Chapter Fourteen
“It has something to do with why you’re housekeepering here in Surrey,” Worth mused as he climbed into Jacaranda’s bed.
Her worst nightmare and her fondest dream had come to call once again. Jacaranda buried her nose in her pillow. “You infernal man, what do you think you’re doing here?”
“I’ve come to talk about cottages and jam pots,” he said, going through the ritual of bouncing around to get the pillows and covers just so. “You would not discuss them with me earlier, and my curiosity is piqued. I would also like to know if you missed me sufficiently that you’re willing to dispense certain favors in my direction.”
“My curiosity is burning to experience a good night’s sleep.” Jacaranda gave him her back, putting a convincing show of sincerity in her words, almost enough to compensate for lying in bed for more than an hour, wondering if he’d join her.
He spooned himself around her. “Yolanda seemed fine at dinner.”
“I think she was surprised his lordship would fetch her, and whatever he said, it seemed to clear the air between them.” Worth was in Jacaranda’s bed, where at least part of her wanted him, and she’d missed these late-night conversations and the simple cuddling and petting he lavished on her.
Missed them a lot, and would miss them more soon.
“Why the sigh, Jacaranda Wyeth?”
“Your hand. I am a fool for the way you rub my back.”
“It relaxes me, too,” he said, pausing to kiss her shoulder, “to rub your back. May I ask you about something?”
“No, Worth. For once, you may not pose whatever question comes into the vast, busy manufactory that is your mind.”
“Do you need money?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“An honest one.” He sounded embarrassed. “My housekeeper in Town sends a portion of her wages home, and it occurred to me your family might be in some need.”
She hadn’t foreseen this, couldn’t quite fathom where it was coming from or where he was headed with it, though she should have known he’d put together the pieces easily enough.
“We’re not in particular need, though I haven’t been home to visit for nearly two years. I have a large family, but the land is good, and we work hard.” Then too, they no longer had to endure the expense of London Seasons for a young lady who did not take. “Why do you ask?”
“My manufactory specializes in producing idle curiosity. Would you trust me with your money, Jacaranda?”
Another kiss, though she had the sense her answer mattered far more than his casual tone suggested.
“If you needed it, yes, I would trust you with my money.”
She’d have been better advised to give him her money than her heart—more fool her.
“I might need it,” he said, and the relief in his tone was unmistakable. “Give me another week or so to sort matters through. I’d give you a note of hand, or a promissory note, if you preferred.”
“I don’t need any notes.” She rolled over to try to see him, but the moon was either behind its clouds or not up yet. “I’ll withhold your raspberry jam if you game it away.”
“My word is good with you?”
“You’re in my bed, after dark, without benefit of clothing, so yes, I’d say a modicum of trust lies between us.” Not as much trust as he deserved, though.
“Hess is nearly rolled up.”
A sterling example of the trust going both ways and part of the reason why Jacaranda would quit Trysting at summer’s end. Better to end their dalliance than let Worth Kettering know he’d climbed into bed with a dissembling woman.
Because whatever lay between him and his brother, Jacaranda was certain a dissembling woman had been part of it.
“Was he mortified to seek your help?” She put an arm under his neck and stroked her hand through his hair—which soothed her.
“I was mortified. Jacaranda, I wanted to put my hand over his mouth and push his words back into silence. He’s been struggling away up there in Cumberland, selling off his beloved hunters, the art he enjoys so much, and God knows what else, and it’s pathetic. Papa left him a cocked-up mess and not one clue how to go about fixing it. He refuses to raise the rents, and I have to applaud him for that, given the price of corn lately.”
Jacaranda kept her hand moving slowly through his hair. “You suspected he’d traveled alone out of economy, and you were right. He probably doesn’t entertain for the same reason.”
“I wish I’d been wrong.” Worth closed his eyes, his lashes glancing delicately against her palm. “We’ll get him sorted out, eventually.”
She kissed his forehead, nuzzling his hair to catch a whiff of his scent. “If anybody can straighten out a monetary situation, it’s you, and that you’re willing to try likely means more to his lordship than that you succeed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He misses his brother. Money grows behind every hedge compared to brothers.”
