Chapter Fifteen
Jacaranda managed to avoid her employer—Worth was still that—for most of the day, and she told herself that for the best, also necessary, because she needed to compose herself.
Or appear to compose herself.
She’d forgotten today was the day for Vicar’s call and had nearly forgotten between a morning note and an afternoon response, that she’d asked for a moment of Mr. Reilly’s time. If Cook hadn’t come bustling by, Jacaranda would have neglected a week’s worth of menus as well.
This was all his fault.
Jacaranda would never grow accustomed to spending the night naked and entwined in a man’s arms. The pleasure was heady, wonderful and, when that man was Worth Kettering, overwhelmingly sweet. The caring and tenderness he was capable of in the simplest, fleeting touch—
Jacaranda’s insides fluttered with the memory of his caresses, a fluttering that had afflicted her all day. She crossed her legs at the knee and encountered a tingling in places a lady doesn’t tingle. She brushed her hair and recalled the feel of his hands sweeping through the length of it repeatedly, like he couldn’t get enough of the sensation. She wiggled her feet out of her slippers and recalled him grasping the arch of her foot and holding her foot in a secure, warm embrace of the hand.
Holding her foot, and she’d wanted to swoon with the pleasure of it.
Angels abide.
Into this muddle of memories and sensations came emotions, heralded by long, gusty sighs, staring spells, and other behaviors Jacaranda had previously seen only in her younger sister, Daisy.
First came a yearning so desperate it scared her, a yearning to be more intimate with Worth than she’d already been, a yearning to share with him the act Jacaranda had experienced only once, years ago.
But following on that honest admission came the realization that what Jacaranda wanted was the entire man, not simply copulation with him, and that—that small, profound distinction—put her on precarious footing.
Worth Kettering was heir to an earl, quite possibly rich as a nabob, and completely unaware of his housekeeper’s true origins. When Jacaranda told him, he’d feel obligated to marry her in truth, when she knew the last person he’d affix himself to was a woman who’d lied to him. He had learned his lesson, just as Jacaranda had learned hers.
Then there was her family, all expecting her to return to their loving, if noisy, disorganized and perpetually impecunious arms.
“There you are.”
Worth Kettering stood in the doorway to Jacaranda’s sitting room, his riding attire showing him off to great advantage, his hair tousled, his faint smile tugging at places low in Jacaranda’s belly.
Even a day later, words eluded her.
“And there you are,” Jacaranda answered, busying herself with afternoon tea. “I’ve wondered if it’s your gaze I felt on me of late.”
“Only my gaze?” He ambled into the room and wandered its small perimeter, stopping to sniff her late roses.
“Need I remind you the door is open, Mr. Kettering?”
He wandered closer and leaned in as if to sniff her.
“The next time I bring you pleasure, I want you to call out for Mr. Kettering in that exact tone, for it arouses me.” He straightened, his eyes dancing.
“You’ve come to torment me. I suppose a day of peace and quiet was too much to ask.”
“Far too much.”
He settled into her rocking chair, and Jacaranda had to admit she liked the look of him there. Relaxed, thoughtful, a gleam in his eyes.
“Tea?”
“Please.” He rested his chin on his palm, his elbow on the rocker’s arm. “What have you found to do with yourself today, Mrs. Wyeth?”
Her name had never sounded so wicked, reminding Jacaranda that she hadn’t even told Worth her true name.
“A little of this and that. Having the family in residence makes the day busier, but more pleasant, too.”
“More pleasant?” He accepted his tea from her hands, cradling her fingers in his as he did. Wretch.
“Meaningful, maybe?” She tried to ignore his nonsense, tried to find honest words. “One doesn’t tidy up and dust and direct the maids and footmen simply for the sake of the house. A house is a building. One cares for the house on behalf of the people who dwell there.”
“For me, you mean?”
“For you, some,” she allowed, and he looked so hopeful she added cream and sugar to her admission. “Mostly for you, because you are the head of this household.”
“I am.” He took a sip of his tea. “I don’t feel like it, but I am. I’m wondering, though, if I shouldn’t offer to spend the winter in Cumberland with Hess and the girls.”
