Chapter Twelve
Worth paused, hoping Jacaranda had ordered him to a parade rest, not the onset of yet more sexual frustration.
“You’ll overwhelm me,” she said, hiking up on her elbows. “I have not decided to—”
“Join,” he suggested, “to join with me intimately.”
“I haven’t, but you said…” She traced his eyebrows with her index finger, as he’d traced hers with his tongue. “I intended that you and I should have a certain difficult discussion, and I still do. But for now, lie on your back and behave, Worth.”
He rolled to his back as obediently as one of Hess’s hounds and prayed to a merciful God this behaving was a form of progress for them. As for the difficult discussion, he could only hope that meant she was reconsidering his proposal. Difficult for her, to admit she’d erred, though in victory he would be gracious and charming. Why, he’d even—
She took up where she’d left off, imitating him, tracing her fingers over his features, then following with her mouth.
“You bathed tonight. I can smell the flowers on you.”
“You like that,” he said, “that I bathed for you. I get hard when I’m bathing, thinking of you doing what you’re doing now.” One of many times throughout the day that arousal afflicted him.
“Oh, please hush.” Not her usual dismissive admonition, more a moan, a prayer, and she settled her mouth over his, ensuring his compliance.
He stayed on his back, where she’d told him to stay, and he resisted mightily the urge to roll her under him and the need to snug her body to his so he’d have something to thrust against.
He instead put all that lust and longing and frustration into his kiss, sealing his mouth to hers, cupping her head in his palm and sending his tongue foraging into her heat. He explored, he plundered, he teased, he feinted, all in aid of encouraging her own forays. When the tip of her tongue limned his teeth, his cock leapt and his belly tightened.
He dropped away from the kiss. “Too much.”
“I don’t understand.”
She was frowning again. Frowning wasn’t good.
“Hell and the devil.” He took her hand and drew it down, to the arousal rampant against his belly, rampant, straining, weeping with the need for completion. “You do this to me, Jacaranda. I’m close.”
“Close.” She kept her hand around him as he drew his away, leaving her to grip his shaft lightly. “I see.”
“Close your fingers around me. Please.”
She did, her grip still too tentative.
“Tighter, love. I’m begging.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” But her marvelously competent hand closed around him securely, and the pleasure of it stole his breath.
“If you move your hand, fondle me, stroke me, put your mouth on me, I’ll spend. I’ll leave if you ask it, Jacaranda. I don’t want to, but I can manage to abandon you now if I must.”
A fine lie, that, and when honesty was one of the aspects of Jacaranda Wyeth he treasured most dearly.
She held him firmly, while he willed her to find the fortitude to take this step with him.
She sleeved him and moved her hand up and down about an inch. “Like this?”
“Higher.” He got both syllables out through clenched teeth. “Not like… Here.”
He showed her with his own hand, a few loose strokes, enough to get most of the length of him and enough that his ballocks threatened to draw up.
“Draw my stones down,” he said. “Gently, yes… God’s dancing slippers.” The cool, soft slide of her fingers, the surprising assurance with which she complied with his request surprised him.
“You like this?” She had her hand on his cock again, letting the circle of her fingers slip up to the crown and down the shaft.
“Love…it. Jesus at the wedding feast.” He had to move his hips, had to, but he kept his undulations slow, wanting to savor the torture, wanting it to build and build. Knowing she was watching him by moonlight, though, watching the tension in his face, watching his body become a mindless, pleasure-maddened beast, made the whole experience so much more intimate.
She was learning about sexual intimacy, yes, but she was learning about him, too.
He grabbed the pillow on both sides of his head to keep his hand from fisting around hers. Bright, hot pleasure roared through him, out through every particle and sinew he owned and on into the dark, summer night. He groaned, he bucked, he strained to withstand the bliss and strained harder to surrender to it, on and on, until he couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, and couldn’t move for the pleasure wringing him out.
When he was once again aware of crickets chirping and the breeze billowing the curtain, Jacaranda’s cheek was pressed to his abdomen, and her hand cupped his rapidly softening cock.
Words. Women wanted words at such times. Worth had none. Couldn’t imagine when he would find any, either.
Jacaranda rose and fetched a flannel and basin from the bureau across the room. She swabbed him off and took a few brisk swipes at her fingers.
“A man’s pleasure is indelicate.” The most blissful indelicacy Worth had ever endured. “I’m sorry.”
