“You’re wise not to force the matter,” Jacaranda said, though complimenting him felt awkward. “She strikes me as having a full allotment of Kettering stubbornness.”
He sat back, his arm still resting along the bench behind her. “Which raises the earlier topic. My brother will pay us a visit sometime in the next few weeks, and at my invitation.”
“We’ve plenty of room, and the house is in good trim. I wish you’d let me know the dates of his visit, though. Certain of the staff have been given holidays to see family and the like.”
“Isn’t that Simmons’s business?”
“We cooperate, with the maids and footmen, the laundresses and grooms, so we’re never too short-staffed in any one regard.”
“Hessian is only one person,” Mr. Kettering said. “He shouldn’t be too inconvenient, though he’ll doubtless travel by private coach, so that means grooms, a valet, a secretary, a coachman, and an outrider or two. He’ll likely bring a second coach, so the help won’t violate his privacy en route.”
“So I should expect his lordship and eight to twelve other mouths to feed?”
“Everlasting powers.” He rose, taking his warmth from her side. “He’ll expect the state chambers, because the man bears a title.”
“Was that the hard part?”
He stood on the other side of the gazebo, facing out across gardens all but shrouded in darkness. “I beg your pardon, Wyeth?”
“Admitting your brother has a title. Was that difficult?”
“Must you?”
“We are having this discussion where there’s no possibility of being overheard,” she said. “By your design. You and this brother do not speak, and yet you want me to ensure his visit is in every way comfortable.”
“Of course I do.” He turned to face her, but the moon wasn’t up yet, and the sun had fled. In the gathering shadows, Jacaranda couldn’t see anything of his expression.
“You aren’t commanding his comfort simply as conscientious host, though.”
“Wyeth, you are a managing damned female if ever there was one. Hess and I are distant for very good reasons. In hindsight, he did me a favor, and himself a disservice, but it lies between us, a great gaping awkwardness that arose before I’d even reached my majority.”
“Will his countess accompany him?”
He abruptly gave her his back and resumed studying the garden. “She’s dead, has been for five years.”
Nothing in his voice gave away any emotion, but something about the lack of emotion spoke volumes.
“You were in love with her.”
“You are beyond overstepping.”
“I am observing a truth.” One that raised as many questions as it answered, none of them happy.
“I was seventeen years old and callow as only a young man can be, though the young lady and I had an understanding. My brother dangled his title before her, and she fell out of love with me post-haste, so I obligingly did the same regarding her. That is as much explanation as you will have from me, and we will not discuss this again.”
His voice had taken on a chilly, flat quality, and Jacaranda wished she’d brought a shawl after all. What sort of young lady could have fallen out of love with Worth Kettering, even in his most callow incarnation?
“Here.” His coat, redolent with his scent and his warmth, dropped over her shoulders. He snugged it around her, then resumed his place beside her. “Youthful follies have a particularly potent ability to make one feel like a flaming idiot even years later.”
Idiot folly was not entirely the province of youth, though Jacaranda had indulged in her share. She ought not to enjoy the warmth and luxury of his coat, or its scent, but she was making a bad habit of it.
“You are extending an olive branch to your brother now.” Or was the overture more in the direction of Mr. Kettering’s youthful self?
“I don’t know about an olive branch.” He ranged an arm along the top of the padded bench again. Jacaranda had been hoping he’d do that. “Yolanda will have to be launched in some fashion, even though she’s a by-blow. She’ll need to snare a fellow, need a settlement, and her brothers must put aside their petty squabbles for her sake.”
“Right.”
“Wyeth… Jacaranda…”
“Hush.” She kept her eyes on the part of the far horizon glowing faintly with the promise of moonrise. “I have many siblings. Do you think I am in great charity with all of them?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t countenance anything less, particularly from the males.”
