Chapter Thirteen
“Grey, you can’t haul Jacaranda home by her hair.”
Daisy Fromm, nee Dorning, scolded her oldest brother quietly as he paced her back terrace. Grey would be handsome if he weren’t always scowling and glaring, but he was scowling now and looking determined, and that always boded ill for someone.
“It’s one thing for Jacaranda to keep house when the owner is off in London, but according to Roberts, this Kettering fellow has brought a pair of children with him, likely his by-blows, and she’s supposed to keep house with them and him underfoot. Francine says it will be the end of Jack’s reputation.”
As if going into service hadn’t already accomplished that?
“She’s been in his employ for five years,” Daisy said, feeling a peculiar pang of envy. “Of course she will occasionally be under the same roof as her employer. Mrs. Dankle dwells with you, doesn’t she?”
“Mrs. Dankle is sixty if she’s a day. She’s wiped my nose and the noses of every little Dorning foal to hit the ground. Moreover, she’s given notice.”
Mrs. Dankle frequently gave notice, then Francine bribed her into relenting.
“We’re not horses, Grey.” Daisy switched her hold on the baby in her arms, for the child was growing at a prodigious rate—just as her brothers had. “Besides, the gentry typically rusticate in summer. You’re here, and you didn’t even stay in Town for the closing ceremonies.”
“Hang the closing ceremonies.” His gaze came to rest on the infant, his glower softening to something approaching wistfulness. “This one’s growing like a weed, Daze. How can Jack miss her own niece and nephews growing up?”
Perhaps because she had no children of her own?
“Jack is stubborn, Grey, and she says in her letters she’s happy. If we miss her, well, that’s the price we pay for loving her.” The words were prevarications wrapped in platitudes, but Daisy would not burden her brother with the truth. She protected not Jacaranda’s dignity with her falsehoods, but her own.
“Letters, bah.” Grey ran a hand over the baby’s fuzzy head, his gentle touch at variance with his scornful tone. “Little fairy tales written by women to placate men. Jack has said she’ll come home at the end of the summer, but she’s made similar promises and found reasons to break them. Something’s amiss at Trysting. And what sort of name is that for a house? Did you know Kettering is brother to an earl?”
“I know many fine people who are siblings to an earl,” Daisy said, patting the baby’s back. “What is your point?”
“Jack needs to come home.” Grey tossed his long frame into a wrought iron chair, its feet scraping against the terrace flagstones. “When I agreed to this scheme, I told myself she was in a pout because you’d caught your man and she hadn’t. I gave it a year before she came home either towing a husband or finally ready to look for one. It has been five years, Daisy. You’ve three children, and she has, what? Bad knees from scrubbing floors?”
Jacaranda had her dignity, a variety of freedom, and a bit of coin to show for it—likely her figure was still comely, too—and she’d have staff to scrub those floors.
“Not all women are suited to marriage, Grey. Not all people.” Though some brothers were more suited to it than they could admit.
“None of that.” He’d growled the words, older-brother fashion. “I looked over this year’s crop in Town. I’m off to a house party in October. I stood up with an entire bouquet of wall flowers at the local assembly.”
Daisy remained silent, tucking the blanket more closely around the baby. She’d caught her man all right, but how much more of the tale Grey knew, she’d never quite fathomed. Because she did value her husband’s continued existence—some days and most nights—she wasn’t about to confide in her oldest brother anytime soon.
“I stopped by Least Wapping on my way south,” Grey said, getting to his feet. He was restless like that, a man beset with too much energy.
“Did you see Jack?”
“I did not. I kept my distance. She seems to be coping, but I have an itchy feeling between my shoulders, Daze. I’ll take some of the boys and go see what’s afoot once we get the ditches cleared. Will has always been able to make her see sense, and he’s confirmed that Francine is getting up to some mischief or other.”
Francine was bored, fretful, and not much of a mother. Daisy could say that in part because she herself was a mother—now.