She realized too late how much truth, how much homesickness her words held, but Worth kissed her breast, and all thoughts of cottages and brothers flew from her head.
“Jacaranda? You never answered my question: Did you miss me? For I assuredly missed you, dear heart.”
* * *
Worth needed to hear the words, which was silly, insecure and unbecoming, but he wanted at least some words from Jacaranda: I missed you. Every night when he climbed into her bed, she put up her token protest.
He accepted that and bantered and teased and cuddled his way past it.
Then he cast around for something of substance they could talk about. He could see her cottage clearly in his mind’s eye, so thoroughly had he made her describe it. He could smell the sea, hear the sea birds, feel the piercing brightness of the summer sun blazing in the Dorset sky.
He’d told her as much as he could recall of Grampion.
Told her as much as he could recall of Moira, and even a few things about his long-dead mother.
Jacaranda listened, she asked a few questions, and she answered most questions he put to her. She sometimes even made small overtures, such as stroking his hair.
But Worth could not divine what was in her mind, and increasingly, he suspected his lady was keeping more of herself from him than she shared with him. The last time he’d had this same uneasy feeling, his intended had ended up married to his brother.
“You were hardly gone,” she said against his forehead. “Two days. How could you miss me in such a short time?”
A besotted man missed his beloved when she ventured into the next room, that’s how.
“I simply did.” He shifted up over her. “I think of you far more than is dignified, and I can only hope you suffer a similar preoccupation regarding me.”
He was naked, she was dressed in only her summer nightgown, so he let her feel the blunt length of his nascent arousal by settling his body loosely on hers.
“You are driving me beyond reason, Jacaranda Wyeth.”
She might have been formulating some prim, off-putting reply, but he wasn’t having any of her starch and vinegar. He pressed his lips to hers, determined that if she’d never missed him thus far, in future she’d have a reason to.
She was at first merely passive, just as she never exactly welcomed him into her bed. He was out of patience with her diffidence—had been out of patience for days. Now he was determined. Very, very determined.
So he grazed his lips over hers lightly, again and again, until she parted her mouth on a sigh, and then he slid his tongue over her bottom lip. She drew back against her pillows.
Jacaranda had tasted him before, but perhaps she grasped that he’d recalled his sense of purpose now, because she went still, waiting, until he dipped inside her mouth again. Then her top lip, then the soft folds between her lips and her teeth.
He drew back a quarter inch, enough to make a point. She lapped at his bottom lip and wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, urging him forward.
“No. You kiss me.” His voice held a slight rasp, for he issued not a command but a plea.
Slowly, she raised her mouth to his, eyes open, watching him until she made contact. Then it was his hand anchored in her hair, her eyes closing on a soft, yearning sound.
He kissed her with his whole body, plundering the damp heat of her mouth while his weight gently pinned her to the mattress. He let her feel his cock, rampant now against the softness of her belly, held her hand in his above her head. He set up a rhythm with his hips, slow and insistent, a deliberate call to her body.
God bless the woman, she answered. Her tongue came questing to explore his mouth, and by the smallest degrees, she arched up into him and followed his rhythm.
“Too much,” she whispered against his mouth.
Relief twined through Worth’s arousal, for Jacaranda Wyeth was at least in the grip of a fierce attraction, and he could build on that.
“We’re barely getting started.”
“No.” She brought her mouth back to his without elaborating. Nonetheless, he’d heard that one damnable syllable and was frustrated enough to take his mouth from hers.
“Not no. You may have your no if you’re refusing me your body, but we will have our pleasure. Say yes to that much at least.”
She didn’t understand. He could see bewilderment in her eyes, so he let go of the hand he’d pinned to her pillow and settled his palm over her breast. Through the soft fabric of her nightgown, the fullness of her practically drove him to begging. Her nipple crested against his palm, and she inhaled sharply as he teased at her with his fingers.
“You will let me pleasure you, Jacaranda,” he said, watching her face. “Or you’ll tell me to leave this instant. Choose.”