“I was seventeen once, too.” Twenty even. Twenty, plain, too tall and more lonely than she’d even known. “My oldest brother is not at all happy that I choose to remain in service. None of my brothers are. My step-mother is nearly hysterical in her demands that I return home.” Though Jacaranda’s continued absence didn’t seem to bother Daisy.
“And you have a deal of brothers. You must have been very foolish, to need to defy them all so badly.”
Perceptive man. “I was almost foolish, which amounts to the same thing.”
“This involved a toothsome swain, I take it?”
She remained silent, and in that silence, she forged an understanding with her employer, something in the nature of a truce, but with a dash more compassion to it.
“Men are the very devil.” His arm came around her shoulders in a friendly squeeze, but then it stayed there and became half an embrace.
Jacaranda should stand up, remark the lateness of the hour, or suggest it was time to get back to the house. She knew she should, but the moon was rising, and she’d never in her more than twenty-five years watched a moonrise with a man’s arm around her shoulders.
Mr. Kettering seemed lonely, too. A bit lost, even.
The first sliver of incandescent moon lipped up over the horizon, and Jacaranda marshaled her resolve to leave.
“Don’t.” Mr. Kettering slipped his hand into hers. “Not yet.”
She subsided, letting herself have more of his warmth, not at all sure what was transpiring between them save a shared moonrise. She let her head fall to his shoulder and felt his hand stroking over her hair, once, twice.
She closed her eyes, the better to savor the sensations, the soft night air with a hint of cool, the silvery moonshine spilling over the gardens, the warmth and scent of the man beside her, and the simple pleasure of sharing a few moments with someone who’d also once been young and foolish.
When the moon was well up, Mr. Kettering drew her to her feet, but kept that arm across her shoulders as they wandered to the house. When they reached the back terrace, he stopped, kissed her forehead, and opened the door for her, then bowed, turned, and walked back the way they’d come, until Jacaranda could no longer see him for the shifting moon shadows.
* * *
Mr. Kettering wasn’t at breakfast the next morning, much to Jacaranda’s relief.
He’d been companionable, that was all. No man in his right mind would make overtures by moonlight to an oversized spinster housekeeper.
She didn’t have to inquire regarding his whereabouts, because he’d left a note by her place at the table.
Mrs. Wyeth,
I’ve taken my pony for a gallop and will inspect the home farm with Mr. Reilly this morning. You may impress me into exactly one tenant call after luncheon. If you would please draft notes for one neighbor call per weekday thereafter, I would appreciate it. We can discuss the children’s schedule when next I see you.
Yours respectfully,
Kettering
Respectfully.
She pondered that single word while she inventoried the linens set aside for the state chambers. Each of the earl’s dozen or so servants would require lodging, and the valet and secretary would expect modest guest rooms with a footman between them at least. Then came the discussion with Cook, who was equal parts pleased and dismayed at the thought of so many more mouths to feed, particularly when one of those sported a title.
“They are no di
fferent from you or me, Cook,” Jacaranda warned her. “They eat when they’re hungry, they sleep when they’re tired, or they should.”
Though they tended to drink a fair bit, in Jacaranda’s experience, and sometimes to impose on the chambermaids.
“If you say so, Mrs. W, but I don’t suppose you’d be willing to look over the menus in advance?”
“I suppose I would, because we don’t know when this relation of the Ketterings’ is descending. You’ll want to stock up now, and I will approve the expenses.”
She made her regular inspection then, finding the new chambermaid had neglected to open the drapes in the downstairs parlor, and the downstairs footmen were taking rather too long to clean the glass lamps in the corridor sconces. She informed them exactly when the new girl would take her break—the young lady seemed canny enough—and tracked Simmons down to his favorite place to nap, the butler’s pantry.
He went into transports to think the master of the household was having company, and titled company, and when Jacaranda left him, he was for the first time in her memory counting the silver she’d counted once a month for five years.
Her stomach was rumbling as she climbed to the third floor to check on Yolanda’s new room. She found Avery with her aunt, both girls holding hands in the middle of the room.