“Will thinks you should leave Jack in peace.” Daisy didn’t want Grey dashing off, so she did something guaranteed to keep him on that terrace: She passed her brother the baby.
“I think her eyes are changing,” Grey said, peering at the little face peeking out of the blanket. Abrupt shifts of subject were symptomatic of Grey preparing to dart away on one of his queer starts. “They’ll be gorgeous eyes, just like Auntie Jack has, won’t they?”
“Just like Uncle Grey has,” Daisy said, wondering if the ladies in London ever took a moment to admire Grey’s eyes, or were too put off by his brusque demeanor.
He ran his nose over the baby’s cheek, which inspired the little baggage to smiling and waving her fists. “So you don’t think I should retrieve Jack?”
The smile he bestowed on the infant nearly broke Daisy’s heart. Before Jack had left, Grey’s smile had been much more frequently in evidence.
“If you’re asking me, then no,” Daisy said. “I don’t think you should barge into her affairs. You’re being the earl, though, not a sensible brother, and thus you’ll bother Jack regardless. Please give her my love when you go storming up to Trysting.”
“One appreciates honesty from one’s siblings.” He left off cuddling his niece, and five minutes later, Daisy let him see himself out, earl or not.
If she’d been honest, she would have told him she hoped that someday he’d turn that smile on a lady who was old enough to treasure it for the rarity it had become.
* * *
The flesh-pots of London failed utterly to lure Hess from Worth’s town house.
Fortunately, Mary had made significant progress bestirring the menials to spruce up the place, so it wasn’t such a bad spot to abandon a guest.
Worth tracked his sovereign down at a picnic and boating party this time, discreetly offered the requisite assurances, and then stopped by Lloyds to see if the clerks had heard any pertinent gossip.
If they had, they were keeping their lips buttoned, which would be a historic first, given that Worth plied them with not only noontime ale, but also rum and decent brandy before the night was through. He spent the next morning calling upon the lady whose husband captained the Drummond and the next afternoon meeting with opera dancers and shopkeepers, then appearing to laze about in the cleaner dockside taverns.
“And where have you been all day?” Mary took his coat from his shoulders as he walked in the door. “You stink of the wharves, Mr. Kettering. This will not endear you to the laundress.”
“My hard-earned coin will have to keep me in her good graces. Where’s my brother?”
“Reading on the back terrace. That man reads like civilization depends upon it. Hardly touched his lunch.”
“Then dinner had best be enticing, and we can serve it out back.” Worth gave her an up-and-down perusal. “How are you feeling?”
“I miss the girls,” Mary said, taking his hat, gloves and walking stick. “I do not miss breezing around in the altogether for a bunch of drunken louts to leer at.”
“Have you talked to Jones?”
She looked away, and Worth wanted to bellow for his head office clerk then and there.
“Never mind,” he said. “It isn’t my business. The house is looking much improved. For that I’m grateful.”
Her smile was heartbreakingly bashful as she nodded her thanks for the compliment. Worth took a surreptitious glance at her tummy and was relieved to see she wasn’t showing. But then, her full apron was long and loose, and he was hardly in a position to assess changes to her figure based on personal knowledge.
Though he might have been.
He shook off that uncomfortable thought, grabbed a decanter, glasses and tray from the library, and made his way to the terrace.
Where Hess was indeed poring over a book. “Poetry, Hessian?”
“Miss Snyder claimed I’d miss a treat if I didn’t make time for Byron. The man is brutally funny.”
“Or simply brutal. May I offer you a drink?”
“Sit you down,” Hess said. “I’ve been swilling lemonade all afternoon. Your terrace is peaceful, Worth. Do you ever spend time out here?”
“We’ll be eating out here,” Worth said, easing off his cravat.
“Did you complete your appointed rounds today?”
“Not entirely.” Worth propped his boots on a low wrought iron table and cradled his drink on his belly. “His Royal Highness moves about when one wants him to hold still and can’t be budged when one wants him to move. A vexing fellow.”
“You’re solicitor to the Regent?”
