Worth Lord of Reckoning (39 page)

“Then she took off for Bath, and the housekeeper quit,” young Sycamore said. “So we thundered up from Dorset because now Jack has to come home. It was fun.”

He downed his brandy like a much older man. What else might this pack of sylvan giants think was fun?

“You are welcome to stay here tonight,” Worth heard himself saying. “The weather is threatening misery, and I can vouch for the readiness of my household to comfortably accommodate you all.”

“Jack wouldn’t have it any other way,” Will said. “I can recall how Dorning House was before she got a flea in her ear.”

“Willow.” The earl’s tone was warning.

Will peered at his empty brandy glass, his expression forlorn. “Jack kept us in line, and she did it without shouting, much. We miss her, and she didn’t come home to visit this summer, not even to see the baby. We worried.”

Worry was something Worth could understand, albeit grudgingly.

“I think she’s been happy here,” he said, praying it was so. “I know she’s kept the house running like a top. The whole estate, actually.”

Casriel ran a hand through thick, dark hair.

“She does that,” he said quietly, almost…sheepishly? “I’ve gone through three stewards since she left. My housekeeper threatened to retire at least a half-dozen times before actually quitting, and that’s after I’ve doubled her wages, twice.”

His admission was followed by a silence, then Will lumbered over to the decanter and helped himself to another drink.

“We can’t keep maids either, and it’s not what you think.” Will passed the decanter to the next brother, and it circled the room until coming back to the sideboard, quite empty. “We don’t pester them, or not much. Grey won’t stand for it, but they don’t stay. They run off with the footmen, or the tenants, or they simply run off.”

“When Jack was around,” the one named Ash said, “they stayed long enough to be friendly.”

Grey frowned. “You weren’t even at university then.”

Ash shrugged. “I was out of short-coats. I’m a Dorning.”

They went on like that, raising a slow, fraternal lament for the sister who’d kept them organized and out of trouble until Worth wanted to scream. These fellows needed their sister, and she would go with them and spend her days running their household, stepping and fetching for them, when they should have been stepping and fetching for her. They arranged themselves all over the room, on the chairs, the table, the sofa, the hearth, the floor, the largest band of orphans Worth had ever seen.

And a house party bore down on them, arranged by this fiend of an errant step-mother, toward whom Jacaranda no doubt felt buckets of loyalty and guilt.

“Don’t you lot have another sister?” Worth asked. “I know Mrs.—Lady Jacaranda mentioned a sister.”

“Daisy.” Sycamore rolled his eyes. “She’s married to Eric and having babies.”

“Shouldn’t Jacaranda be married and having babies?” Worth certainly thought so. Married to him, having his babies.

“She isn’t the marrying kind,” Grey said. “Her heart was broken once long ago, and she hasn’t any interest in finding a husband. She told me that herself, though not the particulars. Why else do you think I’d tolerate this housekeeping nonsense from her?”

Worth searched the gaze of each brother, but it wasn’t until he got to his own brother that he felt some relief. Though Hess’s expression was bland, in his eyes Worth could see his thoughts:
What a driveling lot of pathetic fools, kidnapping their only sensible relation so she can rescue them from—horrors!—a house full of heiresses and debutantes.

“I will confer with Lady Jacaranda to see which rooms we’re putting you in,” Worth said, “and then you’ll be free to freshen up for dinner. We dine as a family, and you’ll be introduced to our sister, Miss Yolanda Kettering, and our niece, Miss Avery, as well as Miss Snyder and Mrs. Hartwick.”

He bowed and left the room before anybody could prevent him from conferring with his own housekeeper. Jacaranda
was
his housekeeper, and he’d trade on that for as long as he could.

Which might be for one more day, give or take a few hours.

He found her in her room, where she seemed to be spending increasing amounts of time. Her pretty gentian eyes were haunted, and all the ire Worth had felt toward her receded behind genuine concern.

“You weren’t expecting the entire tribe, were you?” he asked, closing the door.

“I haven’t seen them since last year. They seem to keep growing.”

Worth took a seat beside her on the settee. She was hunched forward, so he could only see her face in profile.

“You must have been in a very great rage to leave so many helpless men behind you.” His words were soft, so was his touch as he smoothed back her hair. “They miss you terribly.”

“They miss having their every need met without them thinking about it,” she said. “They’re dear, and I do love them, and Grey especially tries, but Step-Mama knew I’d never leave the boys to deal with a house party. You see that, I hope. I can’t allow them to flounder along before half the gossips of Polite Society, bankrupting Grey’s coffers, preyed upon by heiresses, wrecking the house—”

“Who broke your heart, Jacaranda?”

She scooted as if to rise. Worth put a hand on her arm.

“You can tell me. I’ve wondered why you ran away from home, and that was before I knew you were an earl’s daughter.”

He said it for her, because apparently, she’d never intended to say it to him herself. Some purveyor of confidences, he.

“An impoverished earl.” She settled back, and when Worth put an arm around her shoulders, she let him have her weight. “Papa had more kindness than sense, and more amateur botanical inclinations than money. I had a small portion left me by a grandmother, though.”

“Go on,” Worth said, stealing a whiff of her hair.

“My younger sister, Daisy, was sickly—my half-sister. Of all of us, she’s the only one who isn’t a giant.”

“You’re not a giant.” Nor was she his housekeeper. The simple sight of those buffoons in the library, and she’d already on some level abandoned her post at Trysting. She’d get them organized for this house party, see that the staff acquitted themselves as if serving foreign royalty, and by then that cottage would have wrapped its ivy tentacles around her heart.

“Daisy’s lungs were weak as a child,” Jacaranda went on as if Worth hadn’t spoken. “For several winters we feared we might lose her. Papa had the solicitors put my portion in Daisy’s name, because Step-Mama convinced him no man would want a sickly wife.”