“You haven’t been home in a long time.” This was what came of admitting that she must return to Dorset. Perhaps among sophisticated, worldly adults, such a mention was all that was needed.
Worth had brought her pleasure upon pleasure in the dark of night, and now he casually acquiesced in her insistence that their dealings remain only a summer dalliance.
“Avery should see the family seat,” Jacaranda went on. “Yolanda would feel less banished if you accompanied them.”
“I’d feel banished,” he said, grumpiness creeping into his tone. “Would you come with us?”
Grey would have an apoplexy if she broke her word again, Step-Mama would hunt her down with a press-gang. “I could not, not with any sort of reputation. You know that.”
His stare became broody, his eyes shuttered, and she sensed she’d hurt him.
“I might want to,” she relented and spoke the truth. “But I could not. My family would not tolerate such a great distance between us.”
She thought he would let her answer stand unchallenged, but after a beat of silence, he was still watching her.
“Why not come with us? You could be Lannie’s companion, because Miss Snyder is going back to her little finishing school come Michaelmas. The girls would like your company.”
His eyelids dropped to half-mast, implying something else entirely, and God help her, Jacaranda was tempted.
She thought of Grey, and Will and Daisy, and of the boys. Of her two nephews and her niece, Step-Mama’s pleading and threatening and begging.
Of her cottage.
Of the falsehoods now thoroughly rooted between Jacaranda and the man she loved.
“A housekeeper is not a suitable candidate to be a young lady’s companion.”
“The hell she isn’t.” Worth pushed out of his rocking chair, the lazy innuendo replaced with tension. “I want you to think about something, Mrs. Wyeth.” He shot a glance at the open door and lowered his voice. “We have not consummated our dealings in the intimate sense, and for the next two weeks, given the risk of conception, I would not impose on you even were you willing. It’s August, soon it will be September, and for all the patience I’ve shown, you’re no closer to a decision than you were a month ago. You’re a nervous investor, Mrs. Wyeth. No risk, no reward, though. That has ever been true.”
He kissed her cheek and took his leave, while Jacaranda held her cooling tea and tried to think of a reply to his observation.
She came up with nothing but a cold cup of tea.
* * *
Yolanda’s privacy was disturbed when Worth found her reading on a tartan blanket in the hay mow over the stables, a fat black tom cat asleep in a sunbeam beside her. She came here for privacy, and to revel in the way the scents of hay and horses put her in mind of Mr. Hunter.
Thomas.
“Hello, you.” Worth sat right beside her in a manner that still unnerved and pleased her, as if they were siblings of long-standing, not recent acquaintances trying to rub along in an awkward situation. “I do believe you’ve grown prettier since leaving that school.”
Did Thomas think her pretty?
“Hullo, Worth.”
“You reading a fatuous novel?”
“Sir Walter Scott.”
“I’ve always enjoyed his work.” Worth drew a wisp of hay from the packed pile beneath them and batted the fat black cat on the nose. The beast didn’t stir from its position in exact alignment with the sunbeam slanting through the hay port door.
“Are you hiding from Mrs. Wyeth, or from Avery, or perhaps from Hess?” Yolanda asked, closing her book around a single finger because, like a brother one-quarter his age, Worth was apparently intent on pestering her.
“I’m hiding from my life. Have you and Hessian come to some peace with each other?”
Yolanda stroked a hand over the cat, who yawned and began to purr.
“Some. Hess thought I’d be happy visiting here in the south with schoolmates and doesn’t see why I would rather have spent my holidays mostly traveling to and from Cumberland.”
From home, something a brother who dwelled there year after year ought to have appreciated.
“You, of course, assured him he was completely in error?”
“I told him there’s a difference between sparing me travel and abandoning me for two years straight. Hess doesn’t seem to need anybody but his hounds and horses. He doesn’t let himself need family.”
At least Worth had Avery, and Avery had Worth. Lucky them.
“Hessian is a Kettering.” Worth scratched the cat’s shoulders, and the beast tried to bite him. “We’re prone to managing on our own, no matter the size of the load. Did you tell him about that cut on your wrist?”
