Worth; Lord Of Reckoning

by Grace Burrowes

  She kissed his knuckles and nodded.

  “Say the words, my love.”

  Oh, that hurt. Those little words—my love—said with such patience and tenderness while he looked at her as if she were precious.

  “I promise, if we’ve conceived a child, I will tell you and you can make proper provision.”

  “Thank you, Jacaranda.”

  “I’m about to cry.”

  “You cried enough last night,” he said, though his tone assured her his words were meant kindly, bracingly. “A pack of hyenas is scavenging every scrap of food from my larder, my housekeeper is leaving me, my brother wants me to winter in Cumberland, for God’s sake, and you think you’re entitled to cry?”

  “Suppose not.” She might well have the rest of her life to cry. “Will you see me off?”

  “If that is what you want. I’ve a suggestion,” Worth said, drawing her to her feet. “Why don’t we send you and Casriel on your way? Your brothers can come after you when they rise.”

  “They might not be up and about for hours.”

  “Trust me,” Worth said, stepping back and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “They’ll be no more than two hours behind you, and Casriel will want to take his time because he’s escorting a lady. You’ll have your knights at your side by noon.”

  “Anxious to get rid of me, Worth?” She paused by the door, wanting nothing more than to feel his arms around her one more time.

  “Anxious to get the pain of parting behind you, yes.”

  “I’m glad you’re capable of thinking,” she said as he led her toward the stairs. “I’m not.”

  “You’re exhausted. I can send you home in my coach if you like.”

  “No, thank you. The fresh air will do me good.” Left to herself in a coach, she’d give way to tears all the way to Dorset. “Grey and I will spend the morning catching up.”

  By the time Worth had brought her to the breakfast room, Jacaranda’s chin was up, her shoulders were back, and she’d resolved to get through the next hour with some dignity. Grey acceded easily to Worth’s plan, and Worth excused himself to alert the stables to the arrangements.

  When Jacaranda saw Worth next, the tea and toast she’d managed to down were sitting miserably in her stomach, and Grey was making a polite production out of conferring with Hess over by the gardens. She waited by the mounting block as Worth emerged from the stables.

  He was so dear. She’d always liked his looks, liked how easy he was with his size and his strength. She liked his humor, his odd touches of modesty and fastidiousness, liked how he was a good brother and a devoted uncle.

  He was conscientious with his clients, and with her he’d been so careful, so confoundedly caring it was easy to forget that Jacaranda’s brothers needed her.

  Then too, Step-Mama—among others—had some significant explaining to do.

  “Let’s stroll a little, shall we?” Worth appropriated her arm, wrapping his hand over hers. “Hess will keep Casriel busy as long as we need him to. Did you know Roberts and the maid named Muriel were spying for your brother?”

  “I suspected. I would feel eyes on me from time to time.”

  “We’ve been discreet, Jacaranda. You’re not to let that pack of jackanapes run roughshod over you because you think you’ve been naughty.”

  “I’m not?” She had been naughty, wonderfully naughty. A skein of happiness trickled through her sorrow. She’d been naughty, and this time, she was not remotely ashamed.

  She was glad.

  “But for the youngest couple, your brothers are grown men, off to university and back, and you are not their nursemaid.”

  “Are you lecturing me?”

  “I am.” He paused in their perambulation. “I want you to be happy, and that lot isn’t intent on the same priority. I know, I was a jackanapes once myself, and we’re a selfish bunch. Promise me this is what you want.”

  “I want this,” she said, able to mean it in some sense, because five years at Trysting had only made some problems worse, not better. “You’ll make my good-byes to Yolanda and Avery, Miss Snyder and Mrs. Hartwick?”

  “No. They’ve all got their noses pressed to the windows in the nursery wing, I’ve no doubt of it. Wave and they’ll see you.”

  She waved and caught a flutter of movement from the third-floor windows.

  “I’m about to kiss you good-bye, my love.”

  “I’m about to let you.”

