Worth; Lord Of Reckoning

by Grace Burrowes

  “You must have a busy day of your own,” he suggested, carefully tilting her head in his big hands.

  “Industry is its own reward.” He had offered the gambit to distract Jacaranda from his fingers tunneling through her hair, and that was decent of him, so she rallied her manners. “In truth, I have done as much preparation for your visit as I possibly can, but the house is always kept in readiness, so the burden of additional work is not great.”

  “Then you might enjoy coming along with me on these tenant calls?” Gently, gently, Mr. Kettering moved his touch over the knot at her temple. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

  “A little.” While his touch was lovely.

  “The bleeding did not resume,” he said, slipping his fingers from her hair, but not stepping back. “I’m glad you won’t mind showing me about the farms.”

  He was smiling down at her again, pleased with himself, the lout, and before Jacaranda could beg to differ with him, he patted her arm.

  “We’ll wait until after lunch, so I can fire off a few letters first, otherwise I’ll never be up to dandling babies and pinching grannies.”

  “Please say you would never pinch a grandmother!”

  Now he did step back, his eyes dancing.

  “My dear Mrs. Wyeth, I would pinch a granny, but only because she pinched me first. I know a number of grannies who aren’t to be trusted in this regard. A shameless lot, for the most part. Complete tarts. Makes one look forward to his own dotage. Shall we say, one of the clock?”

  “I’ll have luncheon moved up to noon,” she said, not taking the bait no matter how succulent, no matter how close to her nose he dangled it while looking the picture of masculine innocence. “In deference to the fact that the girls traveled for much of the day yesterday, I’ve planned luncheon as a picnic meal on the back lawn.”

  “I’m dining on the ground with children, being pinched by grannies, and acquiring a lot of smelly, drooling hounds, and you expect the country air to agree with me? You are an admirably cruel woman, Jacaranda Wyeth. I’ll meet you at the coach house at one.”

  * * *

  “How are you ladies settling in?” Worth put the question to his sister and his niece, who both looked quite pleased to be eating outside amid bugs and breezes, not a tablecloth in sight.

  Avery, as was her habit, went chattering off in French, lightened by a dash of Italian, with the occasional foray into her expanding English vocabulary. The coach ride had been interminable; the horses had been very grand, but not as grand as Goliath; the coach fare had been very good, if difficult to tidily consume in a moving vehicle; and Miss Snyder had been as quiet as a moose.

  “Mouse,” Yolanda corrected, smiling—the first time Worth had seen that expression on his sister’s face since her arrival at Trysting.

  “What is the difference? Mouse, moose, you know I refer to a little creature for the cat to eat.”

  “There is a difference,” Yolanda said. “Worth, have you pencil and paper?”

  He passed over the contents of his breast pocket, and Yolanda started scribbling.

  “Where have you seen a moose, Yolanda?” he asked, selecting a cold chicken leg to gnaw on.

  “In books, unless you count Harolda Bigglesworth. Poor thing had a name like that and dimensions to match, but she was very merry.”

  “Shall we invite her out to the country with us?” Worth had to admit the chicken was delicious, and with a serviette wrapped around one end, not so very messy.

  “We shall not,” Yolanda said as she sketched. “She’s been engaged to some viscount since she was a child, and association with the likes of me would not do.”

  “Your brother is a perishing earl.” Worth waved his chicken leg for emphasis. “Why not associate with you?”

  “Your moose,” Yolanda said, passing the sketch over to her niece. “He’s a grand fellow, nigh as big as Goliath, and he lives in the Canadian woods.”

  “My goodness, he looks like a cross between a cow and a deer, but what a nose he has!”

  Worth peeked over Avery’s shoulder.

  “You are talented,” he said. “Talent is worth money, you know. I have a client who will make a tidy living painting portraits, a very tidy living. You should develop your art, Yolanda.”

  “Drawing is one thing they let you do,” she said, tucking the pencil behind her ear.

  “They let you do?” Worth set aside the chicken bone, for he’d eaten every scrap of meat on it.