Drat all brothers for being such noticing fellows. Thomas had wondered at the scar, too, but had been gentleman enough to keep his questions to himself. “The injury is healed. What is there to tell?”
“Something, when you’re ready. Hessian is the head of our family, but I’m your brother, too, Lannie. You could tell me if you didn’t want to impose on Hess.”
How delicately Worth could express himself, when he chose to. “There’s little to tell.”
“You ladies.” Worth tormented the cat again by tickling its nose with the hay, but the tom was again intent on ignoring him. “Why can’t I be more like this fellow? Happy to pounce on mice, and be on my way after the occasional trifling scuffle?”
Safer ground entirely, and good of Worth to offer it. “Mrs. Wyeth has given you your congé?”
Worth’s expression was perplexed, while the cat made a half-hearted swat at the hay, which Worth failed to notice. “Sixteen isn’t so very young, is it?”
Yolanda’s finger remained between the pages of her book, which was fortunate; otherwise, she might have patted Worth’s hand.
“Mrs. Wyeth cares for you. That might be why she’s not falling into your arms.”
“I fear one shouldn’t discuss such matters with a younger sister.”
She paged through her book, for Worth apparently wanted to discuss his situation with somebody. “Hess certainly wouldn’t discuss it with me, just as he doesn’t discuss Belinda Evers with me.”
Whom Hessian seemed to regard with equal parts bewilderment and wariness.
Worth smacked her nose with his stalk of hay, entirely the brother, but also affectionate. “Explain your female reasoning to me. Why would Mrs. Wyeth reject my suit if she cares for me?”
“Your suit?”
“Yes, my suit, brat. I’ve asked her to marry me more than once.”
Good for Mrs. Wyeth. Yolanda had the sense few women refused the Kettering brothers anything of value. “Are you such a bargain, Worth?”
“See how many swains flock to your side when word of the dowry I’ve set aside for you gets out. I’m not exactly shoddy goods, Lannie Kettering.”
How she loved the nickname he’d given her. “You’re a good bargain,” she said, in part because of that nickname, “but a husband is a complicated proposition.”
“A long-term investment.” He stroked his face with the straw the way Yolanda often touched a quill pen to her cheek when puzzling over some Latin. “One gathers you ladies view the long-term investments warily.”
Warily, and incessantly. Most of the girls at school had been obsessed with Debrett’s for the information it held concerning possible husbands.
“You have to offer her something she doesn’t already have, Worth. She has a roof over her head and meaningful work and people to care about.”
The notion intrigued him, for he ceased fussing with his bit of hay. “I can offer her wealth, an honorable before our name, all the entrée in Town she wants. She could be Hess’s hostess, clothed in silk and jewels, own all the cottages in England.”
He could also give her babies, though Yolanda did not point that out to him.
“I’m not sure what cottages have to do with it.”
“Neither am I, but it’s important to her. More important than I am.”
How well she knew that feeling. “Don’t sulk. While I was stuck in a cottage with Mr. Hunter for most of an hour, he had to remove my boot and wrap my foot with his bare hands, and he didn’t permit himself the smallest liberty.”
What a delight that had been, to be treated so properly, so carefully.
Also a towering disappointment.
“He had better not take any liberties.” Worth tossed the hay at the sleeping cat and missed. “Do you fancy this yeoman, Lannie?”
Thomas smelled a great deal better than any yeoman Yolanda had stood downwind of. He quoted poetry, and he loved his children.
“I’m sixteen. If I say I do fancy him, you’ll laugh at me. If I say I don’t, you’ll accuse me of lying. Brothers are awful.”
“You didn’t laugh at me,” Worth pointed out. “If this is the fellow you want, Lannie, then do the pretty in Town next Season, but know that you’ll be welcome to spend your summers here at Trysting.”
Yolanda’s exact plan, though she’d been unsure how to manage the part about summers at Trysting. Worth’s generosity was too convenient not to be a little suspect, though.
“You aren’t saying he’s beneath my notice when I’m the daughter of an earl, my brother is an earl, and I’m generously dowered, for which I do thank you.”
