Worth Lord of Reckoning (31 page)

“Is my hospitality so lacking?” Worth said, purposely goading his brother, because hospitality wasn’t the problem.

“Your hospitality is superb, but the thought of Yolanda glaring daggers at me for weeks, then having to haul her, muttering and cursing, the length of England… One would like to have such an ordeal behind one.”

“Perhaps you’ll be able to turn her up sweet, or we can come to some other arrangement.”

“I know my duty, Worth.”

“Your duty now is to get a decent night’s sleep.” Worth got to his feet, fatigued to his bones, but also lighter in spirit. Setting another’s financial house in order often did that for him. “Mine as well.”

“About that.” Hess pinned his gaze on a painting of a mare and foal, an early Thomas Lawrence.

“Hessian?”

“You seem to have the knack of acquiring young, pretty housekeepers.”

“Each of whom,” Worth said, “is entirely her own woman.”

Hess looked sheepish, but pleased. “That’s what she said. Your Mary is quite forward.”

“She’s also carrying another man’s child. If she told you you couldn’t get her with child, it was the God’s honest truth.”

“Little brother, the life you live is incomprehensible to me.” Hess gathered up his boots and stockings. “Though you seem comfortable in it.”

He left on that observation, and Worth went in search of his housekeeper, but only to tell her he’d be leaving for Trysting in late morning.

* * *

“Hell, yes, I’ll sell you my shares.” James Murphy’s boots thumped onto the carpet of his office. “The Drummond is accounted a complete loss, and I know what you’re about, Kettering. You’re trying to keep me from selling to somebody else for a farthing to the pound, so your own pile of shares won’t be worth even less when you try to dump the ones you still have. It’s an old trick.”

“Or perhaps I believe in my captain, and the Drummond will come sailing in here one of these weeks.” Worth injected a note of defensiveness under his rejoinder, though one did want to play fair—within reason.

“The captain hasn’t been born of woman who can control the weather, my friend.” Murphy’s smile was sympathetic, but he signed over his stock certificates at face value. Worth paid him in cash, gathered a witnessed receipt, and thanked his associate very cordially.

He made six similar stops, which left him and his investors the sole shareholders in the venture, then collected his brother at the town house and once again headed back to Trysting.

* * *

“This is a sorry day, Mrs. W.” Simmons shook his head like a dog with a flea in his ear. “A sorry, sorry day. The young lady snatched from our very halls, and not one witness. A right tragedy, you ask me. What will Mr. K say?”

Perhaps Mr. K would allow Jacaranda to pension Simmons off at last.

“We’ll soon know Mr. Kettering’s view on the matter, Mr. Simmons. I sent a note to Town, and I don’t doubt he’ll be here by moonrise.”

“Moonrise!” The eyebrows rose to unprecedented heights, and beneath the dismay lurked a nasty element of glee to have such drama befall the house.

Jacaranda’s hand formed a tight fist in her skirts.

“Mrs. Wyeth?” Carl stood a safe distance away as he addressed her. “We’ve searched the outbuildings and found no sign of Miss Yolanda.”

“Thank you, Carl. What about the attics?”

“We’re up there now, ma’am, and the cellars, too.”

“Very good. Keep me and Mr. Simmons informed.”

“Oh, this is dire,” Simmons moaned. “What if she’s not in the attics or the cellars? We’ve searched the grounds, her room, the outbuildings and gardens. She’s not asleep in a hammock or reading by the stream. There’s no note. She hasn’t taken a horse or cart, and nobody has seen her since luncheon, and that was hours ago. Hours!”

“So it was, Mr. Simmons. I suggest you start praying.”

He was so stunned by that pronouncement, his mouth snapped shut fast enough to have his turkey wattle shaking.

What was there to do except pray? Yolanda had been infernally quiet since the earl had come to visit, wafting around the house like a pretty ghost, holing up in the library, taking trays for lunch and breakfast.

Boot heels rang in the corridor, and Jacaranda had to hope it was a groom arriving with news, good or bad, any news at all.