  “When you’re on room restriction at school, you have your school supplies to entertain you, but only those, so I drew a great deal. Avery, will you eat every bite of that potato salad?”

  Avery made Yolanda earn her salad by teaching her a half-dozen German words. Yolanda made Avery try to copy the moose, with comic results. All in all, it was a pleasurable, nutritious way for Worth to pass an hour with his…family, out of doors. On that thought, he pushed back to sit on his heels.

  “My dears, I must away to impersonate a country squire. While I’m chatting up the neighbors, I can ask if any ponies are going begging in the surrounds.”

  “Oh, Uncle!” Avery’s jubilation at the prospect of a pony knew no linguistic bounds, but Yolanda merely smiled at her niece and toyed with a bite of cheese.

  “Yolanda? What say you? Shall we find you a gallant steed so you can canter about the countryside and turn all the lads’ heads?”

  Yolanda studied her cheese. “Good heavens, no, thank you. I’ve heard regular riding can make a girl’s figure lopsided.”

  “So we’ll teach you to drive,” Worth suggested, “or fit you out with a left-side saddle and a right-side saddle, and you can alternate.”

  “That’s what I shall do,” Avery interjected. “I shall ride with Uncle every day.”

  Worth drew a finger down her nose. “No, you shall not. This is England, and it rains too frequently for daily hacks. Well, think about it, Yolanda. I must call upon the neighbors, many of whom are possessed of offspring whose acquaintance you should make. We’ll be here for months, and I can’t have the two of you growing lonely or bored.”

  Particularly not when Yolanda had been both at her fancy school.

  He got to his feet and made for the coach house, but the meal, surprisingly pleasant though it had been, had left him more convinced than ever that Yolanda was hiding a great deal.

  * * *

  Hess Kettering, more rightly, Hessian Pierpont Kettering, Earl of Grampion, perused the first correspondence he’d received from his baby brother in five years.

  Get your lordly arse down to Trysting before Michaelmas or I’ll send Yolanda home on a mail coach.

  “You’ll go, won’t you?” Lady Evers’s eyes held concern, but only the concern of a friend. They’d tried a dalliance years ago, but neither of them had put any heart into it, and the friendship remained. Now she was spending a pretty summer morning in his library, sipping tea with him at his desk, and fretting over him—to a friendly degree.

  “Worth is telling me the girl is safe with him for at least another few months,” Hess said, “maybe even asking me to give him those months, but he’s also issuing an invitation.”

  “He’s hurting, Grampion. You’re head of the family, and that puts the business of reconciliations squarely on your handsome shoulders. If this is the invitation you get, then this is the invitation you accept.”

  Surely only a friend would address him with that blend of amusement and admonition?

  “Worth was always prone to dramatics, and that’s what got us into this situation in the first place.”

  Not quite true. A young woman’s duplicity had done more than a little to stir the pot of familial estrangement.

  “You could have gone after him,” Lady Evers said, pulling on her gloves. “He wasn’t even quite an adult all those years ago.”

  Hessian came around the desk to scoot her chair back, now that he’d endured tea, scones, and the beginnings of a scold.

  “Papa decided against retrievin
g him—a younger son must be allowed his pride, according to the earl—though I think it broke his lordship’s heart, and then I was too busy marrying to go haring south on a goose chase.”

  “Your only brother and heir is not a goose.”

  “He acted like a goose.” So, apparently, had Hessian.

  Her ladyship tactfully pretended to peruse a portrait of Hess’s mother hanging over the fireplace, one she’d seen dozens of times. The two bore a resemblance, something Hess noticed only now.

  “Were you the soul of probity at age seventeen, Grampion?”

  Yes, he had been, more fool him. He slipped her arm through his, because the time had come to gently herd her toward the door.

  “I was seventeen, and that’s as much as I’ll admit. If I’m to heed Worth’s summons, a journey of two hundred miles will take some preparation. What have you heard from Lucas?”

