Worth Lord of Reckoning (10 page)

Jacaranda sipped her wine—a rare treat—and listened to the conversation without saying much. The food was good and the company congenial, but her day had been long. When the fruit and cheese were removed, she realized the entire table was waiting for her to signal the end of the meal, almost as if she were—

Well.

She rose, her chair drawn back by Mr. Kettering. He thanked Wickie and Miss Snyder for the company, kissed Yolanda and Avery on the forehead, and wished them all pleasant dreams. Jacaranda had slipped in behind the children to make her escape when a large, male hand landed on her arm.

“A word with you, Wyeth, though I don’t suppose I should be calling you plain Wyeth now that we’re dinner companions.”

“I am plain Wyeth,” she said, frowning pointedly at his hand. “What did you wish to discuss?”

“I wished to
invite
you for a stroll in the garden,” he replied, leaving his hand exactly where it was. “The last of the light remains, and I’d like to air a certain topic where nobody can overhear us.”

That sounded sufficiently ominous that Jacaranda let him usher her from the room.

“You won’t need a shawl?”

“Our stroll will be brief.” Then too, her escort had a penchant for lending her his jacket.

His lips quirked up, though he said nothing, and then Jacaranda was on the back terrace, her hand wrapped around his forearm.

“You will give my compliments to the kitchen,” he said as they perambulated across the flagstones. “Dinner was excellent and the menu such that both Avery and I found much to enjoy. Please tell Simmons the wines were well chosen, too.”

“I will pass your praises along.” Of course,
she’d
chosen the menu and the wines. Still, his appreciation lit a small flame of pleasure in the place inside her that sought notice, a pat on the back every once in a blue moon.

“Let’s move away from the house. I do not want an audience.”

“This sounds serious.”

“Not serious, but sensitive. Or maybe I’m sensitive.”

Many people assumed—wrongly—that size and sturdy physique precluded sensitivity. She’d been at risk of making the same error where Mr. Kettering was concerned.

How lowering.

He walked along beside Jacaranda in the fading light, and to her, he looked as tired as she felt. When they’d returned from their outing to the Hendersons, he’d disappeared into the library with a morocco leather satchel and not come out until they’d sat down to dinner.

A groom had been dispatched to Town with a pile of documents, with the expectation that the full moon would allow the entire journey before the man saw his bed.

“Shall we sit?” Mr. Kettering gestured to a folly several yards off the garden path. Jacaranda knew it well, because the folly was one place she could escape to on those rare, lazy afternoons when she had a few hours to read, or nap, or write a letter or two. Afternoons when the owner of the house and his family were properly ensconced in London.

Where they belonged.

“Cushions in my gazebo? What a decadent fellow I am.”

She sat, and he took the place immediately beside her.

“I’m trying to guess how you’d broach this topic, Wyeth, and I think you’d plunge in, no shilly-shallying, no dithering. I have an older brother.”

“A blessing, usually, to have a sibling.”

“Usually,” he said, resting his arm along the bench behind them. “This brother is a fellow of some consequence, or so he thinks. We are not, as the saying goes, close.”

“I am sorry to hear it.”

“He and I are sorry as well, or so I think in my more charitable moments. I stormed away from the family seat as a hotheaded young idiot, and we haven’t had much to say to each other since.”

“These things happen in the best of families.” Had nearly happened in her own.

“We need to get over it. I lost one sister to the idiot French and their inability to police their own streets. Hess lost the same sister, and yet…”

“Yet?”

“He and I lost each other long before Moira died. We can’t do anything about her death, but we have Avery and we have each other. He didn’t even tell me about Yolanda. I learned of her from the school, when they couldn’t reach Hess and needed to expel her somewhere safe.”

This was news. “She was sent down?”

“Don’t suppose I mentioned that, did I? I don’t have all the details, but I will be damned if I’ll let another sister of mine fight battles she’s too young and innocent to fight alone.”

Not a one of Jacaranda’s seven brothers had ever adopted that fierce, determined tone where she was concerned.

“Yolanda was fighting battles at school?”

He made a gesture Jacaranda recognized as a sign that he was fatigued, rubbing his hand over his face, top to bottom.

“Have you noticed she always wears long sleeves?”

“I had not. In a girl her age, that would be unusual this time of year.” Also uncomfortable, given the heat.

“Look at her left wrist. The old besom from whom I collected her intimated that Yolanda tried to take her own life. I cannot believe this, but neither have I found a way to talk to my own sister about such a demented notion.”

“You don’t expect me to have that talk, do you?” She was surprised her voice was steady, for these revelations were shocking—and sad.

“If I thought you could, I’d try to foist it off on you, because I hardly have the knack of being brother to an adolescent female, but no. When Yolanda and I know each other better, I hope she’ll trust me with her confidences.”

He wanted his sister’s trust. If Jacaranda hadn’t respected him previously, she’d respect him for that alone.

“You’re wise not to force the matter,” Jacaranda said, though complimenting him felt awkward. “She strikes me as having a full allotment of Kettering stubbornness.”

He sat back, his arm still resting along the bench behind her. “Which raises the earlier topic. My brother will pay us a visit sometime in the next few weeks, and at my invitation.”

“We’ve plenty of room, and the house is in good trim. I wish you’d let me know the dates of his visit, though. Certain of the staff have been given holidays to see family and the like.”

“Isn’t that Simmons’s business?”

“We cooperate, with the maids and footmen, the laundresses and grooms, so we’re never too short-staffed in any one regard.”

“Hessian is only one person,” Mr. Kettering said. “He shouldn’t be too inconvenient, though he’ll doubtless travel by private coach, so that means grooms, a valet, a secretary, a coachman, and an outrider or two. He’ll likely bring a second coach, so the help won’t violate his privacy en route.”