“Of course not. Prinny and I chat from time to time, about this and that.” Worth took a gratifying swallow of his brandy.
“That’s quite an honor, Lord Mayor of the Regent’s Chit-Chat.”
“It’s quite a pain in the arse when I lack the requisite magic wand and secret incantations. He expects high return and low risk.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
Worth thought his brother was joking at first, but Hess was completely serious. What followed was a tutorial on investment practices, with Hess asking cautious, basic questions and Worth answering as best he could without being insulting.
“It all sounds very complicated,” Hess concluded. “Very modern.”
“Investment strategy is as old as China in some senses. I’d be happy to invest something for you…” He let the offer hang in the air, but sensed this was perhaps the primary objective of Hess’s journey south. Not Yolanda, not reconciliation, not meeting Avery, but money.
Though, quite possibly, Hess himself hadn’t realized his own agenda.
Coin of the realm, blunt, cash… Money had as many names as did the male reproductive organ, and sensible people were more interested in coin than coitus.
“How much would I need to get involved with some of the more profitable ventures?”
The question was carefully, casually posed, and Worth had heard it a thousand times. Nobody looked him in the eye when they asked, and everybody hoped the answer was some insignificant amount.
Which it was not. Not by the standards of an opera dancer, not by the standards of an earl. For the dancers, Worth put together their coin and purchased a share between five or six of them, sometimes between as many as a dozen small investors. Such an undertaking was tedious and meant a flood of paperwork and a great deal of time, but he did it willingly.
“Is Grampion in financial trouble?” Worth asked gently. He and Hess had made progress with their past, and maybe this was a form of progress as well.
Hess propped his feet beside Worth’s on the low table.
“I believe so, yes.” He might have been commenting on the probability of rain, so bland was his tone.
“Are you in trouble?”
Hess’s gaze remained on their boots, Hess’s shiny, Worth’s dusty.
“I will be. I give it less than five years. I expect I’ll remarry sometime before disaster strikes.”
A silence wafted by, while Worth poured them both a tot more brandy. This discussion with his brother in the lengthening shadows of day’s end was like galloping a steeplechaser for three miles at top speed, then slamming into the final jump of the course.
Worth was stopped cold, stunned. Grampion had always been so gracious, so lovely.
So expensive, though a boy would not have realized that.
Hess had married once on impulse, or perhaps in a convoluted exercise in sibling rivalry. He shouldn’t have to marry again for duty. Even Hess should have one shot at some happiness.
What a relief, after years of animosity, for Worth to experience genuine protectiveness toward his brother.
“Will you allow me to help?”
Another question gently put, and another silence, while Worth considered that single question might mean he spent the rest of his life wishing his brother would resume speaking to him.
“God, yes, Worth, I will allow you to help. I will be grateful for your help. I know I don’t deserve—”
“We haven’t much time,” Worth interrupted, “but a particular opportunity lies in the offing now that could set you up nicely. How bad is the bleeding?”
Darkness had fallen before they went inside, moving their discussion to the library. Before Worth let Hess go up to bed, Worth had worked out the rudiments of a plan to not simply get the ancestral estate out of debt, but to turn it into a profitable venture. Putting Grampion on solid footing could take five years, but a few shares in the Drummond would shorten that estimate considerably.
Worth was content with that scenario when he considered their father had likely inherited a dismal situation fifty years ago, and done little to turn it around.
Hess refused to borrow from his brother, though, so it would be only a few shares of Drummond stock purchased, and that money was from Hess’s dwindling personal wealth. Like many of his peers, he was pouring personal money into an increasingly unprofitable agricultural estate, too hidebound or ignorant to diversify his revenue sources.
“This venture with the Drummond is high risk, isn’t it?” Hess asked as he rose to leave for his bed.
“That depends on how you view it, but high reward, too, and we should know in the next fifteen days which it is.”
“So I’ll have to stay in the south for another few weeks.” Hess did not look pleased with this possibility.
“Is my hospitality so lacking?” Worth said, purposely goading his brother, because hospitality wasn’t the problem.