“Mrs. Wyeth?” Worth Kettering stood framed in the doorway, his brother at his shoulder. “My dear, the house is in an uproar, the grooms say Yolanda is missing, and we’ve no footman at our front door. What on earth is going on?”

“Worth—” She took a step toward him, then realized she’d just used his
name
before his brother the earl.

And did not care. “Yolanda hasn’t been seen since luncheon, and we’ve looked everywhere.”

“This is my fault,” the earl said. “She’s run off because she thinks I’ll dragoon her back to Grampion in chains.”

“We can debate her motivations later.” Worth didn’t look angry, so much as focused. “Assuming Yolanda has decamped purposely, we can also take turns whacking at her backside for causing such anxiety to my staff. Let’s have some tea, and Mrs. Wyeth can tell us what’s been done so far to locate our sister.”

“
Tea?
” Jacaranda wanted to beat the bushes herself, and Yolanda’s brother was thinking of tea?

“I’ll see to it,” the earl said, spinning on his heel and leaving the library.

“Now come here.” Worth kicked the door closed and held out his arms. “We’ll find her, don’t doubt it. She’s a Kettering and made of fortitude, resourcefulness and determination. Hess is likely right, and this is a fit of pique, that’s all.”

“I am so worried,” Jacaranda managed, and then she was weeping against his shoulder, so glad to see him, so relieved for once to not have to be the one who organized, and thought ahead, and encouraged everyone else.

“Young ladies loose without supervision are worth worrying about.” Worth tucked his chin against her temple and held her until Jacaranda eased her grip on him. A knock at the door heralded the earl, followed by a maid bearing a tea tray. The newest maid, who would have been limited to upstairs duty under normal circumstances.

“Thank you,” Worth said. “That will be all.” He sat himself on the sofa and patted the place beside him. “Sit you, Mrs. Wyeth, and start from the beginning. Your lordship, butter the lady a scone and stop castigating yourself.”

Jacaranda sat between them, finding the tea and sustenance helped—she hadn’t eaten for hours—but so, too, did Worth’s methodical approach to the entire situation and his simple, calm presence.

“When was she last seen?”

“By whom?”

“Did she receive any correspondence this morning?”

“Has she formed any particular friends in the area?”

“Has she caught the eye of any of the local swains?”

Jacaranda could answer accurately, but at the last question, she paused.

“I don’t know that she exactly caught his eye, but Thomas Hunter caught hers at market. He was most gallant.”

“Gallant?” The earl was on his feet. “I’ll shove my gallant fist down his presuming throat if he’s enticed her to folly.”

“Hessian.” Worth held up a cup of tea to his brother. “Yolanda would have left a note if she were eloping. She wouldn’t want Avery to worry, and she wouldn’t want the scandal exacerbated by a foolish alarm to the whole parish.”

The earl accepted his tea, then took to staring at a portrait of some ancestor sporting lace, hose, and collar. “You’re saying she was carried off against her will?”

“I’m saying I don’t think she eloped with somebody she’s known only a span of weeks. She has more sense than that. What does Avery say?”

“We haven’t wanted to alarm her,” Jacaranda replied. “She’s in the nursery with Mrs. Hartwick.”

“I’ll fetch her.” His lordship was out the door before Jacaranda could ring for a maid.

“Let him go,” Worth said. “He will blame himself until she’s found, and if this is a stupid stunt, Yolanda will regret it to her dying day. Eat your scone, love, and stop blaming yourself.”

“If she was unhappy, I should have seen it. I was a miserable girl once, too, and I know how foolish they can be.”

“You?” He held up a plate with the buttered scone on it. “Foolish? I must hear this tale, for I can’t imagine such a thing.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “For courage. We’ll find her, and she had better have a good excuse for this nonsense. I don’t like to see you upset, much less my brother suffering paroxysms of undeserved guilt.”

That little kiss did give her courage, as did Worth being himself, flirting a bit despite the circumstances, tending to the basics—food and drink—and taking the whole matter in stride.

What would she have done if he’d still been in Town?

“I’ve got Avery,” Grampion said as he crossed the threshold, and he did, literally, have the child. She was affixed to his back and looking around from her perch with a hesitant smile.