The sensible part of him, the part that watched him make a hash of what should have been a protracted seduction, that part understood that forcing any choice on this lady was bound to fail. Stupid—disastrous—any use of coercion. This was a woman who’d turned her back on family for the privilege of ordering about maids and footmen. She would not be forced in any regard.
The man in him, though, the man who’d gone without assurances for too long, the man who’d gone without closeness for far too long, that fellow kissed the hell out of her, surging into her mouth as he surged over her body.
Two passionate instants later, she hauled back on his hair, stoutly, then smoothed her hand over his head.
“Soon, I must return to that cottage, Worth. I’ve made promises to my family.”
What was she going on about? They’d make a damned wedding journey to her cottage.
“And I must return to Grampion. I understand that, and we can discuss our travels at length, some other time. For now, it’s your nightgown that must go somewhere else.” He grasped the hem and lifted it, but something in her bearing gave him pause.
The infernal woman wanted to talk right this minute. He ascertained her intent by the way she shifted back against the gathered fabric of her nightgown, resisting but not exactly protesting.
“We will talk, Jacaranda, I promise you that, but not now.”
She relented, raising her shoulders enough to let him draw her only garment over her head and toss it away.
The pleasure of her naked flesh against his had him sealing his body to hers, wrapping her close simply to indulge himself in the sensation of her skin next to his, belly to belly, chest to breast. They could visit family six times a year, but this—this embrace, nothing between them but honest desire and mutual besottedness—was home.
“God, yes,” he breathed against her throat, though he wanted to give her promises and vows while her whiny family and their musty little cottage could go hang.
Then he rolled so she straddled him, and he fleetingly considered getting up to light branches of candles.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, and his momentum shifted.
He wouldn’t make love to her in the next hour, not as intimately as he wanted to, but they were in new territory, naked, together, and she was trusting him—this far at least.
“You are beautiful,” he said, meaning it as sincerely as he’d ever meant spoken words. “Please allow me to adore you.”
“Adore?” Her single word bore a wealth of uncertainty, and she kept her arms crossed.
“Please.” He levered up and kissed her jaw. “You’ve seen me, watched me lose every shred of dignity and control. Let me see you.”
Slowly, holding his gaze, she drew her arms down to rest at her sides.
Never had desire, trust, and vulnerability been as dearly—and arousingly—clothed in nudity. Worth swallowed around the lump in his throat and prayed for…
All manner of blessings.
Fortitude, to proceed despite risk to something of greater value than a mere few hundred thousand pounds.
Worthiness, because Jacaranda’s trust should be surrendered into only worthy hands.
Gratitude, because she’d chosen to place her trust into his hands.
“I would like to touch you, Jacaranda Wyeth. I’d like it exceedingly.”
“I would like that, too.”
He didn’t use his hands, not at first. He curled up and inhaled the fragrance of her between her breasts.
“The scent is sweet, Jacaranda. Like your neck or your hands, but more secret.” He ran his nose all over her chest, grazing her collarbones, the soft undersides of her breasts, and around her nipples.
“I want…” She sighed, tried again. “Will you touch me?”
“Soon.”
He rested his hands on her shoulders as he lay back against the bed. Sturdy shoulders, unapologetically solid, and yet still feminine.
She regarded him solemnly, waiting, and all his frustration, all his missing her was worth the anticipation he saw in her expression. Gently, he settled his hands over her breasts.
“You’re silky,” he said. “Warm, smooth, delicate, lovely…” With each word, he drew the backs of his fingers over her breasts, her nipples, around the undersides, up the slopes. “I could come simply by touching your breasts, Jacaranda.”
God help him, he spoke the truth. He could come, compose sonnets, and sing hymns to her breasts, and to the heart that beat swiftly under his palm.
As much to shut himself up as to gratify them both, he closed his mouth over her nipple. She arched toward him, and his cock leapt as desire rippled out from her to him and back again, ricocheting through him, through her, resonating endlessly.
“Worth…” Her fingers winnowed through his hair, and she clung to him.
“Ride me.” He got a hand low on her back and anchored himself while she moved over him.