“Your hospitality is superb, but the thought of Yolanda glaring daggers at me for weeks, then having to haul her, muttering and cursing, the length of England… One would like to have such an ordeal behind one.”
“Perhaps you’ll be able to turn her up sweet, or we can come to some other arrangement.”
“I know my duty, Worth.”
“Your duty now is to get a decent night’s sleep.” Worth got to his feet, fatigued to his bones, but also lighter in spirit. Setting another’s financial house in order often did that for him. “Mine as well.”
“About that.” Hess pinned his gaze on a painting of a mare and foal, an early Thomas Lawrence.
“Hessian?”
“You seem to have the knack of acquiring young, pretty housekeepers.”
“Each of whom,” Worth said, “is entirely her own woman.”
Hess looked sheepish, but pleased. “That’s what she said. Your Mary is quite forward.”
“She’s also carrying another man’s child. If she told you you couldn’t get her with child, it was the God’s honest truth.”
“Little brother, the life you live is incomprehensible to me.” Hess gathered up his boots and stockings. “Though you seem comfortable in it.”
He left on that observation, and Worth went in search of his housekeeper, but only to tell her he’d be leaving for Trysting in late morning.
* * *
“Hell, yes, I’ll sell you my shares.” James Murphy’s boots thumped onto the carpet of his office. “The Drummond is accounted a complete loss, and I know what you’re about, Kettering. You’re trying to keep me from selling to somebody else for a farthing to the pound, so your own pile of shares won’t be worth even less when you try to dump the ones you still have. It’s an old trick.”
“Or perhaps I believe in my captain, and the Drummond will come sailing in here one of these weeks.” Worth injected a note of defensiveness under his rejoinder, though one did want to play fair—within reason.
“The captain hasn’t been born of woman who can control the weather, my friend.” Murphy’s smile was sympathetic, but he signed over his stock certificates at face value. Worth paid him in cash, gathered a witnessed receipt, and thanked his associate very cordially.
He made six similar stops, which left him and his investors the sole shareholders in the venture, then collected his brother at the town house and once again headed back to Trysting.
* * *
“This is a sorry day, Mrs. W.” Simmons shook his head like a dog with a flea in his ear. “A sorry, sorry day. The young lady snatched from our very halls, and not one witness. A right tragedy, you ask me. What will Mr. K say?”
Perhaps Mr. K would allow Jacaranda to pension Simmons off at last.
“We’ll soon know Mr. Kettering’s view on the matter, Mr. Simmons. I sent a note to Town, and I don’t doubt he’ll be here by moonrise.”
“Moonrise!” The eyebrows rose to unprecedented heights, and beneath the dismay lurked a nasty element of glee to have such drama befall the house.
Jacaranda’s hand formed a tight fist in her skirts.
“Mrs. Wyeth?” Carl stood a safe distance away as he addressed her. “We’ve searched the outbuildings and found no sign of Miss Yolanda.”
“Thank you, Carl. What about the attics?”
“We’re up there now, ma’am, and the cellars, too.”
“Very good. Keep me and Mr. Simmons informed.”
“Oh, this is dire,” Simmons moaned. “What if she’s not in the attics or the cellars? We’ve searched the grounds, her room, the outbuildings and gardens. She’s not asleep in a hammock or reading by the stream. There’s no note. She hasn’t taken a horse or cart, and nobody has seen her since luncheon, and that was hours ago. Hours!”
“So it was, Mr. Simmons. I suggest you start praying.”
He was so stunned by that pronouncement, his mouth snapped shut fast enough to have his turkey wattle shaking.
What was there to do except pray? Yolanda had been infernally quiet since the earl had come to visit, wafting around the house like a pretty ghost, holing up in the library, taking trays for lunch and breakfast.
Boot heels rang in the corridor, and Jacaranda had to hope it was a groom arriving with news, good or bad, any news at all.