She set the towel and basin aside. “It’s intense. I suppose you’d like to sleep?”
“Sleep, when I’ve just…? I’ll sleep later.”
“I’ve never seen a man do that before.” She gestured vaguely at the cool air over his genitals. “My brothers were forever being coarse when they thought I couldn’t hear them, but I’ve never…well. I was afraid I’d hurt you.”
She was so brave, and so shy about climbing back into bed with him.
“Some people enjoy an element of pain. I’m not one of them, but stop looking at me as if I grew horns. I am in want of affection.” He was a little alarmed at his admission, for that was the truth coming out of his idiot mouth.
Sex scrambled the brains; this was scientific fact, he was sure of it.
She climbed on the bed and busied herself rearranging the pillows he’d cast into chaos. “We’ve shared affection already. You can’t be in want of affection.”
He wanted more than simple affection, and the vexing creature would make him admit it.
“I want to know,”—he paused, gathering his courage—“I need to know you are not repulsed, you aren’t shocked. This wasn’t how I intended to go on. I don’t want you to have a disgust of me.”
She appeared to consider this, and then subsided onto the mattress, facing him, not touching him, damn it. Because she was closer to the window, her face was obscured by night shadows, and that about drove him ’round the bend.
But from somewhere, he found the resolve, the courage, to hold his position and keep his hands to himself.
“What comes now?” she asked, a frown in her voice.
Let me hold you, he wanted to say, but there was that frown.
“Jacaranda, what would you like to come now?”
“Honestly?”
“Love, you’ve seen me in extremis when I hadn’t planned to be that way. You’ll have to tell me where this leaves us, and yes, of course I expect honesty between us. I adore your penchant for honesty.”
The frown intensified. “We still need to have that discussion, but can you do that in extremis part again?”
* * *
Jacaranda’s face heated as she put the question to Worth, and she battled the urge to flee. What stopped her was the suspicion, the strong suspicion, that Worth’s feelings would be hurt if she tucked tail and ran.
They would be hurt even more if she unburdened herself of the two deceptions she yet perpetrated on him.
She was leaving him at the end of the summer, and her name wasn’t Jacaranda Wyeth. She hoped never to burden him with the knowledge he’d dallied with an earl’s spinster daughter.
“I can manage it again,” he said, studying her in the moonshadows. “I need a few minutes to recover, but I could if you assisted. Is that what you want?”
He traced her eyebrows with a single finger then let that finger trail down her nose, and chin, and across her collarbones, his expression reverent.
“Sometime, yes.”
“Enough of this long-distance negotiating, Wyeth.” He moved across the mattress to bundle her against his side. “Slap me if I’m being presumptuous.”
“Slap—” As if lying in his arms were more presumptuous than…well. She cuddled down against his chest, though the wretch could probably feel her cheeks heat.
“On my bum would be nice should the slapping appeal,” he said, gathering her closer. “I’ll happily reciprocate if you’d like a little spanking.”
“Oh, do hush.” She put her hand against his naughty mouth, but some of the awkwardness of the situation dissipated. She could see him enjoying her hand applied smartly to his backside, too.
Which gave one reason to ponder.
“This feels better,” he said, his hand stroking over her hair.
“Better than what?”
“Than you, regarding me so solemnly from halfway across the Channel. Erotic intimacy is an odd business, isn’t it?”
He had a name for what they’d shared. Marvelous.
“The entire business is strange.” She felt him waiting, listening for her reaction, so she mustered a greater quantity of fortitude. “It’s beautiful, too, and very personal.”
“Intimate.”
His was the more accurate word.
“Do you want to sleep now?” Because if he did want to sleep, she wanted him to sleep in her bed, so she could feast her senses on him while he lay passive, beautiful, and mysterious in her arms.
“What I want”—he gently shook her head with his hand in her hair, a scolding sort of shake—“is to know you’re not disconcerted by what happened in your bed tonight. What I did was selfish, vulgar, and presumptuous.”
“I am disconcerted.” She pressed her lips over his nipple and tongued him while she sorted through her reactions and ways to render them into words she could bear to speak. “You taste like spices.”
“Jacaranda Wyeth.”
She smiled, letting him feel her mouth curve against his skin. “I felt powerful, knowing I caused the pleasure you felt.”
“Ah.” Relief in that single syllable. “You’d like that, having power over a man when his defenses were in disarray.”