“Uncle Worth! I saw you come home on Goliath.” She held out her arms as if she’d hug him from his lordship’s back.

“My dearest niece.” Worth plucked her off the earl, hugged her, and deposited her on the sofa. “Join us for a cup of tea. We’ve a mystery to solve.”

“I’ve seen the footmen scurrying everywhere, and I hear them up in the attics. They never go up there. Neither do the maids.” Avery looked perfectly composed as she sat beside her uncle on the sofa.

“We’re hunting a treasure,” Worth said, fixing her a cup of tea that was more cream and sugar than tea. “Your aunt has gone missing and you keep a close eye on her, so we’re hoping you might be able to give us some clues.”

“Clues?”

“Hints, ideas about where she might be.”

“May I have a scone with jam?”

“You may.” He tended to her request and passed her the plate. “You saw Yolanda at lunch, didn’t you?”

“Of course, and she brings her book, and Miss Snyder gives her the don’t-read-at-table look. A bit more jam,” she said. “It’s very good, the jam.”

Worth dutifully took the plate back and added another dollop of jam.

“Where did Yolanda go after lunch?” he asked.

“She comes here to look at the maps,” Avery said, taking the plate and managing to bite off a corner of scone without getting jam all over her fingers. “She likes the maps and said she would explore the estate. It belonged to an aunt, a long time ago, all of this.”

“It did.” Worth passed the child a serviette, which was wise because the jam was excessive in proportion to the scone, and disaster seemed only a lick away. “Which maps did Yolanda like to study?”

“All of them.” Avery dabbed at her lips delicately. “She wants to be an intrepid explorer. What does intrepid mean?”

“Fearless. Did Yolanda like to look at the globe?”

“No, not that kind of map,” Avery said, now halfway through her scone. “She liked the maps of where we are. Where we are now.”

“These maps?” the earl asked from halfway across the room. “They aren’t recent.” He was carefully flipping the pages of a large atlas laid flat for display on a sturdy table.

“Those maps, yes,” Avery said, but didn’t give up her place on the sofa. “They are maps of here, of Trysting, when the aunt owned it.”

“She’s right,” Jacaranda said, “but the estate maps are back a few pages in that atlas. They’re very detailed. I need a quizzing glass to read some of the print.”

“Yolanda would study the map, then take a book with her to explore the estate while Uncle went on his calls with Mrs. Wyeth,” Avery said. “May I have another scone?”

“Not yet.” Worth rose and crossed to stand beside his brother. “You’ll spoil your dinner, but you’ve been very helpful. Did Yolanda go exploring this afternoon?”

“Oh, yes.” Avery gazed upon the plate of scones like a martyr contemplating heaven. “I watch from the nursery windows. Some days she goes to the paddocks to see the horses, some days she goes to the home farm to see the cows and sheep.”

“Where did she go today?”

“To the home wood.” Avery’s fingertip made a surreptitious pass through the jam pot then disappeared into her mouth. “She likes the birds in the wood and likes to read there. She says it’s cool and pretty. I think it’s scary.”

She pronounced the word oddly—scar-y—but her meaning was clear.

“This is not an accurate map of the home wood,” Jacaranda said, peering at the atlas from the earl’s other side. “The entire plot is much overgrown since former days. Something Reilly and I have remarked often.”

Worth bent closer and took up the quizzing glass kept next to the atlas.

“You’re right. Wouldn’t Hunter’s holding be right down this bridle path here?” He traced his finger along the map.

“It would be,” Jacaranda said, “except those bridle paths haven’t existed to speak of in my lifetime. They might be game trails now, but I think they were established more for harvesting lumber in the last century.”

“So Yolanda is stumbling around in the wood looking for trails that don’t exist?” His lordship’s scowl was fierce. “Let’s go. We don’t want to lose the light.”

Worth passed Avery the quizzing glass, patted her shoulder, and sent her back to the nursery. “A few minutes of organization will save us a lot of stumbling around. Mrs. Wyeth, a lane still cuts through the wood, doesn’t it? Would that be this trail, here?”