Chapter Eighteen
“So you’re simply letting her leave?”
Grey Birch Dorning, Earl of Casriel, tossed the question at Worth as his lordship mounded omelet onto his plate at the sideboard. There probably wasn’t an egg in the whole of Surrey that hadn’t gone into the morning’s meal, and at least three entire loaves of bread were toasted and buttered as well.
Jacaranda had kept the lot of them fed, clothed, housed, and more or less out of trouble since her girlhood.
“You’d best eat,” Casriel went on. “Until Jacaranda comes down, the boys will think nothing of taking the food off your plate.”
“Grampion was so busy pouring my best spirits down their thirsty little throats last night, I doubt they’ll be up and about this early.” Worth put a goodly pile of eggs on his plate for show. God knew he wasn’t hungry.
“Sycamore—Cam—can out-eat any one of us,” Casriel said, setting his plate at the place to Worth’s right. “He’ll be the tallest, though he’s the youngest, and certain older brothers of his will regret some teasing they’ve done. You’re avoiding my question.”
“Regarding your sister,” Worth said, passing the teapot over. The table boasted three this morning. “It’s gunpowder. Hess and I prefer it.”
“I didn’t put the two together,” Casriel said, pouring his tea. “I know Grampion in passing, and I knew Jacaranda’s employer was some dithering little cipher in the City, Somebody Kettering. Never made the connection.”
“I don’t dither.” Nor were his offices in the City. Worth pushed over the cream and sugar. The cream was in a milk pitcher today. Better than a quart of it awaiting the Dorset Horde. “Your sister is a lady in every sense. She should not have been allowed to go into service. Had I known her station, I would have returned her to you five years ago.”
“I, for one, am glad you didn’t,” Casriel said around a mouthful of eggs. “I was having a grand time in Town, new to the title, years past university, and she sent me a letter warning me Daisy was being courted and telling me to get myself down to Dorset as head of the family, because Jacaranda was tired of cleaning up after me. She said if she had to spend a life in service, she at least wanted to be paid for it.”
Worth poured himself more tea while he still could, wanting to toast the lady in absentia.
And yet, the earl sounded genuinely contrite. “Go on, Casriel. The barbarians will soon sack the sideboard and take the teapots prisoner, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Jack saw what I did not. I had no authority as head of our family because I was little more than a boy myself and acting as stupidly as most others in my position. My step-mother has ever enjoyed delicate nerves, and my brothers were terrorizing their tutors, the maids, the local girls. Jacaranda contained them as best she could. While my brothers and I weren’t looking, somebody stole a march on us and treated her ill.”
“Do you know who the somebody is?”
Casriel set his fork down, just so, on his plate.
“That’s a bit delicate. A family as big as ours is a balancing act. If I buy Ash a horse, must I buy one for all five of my other brothers? If Daisy got flute lessons, did I owe Valerian the cello he claimed he’d practice five hours a day as well? You can’t always know what the just outcome is, and when you do, sometimes you wish you didn’t.”
“Not in this case,” Worth said. “In this case, you let the man who abused one sister turn around and marry the other.” He felt not the least sympathy for an earl whose brothers were decimating Worth’s pantries and his stores of civility as they stole Jacaranda for their own. “Oh, and you let Jacaranda’s portion be tucked in among the wedding presents.”
Casriel’s gentian eyes narrowed. “The trust was transferred by my own father, and that’s Lady Jacaranda to you.”
On Jacaranda, those eyes were beautiful. On Casriel, they were merely odd, to Worth anyway.
“Lady Jacaranda, my housekeeper. I at least gave her a generous wage for her hard work. You let her sister—or, more properly, her step-mother—steal from her.”
“Daisy’s lungs—”
“Were as hale as yours by the time this Eric weasel came sniffing around your sisters.”
Casriel glanced at the door. “Look, Kettering. There I was, a grown boy, one sister begging me to let her go off into service, the other sister bound and determined to get her hands on this squire’s son. I could not afford many more Seasons for Jack, and Daisy would spare me the whole Town do if I could get her married. Haven’t you ever been young and stupid?”
Well, hell.
Worth had been young and stupid, and last night, he’d been not young but still stupid, because he’d taken no measures to protect Jacaranda from conceiving a child. He was still trying to untangle his motivations for that, and hers for allowing the risk.
“What will you do now?” Worth asked. “Let her molder away on the coast, cleaning up after those bull calves you call brothers?”
“I wish they were bull calves. Then my course would be clear-cut, so to speak.”
