And he was off, waxing eloquent about a place that sounded like a medium-sized slice of heaven, for all it was two hundred miles north and he hadn’t seen it for half a lifetime.
Leaving Jacaranda to wonder if Worth Kettering had been banished, or if he’d exiled himself all those years ago.
* * *
The blasted woman pled a headache at dinner and took a tray in her room. Worth was aggravated at first, because he and Wyeth had settled nothing with that tea and crumpets sparring match upon his arrival, then he was relieved. They were under the same roof, he was bone tired, and perhaps she was as well.
He was restless, though, so he bade his womenfolk good night and ducked out with a towel, dressing gown, and soap, and enjoyed the privacy of the pond. The moon came up as he finished his swim, casting undulating ripples of light over the dark surface of the water.
That play of dark and light reminded him of Jacaranda Wyeth’s hair and of how she moved.
Shaking that thought away, he dried off, shrugged into his dressing gown, and made his way to the house. On a whim, he took himself up to the third floor, where his sister and his niece slept.
He hadn’t sent them any notes either, which was truly reprehensible of him. His housekeeper deserved a note, his womenfolk needed one. As he stood in the doorway of Avery’s room, he recollected all the times his mother had hared off in high dudgeon, threatening never to return. He’d been relieved when she’d come blithely sailing home, though that slight, low-down sickness in the gut had never left him as he’d waited for her next dramatic exit.
“Is she still snuffling?” Yolanda stood across the hallway in nightgown and wrapper. “The poor little thing was disconsolate. I thought she’d never drop off.”
“Disconsolate?” Why would Avery be disconsolate when he was back with them again?
“Her manka went missing, and she was nigh hysterical. She was hysterical.”
“Her what?”
“Manka, or mankit,” Yolanda said. “It’s how she refers to the nursery blanket her mother embroidered for her. We couldn’t find it anywhere, and finally Wickie told her big girls don’t have blankets and if Avery didn’t settle down, she wouldn’t have a doll either.”
“I had such hopes for Mrs. Hartwick.” The woman had been the most promising of a succession of nurse-governesses, but this—
“She wasn’t unkind. Big girls don’t have blankets.”
“No,” Worth countered, “they have keepsakes, and mementos, and I happened to see that your effects include a doll, who occupies pride of place on your mantel.”
She raised her chin, every inch a Kettering. “Your point?”
“Avery’s blanket must be found.”
Yolanda crossed the hall, went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I have hopes for you, brother. Good night and happy hunting.”
Yolanda took her leave on that cryptic remark, and Worth opened the door to Avery’s room. No candle had been left burning in the darkness, no doll tucked under her covers beside her. When Worth lowered himself to her bed, he saw her smooth little-girl cheeks were tear-stained, and her mouth worked silently, as if in want of a thumb.
“Best not wake her.” Wyeth was silhouetted in the door in her nightclothes, her hair down and unbound.
The sight caused an obstruction in Worth’s breathing. “You heard the racket?”
“She was pathetic.” Wyeth advanced into the room. “The first honest tantrum I’ve seen since my brothers were very young.”
“Was it your idea to threaten her dolls?”
“Angels abide, of course not.” She took a rocking chair a few feet from the bed. “When children are tired and aggrieved, they can’t respond rationally to threats, though it isn’t my place to interfere in the nursery.”
“Some would say it isn’t mine.”
“Some would say sending the child to Cumberland to live among a whole new set of strangers is not merely convenient for you, but in her best interests.”
He brushed a lock of Avery’s hair off her forehead, silently ceding his housekeeper points for tenacity and courage. “Where’s her blanket?”
Wyeth rocked slowly, the tempo conveying bodily fatigue, maybe even sorrow.
“I thought that’s what the fuss was about. I’ll unleash the whole staff tomorrow. Blankets don’t just get up and walk away. Unless the blanket has flown back to France, we’ll find it.”