“You start slowly, so you can learn to move the same time I do,” Avery was saying. “Now, with me. Step, behind, step, kick. Again, step, behind, step, kick.”
Yolanda dropped her niece’s hand. “Hello, Mrs. Wyeth. Avery is teaching me a dance.”
“Not one you’ll need in any ballroom, I take it?”
Avery grinned and executed a lovely pirouette in arabesque. “Not for the ballrooms. Uncle’s opera dancers teach me their dances while we wait for him in the kitchen.”
“His—!” Jacaranda shut her mouth with a snap. “Yolanda, is your room more to your liking?”
“Very much.” Yolanda smiled back at her, as if Uncle entertaining opera dancers—plural—wasn’t a scandalous situation for a small child to know of—for any child to know of. “I can see the drive and the stables and side terrace. Trysting is really a lovely house. I’m surprised Worth doesn’t spend more time here.”
Jacaranda’s surprise was easily contained. The wilds of Surrey suffered a paucity of opera dancers, after all.
Opera dancers. Plural. In the kitchen. Teaching Avery scandalous dances.
Angels abide.
“Luncheon should be ready, so you’ll want to freshen up.” Jacaranda left them, step, behind, step, kicking amid a flurry of giggles, and knew the need to strangle her employer.
Men had urges over which they exercised not one bit more control than they had to. Jacaranda knew this.
“No better than they should be, the sorry lot of them,” she muttered as she careened around a corner and ran into the principal author of her distress.
“You!”
“Me?”
“Mr. Kettering, you will excuse me.” She leveled her most righteous glare at him and tacked left to circumnavigate him, but he stepped back and cut her off with his sheer, bodily presence.
“No, Mrs. Wyeth, I will not excuse you when you’re clearly in a temper.” His fingers manacled her wrist, and just that touch, warm, strong, and altogether male, made her temper snap its leash.
“I detest no man more than he who takes advantage of female innocence. You destroy something that can never be replaced, never repaired. Innocence doesn’t become merely wrinkled or tarnished, it’s gone forever. You leave in its place betrayal and a sorry knowledge no lady should have to bear.”
“What are you going on about?”
“Step, behind, step, kick.” She wrenched her wrist from his and would have flounced off, except he snatched her wrist again and pulled her into an empty bedroom, kicking the door closed behind them.
“Explain yourself, Wyeth. You aren’t a woman who flies into a taking easily, so I’m doing you the courtesy of hearing you out.”
He stood between her and the door, fists on his hips, and in the ensuing silence, Jacaranda realized anew that her employer was one of few people on the face of the earth who might have no trouble physically subduing her.
He was large enough, strong enough, and sufficiently unconstrained by manners when it suited him.
“Your light-skirts are teaching Avery indecent dances in your kitchen.”
He locked the door, then stalked over to peer down at her. “Is it the location of the dancing, the nature of it, or the nature of the instructors you object to?”
“She’s a little girl! Her mother would have wanted you to protect her from such influences, not parade them and their unfortunate morals before the child.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” Jacaranda shot back. “Those women cannot help their circumstances, I know that, too, but if you intend to prey on them, can’t you at least do it where Avery has no knowledge of it? Gentlemen are expected to exercise discretion even when they can’t exercise control.”
“You have a very bad opinion of men, don’t you?” His tone was curious, and he was standing entirely too close. “For example, if I kissed you right now, you’d wallop me at the least and probably ban me from my own house. I adore a ferocious woman.”
“You seek to turn the subject, and crudely. Avery should not be exposed to your debaucheries.” If I kissed you? Despite Jacaranda’s considerable anger at the man before her, her gaze dropped to his mouth. Damn him to Hades, it was a beautiful mouth, even when it wasn’t turned up in that faint smile.
“Come sit with me, and I will explain to you what transpires in my London household. As a courtesy, mind you, because you’re concerned for the child, not because you’re entitled to explanations. One must always be mindful of setting unfortunate precedents.”