“Good morning, all.” Hess sauntered in, looking well rested and elegant, damn him.
“Hessian.” Worth poured himself more tea. “Casriel encourages us aging bumblers to eat before the locusts descend from their bedrooms.”
“Jack can put away her fair share, too,” Casriel said, slathering jam on his toast.
“Lady Jacaranda to you,” Worth retorted, balling up his serviette and rising. “She hates to be called Jack.”
* * *
Worth helped Jacaranda dress. His attentiveness broke her heart in a whole different way, but he topped that accomplishment by helping with the last of her packing, too.
Both of those heartbreaks were different from the heartbreak of making love with him.
Different from the pain of waking in his arms.
Different from the anticipation of him coming home from Town.
Different from sharing the single tea cup with him when her morning tray came up.
And it all hurt unbearably.
“Before you go downstairs,” Worth said, drawing her down beside him on the settee, “we need to discuss something.”
“Not my money.” She could not bear to see him looking so solemn. “You may borrow it as long as you want. I’ll have a roof over my head at Dorning and coal for the hearth. We manage. I’m not sure how Grey does it, but we do manage.”
“Not providing his sisters any dowry probably helps.” Worth’s scathing tone was at variance with the gentle caress of his thumb over her knuckles.
“He has to see my brothers educated, Worth. Don’t judge him.”
Worth’s smile was crooked and sad. “You love him. I’ll keep my judgmental mouth shut on that score. My dear, last night—”
“Last night was lovely.”
“Last night was beyond lovely,” he countered, “but there could be a child, Jacaranda. I want you to promise me we’ll marry if there is.”
His words implied they would not marry unless a child came along. She had refused his proposals, after all.
“Think of the child, love.” He brought her hand to his lips. “Think of the scandal to your family, when your brother ought to be finding himself a countess.”
She studied their joined hands. “He ought, oughtn’t he? Given the timing, I doubt there will be consequences.”
“Is Wyeth any part of your name?”
“Jacaranda Wyeth Dorning. No missus, though. That was a misrepresentation.” Another misrepresentation.
“A liberty,” he said. “Promise me, Jacaranda Wyeth Dorning. I would not force you into marriage, but it is my right to provide for my child and the child’s mother. My privilege.”
She kissed his knuckles and nodded.
“Say the words, my love.”
Oh, that hurt. Those little words—my love—said with such patience and tenderness while he looked at her as if she were precious.
“I promise, if we’ve conceived a child, I will tell you and you can make proper provision.”
“Thank you, Jacaranda.”
“I’m about to cry.”
“You cried enough last night,” he said, though his tone assured her his words were meant kindly, bracingly. “A pack of hyenas is scavenging every scrap of food from my larder, my housekeeper is leaving me, my brother wants me to winter in Cumberland, for God’s sake, and you think you’re entitled to cry?”
“Suppose not.” She might well have the rest of her life to cry. “Will you see me off?”
“If that is what you want. I’ve a suggestion,” Worth said, drawing her to her feet. “Why don’t we send you and Casriel on your way? Your brothers can come after you when they rise.”
“They might not be up and about for hours.”
“Trust me,” Worth said, stepping back and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “They’ll be no more than two hours behind you, and Casriel will want to take his time because he’s escorting a lady. You’ll have your knights at your side by noon.”
“Anxious to get rid of me, Worth?” She paused by the door, wanting nothing more than to feel his arms around her one more time.
“Anxious to get the pain of parting behind you, yes.”
“I’m glad you’re capable of thinking,” she said as he led her toward the stairs. “I’m not.”
“You’re exhausted. I can send you home in my coach if you like.”
“No, thank you. The fresh air will do me good.” Left to herself in a coach, she’d give way to tears all the way to Dorset. “Grey and I will spend the morning catching up.”
By the time Worth had brought her to the breakfast room, Jacaranda’s chin was up, her shoulders were back, and she’d resolved to get through the next hour with some dignity. Grey acceded easily to Worth’s plan, and Worth excused himself to alert the stables to the arrangements.
When Jacaranda saw Worth next, the tea and toast she’d managed to down were sitting miserably in her stomach, and Grey was making a polite production out of conferring with Hess over by the gardens. She waited by the mounting block as Worth emerged from the stables.
He was so dear. She’d always liked his looks, liked how easy he was with his size and his strength. She liked his humor, his odd touches of modesty and fastidiousness, liked how he was a good brother and a devoted uncle.
