Worth Lord of Reckoning (16 page)

He had, or his lady friends had. The cottage barely needed dusting and lacked the mildewed scent common to neglected dwellings. The wood box was full, the windows were clean, and on the shelves above the sink, a few faded towels sat neatly folded.

Over in the corner, an old tester bed was made up, knitted blankets folded across its foot, canopy nowhere in evidence.

Jacaranda rubbed her arms as another rumble of thunder sounded, even louder than the last one.

“The storm is still gaining on us,” Mr. Kettering noted. “Best get a fire going, and I hope you won’t mind if I get out of this wet shirt.” He wasn’t asking permission. He was disrobing as he spoke, removing shirt, boots and stockings.

Jacaranda tried not to watch.

While the rain against the windows began a steady roar, she took longer to remove her bonnet than she ever had in her life. Her fingers shook, and her insides felt odd, and she could not get the image of Mr. Kettering’s damp, naked chest out of her mind. She also could not get her dratted bonnet off, a hairpin having caught on some part of the straw or wiring.

“Wood’s nice and dry,” Mr. Kettering said, scratching a flint and steel over some dead pine needles. A spark obligingly leapt, and to Jacaranda, even that—the spark falling on dry tinder, the flames eagerly licking up into the air—had prurient connotations.

What on earth was wrong with her?

“That should take the chill off.” He rose in one graceful flex of muscles. “We’ll hang your bonnet from the rafters, and it will be dry in no time.”

Her only good bonnet would be ruined if she kept fussing at it. Her gaze fell on a box on the mantel, one decorated with a carving of the belladonna flower.

“Sit.” She patted the back of a ladder-back chair then retrieved the box, finding it contained the same supplies its twin did at Trysting. “I’ll clean up your knuckles.”

He obliged but turned the chair backward so he could straddle it and extended his hand.

“This situation is fortuitous,” he said.

“Finding a box of medicinals was fortuitous.” She dabbed a clean cloth on his knuckles. “You are still bleeding.” She held the cloth snugly over his abused flesh. “I thought you had gloves on.”

“Had to take them off to work with the wet harness and buckles, but I like holding hands with you, Wyeth. Take your time, and don’t forget to kiss me better.”

She peeked at his knuckles, then closed the cloth over them again. “You are tenacious.”

“So are you. I like that about you.”

He could not know how susceptible she was to such a compliment. “My brother says I’m unnaturally stubborn for a woman.” Now, where had that come from?

“With seven brothers, you’d have to be.”

She took the cloth away again. “This might sting a bit.”

She applied a pungent brown astringent, and he winced, so she blew on his knuckles to ease the sting.

“Let it dry, and don’t be mucking about in the ashes or Goliath’s stall until it does.”

“Goliath has an open shed,” Mr. Kettering said. “He can amble around or crop some grass, and I dipped him a bucket from the cistern out back. Now, we’re safe and warm, and he is, too. What shall we do with this boon?”

“Boon?”

“I told myself to be patient.” He stood and crossed to the braided rug before the hearth. “I told myself sooner or later, I’d catch you in the pond, or reading late at night, or in some situation where we’re guaranteed privacy.”

“The rain should let up soon,” she said, a sense of unease rising at his words.

“I can be very quick,” he went on, casually unfastening his falls. “When I want to make a point.”

He stepped out of his damp breeches and hung them from a nail on the rafter nearest the fire. And that gesture, that simple reaching, without a stitch on, was so blatantly, masculinely beautiful, Jacaranda wanted to tell him to hold the pose so she might memorize it. His skin was darker above his waist, but the musculature of his arms, legs, belly, and back was all of a smooth, powerful, healthy male animal piece.

Blessed angels, he was beautiful.

He took the towel he’d been sitting on and wrapped it around his waist, and Jacaranda wanted to weep.

“Like what you see, Wyeth? I like what I see, too.”

“You will not come any closer,” she said, holding up a hand.