  He kissed her when she desperately wanted him to talk her out of leaving. Not a naughty kiss either, which made it worse. His kiss was sweet, tender, almost chaste, and all too quickly over.

  “Ready?” His gaze was steady and steadying.

  “As I shall ever be.” She took his arm and processed to the mounting block, feeling as if it might have been the gallows at the Old Bailey.

  “We’ll be off then,” Casriel said. “Thanks for the hospitality, and if the boys give you any trouble, a bullwhip sometimes helps. They know which inns we use, and they’ll come along because I’m the only one carrying enough blunt to stand their meals.”

  “Lady Jacaranda.” The Earl of Grampion bowed over her hand. “It has been a pleasure and an inspiration.”

  She blinked, seeing kindness and understanding in the earl’s eyes. Oh, dear…

  “Come.” Worth turned her by the arm. “Your steed awaits.”

  “My….Goliath? You’re lending me Goliath?”

  “He’s taken to the country,” Worth said. “If you find he doesn’t suit, you can send him back with one of your brothers, but you and he are friends, and he’s of a size to carry you. Then too, Casriel says that due to yet another unforgivable oversight on your family’s part, you have no personal mount, and you deserve one.”

  “Just for a loan,” she said, patting the beast’s glossy black neck. “A short-term loan.”

  “For as long as you need him,” Worth said, and he was looking at her with such focus, Jacaranda had to wonder at the significance of this extravagant gesture.

  This lovable gesture. The loan of Goliath was generous and kind, easing their parting and leaving them one detail of business to connect them. She threw her arms around Worth, heedless of Grey clearing his throat on his mount. Worth caught her to him in a fierce embrace, then let her go and stepped back, her gloved hand in his.

  “Safe journey home, Lady Jacaranda. Lord Casriel, you will send us word when you’ve seen the lady back to Dorset.”

  “Of course.”

  Worth held Goliath’s reins while Jacaranda mounted. When her skirts were arranged, he petted the horse’s shoulder.

  “She’s precious, old friend, so don’t put a foot wrong.” He looked up at Jacaranda, his eyes the same impossible blue as when she’d first met him, but so much more dear to her. “God-speed.” He blew her a kiss, and then somehow, the horse was cantering down the driveway, taking her away from the only man she’d ever loved.

  The only man she ever would love.

  * * *

  “I am near tears,” Hess said, standing beside Worth.

  “Stubble it, Hessian.” Worth turned toward the house. “That is my future wife, though before she admits that, she must face again the choice between her happiness and her family’s dictates. Last time she confronted that reckoning, she chose neither. This time, I’ve every confidence she’ll see she for herself that she can have both—and a fine husband into the bargain.”

  Worth was counting on it, maybe the way Hessian had been counting on him to ask for a reconciliation.

  Which had taken more than a damned decade to bring about.

  “She didn’t even give me her direction,” Worth added, because he and Hess were reconciled. “I am in no mood to be teased.”

  “She didn’t need to give it to you,” Hess said, holding up a piece of folded paper. “Casriel generously provided his direction to me, while her ladyship sipped tea and made not the least fuss.”

  Worth coasted to a stop, like a ship gliding
home to the dock. “Hessian, I love you. I might not have always said as much, or been much of a brother, but I…what?”

  Hess passed him the paper.

  “I’ve done my part,” he said. “With or without you, I must leave for Grampion in a few weeks. Now what will you do with that address?”

  “Nothing, for now. Jacaranda isn’t the only one with some reckoning to do.”

  Hess said nothing, but walked with him back to the house where six bleary-eyed young men were rousted, dressed, fed and put on their mounts in record time.

  * * *

  “I wondered when you would come see me,” Daisy said, hugging her sister.

  “I saw you at dinner last week at Dorning House,” Jacaranda replied, though the final dinner of the house party had been more like a mêlée. “I know the children keep you busy, and I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Come.” Daisy took her hand and walked beside her through the tidy manor house. “Her Highness is asleep, and that’s the best time to visit her. Before I can get the tea tray ready, she’ll be up and fussing.”