“Not just any man, for most of them have their defenses in disarray most of the time. You. I liked sharing that moment with you.” In this, she could be absolutely honest.
“You’re not disgusted?”
“I wanted to taste you.” She bit his chin and climbed over him, probably surprising them both with her boldness. “I wanted to taste you, and kiss you, and fondle you.”
The dear man threaded his hands through her hair on either side of her head and shut her naughty mouth by kissing her soundly.
* * *
Jacaranda delighted to waken in Worth’s arms, to see his dark hair against her white pillowcases when the sun’s first rays came stealing in the window. To watch him rouse while the birds outside the window sang to the new day, to see him open his eyes while she drowsed beside him.
These desires were dangerous. Her longing went beyond merely wanting him, which any woman with red blood in her veins might do. More than that, she wanted memories with him, memories of intimacies that transcended a mere joining of bodies.
Because she sought those memories, she endured his farewell kiss without embarking on any difficult discussions about Dorset and family obligations and impoverished earldoms.
She did not want to explain to him that she, of all people, hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with him, and though her secrets were not shameful, exactly, they were falsehoods. Worse, the longer she allowed those falsehoods to live, the more difficult would be the reckoning for her deception.
With Worth Kettering, further intimacies would be transcendently splendid. Jacaranda knew that now, knew the look and feel and scent of him when he expressed his passion, when he was in extremis, as he’d put it, and she wanted more. With him, she wanted to share that passion, to know if it could ignite her own.
Which would, of course, do nothing to ensure the maids were at their tasks, the footmen weren’t bothering the maids too awfully much, Simmons’s knees were still working, and Cook wasn’t overwhelmed.
Dawn came wonderfully early in summer, though when Jacaranda reached the breakfast parlor, she was surprised to find only the Earl of Grampion at the table.
No Worth?
“He’s packing,” Grampion said, rising. “I expect he’d be down here at a dead gallop did he know you were breaking your fast.”
Jacaranda retreated into manners. “Good morning, my lord. I assume you’re referring to Mr. Kettering?”
“I am. Did you sleep well, Mrs. Wyeth?”
He held her chair for her, so Jacaranda couldn’t watch his face as he posed the question.
“I slept wonderfully,” she said, the absolute, bald, unfortunate, naughty truth.
“You have that look about you.” He took his seat and passed her the teapot, cream and sugar in succession. “You’ve roses in your cheeks.”
“Thank you for the compliment.” Jacaranda smiled at him, for it had been a compliment, though hardly given with a flourish. “Are you enjoying your stay here, my lord?”
He took a sip of his tea and wrinkled his handsome mouth. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, though his lanky English blondness was less appealing than his brother’s dark good looks.
“I am enjoying my stay, yes.”
“Is there a ‘but’ appended to that grudging allowance?”
“Worth said you were a woman of substance.” Grampion frowned at his tea now, a stout black breakfast blend Jacaranda had ordered to get the household’s day off to a good start, though he might have ordered gunpowder for himself easily enough. “I should have known by Worth’s lights that substance meant a tendency toward cheek as well.”
“My apologies.” Jacaranda appropriated a serving of eggs from the server in the middle of the table and some toast. “May I have the butter?”
This provoked a smile from the earl, which made him look younger and far more attractive—by Jacaranda’s lights.
“Your apologies, pass the butter. I can see why Worth is so taken with you.” He did pass the butter.
“Aren’t you eating, my lord?” She went about buttering her toast as if the earl hadn’t made a disquieting observation, hoping that Grampion simply lacked for conversation first thing in the day. She certainly did. “The eggs are surpassingly good.”
“You needn’t turn up skittish, Mrs. Wyeth. I’m out of the habit of poaching on my brother’s preserves.”
She put her knife and toast down, for that comment, especially from a belted earl, required a response, regardless of the household’s democratic eccentricities at meal times.
“Were I, as you put it, your brother’s preserves, then it would be up to me whether I could be poached upon, wouldn’t it? And were I your brother’s preserves, and he mine, I can assure you, your overtures would be soundly rebuffed.”
“You don’t fancy a title panting after you?” He was merely curious rather than peevish or offended.
“I don’t fancy a man who would betray his brother at the same table as I am, much less with his tongue unattractively wagging in the wind,” Jacaranda said. “Because you are not such a man, at least not in your present incarnation, we need hardly discuss hypotheticals over our morning tea, correct?”
