Worth Lord of Reckoning (30 page)

“It’s one thing for Jacaranda to keep house when the owner is off in London, but according to Roberts, this Kettering fellow has brought a pair of children with him, likely his by-blows, and she’s supposed to keep house with them
and him
underfoot. Francine says it will be the end of Jack’s reputation.”

As if going into service hadn’t already accomplished that?

“She’s been in his employ for five years,” Daisy said, feeling a peculiar pang of envy. “Of course she will occasionally be under the same roof as her employer. Mrs. Dankle dwells with you, doesn’t she?”

“Mrs. Dankle is sixty if she’s a day. She’s wiped my nose and the noses of every little Dorning foal to hit the ground. Moreover, she’s given notice.”

Mrs. Dankle frequently gave notice, then Francine bribed her into relenting.

“We’re not horses, Grey.” Daisy switched her hold on the baby in her arms, for the child was growing at a prodigious rate—just as her brothers had. “Besides, the gentry typically rusticate in summer. You’re here, and you didn’t even stay in Town for the closing ceremonies.”

“Hang the closing ceremonies.” His gaze came to rest on the infant, his glower softening to something approaching wistfulness. “This one’s growing like a weed, Daze. How can Jack miss her own niece and nephews growing up?”

Perhaps because she had no children of her own?

“Jack is stubborn, Grey, and she says in her letters she’s happy. If we miss her, well, that’s the price we pay for loving her.” The words were prevarications wrapped in platitudes, but Daisy would not burden her brother with the truth. She protected not Jacaranda’s dignity with her falsehoods, but her own.

“Letters, bah.” Grey ran a hand over the baby’s fuzzy head, his gentle touch at variance with his scornful tone. “Little fairy tales written by women to placate men. Jack has said she’ll come home at the end of the summer, but she’s made similar promises and found reasons to break them. Something’s amiss at Trysting. And what sort of name is that for a house? Did you know Kettering is brother to an earl?”

“I know many fine people who are siblings to an earl,” Daisy said, patting the baby’s back. “What is your point?”

“Jack needs to come home.” Grey tossed his long frame into a wrought iron chair, its feet scraping against the terrace flagstones. “When I agreed to this scheme, I told myself she was in a pout because you’d caught your man and she hadn’t. I gave it a year before she came home either towing a husband or finally ready to look for one. It has been five years, Daisy. You’ve three children, and she has, what? Bad knees from scrubbing floors?”

Jacaranda had her dignity, a variety of freedom, and a bit of coin to show for it—likely her figure was still comely, too—and she’d have staff to scrub those floors.

“Not all women are suited to marriage, Grey. Not all people.” Though some brothers were more suited to it than they could admit.

“None of that.” He’d growled the words, older-brother fashion. “I looked over this year’s crop in Town. I’m off to a house party in October. I stood up with an entire bouquet of wall flowers at the local assembly.”

Daisy remained silent, tucking the blanket more closely around the baby. She’d caught her man all right, but how much more of the tale Grey knew, she’d never quite fathomed. Because she did value her husband’s continued existence—some days and most nights—she wasn’t about to confide in her oldest brother anytime soon.

“I stopped by Least Wapping on my way south,” Grey said, getting to his feet. He was restless like that, a man beset with too much energy.

“Did you see Jack?”

“I did not. I kept my distance. She seems to be coping, but I have an itchy feeling between my shoulders, Daze. I’ll take some of the boys and go see what’s afoot once we get the ditches cleared. Will has always been able to make her see sense, and he’s confirmed that Francine is getting up to some mischief or other.”

Francine was bored, fretful, and not much of a mother. Daisy could say that in part because she herself was a mother—now.

“Will thinks you should leave Jack in peace.” Daisy didn’t want Grey dashing off, so she did something guaranteed to keep him on that terrace: She passed her brother the baby.

“I think her eyes are changing,” Grey said, peering at the little face peeking out of the blanket. Abrupt shifts of subject were symptomatic of Grey preparing to dart away on one of his queer starts. “They’ll be gorgeous eyes, just like Auntie Jack has, won’t they?”

“Just like Uncle Grey has,” Daisy said, wondering if the ladies in London ever took a moment to admire Grey’s eyes, or were too put off by his brusque demeanor.

He ran his nose over the baby’s cheek, which inspired the little baggage to smiling and waving her fists. “So you don’t think I should retrieve Jack?”

The smile he bestowed on the infant nearly broke Daisy’s heart. Before Jack had left, Grey’s smile had been much more frequently in evidence.

“If you’re asking me, then no,” Daisy said. “I don’t think you should barge into her affairs. You’re being the earl, though, not a sensible brother, and thus you’ll bother Jack regardless. Please give her my love when you go storming up to Trysting.”

“One appreciates honesty from one’s siblings.” He left off cuddling his niece, and five minutes later, Daisy let him see himself out, earl or not.

If she’d been honest, she would have told him she hoped that someday he’d turn that smile on a lady who was old enough to treasure it for the rarity it had become.

* * *

The flesh-pots of London failed utterly to lure Hess from Worth’s town house.

Fortunately, Mary had made significant progress bestirring the menials to spruce up the place, so it wasn’t such a bad spot to abandon a guest.

Worth tracked his sovereign down at a picnic and boating party this time, discreetly offered the requisite assurances, and then stopped by Lloyds to see if the clerks had heard any pertinent gossip.

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.