  Daisy led Jacaranda up the stairs to the third floor and quietly pushed open a door left slightly ajar. Still holding her sister’s hand, Daisy crossed the room, stopping beside a white bassinette.

  “She’s beautiful, Daze.” The infant had her mother’s perfect skin, a thistledown head of white-blond hair, a perfect Cupid’s bow mouth, and the tiniest, sweetest little fingers.

  “She’s beautiful now,” Daisy said. “Give it an hour, and she’ll be a terror. She puts me in mind of my own mother when Mama’s nerves are troubling her.”

  They drew back from the sleeping infant, though Jacaranda wanted to linger. She already knew she wasn’t carrying Worth Kettering’s child, and while that was a relief—it truly was—it was also the unkindest cut.

  “You’re wool-gathering again,” Daisy said when they’d repaired to a sunny morning parlor.

  “I’m sorry. She’s a disconcertingly beautiful child.”

  “Eric loves the children, which is why I don’t leave him.”

  “I beg your pardon? Daisy Fromm, you aren’t thinking of leaving your husband? You’ve been married but five years.”

  Was this why Jacaranda had come home? To prevent her sister from abandoning a marriage Jacaranda had resented for years?

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Daisy took one seat and gestured for her sister to take the other. “We have three children, so we must be compatible in the essentials.”

  “Daisy, your unwed sister is not the one to receive these confidences.” Jacaranda took her seat, wondering where her dear little sister had gone, leaving this tired, somewhat resigned-looking young matron in her place.

  “Grey pulled me aside at dinner and said you and I are overdue for an honest chat. I thought it might help if you knew Eric and I have already descended into tolerating each other.”

  Angels abide. “Of course it doesn’t help. Why would it help? What would it help?”

  “Jack…Jacaranda, all those years ago, Eric was about to offer for you. He confided in me when we found ourselves on the garden swing in a shockingly friendly moment, one I am ashamed to say I instigated in part because Mama suggested Eric was trying to choose between us. I told him you weren’t inclined to marry. Otherwise, why would you have given me your portion?”

  This revelation should have pierced Jacaranda to the quick. Instead, she stifled a curious inclination to snicker. “Oh, my poor Daisy.”

  “I am Eric’s poor Daisy.” She fiddled with the tea service, an everyday Jasperware sporting a chip on the spout of the cream pitcher. “I don’t know how you can stand to look at me.”

  “You were seventeen,” Jacaranda reminded her, “and Eric didn’t truly love me or he wouldn’t have been swayed by the money.” She’d taken five years to admit that, to see that she’d had a narrow escape.

  Daisy glanced around at the tidy comfort of their surroundings. “Enough to buy this place and keep up the three tenant farms fairly well.”

  “You’re doing the managing, aren’t you?” Unlike Jacaranda, Daisy wasn’t comforted by ordering a domestic universe for others.

  “Eric isn’t a bad man,” Daisy said, peering into the teapot. The scent of a delicate gunpowder provoked memories of Trysting. “Eric is simply in want of guidance.”

  “Do you suppose Francine is providing that exact guidance to her baron?” For Step-Mama’s campaign at Bath had borne fruit, and Daisy had a new step-papa, may God help the man.

  “She’s beggaring him,” Daisy said dryly, “or she will soon. Grey says the money he’ll save not having to pay Mama’s bills will exceed what he would have spent on three house parties. I’m sorry you were plucked from Surrey, but Jacaranda, Mama was driving us all to Bedlam.”

  “I’ve written her my best wishes and made a few suggestions for how she might curry favor with the baron’s housekeeper. I don’t believe she’ll take my suggestions to heart.”

  They shared a sororal smile, then Daisy started giggling and Jacaranda was pouring tea, and five years of distance and hurt were eased aside in an afternoon.

  As much as Jacaranda missed Worth, missed him bitterly moment by moment, she took some pleasure in knowing she’d at least put matters right with Daisy, who’d also been manipulated by Francine’s marital schemes. Jacaranda had hired Grey a housekeeper who would not tolerate juvenile behavior from grown men, and she’d written what would likely be her last letter to her step-mother for some time.