“God in heaven.” The words were said with exactly the same inflection Worth used. “You are a veritable Tartar.” He saluted with his tea cup. “We have thoroughly hashed through my dastardly past, and I will have some of those eggs.”
“You ought to talk to him about it, you know,” Jacaranda said, spooning eggs onto his outstretched plate. He was a big man, almost as big as Worth, so she didn’t stint.
“You expect me to eat all this?”
“You aren’t a bird, my lord, and Worth has you riding all over the shire. Eat up, and be grateful. I am.”
She smiled and gave a flourish with her forkful of eggs. He wasn’t so bad, this earl, but he wasn’t a happy man, and she felt sorry for him.
Imagine, feeling sorry for an earl. She’d thought to leave that habit behind her forever.
“I’ve tried talking to Worth,” he said, tucking into his eggs. “He brushes the topic aside. Even as a boy, Worth was plagued by shyness.”
“Bring it up again. My brothers all require persistence when one wants to parse a delicate subject, and then they want it over with as soon as may be. Cowards, the lot of them.”
“Are you saying Worth is a coward?”
“Good heavens, no.” Jacaranda studied her plate to hide the smile that went with the next thought: Worth is very brave. He’s pursuing me. “You both have a capacity for shyness, and Worth is the kindest man I know. I doubt he’d want you to trouble yourself over ancient history.”
“Less than fifteen years ago,” the earl said, pouring himself more tea. “I am not shy.”
She reached over and patted his hand. “Of course you’re not.”
He glared at her, just as one of her brothers might, and she wondered where this great good-humored confidence of hers was coming from. The man was an earl, for pity’s sake, and she was teasing him.
She wondered if anyone was teasing her own brother like this, for Grey was a man badly in need of teasing.
“You are a baggage, Mrs. Wyeth,” Grampion pronounced, but he was smiling. At last, he was smiling again. “Worth is lucky to have you.”
“Worth knows this,” said the man himself. He kissed Jacaranda’s cheek as he swept into the room, tousled his brother’s hair, and appropriated the teapot.
“Damned thing is empty,” he said, taking a seat beside his brother and helping himself to the man’s tea. “One has to make do. Mrs. Wyeth, my brother and I are removing to Town this morning. I’ve been summoned by a particularly irksome client. We should be back before too long, unless I lose my brother’s company to the flesh-pots of Egypt, as it were.”
The earl stole his tea back. “Worth, for pity’s sake.”
“You could have grown lonely up there in the north with nothing but sheep to keep you company. Natures in the south are sunnier, you’ll note, because we have more opportunities to socialize convivially, and winters don’t last ten and a half months. Ah, look, somebody took pity on a poor, starving lad and left me a few spoonfuls of egg.”
He took the rest of the eggs, winked at Jacaranda, and stoically endured his brother’s splutterings about manners and upbringings and decadent speech. A footman brought in more tea and moved the empty dishes to the sideboard before Worth waved him away.
The earl rose and bowed to Jacaranda. “I’m sorry to leave you in such company, Mrs. Wyeth, but Worth claims his client cannot wait. I’m off to finish my packing.”
“Worth claims,” Worth mimicked. “You’d better have your lordly arse down to the stables in thirty minutes or I’ll leave you here to Mrs. Wyeth’s tender mercies. She’ll have you fat as a shoat and standing up with all the local beauties if you’re not careful, and we have a veritable regiment of local beauties.”
The earl departed, not deigning to reply, and Jacaranda was left smiling at her… Well, he was still her employer, and a little of her glee at the start of the day dimmed.
“That boy needs to visit some flesh-pots, methinks.” Worth spoke loudly enough his departing brother might have heard him. “But he’ll stay with me in Town, because he hasn’t had time to open Grampion House. You’ll manage?”
“Without you two? Of course.”
This earned her a pause as Worth reached for his brother’s tea again.
“I’ll miss you, Jacaranda Wyeth. I can’t close the door and part with you as I’d like, but I can tell you I will miss you.”
“When will you return?”
“You’re supposed to say you’ll miss me, too.” He set the tea down untasted, his morning bonhomie leaving his expression. “I wouldn’t be haring back to Town now of all times if I could avoid it, but this client has a right to be concerned.”
“His money is at risk?”
“He doesn’t do well with high-risk investments,” Worth said, clearly choosing his words, “but he needs high returns, and I’ve promised them to him.”
“Promised, Worth?” He hadn’t made her many promises; but then, she’d given him exactly none herself.