When she didn’t move, he took her hand and led her to a window bench. The cushion could accommodate them both—barely.
“Avery likes the opera dancers, you see.” He kept her hand in his and drew his fingers over her palm. He had an ink stain on his right cuff—ink was the very devil to get out—and his touch was mesmerizing, soothing and arousing at once.
Arousing?
“Avery likes the dancers, or you do?”
“We both do. Moira went to Paris to study art during the Peace of Amiens, and then remained, against my judgment and Hess’s. Nobody wanted her there, but I suspect she was enamored of Avery’s father and unwilling to come home. Then she was unable to come home, and I didn’t become aware of Avery’s existence until the False Peace.”
“I know the French are not as judgmental regarding their diversions, but the child is in England.”
“She is.” He laced his fingers with hers, and Jacaranda bore it, because her employer was a man who liked to touch. He touched his niece and his sister, he patted Wickie on the shoulder, and he put his arm around his housekeeper in the moonlight.
He also entertained opera dancers in his very home. She tried to withdraw her hand.
“You will hear me out, Wyeth, because I will not repeat this tale. Moira’s artistic aspirations came to naught, and when Avery’s father died, Moira eventually supported herself at the opera comique, if what Avery tells me is accurate. The dancers remind Avery of happy times with her mother. I gather the child became some sort of backstage mascot. I have an opera dancer to thank for the fact Avery arrived safely to these shores.”
“You justify your choice of paramour on this basis? Your lapse of discretion?”
“Do you imagine opera dancers don’t age, Mrs. Wyeth? Do you imagine they don’t fall sick or suffer injury? You can turn your ankle and put it up with ice and arnica for a fortnight if you need to, but if they twist their ankles, they don’t eat.”
“For God’s sake, you don’t expect me to believe you paw these women out of charitable impulses?”
“I do not paw women, not any women, ever. If you must know, I handle investments for my opera dancers, you
fire-breathing little besom.”
And then he kissed her.
He settled his lips on hers, gently, so gently, while his hand came up to caress her jaw, then her hair, then to rest softly on her throat, so his thumb could brush over her cheek. His touch was sunbeam-light, warm as a breeze, and left wicked, wicked pleasure drizzling over her skin and into her mind. His mouth treasured hers, parting so his tongue could tease and taste and coax at her lips. When he eased away, Jacaranda’s own mouth was parted, and her wits—and her indignation—had deserted her utterly.
“The opera dancers won’t come to my office in Mayfair,” he said, dropping his hand. “We meet in my kitchen, instead, where I can insist they eat some decent food, and my footmen can see them safely home. I do not paw them, though they’re a great deal more honest about their willingness to be pawed—and do some pawing of their own—than their so-called betters. I’ll see you after luncheon.”
He rose and left. Jacaranda stared after him, unseeing, her hand cradling her jaw while she stifled an unaccountable urge to cry.
* * *
Wyeth’s kiss was a puzzle, and Worth spent most of his solitary luncheon in the library trying to decipher it when he should have been reading quarterly earnings statements.
She wasn’t a virgin with regard to kissing; he’d bet his honor on that. She’d been startled to find herself lip to lip with him, but then she’d been curious, and then she’d been interested, and then she’d been…interesting.
One kiss was obviously not enough. He must needs kiss her again, to see if that cool, cautious curiosity could be made to burn out of control. He would parse the taste of her down to something describable, not merely “lovely” or “delicious” or “womanly.”
Then there was the sound of kissing her. That soft indrawn breath of surprise, the sigh of acceptance, the hungry little moans in the back of her throat, the rustle and slide of her gown against his breeches, the almost-groan when she opened her mouth for him.
This great feast of the senses that was kissing her, he’d have it again. They would have it again, because if ever there was a woman from whom “no” meant “Absolutely Not Ever,” it was Jacaranda Wyeth, and not even her mouth had said no.
Worth; Lord Of Reckoning Page 8