He stopped in his tracks. “Suppose not. I’d like it much better were you the one to do the approaching.”

“In God’s name why?” She couldn’t keep her eyes averted, much as common sense was screeching at her to do just that. When she looked, she wanted to touch, and if she touched, she’d want to
be
touched.

“A fellow needs to know his attentions are welcome,” he said, subsiding onto the raised stone hearth. “What better sign of welcome than when a woman makes the overtures?”

“I thought you understood I am not interested in your overtures.” With the last of her resolve, she turned her face so the brim of her bonnet took him from her sight, and that was…a mercy.

“You’re interested in my overtures. You’re not interested in earning coin by returning them. I applaud your scruples. The alternative makes a great deal of sense to me upon sober reflection.”

Sober reflection eluded Jacaranda where Worth Kettering was concerned. “A great deal of sense?”

“I’m not without sense, Wyeth, but I am without clothes. Why don’t you come investigate the bargain I’m offering?”

“What bargain?”

She was reduced to inane questions, in part because he’d chosen that moment to cross the room and crack a window, the better to help the fire in the hearth catch. The Italian masters hadn’t sculpted a man as breathtaking as Worth Kettering. He was a mature David, he was Vulcan, he was the exponent of all that was attractive and dangerous in a healthy adult male.

And he was nigh naked in a secluded cottage
with her
.

“That should draw better,” he said. “I’d suggest getting you out of your wet things, but then you’ll stay in them until lung fever carries you off. I’m not sure what motivated you to keep your bonnet on indoors, though.”

She resumed tugging at the infernal bonnet, but the ribbons were damp, which made working the knot difficult. “I’m not as wet as you. You were out in the rain longer.”

“If you need help with your bonnet, I am happy to oblige.” He bounced down onto the bed, and the creaking of the ropes had Jacaranda’s insides bouncing as well. “You brought a brush in your reticule, didn’t you?”

“Comb. I can see to myself.” Though when she removed her bonnet, she would look a fright.

He flopped back on the mattress so his legs hung over the side of the bed, and his words were addressed to the rafters.

“I may not have moved in quite the highest circles, but I am gentleman enough that you must know I wouldn’t force you. Let me get rid of that bonnet for you, Wyeth. You fancy it, and it’s fetching, in a rural sort of way. At the rate you’re going, you will soon be bald and the bonnet fit only for consumption by William the Famous Draft Sow.”

He wouldn’t force her. Jacaranda could be stark naked and the only woman left on earth, and he wouldn’t ever force her. That realization settled her down enough that she gave up ruining her bonnet and her coiffure.

“Come here, closer to the fire.” He sat up and patted the bed beside him, hiking a knee onto the mattress.

“How can you be so casual about being nearly…about being undressed like that?” She lowered herself to the mattress as if it were not up to her weight, as if it might start moving without notice.

He shifted, and the bed bounced. “I can strut about as God made me because I am a man in the presence of a female who likes the look of me unclothed. Then too, my clothes are wet, and wet clothes don’t flatter much of anybody. Damned uncomfortable, too, and in the most inconvenient locations. How many pins do you use, for pity’s sake?”

“My hair is thick and takes a lot of pins.”

But not so many that his deft fingers couldn’t work under the brim of the bonnet to withdraw the offending pins that snared the bonnet onto her head. He set the pins on the bedside table, lifted the bonnet away, and her hair went tumbling down her back in a single thick braid.

“You have the knack of smelling luscious, Wyeth.” He buried his nose in a handful of her hair. “Diabolical of you.”

“You have the same knack. Few men do. Will you sniff at me all afternoon, or surrender my bonnet?” She’d prefer the sniffing, of course. Vastly prefer it.

He rose and hung her bonnet on a nail along the same rafter that held his clothing, then returned to the bed. “You’re still sporting a few pins, and when attending a lady, I am nothing if not thorough.”