“Within reason. I don’t like doing it, for no matter how sternly I caution him, he hears only of the potential profit, but so far, we’ve been lucky. Walk me to my room? I’d like to take a proper leave of you, and Hess will be down at the stables in exactly five-and-twenty minutes.”
“Did you know last night that you’d be leaving this morning?”
He patted his lips with his serviette. “I did. The messenger arrived as Hess and I were putting away the cards. We saw him fed and bedded down with the grooms. He was on his way back to Town at first light. Why?”
“You should have been getting your rest,” she said, unhappy with him for reasons she couldn’t sort out. “Not disporting with me.”
“You are not doing this.” He rose and came around to hold her chair. “You are not picking a silly fight because I’ve been called to Town and you think I’m going happily. I’m going kicking and screaming, my love. I am well aware this timing is execrable, well aware we need to talk.”
He towed her by the wrist into the hallway then dropped her hand. “Come along, please. We won’t be disturbed in my room, and you should have a chance to throw things at me if it will make you feel better.”
“I don’t want to throw things at you.” Except he was right: She did want to throw things, things that broke with a lot of noise and mess and sharp edges.
Good heavens, she was turning into her step-mama.
“Then scream at me like a virago,” he suggested. “Along the lines of ‘Worth, how can you run off to Town when you know I haven’t made up my mind about you? This is exactly why no woman in her right mind should give you the time of day, much less fifteen minutes of her night. You dash off at the worst moment and leave a woman to wonder if she imagined all that…’ Have I got it about right?”
He’d kept his voice down, which was probably why she hadn’t interrupted him with a sound scolding.
“I wish you didn’t have to go, though I know your business means a great deal to you.”
“Less than it used to,” he muttered, and this, for some reason, made Jacaranda feel better. “Less than it should.”
She could not ask him if he’d consort with his opera dancers while in Town, if he’d haul his brother around to the brothels in a display of fraternal hospitality. Men were capable of living parallel lives, she knew that from being Grey Dorning’s sister, and from the mistakes she’d made five years ago.
“I hardly need to pack much,” he said as they reached his room. He left the door open, but disappeared into his dressing room, allowing Jacaranda to peer around chambers she’d been in often enough, but never with him.
“Do you know where my emerald cravat pin has got off to?”
“I wasn’t aware you had an emerald cravat pin.” She followed him into his dressing room, because a possible theft of emerald jewelry on her watch was a very serious—
He dragged her up against him and covered her mouth with his as soon as she was across the dressing room threshold.
A morning kiss, Jacaranda thought as pleasure bloomed. He tasted of sweetened tea and a little of desperation. She preferred the desperation.
“Damn you.” He pushed her up against a wardrobe. “How can you be so composed when I want to pitch a tantrum?” His kiss became slower, less desperate, more plundering. “I want to consume you, woman, to spend hours in bed wearing you out and then hours longer while you wear me out. Or maybe I’d go first, but what an end, eh? Say you’ll miss me.”
He kissed her neck, holding her hands stretched above her with one of his and brushing his other down her front.
“Worth.” Whispering his name was not a very impressive display of feminine authority. “Worth Reverence Kettering.” She got the whip-crack into it that time. “You must stop.”
He hung over her, his lungs working so each inhale meant his chest brushed her breasts. “Why stop?” An incongruous, wry smile bloomed across his features, and Jacaranda was relieved to see it.
“Because in twenty minutes, you’ll have to sit a horse, and I have no intention of permitting you nineteen minutes of liberties first.”
A look passed across his features, arrested, then maybe chagrined. He pushed away and crossed the little room to sink down onto a daybed.
“Cruel but accurate. I really do not want to go.”
“I believe you.” Still, she couldn’t bring herself to ask again when he’d be back. “I’ll look after the girls in your absence, and for Yolanda, it might even be a relief to have some breathing space.”
“That one.” He stood and scrubbed a hand down his face. “I can’t tell if what she wants is to stay with me, or to make Hess pay for leaving her to her own devices.”
“You might talk to her about it.”
“A novel idea: talk to a female about what she wants. Let’s give it a try, shall we? Do you want me, Jacaranda Wyeth?”
Maybe Jacaranda was the one in need of room to breathe. “Bodily? Of course, that has never been in question.”
His smile faded into puzzlement. “We should be back toward midweek. Parliament will go out of session, and I doubt Hess wants people to know he’s underfoot.”