He would not, would not, shift his hips to penetrate her heat. She hadn’t given him that permission, wasn’t expecting that intimacy, and no matter how much pleasure he brought her, he’d never regain her trust if he presumed to cross that line now.
He tipped her so she hung over him, her braid slipping down, tickling his shoulder and arm as he made love to her breasts. The hand he’d used to guide her over him slid around the full curve of her flank, a satiny warm pleasure he’d explore later and thoroughly.
By slow increments, he brought his hand lower, to draw the backs of his fingers over her curls. He sensed surprise and pleasure vibrating through her, and she didn’t draw back.
Thank God Almighty, she didn’t draw back.
He traced her folds with one thumb, pleased to find dampness and heat and more pleased that she went motionless, allowing it.
“Move, love,” he whispered against her breasts, letting his hand go still, waiting for her this time. Then, a tentative motion with her hips, forward against his hand, back, but not far.
“Just like that. Again.”
In the quiet darkness, she found a rhythm—conservative, because she didn’t know her destination yet as well as she soon would, but Worth fell in with it, applying and releasing pressure at the apex of her folds.
“Worth…what…?”
“The matter wants only patience and determination. You excel at both.” He watched her face in the moonlight, and kept up enough pressure that her arousal escalated toward completion. “I’ll get you there. No risk for you, all reward.”
She said nothing, no doubt listening with her body for how to find more and more pleasure.
Worth’s arousal became insistent, but he focused on her, on caressing one breast while he took the other in his mouth, on plying her sex with as much gentle insistence as one half-sane man could muster.
He sensed when passion overtook her restraint. Her back arched, driving her against his hand and his mouth, and she leaned into him hard, her body begging for what words could not convey.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “All reward.”
“Worth…”
She hissed his name on a rasp of pleasure, and he drove a finger into her heat, her sex gripping hard around him, and that—that was too much. He held on to her like a bankrupt clutches his last, shiny gold sovereign and let the pleasure reverberate through him even as she was overwhelmed by it as well.
The sounds of their harsh breathing mingled, then eased, and still Worth held on.
Jacaranda stroked his hair, clinging to him, too, as he relaxed back against the bed.
“Come here.” He urged her down onto his chest, needing to hold her, needing to keep her close.
She went easily, despite his spent seed all over his belly, despite the aftershocks he sensed rippling through her.
What words could he give her now? What could he say, in thanks or reassurance? He was at sea still, for this was an aspect of intimate pleasure he’d not experienced before—the desire to linger and comfort and be comforted.
He kissed her temple, stroked her back, and prayed for the right words.
Any right words at all.
* * *
Jacaranda tried to get her mind to function, to form sentences, but her body was still too absorbed with marvelous sensations. Her skin buzzed with pleasure, her breasts hummed with it. Between her legs the fire of Worth’s touch lingered, and inside, deep inside where a woman carried new life, bodily exultation had yet to entirely fade.
What to say?
“I missed you, too.” The ridiculous words were out without Jacaranda having any idea where they’d come from. They were honest, but ye gods. I missed you?
After that?
He came alert beneath her, and it was too late to call the words back. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, I missed you, too.”
“Good.” His hand started moving on her back again. “That’s good.”
What did “good” mean? She searched for basic vocabulary.
“Hold me.” Those words were right, and Worth’s arms closing more securely around her were more right still.
“Better?”
She nodded against his chest and wondered what came next, but then the comfort of his embrace stole even curiosity from her grip. Worth knew what came next, and that was all she needed for the moment.
His lips moved at her temple. “Sleep, love. I’ve got you.”
“You won’t leave?”
“Not yet.”
When she next opened her eyes, she was cast adrift over the great, lovely expanse of Worth Kettering. His hands caressed her back, his chest rose and fell beneath her.
“I should move.” Straight back to Dorset, and soon.
“You shouldn’t go far. We could do with a wash, though.”
So one talked about that. Two did. “I’ll see to it.”
“You will not.”
One argued about it, even. She wanted to smile—no, to smirk. She did not want to move back to Dorset.
“You sprawl here in feminine splendor while I see to it,” Worth said, and he was smiling outright, his teeth gleaming in the darkness.