Kind, botanical, and none too bright. No wonder Jacaranda felt she had to fend for her menfolk.

“Let me guess,” Worth said. “Dear Daisy used her portion to snabble a swain, and she’s been in the pink of health ever since, while you’ve been slaving away here in Surrey for a man who doesn’t even bother to learn what his housekeeper looks like.”

“You rather know what I look like.”

“So now you leave me?”

She turned her face into his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you. Well, I am, a little, maybe. We were only dallying, Worth.”

“We weren’t
even
dallying.”

She fell silent, and again, he wanted to kick something fragile and bellow obscenities, but he knew when to let a negotiating opponent stew, and this little tale was more complicated than Jacaranda had disclosed.

“I did dally, once,” she said. “I do mean once. One time.”

“Not a memorable occasion?” Whoever he was, Worth wanted to kill him, not for despoiling Jacaranda—she was free to dally where she chose, thank the Deity—but for disappointing her.

She tucked closer, as if to hide. “Eric was so sweet, not loud and ribald like my brothers, but mannerly and soft-spoken. When he kissed me, I felt pretty. He’s handsome, Eric is, refined.”

The bastard was shrewd, too. “He had the sense to pay you some attention.”

If Jacaranda tucked herself any closer, Worth would give in to the temptation to haul her into his lap.

“His attentions befell me when no one was about—I thought he was exercising gentlemanly discretion. My brothers trusted him, because we’ve known the family forever. They trusted me because no man in his right mind would bother flirting with me.”

“In God’s name why not? You’re gorgeous, brilliant, tireless—”

She kissed his cheek, a scolding, hushing kiss, and Worth had the uncomfortable suspicion his words wounded her.

“I didn’t know any better,” she said. “I thought Eric was courting me, and I was pleased to think it so.”

“You would have married him?”

“At the time, I would have rejoiced to marry him. I was infatuated.”

“How old were you?”

“Past twenty. I’d had my Seasons and was facing yet another year as the tallest, plainest, most awkward woman in every ballroom. Marriage to Eric would have spared me that. He hasn’t a title, but his father is gentry and prosperous.”

Gentry, prosperous, and conniving as hell. “This lovely, discreet gentleman married your sister.”

She was a ball of hurting female against his side, and Worth kicked himself for not having the patience to prompt this story from her before. This part of her past mattered to her, so it should have mattered to him.

“I was increasingly willing to permit him liberties. I thought we were anticipating the vows.”

Oh, my love.
“What happened?”

“I let him…have me, and it was awkward and untidy, and he was so pleased with himself over it, I said nothing. He hadn’t finished buttoning his falls before he was explaining to me that his father believed a married man should make his own way, so it was Daisy he’d have to marry—she had that nice little settlement, after all—but there was no reason he and I couldn’t continue to enjoy each other’s company.”

“He got your portion, and your sister got him.”

“She’s welcome to him,” Jacaranda said. “I’ve saved some money working for you, a fair bit for a housekeeper, and if I invest it well, I’ll manage. And as for Eric…”

Worth had invested that money for her, lest she forget—a discussion for some other day. “He deserves the French pox, at least, for how he treated you. Do your brothers know?”

“Grey suspects.” Jacaranda fell silent for a moment, still leaning on him. He wanted to store the moment up like a happy memory, except it wasn’t happy. Not for her, not for him, but it was important. “When he wanted to demand answers and create a fuss, I argued him out of it. He made them have a long engagement, but my oldest nephew was born four months after the wedding.”

“Eric is a randy bugger, isn’t he?”

“He seems devoted to Daisy.” Jacaranda was trying to convince herself, because how could she know this when she dwelled far from her family—unless her sister tortured her by correspondence? “Leaving was far easier than staying and watching them raise their children, but now it has been five years, and I still haven’t put things right with my only sister.”

“One can understand that a reckoning would be important to you. If it makes any difference, I am sorry.” Particularly when wounded pride had also sent one fleeing his own home more than a decade ago.

“Sorry? For?”

“For what you went through. I’m not sure I would have importuned you if I’d known.”

“You knew I was used goods; you did not know that I was also a lying baggage of used goods. I’m sorry for that. I could not find the right time to explain my situation to you, and I knew I was bound to return to Dorset soon anyway.”

She still hadn’t entirely explained her situation to him, though Worth had acquired a fine grasp of the havoc unfinished business between siblings could wreak.

“Hush, Jacaranda Dorning. You are not used goods any more than I am. We’re adults, we’ve taken some knocks. Are you sure you don’t want to remain here, though? You don’t have to marry me. You don’t even have to see me. I’ll go north, I’ll stay in Town, I’ll buy a few more properties and keep myself from your sight.”

What was he offering? Lies, certainly. He might try to stay away, but some pressing contrivance would see him on Trysting’s doorstep within a month. He’d ride William the Pig if it meant he could share a roof with Jacaranda.

“You don’t like it in Town,” she said, smoothing her palm down his lapel.

“I realize that now, but I don’t want you keeping house for that lot of handsome louts when they couldn’t even see your heart was broken.” Though he did want her to put things to rights with her sister. That was important, when one had only a single sister.

She looked away, and Worth felt his frustration with her rising again. What had he said? What had he missed? He understood that this house party nonsense required her presence in Dorset for a time, but why was it so important for her to
stay
away
from him?

“Would you do me a very great favor, Mr. Kettering?”

“Anything, Mrs. Wyeth.”

“Hold me.”

And while she cried as if her heart were breaking all over again, he held her and knew for a certainty his was breaking, too.

* * *

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” Hess settled in beside Worth on the library sofa.

“We have brandy left?” Worth marveled as Hess passed him a drink.

“Your cellar has been kept in good stock, probably thanks to old Simmons.”