Jacaranda pushed away from the wardrobe. “He’s single, titled, and wealthy. They’ll get word he’s in Town even if he never leaves your residence.” Grey had complained often enough about the London hostesses that Grampion’s plight earned her sympathy.
“Hess’s heir is similarly situated,” Worth reminded her. “I wonder about the wealthy part of it, Jacaranda.”
“In what sense?”
“Hess came down here without a single groom, for pity’s sake. I take a groom when I’m going any distance, to see to the horses, for safety, in case Goliath throws a shoe, a hundred reasons. Why no groom?”
“He made it here without one, and he’s a very private person, your brother.”
“He is. May I tell you something?”
The subject was no longer Hess Kettering, and unease skittered up Jacaranda’s spine.
“I want you to desire me,” Worth said, coming to stand right before her. “I think I can make you desire me, in fact, but I am confounded to admit that isn’t enough.”
She must not let him say anything more along these lines. “We haven’t even—”
He put two fingers to her lips.
“I know.” The puzzlement was back. “Will you miss me, Jacaranda? Will you stop in the middle of your day and wonder what I’m up to, if I’m thinking of you? Will you smile sometimes, to recall something I said, something I did? Or am I spouting callow nonsense, thinking, maybe just a little, that you want more than bed sport of me, too?”
“That is precisely the problem,” she said, trying not to be dazzled with what he’d confessed. Dazzled and heartbroken. “What I want is complicated. I’d hoped we might have time to discuss it, but now I want—”
“I want it, too. I thrive on complexity.” He kissed her again, sweetly, as if her answer had been exactly what he wanted to hear.
Then he rummaged in his bureau.
“Worth, bid the girls farewell. We’ll manage in your absence.”
“Manage.” He banged a drawer closed and held up an elegant gold and emerald cravat pin. “Bugger managing. Tell me, Jacaranda Wyeth. I will not let you out of this room until you do.” They weren’t touching, but his gaze bored into her with unnerving determination. “Tell me.”
Jacaranda took a moment to sort through what else lurked in his gaze: encouragement, a gift of his courage, offered to her to fortify her against any fears.
All he wanted was the truth. That again.
“I’ll miss you,” she said, sliding her arms around his waist. “I’ll say prayers for your safety, I’ll listen for Goliath’s hoof beats coming up the drive. When no one’s about, I’ll lift your pillow to my nose to bring your scent to me. I will not always be housekeeper here, Worth, but for now, I wish I had a miniature of you. I wish I had one of myself to give you.”
They were courting words, also parting words. He kissed her again, each cheek, each eyelid, framing her face with his hands, suggesting he’d heard the courting part and ignored the rest.
“You’ll be on horseback soon, Worth.”
“Right, and I must make my bow in the nursery. Sniff my pillow all you like.”
Then he was gone.
Before she left his rooms, Jacaranda stopped by the great lordly expanse of his high bed and brought his pillow to her nose.
* * *
“Good of Miss Snyder to bring Avery down to see us off,” Worth said. They’d left Least Wapping in the dust, the horses had worked off their fidgets, and Hess still hadn’t volunteered one word of conversation.
“I was surprised your Mrs. Wyeth didn’t see you off. Shall we let the beasts blow?” He brought his horse down to the walk, the steeplechaser Worth had put him on earlier in the week. “Your housekeeper seems fond of you.”
“One hopes she’s fond of me. I’m more than fond of her, so don’t get ideas.”
“About?”
Worth smiled at his brother to ensure hostile notions remained only notions. “I overheard her at breakfast. She might as well have smacked your nose with a rolled-up newspaper.”
“So that’s what put you in such a fine humor? Your housekeeper—who referred to you by your given name, by the by—scolding me? Why didn’t you call me out?”
“Same reason I didn’t years ago.” Worth hadn’t foreseen the conversation taking this turn, but neither would he dodge the topic. “The lady makes her choice, we fellows abide by her wishes.”
Hess fixed his gaze on the horse’s ears. “Mrs. Wyeth is choosing you?”
“She isn’t choosing you.” Brilliant, dear, stubborn woman. “That’s enough for present purposes.”
“I know this will sound ridiculous, but I wouldn’t want to see the woman abuse your sensibilities, Worth.”
“From you, who stole my bride, that does sound ridiculous.” Worth lifted his reins free of Goliath’s mane. “Touching but ridiculous.”