She didn’t feel so much as a tug or a yank on her scalp as he withdrew the last pins from her braid. He was that careful with her—or that experienced at tending to a woman’s hair. She was still marveling at his skill when a boom of thunder literally shook the cottage.

“I hate storms,” she said, hunching in on herself. “In Dorset, we don’t get the Atlantic storms they do in Devon and Cornwall, or not so many, but we get the Channel weather, and it’s bad enough.”

“You’re safe here, Wyeth.” His arm came around her shoulders, and his lips applied themselves to her temple. “Perfectly safe.”

He sat back a moment later, and Jacaranda wondered what that embrace had been about. Reassurance? When he was wearing only a
towel
? His arms had been warm and strong about her, and the reassurance in his voice had been convincing.

“My mother died in a storm,” she said, back to him. “She was out on the water with a boating party, and the weather came up suddenly. Some of them made it back, but she wasn’t a good swimmer.”

He brushed a hand over her nape. “I am sorry, love. How old were you?”

“I was nearly three, Grey was six, Will about five.”

“I was eight when my mother died. There’s no good age for a child to lose a mother.”

“You think about Avery losing Moira, don’t you?” She did not glance over her shoulder, for the conversation had taken an unlikely turn, though she preferred it to his ridiculous banter.

“Of course I do.” Another caress, this one pretending to tuck a lock of hair over her ear. “I think of Yolanda, losing both parents, and I realize whatever differences I might have had with my father, he at least did me the courtesy of surviving until I was able to make my own way in the world. Parents are supposed to see to that much.”

He regretted the terms on which he’d parted from his father. Jacaranda could hear his regret, could feel it in his hand tracing the curve of her shoulder.

“I had my papa until I was seventeen, and my step-mother is still at home.” Though Jacaranda wondered who was running Grey’s domicile, for dear Step-Mama hadn’t the knack.

“She was left with a lot of children. A lot of boys.” Another slow caress, this time under her damp braid, over her nape.

“She was, but Grey was down from university before Papa died, and Step-Mama hasn’t had to manage all the boys herself. Grey takes his responsibilities seriously.”

“As do you.”

“Papa did too.” She stifled a yawn, because those little touches of his and the rain on the roof were combining to send an insidious languor through her. Then too, the fire was warming the interior of the cottage nicely. “Papa told me he remarried to ensure Will and Grey wouldn’t be overly burdened managing the family’s holdings.”

“You believed him?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Five extra spares, Jacaranda?” His tone held humor, and when she glanced at him over her shoulder, his eyes did as well.

“Papa was very conscientious.” While Step-Mama was very delicate, if her letters were to be believed.

“Just as you are conscientious about my house?” His arms went around her again, and he pulled her back against the warmth of his chest.

“I try.” Though he would have to find a successor for her soon. She ought to tell him so.

“You succeed beautifully.”

When he complimented her like that, and held her this way, Jacaranda felt beautiful, too.

Trouble invariably had the ability to entice and please while promising certain disaster.

“The rain isn’t letting up.” She made the observation to fill the silence stretching between them, though she didn’t move. He didn’t either, but remained sitting behind her on the bed.

“Which means that rickety little excuse for a bridge might be washing out,” he said. “If I were you, I really would get out of that wet dress, Jacaranda Wyeth. Keep your chemise on if you want, but don’t take a chill for the sake of modesty. I first came upon you in sopping wet nightclothes, if you’ll recall. I’ve seen your treasures, you’ve seen mine, and nobody has gone insane with thwarted lust.”

He had seen her treasures, or all but, and the dress
was
damp.

“I do not want to encourage your wrongheaded notions,” she said, getting off the bed. “Neither do I consider myself the stuff of insane lust.”

Or even sane lust.

“I could not imagine encouraging your wrongheaded notions.” He lifted the covers and scooted under. “What? My clothes are wet, and unless you want me prancing about in a towel—which I’d be happy to do, so greatly do I seek to court your notice—then the least ridiculous place for me to be is under these covers.”