“You’re my sister. Of course you’ll have a decent portion, and I will not lecture you about your station. You’re the acknowledged illegitimate daughter of an earl, and if you haven’t already sensed it, the tabbies of Polite Society will ensure the distinction is noted by all.”
Yolanda turned an idle page, though Worth’s blunt acknowledgement of reality was comforting in a way his generous dowry could not be.
“School was no different. If I’d been the illegitimate daughter of a mere baronet, it might have been worse. Coin does seem to open doors.”
“You are not like any sixteen-year-old of my acquaintance, Lannie Kettering. Next you’ll be reading the financial pages.”
Yolanda put her book aside, because he’d given her the opening she needed.
“I saw a piece in the Times about the Drummond being late for its scheduled return and you being a major source of investors. Are you in trouble, Worth?”
* * *
“Had I not been quizzing Avery on her fairy tales”—Hess handed his brother two fingers of brandy—“we would have had no conversation at dinner to speak of. Are you and your housekeeper feuding?”
“We are.” When had Hess become Worth’s drinking companion? “My thanks.”
“Is this feud over the menus, perhaps?” Hess took the second of the library’s two largest, most comfortable chairs. “Or maybe she wants a raise in her pay?”
“She deserves a raise in her pay.” Though Jacaranda, in her contrary fashion, would regard a pay raise as an insult. “I asked her about traveling north with us next month, serving as Lannie’s companion for the winter months at Grampion.”
“Miss Snyder isn’t willing to serve any longer?”
The question was posed casually, but Worth had been watching the glances exchanged at dinner. “You find Miss Snyder attractive?”
“Her papa is heir to a barony.” Stated even more casually.
Worth set his drink on the low table. One Kettering brother in perpetual rut was one too many. “Go back to Town, Hess. Avail yourself of what Mary freely offers and settle your nerves.”
“I did.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I did avail myself of what Mary so delightfully offered, and my nerves are settled.” Hess took a contemplative sip of his drink, and indeed, he did appear to be more relaxed than he had upon arriving from the north.
Rotter.
“Settle them again. The activity bears repeating in the right company.”
“Up to a point,” Hess allowed. “Then it is merely an activity, and as pleasant as it is, I found my nerves adequately settled by the one occasion.”
“Pleasant.” Life had been simpler before Hess had resumed being a brother—also lonelier. “If it’s merely pleasant, then you’re going about it wrong, brother mine.”
“I was never afflicted with the passions affecting the rest of our family.” Hess retrieved Worth’s drink and handed it to him. “Back to your Mrs. Wyeth. What is the problem?”
The question of the hour.
“I delivered her an ultimatum,” Worth said, “or as good as, and that after telling her she could have between now and forever to make up her mind.” Though every half-witted, spotty legal clerk knew a decently drafted contract specified an exact period of performance.
“What did your ultimatum regard?”
“What do you think it regarded?” Worth paced to the window—the sparkling-clean window, which he was tempted to put his fist through. “I offered her marriage, she politely laughed in my face. Why should she give up all this freedom, the endless adventure of warring with the dust and the mice and the gossiping menials when all I offer is a ring? So I offered something less weighty—my heart on a platter—and she dithered. She’s still dithering and talking about going to visit her family.”
“Well, there’s your answer, isn’t it?”
“Must you be so honest?”
Hess rose and put a hand on Worth’s shoulder. “I cannot fathom women, never have, never will. You’ve more than the normal complement of sense, though, Worth, and a Kettering’s portion of pride. Why do you persist when the reception is feeble?”
“Because it isn’t feeble, damn it. She nigh devours me when we’re private.”
“And you devour her?”
No, that was the question of the hour.
“I haven’t yet.” Worth traced his finger down the lattice-work of the mullioned window. “It’s a near-run thing, Hess.”
“You’re in unfamiliar waters?”
“Deep, shark-infested unfamiliar waters with cross-currents and undertows.”
“Then it’s time for a strategic return to dry land, old man. You’re the only brother I have, and I refuse to stand by and watch you dragged out to sea ever again.”
Worth stood, staring out the window, long after Hess had sought his bed. He considered getting drunk, something he hadn’t done for a decade or so, but if he imbibed, he was more likely to talk himself into visiting Jacaranda’s boudoir.