“I do not sprawl, Worth Kettering.” She climbed off him, an ungainly production, and hit the mattress on her back. Her stomach was sticky, so she didn’t draw the sheets up.
“You will acquire the knack of sprawling if I have anything to say to it.” He bounced off the mattress, his tone as brisk as his movements. “Sprawling, lounging, reclining, what have you. A well-pleasured lady is entitled to certain privileges.” He came back to the bed with a flannel in his hand, looking her over in the moonlight.
Jacaranda held out her hand. “I’ll take that.”
He sat at her hip, ignored her hand, and put the cool, damp cloth on her belly.
“You sprawl,” he said, tidying her up. “Unless you’d like to perform this courtesy for me?”
“Good heavens.” So many ways to be intimate, and she wasn’t even truly his lover.
He rubbed at himself briskly. “Maybe next time. Now we sprawl together. I rather like this part.”
“You didn’t like the other?”
More wrong words. When would her wits come back to life?
Worth positioned himself over her, and that was nice, to be gathered beneath him again. Despite her words, Jacaranda felt safe and close to him.
“I adored the other,” he said, close to her ear. “I adore you.” He climbed off her when she didn’t have the confidence to ask him not to. “Now we sprawl. There’s science to it. First, you get comfortable.”
“I am comfortable.”
“You usually sleep on your right side, love.”
She wanted to argue, but didn’t because she felt rather in charity with him, and with the rest of creation. She scooted to her right side.
“Just so. Then I get comfortable.” He spooned himself around her, his warmth comfortable and comforting. “Then I tell you how much I enjoyed spending this time with you, more than words can say.” He kissed her nape. “You are truly magnificent, Jacaranda Wyeth. Beyond words, beyond anything in my experience. I am humbled.”
He sounded humbled, too. Jacaranda was grateful for the darkness, because his words made her blush.
“Now go to sleep.” He settled a hand around her breast, and even that brought with it emotions warm and dear. “Dream of me, for I shall surely dream of you.”
She went to sleep and she did dream of him.
Also of her cottage in Dorset.
* * *
Worth lingered in Jacaranda’s bed until almost dawn, passing the night in a pleasurable twilight. He’d wake up, cuddle her closer, stroke his hands over her curves and hollows, kiss her cheek, her hair, her neck, and subside back into dreamy drowsing. He knew for a fact he’d never spent as much of an entire night with a throbbing cockstand, or enjoyed himself so much without having intercourse.
Before the sun peeked over the horizon, he stole down the corridor, boots in hand, much on his mind.
Jacaranda probably suspected his latest marriage proposal hadn’t been a joke about raspberry jam. She was deucedly perceptive about things like jam pots.
The words had come out, heartfelt and sincere. Jacaranda had been surprised and nonplussed, which did not bode well for him.
As the day wore on, he confirmed his suspicion that part of what ran the household was his housekeeper’s perpetual motion. She came to rest in her little sitting room for tea, but she also held audiences in there.
Cook joined her for a cup and emerged peering at a handful of menus.
Mr. Reilly passed the time of day with dear Mrs. Wyeth and then braced Worth on whether the bridle paths in the home wood ought to be cleared to permit access to Hunter’s holding if the bridge should fail.
Carl disappeared into that sitting room and emerged clutching a list to take to Mr. Simmons, the printing so large and bold Worth could make it out from across the corridor.
With the head maid, another list of orders was dispatched. Then the vicar called, paying Worth and Hess a few courtesies before rising to go in search of Mrs. Wyeth.
Jacaranda Wyeth was more than a housekeeper, and not simply in the sense she was the woman Worth wanted for his wedded wife. She had infiltrated his household, systematically asserted her common sense, and made a large, neglected estate into a profitable, smoothly running home.
She’d invaded and taken over.
“What has you frowning so?” Hess asked as he ambled into the library.
“My housekeeper. I’ve been duped, Hessian. I like it not.”
“By her? In what sense? She doesn’t seem the duping kind.”
“I only think I own this property,” Worth said, tossing himself into a wing chair. “I’m a guest here.”
