a chaos of gowns, hats, and boxes strewn about the room. “Your ladyship, what’s afoot?”

  The dog sniffed at a stocking dangling from her ladyship’s vanity, then padded over to Will’s side, her tail no longer wagging.

  “You might knock before entering a lady’s chambers,” Francine said. “What is that dog doing in my rooms?”

  “She’s sitting,” Grey said, as a maid stacked three hat boxes in a tower and departed with the lot. “While you appear to be going somewhere.”

  For all Francine was unhappy, as Will had said, Grey was still uneasy to see her boxing up her every slipper and glove.

  Particularly without a word of warning to the head of her household.

  “I’m leaving for Bath,” Francine said, closing the doors to an empty wardrobe. “Baron Hathaway has offered to share his coach with me.”

  “Will says the baron has offered to share a bit more than that with you,” Grey observed, “and when were you planning to tell me yesterday was Dankle’s last day?”

  Francine turned, the wardrobe at her back. “When were you planning to get that sister of yours to come home, so my existence here was not an endless round of feuding housemaids, lazy footmen, and ridiculous economies?”

  Francine truly was leaving, else she would not have been as obvious about her motivations. If her departure to Bath were merely temporary, then she’d resume fretting over Jacaranda’s good name, or natter on about missing dear Jacaranda, or coo over family needing to be together.

  “Do you hate Jacaranda?” Will asked, his tone for once sharp.

  “No, I do not,” Francine said, snatching up the dangling stocking and rolling it into a tight ball. “I’m in truth fond of the girl and have only her best interests in mind, but you lot seem content to turn Dorning House into the largest gentleman’s club in England. Jacaranda can manage you, and she’ll likely even be able to find wives for you. I wash my hands of you all. She is not plagued by delicate nerves—not yet.”

  Francine pitched the stocking into an open hat box with an accuracy many a cricket team would envy, and while she tried to hide it, Grey detected a gleam of triumph in her eyes.

  “Francine, you may elope with your baron, and I will wish you all the very best. I hope for Daisy’s sake and the sake of your grandchildren, we continue to remain cordial. Whatever you’ve done, whatever scheme you’ve concocted, you had best tell us now, or we’ll inform the baron you’ve changed your mind.”

  The dog rose from her haunches, her alert gaze swinging from Grey to Francine.

  “Hathaway will not believe you,” Francine said. “As for my schemes, I’ve planned a little house party to keep you gentlemen entertained, a few dozen of Society’s finest heiresses and prettiest debutantes selected from the best families. The list is in my escritoire, and while I’d really rather stay and allow you to bid me a proper thanks, I must instead make my farewell.”

  She swept out, the last of the maids following with another tower of hat boxes.

  With a sense of foreboding, Grey approached the escritoire and opened the top drawer. On a piece of vellum—no foolscap for Francine—in the tidy hand that was likely recognized all over the realm, a list of names marched down one page and onto the next.

  “How bad is it?” Will asked.

  Grey took the delicate Louis Quinze chair before his knees could buckle.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s bad, exactly,” he replied, reading down the third page. “I’d say if we don’t retrieve Jack immediately, we’re facing a bloody damned disaster.”

  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 no
w 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.