“What if the pig ate Manka?” Avery asked sleepily. “William is always hungry. What if we never, ever find her? She’ll be all alone.” Her breathing hitched, and her little face screwed up, and she was in Worth’s lap before the first tear could think of falling.
“We will find her,” he assured her. “Mrs. Wyeth has said it will be so, and I say it will be so. We’ll turn out every maid and footman and tell all the house cats to look for her. Hmm? Maybe your dolls saw Manka going for a great lark in the laundry cart, and she’ll come back from her adventure all clean and smelling of sunshine.”
“She doesn’t want to smell of sunshine. She wants to smell like my m-mama.”
“Like your mama?”
The blanket was years old and had literally been dragged through the gutters of Paris. The hems had a few tattered vestiges of once-lovely embroidery, but the blanket couldn’t possibly smell of Moira Kettering now.
Wyeth shifted to sit beside them on the bed. “Did your mama’s scent resemble this?” She held a long, dark lock of her hair under Avery’s nose.
“Yes! That’s the Mama-flower. Manka always smells like that. I want to sit in your lap.”
She hiked herself away from her uncle and appropriated her perch of choice.
“Lavender,” Wyeth said, kissing the child’s crown. “Both the Kettering households use it for laundry and linen scents. I use it on my person.” She shifted away and resumed her rocking chair, the child in her lap.
“Tomorrow, your uncle can show you where the Mama-flower grows here. Now is when it blooms, and the scent is quite, quite lovely,” Wyeth said. “Did your mama ever sing to you when you were tired?”
“Mostly in English, which wasn’t my best when I was small.”
The slow rocking went on, and Wyeth’s hand traced an easy pattern on the child’s back. Worth felt his eyes growing heavy, and a heaviness elsewhere, too.
Not desire, though that hummed along quietly in his veins whenever he thought of the woman sitting a few feet away. Something calmer and sweeter pooled in his chest, having to do with seeing Wyeth with other children, babies even.
Everlasting Powers, save him.
“Can you hum the tune your mama sang?” Wyeth asked in drowsy tones.
And soon Wyeth had lullabied the child right back to sleep, her voice a lovely, true alto that brought comfort and peace in the darkened room.
“She’s out like the proverbial candle,” Wyeth said after a few minutes of silent rocking. “Can you lift the bedclothes?”
He obliged, then covered the child up when Wyeth stepped back and arched her spine, hands low on her back. While she gazed down at the sleeping child, Worth found a cloth doll to tuck in with Avery and bent to kiss the child’s forehead.
He also left her door cracked, so light from the sconces in the corridor might reach her room.
“My thanks,” he said as they moved down the hallway. “God help whoever misplaced that blanket.”
“The child herself likely misplaced it. You love her, you know.”
“Always a fine thing, when a woman tells a man what he feels.”
She stopped outside her door and peered up at him in the dim light. “I simply wore a soothing scent. You needn’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.” He wasn’t, exactly, but he was made hungry in some regard by what had just transpired. Rather than examine that hunger or admit the loneliness of spirit behind it, he opened the door to Wyeth’s sitting room and peered inside.
Candles burned, and a modest fire danced on the andirons. The room was cozy on
a night Worth would have said was almost warm to begin with.
“I’ll build up your fire,” he said, moving past Wyeth into her room.
“You needn’t.” She followed him in. “I lit the fire only to dry my hair. I’ll open my windows, because it’s nearly stuffy in here now.”
Stuffy and thick with lavender. “I’ll bank your fire then.”
He made a thorough job of a simple task, because otherwise she’d shoo him out of her quarters, when he wasn’t in any hurry to leave.
“Before,” he said, back to her as he knelt in front of the hearth, “when we were on the bridge? I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“My guess is you did not mean much of anything.”
“Oh, I meant something.” He straightened and put the poker aside. “We’ve chemistry between us, and indulging that chemistry could be lucrative for you, Wyeth.”
She neither took a place on her small sofa, nor hovered by the door, but simply stood her ground at the center of the room.