  Dorning House was again the family home, and yet, the longer Jacaranda missed Worth, the more she realized that home for her was no longer a dwelling, but rather a certain handsome, ruthless, dear and difficult solicitor.

  * * *

  “You and Daisy must have found something to talk about,” Grey said as Jacaranda rode Goliath into the Dorning stable yard.

  “I had to wait for the baby to wake up to properly dote on her.” Jacaranda let her brother help her dismount, a courtesy he wouldn’t have known to offer five years ago.

  “Did Fromm show his face?”

  “He did. He’s aged.” Not matured, aged. Poor Daisy.

  “He has responsibilities,” Grey said carefully. He waited until a groom led Goliath away to speak further. “You didn’t call him out?”

  “He offered me no dishonor I didn’t invite, Grey.” Jacaranda looped her arm through his, sparing herself his searching gaze. “I see him now, and he’s not an old man, but he’s going soft in the middle, his hair’s thinning, and he still has puny arms.”

  “Puny arms? What has that to do with anything?”

  “I doubt he could manage Goliath in a snaffle.” She gently guided her brother toward the house. “Eric has no bottom, so to speak, and he’s lucky Daisy will have him.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? How much do you know, Grey?”

  “More than I want to. Enough to know the topic can be dropped now and forever.”

  “It can,” Jacaranda said, and what a relief that was, not to have to dodge and cringe and tiptoe around the past with either her sister or her oldest and dearest brother. The past was the past, and the future… Jacaranda had decided to return Goliath to his owner in person.

  Maybe Worth had known she would?

  And yet, Grey looked worried. “Does this mean I can bring up your former employer?”

  “If you must.”

  “Roberts will be returning to Surrey,” Grey said as he held the front door to the house for her—another small, dear courtesy he hadn’t shown her five years ago. “You could send along a note.”

  “A lady does not correspond with a single gentleman to whom she is not related, unless to offer condolences or other socially acceptable sentiments.”

  “Jacaranda, the poor blighter’s in love with you,” Grey said when they reached the family parlor. “For once in your life, have pity on the male of the species. Write to him.”

  She was well and truly done having pity o
n the males of the species.

  “What I have to say to Worth Kettering can be said in person, Grey. I’ve made the mistake once before of thinking my sentiments were returned, and I was egregiously in error. Now I know my sentiments are shared with the object of my affections, and I owe the man an honest recitation. His affection for me was not in doubt when I left Trysting, I can only hope he still holds me in high regard.”

  Vaguely, she heard somebody clearing his throat behind her, but she went on even in front of some embarrassed footman, because Grey needed to let this drop once and for all.

  “I have come home, I’ve seen you through the house party, I’ve sorted out matters with Daisy. I’ve put your house to rights, and even dispensed advice to Francine, but it’s time I put my own house in order, Grey.”

  She’d known she loved Worth Kettering when she’d left Surrey. Now she knew that she needed him as well. She didn’t need him as a large household needed organization and effort to run smoothly, she needed him as a woman needs to love and be loved.

  “Er, Jacaranda?” Grey, who never dithered, was dithering.

  “You must simply learn to muddle along without me,” she went on, because this was something Grey should understand. “I have my own life to live, my own matters to tend to. I never told Worth Kettering I loved him. I didn’t think I deserved to impose my feeling on him, didn’t want to risk that he might not—what?”

  Grey looked like he’d swallowed bad fish, but he managed to point over Jacaranda’s left shoulder. She turned and saw Worth Kettering standing in the family parlor, his expression arrested while the butler beside him wrung his hands.

  “Lady Jacaranda has a caller. Mr. Worth Kettering,” the butler explained, his ears as red as the fall mums gracing the sideboard.

  “Worth?” There he was, looking just as handsome and fit as ever, though not particularly happy.

  “I’m sure you two have things to chat about.” Grey sketched a bow and escaped right behind the retreating butler, leaving Jacaranda ready to melt into a puddle of mortification.