“Mrs. Wyeth?” Worth Kettering stood framed in the doorway, his brother at his shoulder. “My dear, the house is in an uproar, the grooms say Yolanda is missing, and we’ve no footman at our front door. What on earth is going on?”
“Worth—” She took a step toward him, then realized she’d just used his name before his brother the earl.
And did not care. “Yolanda hasn’t been seen since luncheon, and we’ve looked everywhere.”
“This is my fault,” the earl said. “She’s run off because she thinks I’ll dragoon her back to Grampion in chains.”
“We can debate her motivations later.” Worth didn’t look angry, so much as focused. “Assuming Yolanda has decamped purposely, we can also take turns whacking at her backside for causing such anxiety to my staff. Let’s have some tea, and Mrs. Wyeth can tell us what’s been done so far to locate our sister.”
“Tea?” Jacaranda wanted to beat the bushes herself, and Yolanda’s brother was thinking of tea?
“I’ll see to it,” the earl said, spinning on his heel and leaving the library.
“Now come here.” Worth kicked the door closed and held out his arms. “We’ll find her, don’t doubt it. She’s a Kettering and made of fortitude, resourcefulness and determination. Hess is likely right, and this is a fit of pique, that’s all.”
“I am so worried,” Jacaranda managed, and then she was weeping against his shoulder, so glad to see him, so relieved for once to not have to be the one who organized, and thought ahead, and encouraged everyone else.
“Young ladies loose without supervision are worth worrying about.” Worth tucked his chin against her temple and held her until Jacaranda eased her grip on him. A knock at the door heralded the earl, followed by a maid bearing a tea tray. The newest maid, who would have been limited to upstairs duty under normal circumstances.
“Thank you,” Worth said. “That will be all.” He sat himself on the sofa and patted the place beside him. “Sit you, Mrs. Wyeth, and start from the beginning. Your lordship, butter the lady a scone and stop castigating yourself.”
Jacaranda sat between them, finding the tea and sustenance helped—she hadn’t eaten for hours—but so, too, did Worth’s methodical approach to the entire situation and his simple, calm presence.
“When was she last seen?”
“By whom?”
“Did she receive any correspondence this morning?”
“Has she formed any particular friends in the area?”
“Has she caught the eye of any of the local swains?”
Jacaranda could answer accurately, but at the last question, she paused.
“I don’t know that she exactly caught his eye, but Thomas Hunter caught hers at market. He was most gallant.”
“Gallant?” The earl was on his feet. “I’ll shove my gallant fist down his presuming throat if he’s enticed her to folly.”
“Hessian.” Worth held up a cup of tea to his brother. “Yolanda would have left a note if she were eloping. She wouldn’t want Avery to worry, and she wouldn’t want the scandal exacerbated by a foolish alarm to the whole parish.”
The earl accepted his tea, then took to staring at a portrait of some ancestor sporting lace, hose, and collar. “You’re saying she was carried off against her will?”
“I’m saying I don’t think she eloped with somebody she’s known only a span of weeks. She has more sense than that. What does Avery say?”
“We haven’t wanted to alarm her,” Jacaranda replied. “She’s in the nursery with Mrs. Hartwick.”
“I’ll fetch her.” His lordship was out the door before Jacaranda could ring for a maid.
“Let him go,” Worth said. “He will blame himself until she’s found, and if this is a stupid stunt, Yolanda will regret it to her dying day. Eat your scone, love, and stop blaming yourself.”
“If she was unhappy, I should have seen it. I was a miserable girl once, too, and I know how foolish they can be.”
“You?” He held up a plate with the buttered scone on it. “Foolish? I must hear this tale, for I can’t imagine such a thing.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “For courage. We’ll find her, and she had better have a good excuse for this nonsense. I don’t like to see you upset, much less my brother suffering paroxysms of undeserved guilt.”
That little kiss did give her courage, as did Worth being himself, flirting a bit despite the circumstances, tending to the basics—food and drink—and taking the whole matter in stride.
What would she have done if he’d still been in Town?