“What you offered might have been lucrative in terms of coin, but costly otherwise. We need not discuss this again. Ever. ”
That gave him something to think about, which might have been an adequate distraction, except it was late, they were alone, and a bed was close at hand.
Her bed.
“Most choices involve costs and benefits, my dear. You consider the costs almost exclusively.” He recognized in another a trait he had honed to a fine business advantage in himself.
Her smile was such as a tutor might bestow on a particularly dim pupil. “You offered me illegitimate children I can’t support, loss of reputation, potential loss of health, loss of long-term income and standing, loss of my family’s regard, for starters. Let’s assume I don’t die in childbirth, as so many women do, and for what? A few kisses, some stolen pleasure? A little coin?”
A lot of coin, half his fortune maybe, because he could always replace the money. With her, that point would merit him nothing.
“Few of those losses would accrue unless you chose to be indiscreet. I’d protect your reputation the same as I would Yolanda’s. You’d gain a few assets, paltry though they might measure in your estimation.”
While this discussion alone might cost Worth his dignity, for rather than negotiating, he was perilously close to…wheedling.
“What could I possibly gain from an illicit liaison with a man who can’t admit he loves his niece as if she were his own?”
The finer points of her logic escaped him. Taking care of Avery was his privilege and his duty—and Avery was his, unless Hessian decided to snatch her away to the north.
He sauntered close to the pillar of good sense standing where his Wyeth ought to be.
“You would gain pleasure, in which your existence is decidedly deficient, madam.” He spoke gently, lest she turn the argument right back around on its source. “You would gain a friend in this life, a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, someone to provide bodily comfort when running your empire weighs too heavily. In short, you would gain a part of me I don’t lend easily, but one you might find worth having.”
He was close enough to catch the part of her scent that wasn’t simply lavender, but summer flowers, and her. She regarded him with some puzzlement, and he would have given a lot to know which particular rabbit trails her febrile feminine brain was coursing.
“A part of you not lent easily,” she said, “with interest, principle subject to collection without notice. Too much risk in those terms for a prudent investor. Nothing but risk, really. Good night, Mr. Kettering. We’ll find Avery’s Manka in the morning, won’t we?”
He bowed and withdrew, knowing that if he touched her, the argument would progress in a different and equally fruitless direction. In her convoluted-to-him, crystal-clear-to-her way, Wyeth had communicated something in what she hadn’t said.
She viewed a part of him was worth having, but not on the terms he’d offered. She wanted a different balance of risk and reward. That was progress, and all any negotiation wanted to remain viable was a bit of progress from time to time.
Chapter Seven
“What will it take to wake you?”
Jacaranda knew that silky baritone, but in sleep, she did not care to heed it.
“Woman, for the love of God, wake up.” A warm, large hand shook her shoulder, even as both the impatience in that voice and its anxious undertone registered.
She was comfortably face down in her pillows, a fresh breeze coming in her window. She’d been so tired last night a headache had plagued her, and then she’d lain awake pondering that odd exchange with the household despot.
Lips, on her nape. Soft, sweet, tender even, and something warmer and a touch damper than.—
She whipped over to her back. “Were you thieving a taste of me?”
“Good morning, or at least it will soon be morning.” Mr. Kettering sat up, an infernal smile playing over those very same larcenous lips. The room was barely light, and outside Jacaranda’s window, one lone bird chirped a greeting to the day.
“Get off my bed, leave this room, and do not come back, ever. If you have need of me, a maid can bring a note. Good-bye.”
She tried to roll away from him, but that hand was back on her shoulder, staying her. Her bare shoulder.
Her gaze met his, and he appeared to realize at the same time she did that she’d slept without her nightclothes. Beneath the thin old quilt and sheet, Jacaranda was as naked as an opera dancer’s knees.
“Wyeth, you wicked little creature.” His smile became diabolical, and that hand on her shoulder shifted to trace her collarbone. “You’re awake now. As am I.”