“You weren’t a guest yesterday.” Hess took the other chair in a more decorous fashion. “I was ready to expire with worry, and your housekeeper had reached the end of her tether, too.”
“She was worried she’d fail.” The words were unfair, also true. Something or someone had driven Jacaranda to impossibly high expectations of herself.
“She was worried Yolanda had done something irreparably foolish,” Hess corrected him. “Worried the girl was hurt, lost, set upon by ruffians.”
“Ruffians on Trysting land?”
“With sufficient quantities of drink and stupidity, ruffians can be found in almost any corner of the realm. The point is, Mrs. Wyeth was beside herself, as was I, and you—Mr. I’m Only A Guest—were the only one with a cool head. You might feel like a guest, but you do own the place.”
“I pay the taxes. That’s not the same thing.”
Hess’s lips quirked at this pouting. “You are decidedly grumpy, brother. To what do we attribute your foul mood?”
“Hess, I want to marry her.”
Hess’s smile became sweet rather than teasing—and God above, that smile would bring the ladies of Polite Society to his side at a dead, panting run.
“Then procure a ring, take a knee, and be about it. We’re not getting any younger, in case you hadn’t noticed, and neither of our nurseries sports an heir.”
“Hang the nurseries.” Worth abandoned his chair to study the outdated maps of the enormous atlas. “She won’t have me.”
“Have you asked?”
“More or less.” Mostly less. “She scolded me for being so forward the first time. The second time we made a raspberry joke of it. She natters about her family and some cottage in Dorset.”
“I have no idea what a raspberry joke is, Worth, but the lady fancies you.”
Clearing the bridle path would also create a shortcut into town—and let a closer eye be kept on Thomas Hunter.
“Has Jacaranda told you she fancies me?”
Worth understood about money, and all the ways human nature and money fit together, but Hess… Hess had been married. For years. Hess had dallied. Hess had a child, and he was the only sympathetic ear Worth was likely to find.
“Your housekeeper is an attractive female. My notice has been drawn to her, but every time I behold the lady, she’s busy beholding you. And Worth, she has this wistful gleam in her eyes when she does. I do not think she’s contemplating dusting you, either, or adorning you with a lace runner.”
A smile threatened at the image of Jacaranda Wyeth using a feather duster on Worth’s naked parts. He flipped the page of the atlas to find an elevation of Trysting before the conservatory had been added.
“Women like to hear the words,” Hess said. “I haven’t any pretty words for them, hence I am a non-competitor in the courting stakes.”
“So stay here in the south with us.” Worth left off perusing familial ancient history to regard his brother. His only brother, his only adult family in the entire world. “Get some practice, or at least get your ashes hauled regularly. Most women I know, the married ones anyway, are long past the need for any words besides ‘faster,’ ‘harder,’ and ‘aren’t you ready to give it another go yet?’”
“You poor abused old thing. No wonder Mrs. Wyeth has her doubts. What do we know about Mr. Wyeth?”
“Who? Oh, Mr. Wyeth. Not a thing. I doubt there was one.”
Though there had been somebody, or no way on God’s earth would Worth be pursuing Jacaranda in the manner he was.
“Many housekeepers make diplomatic use of the married form of address,” Hess said, rising and coming to stand beside Worth. “I told Yolanda I wouldn’t drag her north against her will. I’m not sure where that leaves us, when Grampion is the only roof I can afford to put over her head. She assured me she hadn’t been running away.”
As changes of subject went, Hess’s gambit lacked subtlety, but Worth had gone over Hess’s finances. The lesser holdings were either let out or soon to be rented, that much was fact.
“What about spending the winter in Town? Your vote would be an asset to your party.”
Hess drew a finger along the fa?ade of an older, more stately Trysting. “Winter up north is long, cold and harsh, but it’s also beautiful, peaceful, and I’m used to it.”
“We’re both in a contrary mood, though that parade of footmen across yonder terrace means we’re once again to be picnicking. Perhaps I’ll go north with you, where the picnic season is so much shorter.”
Where housekeepers were less likely to drive a man to unrequited longings that had him up most of the night, in more ways than one.