He went for a long swim, diving frequently to the coldest reaches of the pond, and eventually sheer fatigue took the edge off his mood. He arrived to his rooms tired, chilled, and no clearer in his mind than he’d been earlier. While part of him was certain Jacaranda would dither and prevaricate on his offer for the rest of her natural days, another part of him wondered if she was waiting for some sign from him, some subtle indication of worth he’d failed to give.
So he fell into a restless sleep and dreamed of the Drummond coming to grief on rocky shoals within sight of port.
* * *
“Why is my stable master waltzing about the garden with Miss Snyder?”
“Good morning, Mr. Kettering.” Jacaranda rose from her place at the table to stand beside him at the window to the breakfast parlor. “Roberts and Miss Snyder do not appear to be waltzing.”
Simply standing near Worth had Jacaranda’s pulse leaping, had her leaning infinitesimally closer to catch his scent.
“Promenading, then. Are they enamored of one another?”
“If they are?” she asked, resuming her seat.
“Then good for them,” he said, taking his own. “At least somebody on this benighted estate is finding some pleasurable company.”
She took a sip of tea and scalded her tongue. He’d very nearly hurt her feelings, though she wasn’t good company.
“My apologies.” Worth reached for the teapot. “I’m on tenterhooks regarding an investment, and my nerves are unsettled.”
“You usually take it with cream and sugar,” Jacaranda said as Worth winced at the taste of his tea.
Worth spooned the sugar in generously. “Does anything on this property escape your notice, Mrs. Wyeth?”
Her wits, her common sense, her ability to be honest with the man she’d come to love.
“Much,” she said, wondering—hoping?—he was in this foul mood because he’d not come to her bed last night.
She’d missed him, missed him badly, and tossed and turned for hours. She’d made the decision to return home to Dorset, but longed to consummate her dealings with Worth Kettering before she did.
A woman already sunk in falsehoods might as well steal some memories, too.
“I take leave to doubt you miss anything of significance, madam. Is that all you’re eating?”
Toast and butter. Daisy’s breakfast in the early weeks of her pregnancies. “My appetite is off.”
His gaze narrowed. “Is it really? What a pity.”
“You are not a mean man. What has got into you?”
“Do you recall telling me I could have your coin?”
Not an answer, and he was busy putting more omelet onto Jacaranda’s plate.
“I recall that, yes.”
He stopped heaping eggs before her. “Why won’t you marry me?”
“Oh, Worth.” She stared at her plate, trying to form an answer as tears welled. “Not fair.”
“What isn’t fair,” he said, his voice low, “is that you pleasure me like a siren in the night, find bliss in my arms, and then turn up diffident and prim at the breakfast table. Am I really such poor husband material, Jacaranda?”
She fell back on the truth.
She dabbed at her eyes with her serviette. “I honestly do feel an obligation to my family, but you and I also hardly know each other. I am not the ideal wife for an earl’s heir. You would agree with me if you knew me better.”
“The earl’s heir? I’m not asking you to marry Grampion’s unborn children,” Worth said. “Trust me, Hess is getting up the nerve to find himself a countess. I know the look, and he’s a smart lad. Winters are long in the north, and families tend to be large.”
“Hush.” Jacaranda rose. I love you, I love you. “One doesn’t pick a husband like a new mount at Tatt’s. You and I suit in one regard, I’m confident of that, but I sense others have suited you as well, and you know you’re not my first.”
He rose. “Dear heart, that can hardly matter to me when you won’t even permit me to be your second.”
His eyes held puzzlement, hurt, and not a little determination, so Jacaranda left the room at the fastest walk dignity would allow.
* * *
Worth pushed the remains of his breakfast away and went in search of his brother, resisting the urge to chase after his unwilling intended. Instinct suggested that if he pursued Jacaranda too tenaciously, she’d flee not simply to her sitting room, but clear back to that cottage in Dorset she seemed so fond of.
He could not fathom why. Some secret tormented her or some familial obligation. Perhaps she had a child in her brother’s care in Dorset—
Walking by the library, Worth was surprised to hear an otherwise peaceful morning punctuated by Yolanda’s voice, nearly raised at her older brother.