“I couldn’t possibly be awake, because I’m in the midst of a nightmare. Will you please take your hand off my person?”
The hand was gone, and so was the smile, then so was the man, for he rose and paced out of touching distance, turning his back to her.
“Thank you, Mr. Kettering, and if you will do me the courtesy to remain like that, I can find my nightclothes, though what earthly use you expect me to be without a hot cup of tea and at least a scone or two I cannot fathom.”
She fished her nightgown from under her pillow while she lectured him and rose to belt her dressing gown around her waist.
“I’m somewhat decent,” she announced. “Except my hair’s a fright, and we’re alone in my boudoir, and that cannot be decent.”
He peeked, then turned around and stepped behind her to lift her hair out of her dressing gown.
“This is not a fright. Your hair could never be a fright, and when I behold you, Wyeth, I thank the Creator you do not indulge in ghastly caps and severe coronets. I found the blanket.”
“Have you been up this entire night searching for that thing?”
She liked the sensation of his hands in her hair, sweeping it up and out so gently. She whipped around and glared at him accordingly.
“Not all night, but I couldn’t sleep, so about an hour ago, I started looking around. Down at the stables, in the playroom, the library. I found it with the soiled linens from the girls’ rooms, and it doesn’t smell in the least like lavender.”
“So we’ll wash it on Monday.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes, for it was inclined to subversive behavior when loose.
“You can’t be seen to wash it, or Avery will think you’re taking her mother’s scent away, not refurbishing it.”
“Then we won’t wash it.”
He glared back at her, which—though she was tempted to snicker at all this blustering over a child’s blanket—also made him look rather magnificent.
“Do not patronize me, Jacaranda Wyeth. We will wash it, as soon as you show me where the blighted soap is. Then we’ll let it hang in the kitchen to dry before Avery is finished breaking her fast.”
“You woke me at the crack of doom to find the soap?”
His glare faltered, and he apparently found it necessary to open her window one additional inch. “You’re always up at the
crack of doom. Simmons complains that you make him look lazy by comparison.”
“He is lazy. I like it that way, and he does a fine job, despite both age and laziness. Come with me, and we’ll find your lavender soap.”
The relief that flickered in his eyes caught her off guard, but really, did he think she’d let the household run out of lavender soap? In summer, for pity’s sake?
They washed the blanket, then Mr. Kettering wrung it out between his hands until it was nearly dry. The only scullery maid stirring in the kitchen hared off to fetch the cream from the dairy and the eggs from the henhouse.
“I suppose you’d like me to make you a pot of tea?” Jacaranda extended the offer, knowing she would have her tea, come fire, flood or famine—or Worth Kettering in a rambunctious mood.
“Sit,” her employer ordered. “I’ll make the tea while you have a scone or two. Your disposition might benefit, if the Deity is merciful.” He passed her the basket of fresh scones and put both a jar of raspberry jam and a crock of butter on the table. “Save me at least a morsel, lest I get peckish and wan.”
“Peckish and wan, and given to invading your housekeeper’s quarters at all hours.” Jacaranda let that suffice for a riposte because the jam was wonderful, the scones perfect, and she wasn’t having to make her own cup of tea.
Then too, Worth Kettering had tracked down the prodigal blanket. She very nearly congratulated him for it, but eating her scone was a higher priority. He set a cup of tea before her, then slid onto the bench beside her.
“Budge over. I am owed a scone complete with butter and jam for my heroics this morning.”
She passed him her half-eaten scone, intending to hush him with sustenance, but he took a bite off it as she held it.
She put the scone on the table. “Mr. Kettering, will you cease your naughtiness?”
“Mrs. Wyeth, will you cease attributing base motives to every small gesture of flattery and flirtation that comes your way? This,”—he kissed her lips soundly, a brief, warm, raspberry-flavored kiss—“is being naughty. Now eat your scone, and I’ll make you up another.”
Worth; Lord Of Reckoning Page 11