“I’ve got Avery,” Grampion said as he crossed the threshold, and he did, literally, have the child. She was affixed to his back and looking around from her perch with a hesitant smile.
“Uncle Worth! I saw you come home on Goliath.” She held out her arms as if she’d hug him from his lordship’s back.
“My dearest niece.” Worth plucked her off the earl, hugged her, and deposited her on the sofa. “Join us for a cup of tea. We’ve a mystery to solve.”
“I’ve seen the footmen scurrying everywhere, and I hear them up in the attics. They never go up there. Neither do the maids.” Avery looked perfectly composed as she sat beside her uncle on the sofa.
“We’re hunting a treasure,” Worth said, fixing her a cup of tea that was more cream and sugar than tea. “Your aunt has gone missing and you keep a close eye on her, so we’re hoping you might be able to give us some clues.”
“Clues?”
“Hints, ideas about where she might be.”
“May I have a scone with jam?”
“You may.” He tended to her request and passed her the plate. “You saw Yolanda at lunch, didn’t you?”
“Of course, and she brings her book, and Miss Snyder gives her the don’t-read-at-table look. A bit more jam,” she said. “It’s very good, the jam.”
Worth dutifully took the plate back and added another dollop of jam.
“Where did Yolanda go after lunch?” he asked.
“She comes here to look at the maps,” Avery said, taking the plate and managing to bite off a corner of scone without getting jam all over her fingers. “She likes the maps and said she would explore the estate. It belonged to an aunt, a long time ago, all of this.”
“It did.” Worth passed the child a serviette, which was wise because the jam was excessive in proportion to the scone, and disaster seemed only a lick away. “Which maps did Yolanda like to study?”
“All of them.” Avery dabbed at her lips delicately. “She wants to be an intrepid explorer. What does intrepid mean?”
“Fearless. Did Yolanda like to look at the globe?”
“No, not that kind of map,” Avery said, now halfway through her scone. “She liked the maps of where we are. Where we are now.”
“These maps?” the earl asked from halfway across the room. “They aren’t recent.” He was carefully flipping the pages of a large atlas laid flat for display on a sturdy table.
“Those maps, yes,” Avery said, but didn’t give up her place on the sofa. “They are maps of here, of Trysting, when the aunt owned it.”
“She’s right,” Jacaranda said, “but the estate maps are back a few pages in that atlas. They’re very detailed. I need a quizzing glass to read some of the print.”
“Yolanda would study the map, then take a book with her to explore the estate while Uncle went on his calls with Mrs. Wyeth,” Avery said. “May I have another scone?”
“Not yet.” Worth rose and crossed to stand beside his brother. “You’ll spoil your dinner, but you’ve been very helpful. Did Yolanda go exploring this afternoon?”
“Oh, yes.” Avery gazed upon the plate of scones like a martyr contemplating heaven. “I watch from the nursery windows. Some days she goes to the paddocks to see the horses, some days she goes to the home farm to see the cows and sheep.”
“Where did she go today?”
“To the home wood.” Avery’s fingertip made a surreptitious pass through the jam pot then disappeared into her mouth. “She likes the birds in the wood and likes to read there. She says it’s cool and pretty. I think it’s scary.”
She pronounced the word oddly—scar-y—but her meaning was clear.
“This is not an accurate map of the home wood,” Jacaranda said, peering at the atlas from the earl’s other side. “The entire plot is much overgrown since former days. Something Reilly and I have remarked often.”
Worth bent closer and took up the quizzing glass kept next to the atlas.
“You’re right. Wouldn’t Hunter’s holding be right down this bridle path here?” He traced his finger along the map.
“It would be,” Jacaranda said, “except those bridle paths haven’t existed to speak of in my lifetime. They might be game trails now, but I think they were established more for harvesting lumber in the last century.”
“So Yolanda is stumbling around in the wood looking for trails that don’t exist?” His lordship’s scowl was fierce. “Let’s go. We don’t want to lose the light.”