“You said you wouldn’t drag me north against my will!”
Hess’s voice came next, civil, but tense from the tone, the words indistinguishable.
Worth debated mentally, then pushed the door open. He loved them both, and they were clearly in difficulties.
“Greetings, siblings. A pleasant day for a disagreement, is it not?”
“We weren’t disagreeing,” Hess began, as Yolanda crossed her arms and declared, “Wonderfully so.”
“What seems to be the trouble?” Though for once, no part of Worth relished a touchy negotiation, no part of him was eager to see if he could untangle the Gordian knot of Hess’s sense of duty, Yolanda’s injured pride, and his own desire to remain as close to Trysting as possible.
Yolanda’s chin jutted in Hess’s direction. “He says we need to think of repairing to Grampion. He wouldn’t invite me home when I was desperately homesick, but we must hare off there now when you’ve perfectly lovely accommodations for us all here in the south.”
“She wants to make sheep’s eyes at that dratted farmer,” Hess retorted. “If I leave her here, you’ll need to post a watch on her.”
Yolanda’s eyes glittered ominously. “Unfair, Hessian. If I’d wanted to misbehave in that manner, I would have accepted all the invitations I received to join the school’s gardener in his charming little shed, wouldn’t I?”
“What?!” Both brothers spoke—bellowed, more like—at once. Worth recovered first.
“What invitations, Yolanda Kettering? And don’t think to prevaricate with us now.”
Her expression was chillingly blank for such a young lady. “His name was Arnold, and he was a nuisance, but he was Mrs. Peese’s nephew, so my complaints weren’t considered noteworthy.”
“Of what exactly,” Hess asked, “did you complain?”
Yolanda’s gaze traveled from one brother to the other. She settled on the sofa, in the same manner the accused takes the dock. “Promise me you won’t yell at me?”
“We promise.” In unison.
“You won’t throw things?”
The brothers exchanged a look.
“We won’t throw things of value at you,” Worth said. “Stop fretting and tell us.”
“He started with a few little touches, at first,” Yolanda said, staring at her hands. “The other girls thought it was daring, because he’s not…he’s not spotty. Some of them said he was handsome in a common sort of way.”
“Famous,” Hess hissed. “You’ve been subjected to the attentions of a not-spotty gardener in the one place a girl should be free of such bother.”
Worth sent his brother a quelling look. “Go on, Lannie. We’re listening.”
“He must have known he wouldn’t get in trouble, because he started leaving me notes then, in personal places.”
“Personal places, Lannie?” Hess asked.
“Under my pillow, among my clothes.”
“With your unmentionables,” Worth said. “He’s a dead gardener, this spotless wonder.”
“You mustn’t,” Yolanda wailed quietly. “All the girls knew, and to them, daring progressed to amusing.”
“But not to you.” Worth settled beside her. “To you it became frightening.”
“He waited in my room one night and k-kissed me.” Yolanda grimaced at the memory. “It was horrid. He was horrid, and he said things.”
Hess took a cushioned chair, his fingers drumming on the arm. “Things?”
“Things he wanted to do to me. You didn’t answer my letters, and Mrs. Peese said I was imagining it all, but I wasn’t.”
“God in heaven.” Worth brushed back a lock of Yolanda’s hair. “Did he manage to do more than threaten you, kiss you, and scare you witless?”
“He had better not have,” Hess said, back on his feet. “I’ll see the place shut down, I will.”
“You mustn’t.” Yolanda leaned into Worth. “When Mrs. Peese asked the other girls, they said they’d seen nothing, heard nothing, but they all knew he’d treated another student the same way the previous year. She was a by-blow, too.”
“So, little lunatic that you are, you cut yourself,” Worth guessed. “Beat them at their own game, brought me running, and got free of the scoundrel. Well done.” He kissed her forehead and glared at Hess over her shoulder.
“Right,” Hess said, “well damned done indeed. I’m surprised you didn’t call the idiot out, or entice him into his lowly garden bower, then wallop him with a shovel where it counts.”