  She prattled on about her oldest son, spending a summer in the south between public school terms, and in her voice Hess heard pride, longing, and love. Not for the first time, Hess regretted the lack of children in his own household. Grampion was beautiful, the land graciously generous, the views spectacular.

  But lonely. His only consolation was that Worth had no children either, no wife, no family about except a little niece who likely understood only French, and now Yolanda, a near adult and about as sunny-natured as a hurricane.

  Still, Hess wouldn’t remain in the north, without niece or sister, while Worth had both, though neither would Hess go galloping south and solve all the family’s problems himself—again.

  * * *

  “Tell me about these Damuses,” Worth said as he settled onto the seat of the dog cart beside Mrs. Wyeth. Goliath—trained to drive as well as ride, like any proper mount of his breeding and dimensions—was in the traces, which had required loosening the harness by a few holes in all directions.

  “The Damuses are not an old local family,” Mrs. Wyeth said as they clattered out of the coach yard. “She was a Dacey, and he’s the second son of a baronet in Dorset. Their holding was willed to him by a grandmother, and she brought a good settlement to the union, so they prosper.”

  “With twelve children, that’s not all they do. How about the Hendersons? Have they leporine inclinations?”

  “Leporine?”

  “In the nature of a hare, similar to caprine, or vulpine, in the nature of a goat, or a fox, you know?”

  “My Latin is rusty. The Hendersons are a young couple who moved here from Dorset when his cousin left the property for London. They’ve three boys yet, now that Linda has passed on. The land is good, but they haven’t been farming it for long, and it takes time to learn the way of a piece of ground.”

  What manner of housekeeper was brought up on Latin?

  Worth turned Goliath onto the lane. “Ground is just there. What do you mean, learn the way of it?”

  “This field tends to get boggy in spring, but mostly in the one corner, so you might plant that corner later. That field is perfect for oats, but doesn’t do quite such a good job with barley. A particular irrigation ditch is always the first to back up when the leaves come off in the fall. That sort of thing.”

  Agricultural land was like women then, full of idiosyncrasies and quirks. “How come you, a housekeeper, to know about that sort of thing?”

  “I wasn’t always a housekeeper, Mr. Kettering. My father was responsible for a great many acres, and land doesn’t farm itself.”

  So her father was likely a steward to some lord. Worth hoarded up that information the way some of his clients hoarded their denarii and sesterces.

  “What do the Hendersons do well?”

  “Her people are Irish on her mother’s side, which is part of the reason they left their home county.”

  “We’re superstitious about third-generation Irish, are we?”

  “I haven’t asked her for the particulars, but Mrs. Henderson can tat lace so delicate it hardly catches sunlight. Mr. Henderson has a magnificent sow by the name of William.”

  “A sow named William, and my livelihood depends on such as these?”

  “The boys named the pig, because she lets them ride her, so she’s in the way of a porcine charger.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to ride this great pig?”

  “Don’t let me stop you, if that’s your inclination.”

  He deserved that, and it was worth the insult to know Wyeth was enjoying herself. “Goliath would never bear the shame if I rode a pig. Is there a marker for the child’s resting place?”

  She was silent for a moment, and Worth was pleased to have surprised her. He’d surprised himself, but he knew what it was to lose a family member, and to some people, a marker would be important.

  “We’ll go by the church on the way over,” Wyeth said. “We can look.”

  They found the grave but no marker, and the curate intimated none had been ordered. Worth drew the man aside, made arrangements for something befitting a girl child, and handed Wyeth back into the gig.

  “How is it you know French, Wyeth?” He slapped the reins on Goliath’s shiny black rump before his housekeeper could remark his discussion with the curate.

  “I had a good upbringing, and French is not a difficult language.”

  A steward’s daughter might have a good upbringing, if her father served the nobility. “Where did you have this good upbringing?”

  “Dorset.”