Worth passed Avery the quizzing glass, patted her shoulder, and sent her back to the nursery. “A few minutes of organization will save us a lot of stumbling around. Mrs. Wyeth, a lane still cuts through the wood, doesn’t it? Would that be this trail, here?”
Within a few minutes, Worth and the earl had a grid worked out and a system whereby one team of men would start on the lane to Hunter’s holding, the other would start at the manor, and they’d meet in the middle of the wood. Footmen were being instructed to notify the grooms and gardeners and other staff when Carl tapped on the library door.
“Mr. Thomas Hunter is asking for you, Mrs. Wyeth. He wouldn’t say what his business was, but his mule is in a right lather.”
“Show him in,” Worth said. “Mrs. Wyeth will receive him here with us.”
Thomas came in, his attire too informal for this call to be social.
“Mrs. Wyeth, Mr. Kettering.” He bowed to Jacaranda, he merely nodded at Worth. He shot the earl a measuring look. “I don’t believe I know you, sir.”
“Grampion,” Worth said, “may I make known to you Mr. Thomas Hunter, one of my most industrious tenants. Hunter, I give you the Earl of Grampion, who is at this moment a very concerned brother to a certain young lady, as am I.”
“She’s safe,” Hunter said. “She twisted her ankle, but I don’t think it’s broken. She’s at the gamekeeper’s cottage near my property, her foot up and her book within reach. She’s very embarrassed, but got turned around in the wood and then took a bad step. I heard her calling on my way to Least Wapping.”
Jacaranda had to sit, so great was her relief, because a young woman could come to very great harm in no time at all.
“Do we have you to thank for her comfort and care, Hunter?” Worth’s tone held a pugnacious edge.
“I have shown her every courtesy,” Hunter retorted, his chin lifting half an inch. “She is not at my home, but she is certainly an honored guest.”
“We’d best fetch her in a cart,” Jacaranda interjected, for male posturing could be interminable. “Getting from the cottage out to the track will be difficult for her.”
“I’ll fetch her,” the earl said. “My horse can take the two of us, if Mr. Hunter would be so kind as to lead the way?”
Hunter looked the earl up and down, but held his peace.
“You might as well speak plainly,” Worth said. “We are her family, and we love her, but her mind is her own, Mr. Hunter.”
“She said this one”—he nodded at his lordship—“would scold her as if she were eight years old. She’s not eight years old.”
“Yolanda is not to blame for turning her ankle,” Worth said. “I doubt his lordship will do any scolding, for he’s too glad the girl’s safe and reasonably sound.”
The earl nodded his agreement—his capitulation—once. “Just so, but she needs her family now, though you have our thanks, Hunter. She is dear to us.”
“One hoped that was the case. I’ll await you in the stables.” He bowed politely to Jacaranda, gave each man a nod, and withdrew.
“She’s safe,” Worth said, directing his comments to his brother. “She didn’t intentionally alarm anyone, and she’s safe.”
“She’s safe, but we don’t know she turned her ankle. She might have concocted this whole debacle to spend time unchaperoned with your tenant. Yolanda is clever if nothing else.”
“Do you have a reason to accuse her of such dramatics?” Worth asked, which was fortunate, because Jacaranda would not have put the question half so civilly.
“Wasn’t it you who had to retrieve her from an exclusive boarding school for trying to do injury to herself?”
Jacaranda could keep silent no longer, for brothers would chose the most vexatious times to be difficult. “Can’t you sort through that later? Right now, we need to retrieve her from that cottage, and assure her she’s loved and that her absence mattered.” Why could they not see this? “If you two want to continue this argument, I will happily fetch her with Mr. Hunter.”
She’d carry the girl from the cottage herself if need be, though Thomas would likely appropriate that honor.
The earl’s eyebrows rose, then crashed down, making him look very much like his brother. He bowed and withdrew without another word.
“You’re not going with him?” Jacaranda aimed the question at Worth, who’d settled on the sofa near the tea and scones.
“I am not,” he said, buttering a scone. “Hess and Lannie have matters to work out, and they’ll need privacy to do it. They’re both monumentally shy, and my hovering won’t help.”