Yolanda dropped her forehead to Worth’s shoulder. “I thought about it, but nobody supported my version of events, and a violent lunatic is worse than a hysterical female. I didn’t know if Worth would come fetch me or not.”
“Worth came,” Hess said.
“I will always come when you ask it. You’re my sister.”
“You didn’t know that.” Yolanda took Hess’s proffered handkerchief. “You were so dark and stern and brisk. You never said I was your sister until recently.”
“You’re my sister.” He hugged her, pushing the words past an abruptly tight throat. “Hess is my brother, you are my sister. Avery is our niece. We’re a family.”
“I will not drag you north,” Hess said, clearing his throat. “I will, however, offer a medicinal tot all around.”
Yolanda sat up. “Brandy? For me?”
“It’s medicinal.” Hess passed her a scant portion and Worth a more generous serving. “I really do want to see that school closed.”
“But what will the girls think?”
“What will their families think, to know such a situation wasn’t dealt with appropriately?” Hess countered. “Consider another girl, Lannie, younger than you, not as resourceful, not as brave. She won’t think of a scheme to get herself sent down. She won’t even protest.”
“Like the girl last year,” Yolanda said. “She didn’t come back for Hilary term, and nobody said anything.”
“Ketterings don’t meekly allow such injustices, and they don’t quietly tolerate another’s dissembling,” Worth said. “Either the gardener takes a post where he can’t prey on girls or the school will be closed. Between Hess and me, we’ve the connections to see to it.”
“We do,” Hess said. “I’ll give it a day, then draft a letter for you two to look over. It’s the right course, Lannie.”
“It is,” she agreed, taking a shuddery breath. “This brandy does help with one’s nerves.”
Worth downed his at a swallow, more proud of his siblings than he could bear. “Having family helps, too.”
“Here, here.” Hess held up his glass, as did Yolanda. A knock on the door interrupted Yolanda’s maiden attempt at a toast.
“A note for Mr. Kettering,” Carl said. Worth took the folded and sealed missive, dreading any news that took him away from Trysting
“A pigeon up from Devon,” he said, crumpling the paper into a ball.
“It’s urgent?” Yolanda asked.
“Pigeons generally are. The timing is miserable.”
“You fear for the Drummond?” Hess asked.
“I do.” And, worse, he feared for his future as Jacaranda Wyeth’s husband. “Somebody should have passed along some gossip by now, something from one of the Cape Town ships, or Lisbon. Some-damned-where between here and the Antipodes, somebody has to have seen the Drummond under way and headed home.”
“Unless it came to grief again,” Yolanda said. “Oh, Worth—”
“I’m for Town,” Worth interrupted her. “Hess, I’d appreciate it if you’d hold the reins here. Lannie?”
“Worth?”
“You did the right thing. You defended yourself the best you knew how, and I am sorry as hell I haven’t been a better brother to you.”
“You needn’t—” Yolanda began, but Hess interrupted.
“We need to, both of us, Lannie. I’m sorry, too. I should have paid attention, should have protected you. I am sorry. I won’t let you down like that again.”
He aimed a look at Worth as he said that last, a look that implied unspoken apology, and a full complement of Kettering determination. A fraction of Worth’s anxiety eased.
“Does this mean you’ll invite Mr. Hunter to dinner?” Yolanda asked.
“I’m leaving,” Worth said. “Hess is the head of our family, he can deal with the difficult decisions.”
Worth all but ran from the library, knowing Hess faced no decision at all. At this rate, Yolanda Kettering would soon be vying with Jacaranda Wyeth for honors as queen of the parish, if not the shire. The gardener had been lucky she hadn’t taken a knife to his parts.
He put away for another time the self-flagellation resulting from the knowledge that Yolanda had resorted to self-harm to get herself rescued. What if the knife had slipped? What if the wound had become infected? What if Peese’s letter had gone astray?
God’s toothbrush.
And now, now of all times, Worth did not want to leave Trysting. He had a miserable, low-down hunch that Jacaranda was up to something, looking for another post, taking a permanent leave to see her family, somehow withdrawing from the field and refusing his several offers.
He couldn’t let that happen. Could not.