“Precisely because I did steal your bride, I’m protective of you,” Hess said. “Then too, you’re my only brother, my only adult sibling, my heir. Humor me and tread carefully around Mrs. Wyeth.”
Hess’s expression was a study in impenetrable, titled dignity, though Worth would never have taken his brother for a snob.
“You mean I’m not to offer her marriage?”
“Offer her marriage on a platter,” Hess said, “but only after she’s offered you her heart. I do not need to tell you women can dissemble, and we fellows, led about by something other than our common sense, don’t wake up until it’s too late.”
“Speaking from experience, Hessian?”
“Do you recall Lady Belinda Evers?”
Worth had a vague memory of a girl who’d briefly been as tall as he’d been, before adolescence had turned him into a compilation of elbows, knees, and peculiar vocal pitches.
“She was plain Belinda Turner when I knew her—a nice girl, not given to airs.”
“I have a daughter with her,” Hess said. “Or I’m almost sure I do. Evers is twenty-some years Belinda’s senior. She presented him his heir and spare, and then he pretty much went shooting for the duration. She told him she wanted more children, and he tried to rise to the occasion, so to speak, but frequently without adequate result. Belinda doesn’t understand I know what she was about.”
“This is quite a tale. How can she think to keep this secret from you?”
And how did Hess feel about not one but two women seeking taking advantage of him?
“Because she doesn’t know Evers shared his woes with me over brandy, complained about having a restless younger wife who demanded children from a man old enough to be a grandpapa, and so forth.”
Life in the north was supposed to be dull. “Then she batted her eyes at you over tea. You could have refused her, but you didn’t.”
“I almost felt as if Evers were asking for my help, truth be known. He dotes on the child. Belinda was miserable to see her boys growing up and nothing in her future but watching her husband age.”
This exchange of honest confidences with Hess had veered into the “be mindful what you wish for” category of business, and yet, this was what Worth had wished for—his brother’s trust and all that went with it.
“You use this situation with the fair Belinda and her aging spouse to punish yourself,” Worth said. “I can’t figure out all the details, but this was self-flagellation, wasn’t it?”
“I undertook a casual affair with a willing party—or Belinda did.” Hess spoke the words as if he’d rehearsed them many times. “We’re friends, all of us, in some way. I don’t pretend to understand it, and I’m not about to embark on such foolishness again.”
Hess could tell him this, because despite all, they were still close in a way known only to brothers. The realization warmed Worth as summer morning sun could not.
“You keep to yourself because of the girl?”
“Yes, because of her. Dallying is one thing, but giving up my children to be raised by other men is quite another. Amy is nearly four and has my eyes—our eyes. I’m still waiting for Belinda to tell me she at least suspects the child is mine, but it has been years, and she’s made no admission.”
Amy was an artifact of grief then, for she’d been conceived soon after the death of Hess’s countess. “Belinda is a loyal wife.”
“Oh, right.”
“Well, loyal and faithful aren’t always a matched pair.”
“This child might be my only progeny, Worth. You’d think Lady Evers might take that into consideration as well.”
“She’s trying to do you a favor, I suspect,” Worth said, battling more than a twinge of consternation on his brother’s behalf. “A damned strange sort of favor. I trust she loves the girl?”
“Belinda would give her right arm for her boys, but she’d give her life for that little girl. I have no doubt of that whatsoever.”
The horses walked along for the better part of a mile, while Worth composed a great philosophical oratory about fate and the Almighty and one’s role being mysterious. A fine speech it was, too, full of long words and poetic allusions. Also impressively boring.
London was still better than an hour away, and beside Worth, the earl remained silent.
“I’m sorry, Hess.”
“For?”
“You seem doomed to lose family. Your wife, your parents, your sister, all dead. Your daughter is being raised by another, your remaining sister can’t stand your household, and your brother and your niece live two hundred miles to the south. I’m sorry these hardships have befallen you.”
He phrased the sentiment as a condolence, but a more accurate description for what Worth experienced would have been…pity.
Commiseration, even, for some of those losses Worth had shared, and his brother was also two hundred miles distant.
A damned nuisance, that.
“I’ve come to treasure my solitude,” Hess said, “and at least my brother and I are no longer estranged.”
No, they were not, though how that had happened, Worth was not sure—nor did he need to be. “Maybe your luck is changing.”
“One can hope.” Hess nudged his mount back up to the trot, and they exchanged not another word before reaching the town house.