“Eating a scone will?” Though Jacaranda was hungry, and another cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss either.
“Come sit with me.” He beckoned with the hand holding the scone. “And, yes, because I’ve been in the saddle for much of the day, I intend to eat every last scone on this plate. The jam is about gone, though.”
Jacaranda sat, needing to be near him, which made no sense when the crisis was past. “I was so relieved to see you. Your brother was doubtless scandalized.”
“My brother has other things on his mind just now.” Worth held up the scone for her to take a bite. “A little scandalizing will be good for the fellow. He’s grown Puritan in his northern wilderness.”
“Puritan?”
“Lonely, but he doesn’t seem to know it, or what to do about it.” Worth took a bite for himself, then offered the scone to her again. “We need some tea to wash this down.”
She let him ply her with tea and scones and let herself sit right next to him, absorbing his warmth and calm.
“You didn’t panic,” she said. “I was ready to scream, and you didn’t panic.”
“She isn’t your little sister,” Worth said. “Inside I was screaming, but you kept looking at me as if I’d know what to do, and Hess couldn’t very well step in, because it isn’t his property, and he was too busy blaming himself.”
“You didn’t blame yourself.” She let her head rest against his shoulder, and he obligingly looped an arm around her.
“I most assuredly did. You simply didn’t hear me. I will always bear responsibility for Moira’s death, and I was fully prepared to be at fault if Yolanda had been set upon by bears, or pirates, or pixies.”
Jacaranda lifted her head to glare at him. “You did not cause Moira’s death. If anything, your generosity gave her a few years of happiness.”
He was silent, not a brooding silent. Then, “Marry me.”
“What?”
“I said…” He drew his finger along her arm. “Please marry me. Please.”
Jacaranda watched his finger trail down her forearm, having difficulty connecting the sight with sensation, just as Worth would not be able to connect Lady Jacaranda Wyeth Dorning with his practical, plain housekeeper.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, please marry me. This raspberry jam is worth putting my foot in parson’s mousetrap. Did you make it? I think you did. No wonder Avery was abandoning all manners for a mere taste. You could sell this, you know, retire from this life of gay abandon and buy that cottage.”
She blushed hotly, probably turning nearly the color of the jam itself. “You will not bring up cottages, if you please.”
“You have such a way with the imperatives, my dear.” He munched away on his scone, the wretched man. “What did you mean when you said you’d once been a foolish girl?”
“Weren’t you once a foolish boy?”
“Hell, yes. For years and years.” He chewed more slowly, and Jacaranda hoped his teasing about marriage was done—for he had been teasing, this time.
Or he’d turned his proposal into a joke rather than endure her rejection.
The sooner she returned to Dorset, the better.
“In some ways, I’m only now getting over the tendency toward foolishness,” he said, “but that doesn’t answer my question, dear heart. Tell me of your foolishness.”
“My past is not a fit topic.” Jacaranda rose, and she could see she’d surprised him. Her past and her future were both not fit topics. “I must ensure that Cook has dinner underway, given the upheaval of the day.”
“Jacaranda?” He was on his feet, too, and clearly done with his teasing.
“Sir?”
He paced across the room to join her near the door, his gait unhurried, as if he knew she wasn’t about to leave until she’d heard him out.
“Thank you,” he said, speaking distinctly. “I neglect to give you these words often enough, not because I don’t feel grateful—I do—but because they make you uncomfortable, just as talking about your cottage does. Thank you for turning the house and staff upside down to look for my sister. Thank you for making this house a home my family can feel welcome in. Thank you for raspberry jam.”
She wanted to cry. He wasn’t even touching her, he wasn’t teasing, and she wanted to cry.
“You’re welcome.” She put her fingers on the door latch and walked out from under the hand he’d settled on her shoulder—one of the more difficult departures she’d asked of herself.
“I’ll see you at dinner.” His words floated after her, pitched so she’d hear them, but she made good her escape and reached her room before the tears fell in quantity.