  Dorset, from whence the beleaguered Hendersons hailed, though from Worth’s observation, they did not know they were beleaguered. The lady of the house had a sadness in her eyes, but she was much loved by her beamish young spouse and doted on her menfolk. Worth dutifully asked to see the magnificent sow and, while the boys rode her around the yard, inquired of Mr. Henderson if Mrs. Henderson might consider parting with some of the exquisite lace gracing their spotless cottage.

  “Whyever would a grand fellow like yourself be in want of lace?”

  “I’m not, personally, but I’m also not such a grand fellow that I’d pass up an opportunity to make a coin or two. Lace like that is becoming scarce, and all the fine ladies in Town will pay dearly for flounces, ruffles and mantillas. I know modistes and tailors who’d die for as much of that lace as they could get their hands on.”

  “You’d buy Trudy’s lace?” Henderson was tall, rangy, blond and ruddy. He was also besotted with his round, red-haired Trudy, and appropriately protective of her.

  “If you’re willing to part with your goods,” Worth said. “I’d take a commission, for arranging the London end of things, but there’d be coin for you and yours as well.”

  William came to a halt, like any well-trained mount, then—with the two little boys bouncing happily on her back—trotted off in the direction of the chicken coop.

  “Trude’s proud of that lace,” Henderson said. “We’ve shown the boys how to tat a little, too.”

  “You know your lady best. Discuss it with her and send word of your decision. Seems a shame to keep work that fine a secret, though, and I could use the coin.”

  Henderson looked him up and down, from his brilliantly white cravat to his shiny riding boots and all the Bond Street finery in between. “Takes a bit of the ready to trick yourself out like a swell.”

  “More than a bit. Now, you’re a married fellow. What is the secret to politely prying two women apart when a man needs to be on his way?”

  Henderson’s expression turned sympathetic. “Can’t be done. Trude gets to visiting in the churchyard, too, and the boys have walked halfway home before I get her in the cart.”

  “Don’t suppose that pig knows how to drive?”

  “The boys are working on it. They want to be famous throughout the shire for training the realm’s first draft pig.”

  Worth complimented the boys on William’s accomplishments, scratched the pig’s hairy chin, and took his housekeeper by the elbow to remove her from the Hendersons’ front porch.

  “Mrs. Henderson’s a genius
with her lace, isn’t she?” he observed when he’d handed Wyeth up.

  “The whole family can do work like that, but it’s hard on the eyes. We’d best hurry. Looks like we’re in for a squall.”

  “Goliath is the steady sort, and he must live up to the standards set by that pig. He’ll get us home safe and sound. What did you ladies talk about?”

  “The usual.” She pulled her shawl closer. The temperature, which had been summery warm, was dropping as the breeze picked up. “The boys are growing, the crops are coming along, she misses her Linda, but may be carrying again already.”

  “The fences were not in the best repair, and I suspect one corner of the cottage roof leaks.” Though Henderson hadn’t mentioned either problem.

  “Your steward will have a list of tenant repairs for you,” Wyeth said, eyeing the sky. “A short list, but he’ll want to show it to you before he spends any coin on maintenance.”

  “I know this steward you mention. Mr. Reilly sends me reports each month almost as detailed as yours. Is the weather always so changeable here?”

  “This is England, so yes.”

  It might have been Worth’s imagination—or wishful thinking—but it seemed to him she bundled closer to his side.

  “Your bonnet might get a soaking.” She likely had only the one. “May we impose on a neighbor along the way to the manor?”

  “The Hendersons are the closest tenants, and the church is kept locked on weekdays.”

  “To prevent felons from taking refuge?”

  She made no reply, and from the south came a long, low rumble of thunder.

  Worth gestured with his chin, because his hands were on the reins. “A covered bridge, about half a mile ahead. We’ll make it.”

  Goliath gave them his best bound-for-home trot, and a gust of rain spattered down, but they made the covered bridge before the heavens opened up. To Worth’s surprise, his housekeeper’s gloved hand was manacled around his arm when he drew the horse up in the middle of the bridge.

  “You are pale as a winding-sheet, Wyeth. Is your head paining you?” He set the brake and wrapped the reins, unwilling to move until she loosened her grip.