“So I should expect his lordship and eight to twelve other mouths to feed?”

“Everlasting powers.” He rose, taking his warmth from her side. “He’ll expect the state chambers, because the man bears a title.”

“Was that the hard part?”

He stood on the other side of the gazebo, facing out across gardens all but shrouded in darkness. “I beg your pardon, Wyeth?”

“Admitting your brother has a title. Was that difficult?”

“Must you?”

“We are having this discussion where there’s no possibility of being overheard,” she said. “By your design. You and this brother do not speak, and yet you want me to ensure his visit is in every way comfortable.”

“Of course I do.” He turned to face her, but the moon wasn’t up yet, and the sun had fled. In the gathering shadows, Jacaranda couldn’t see anything of his expression.

“You aren’t commanding his comfort simply as conscientious host, though.”

“Wyeth, you are a managing damned female if ever there was one. Hess and I are distant for very good reasons. In hindsight, he did me a favor, and himself a disservice, but it lies between us, a great gaping awkwardness that arose before I’d even reached my majority.”

“Will his countess accompany him?”

He abruptly gave her his back and resumed studying the garden. “She’s dead, has been for five years.”

Nothing in his voice gave away any emotion, but something about the lack of emotion spoke volumes.

“You were in love with her.”

“You are beyond overstepping.”

“I am observing a truth.” One that raised as many questions as it answered, none of them happy.

“I was seventeen years old and callow as only a young man can be, though the young lady and I had an understanding. My brother dangled his title before her, and she fell out of love with me post-haste, so I obligingly did the same regarding her. That is as much explanation as you will have from me, and we will not discuss this again.”

His voice had taken on a chilly, flat quality, and Jacaranda wished she’d brought a shawl after all. What sort of young lady could have fallen out of love with Worth Kettering, even in his most callow incarnation?

“Here.” His coat, redolent with his scent and his warmth, dropped over her shoulders. He snugged it around her, then resumed his place beside her. “Youthful follies have a particularly potent ability to make one feel like a flaming idiot even years later.”

Idiot folly was not entirely the province of youth, though Jacaranda had indulged in her share. She ought not to enjoy the warmth and luxury of his coat, or its scent, but she was making a bad habit of it.

“You are extending an olive branch to your brother now.” Or was the overture more in the direction of Mr. Kettering’s youthful self?

“I don’t know about an olive branch.” He ranged an arm along the top of the padded bench again. Jacaranda had been hoping he’d do that. “Yolanda will have to be launched in some fashion, even though she’s a by-blow. She’ll need to snare a fellow, need a settlement, and her brothers must put aside their petty squabbles for her sake.”

“Right.”

“Wyeth… Jacaranda…”

“Hush.” She kept her eyes on the part of the far horizon glowing faintly with the promise of moonrise. “I have many siblings. Do you think I am in great charity with all of them?”

“Yes. You wouldn’t countenance anything less, particularly from the males.”

“I was seventeen once, too.” Twenty even. Twenty, plain, too tall and more lonely than she’d even known. “My oldest brother is not at all happy that I choose to remain in service. None of my brothers are. My step-mother is nearly hysterical in her demands that I return home.” Though Jacaranda’s continued absence didn’t seem to bother Daisy.

“And you have a deal of brothers. You must have been very foolish, to need to defy them all so badly.”

Perceptive man. “I was
almost
foolish, which amounts to the same thing.”

“This involved a toothsome swain, I take it?”

She remained silent, and in that silence, she forged an understanding with her employer, something in the nature of a truce, but with a dash more compassion to it.

“Men are the very devil.” His arm came around her shoulders in a friendly squeeze, but then it stayed there and became half an embrace.

Jacaranda should stand up, remark the lateness of the hour, or suggest it was time to get back to the house. She knew she should, but the moon was rising, and she’d never in her more than twenty-five years watched a moonrise with a man’s arm around her shoulders.

Mr. Kettering seemed lonely, too. A bit lost, even.

The first sliver of incandescent moon lipped up over the horizon, and Jacaranda marshaled her resolve to leave.

“Don’t.” Mr. Kettering slipped his hand into hers. “Not yet.”

She subsided, letting herself have more of his warmth, not at all sure what was transpiring between them save a shared moonrise. She let her head fall to his shoulder and felt his hand stroking over her hair, once, twice.

She closed her eyes, the better to savor the sensations, the soft night air with a hint of cool, the silvery moonshine spilling over the gardens, the warmth and scent of the man beside her, and the simple pleasure of sharing a few moments with someone who’d also once been young and foolish.

When the moon was well up, Mr. Kettering drew her to her feet, but kept that arm across her shoulders as they wandered to the house. When they reached the back terrace, he stopped, kissed her forehead, and opened the door for her, then bowed, turned, and walked back the way they’d come, until Jacaranda could no longer see him for the shifting moon shadows.

* * *

Mr. Kettering wasn’t at breakfast the next morning, much to Jacaranda’s relief.

He’d been companionable, that was all. No man in his right mind would make overtures by moonlight to an oversized spinster housekeeper.

She didn’t have to inquire regarding his whereabouts, because he’d left a note by her place at the table.

Mrs. Wyeth,

I’ve taken my pony for a gallop and will inspect the home farm with Mr. Reilly this morning. You may impress me into exactly one tenant call after luncheon. If you would please draft notes for one neighbor call per weekday thereafter, I would appreciate it. We can discuss the children’s schedule when next I see you.

Yours respectfully,

Kettering

Respectfully.

She pondered that single word while she inventoried the linens set aside for the state chambers. Each of the earl’s dozen or so servants would require lodging, and the valet and secretary would expect modest guest rooms with a footman between them at least. Then came the discussion with Cook, who was equal parts pleased and dismayed at the thought of so many more mouths to feed, particularly when one of those sported a
title
.