He was conscientious with his clients, and with her he’d been so careful, so confoundedly caring it was easy to forget that Jacaranda’s brothers needed her.
Then too, Step-Mama—among others—had some significant explaining to do.
“Let’s stroll a little, shall we?” Worth appropriated her arm, wrapping his hand over hers. “Hess will keep Casriel busy as long as we need him to. Did you know Roberts and the maid named Muriel were spying for your brother?”
“I suspected. I would feel eyes on me from time to time.”
“We’ve been discreet, Jacaranda. You’re not to let that pack of jackanapes run roughshod over you because you think you’ve been naughty.”
“I’m not?” She had been naughty, wonderfully naughty. A skein of happiness trickled through her sorrow. She’d been naughty, and this time, she was not remotely ashamed.
She was glad.
“But for the youngest couple, your brothers are grown men, off to university and back, and you are not their nursemaid.”
“Are you lecturing me?”
“I am.” He paused in their perambulation. “I want you to be happy, and that lot isn’t intent on the same priority. I know, I was a jackanapes once myself, and we’re a selfish bunch. Promise me this is what you want.”
“I want this,” she said, able to mean it in some sense, because five years at Trysting had only made some problems worse, not better. “You’ll make my good-byes to Yolanda and Avery, Miss Snyder and Mrs. Hartwick?”
“No. They’ve all got their noses pressed to the windows in the nursery wing, I’ve no doubt of it. Wave and they’ll see you.”
She waved and caught a flutter of movement from the third-floor windows.
“I’m about to kiss you good-bye, my love.”
“I’m about to let you.”
He kissed her when she desperately wanted him to talk her out of leaving. Not a naughty kiss either, which made it worse. His kiss was sweet, tender, almost chaste, and all too quickly over.
“Ready?” His gaze was steady and steadying.
“As I shall ever be.” She took his arm and processed to the mounting block, feeling as if it might have been the gallows at the Old Bailey.
“We’ll be off then,” Casriel said. “Thanks for the hospitality, and if the boys give you any trouble, a bullwhip sometimes helps. They know which inns we use, and they’ll come along because I’m the only one carrying enough blunt to stand their meals.”
“Lady Jacaranda.” The Earl of Grampion bowed over her hand. “It has been a pleasure and an inspiration.”
She blinked, seeing kindness and understanding in the earl’s eyes. Oh, dear…
“Come.” Worth turned her by the arm. “Your steed awaits.”
“My….Goliath? You’re lending me Goliath?”
“He’s taken to the country,” Worth said. “If you find he doesn’t suit, you can send him back with one of your brothers, but you and he are friends, and he’s of a size to carry you. Then too, Casriel says that due to yet another unforgivable oversight on your family’s part, you have no personal mount, and you deserve one.”
“Just for a loan,” she said, patting the beast’s glossy black neck. “A short-term loan.”
“For as long as you need him,” Worth said, and he was looking at her with such focus, Jacaranda had to wonder at the significance of this extravagant gesture.
This lovable gesture. The loan of Goliath was generous and kind, easing their parting and leaving them one detail of business to connect them. She threw her arms around Worth, heedless of Grey clearing his throat on his mount. Worth caught her to him in a fierce embrace, then let her go and stepped back, her gloved hand in his.
“Safe journey home, Lady Jacaranda. Lord Casriel, you will send us word when you’ve seen the lady back to Dorset.”
“Of course.”
Worth held Goliath’s reins while Jacaranda mounted. When her skirts were arranged, he petted the horse’s shoulder.
“She’s precious, old friend, so don’t put a foot wrong.” He looked up at Jacaranda, his eyes the same impossible blue as when she’d first met him, but so much more dear to her. “God-speed.” He blew her a kiss, and then somehow, the horse was cantering down the driveway, taking her away from the only man she’d ever loved.
The only man she ever would love.
* * *
“I am near tears,” Hess said, standing beside Worth.
“Stubble it, Hessian.” Worth turned toward the house. “That is my future wife, though before she admits that, she must face again the choice between her happiness and her family’s dictates. Last time she confronted that reckoning, she chose neither. This time, I’ve every confidence she’ll see she for herself that she can have both—and a fine husband into the bargain.”
Worth was counting on it, maybe the way Hessian had been counting on him to ask for a reconciliation.
Which had taken more than a damned decade to bring about.
“She didn’t even give me her direction,” Worth added, because he and Hess were reconciled. “I am in no mood to be teased.”
“She didn’t need to give it to you,” Hess said, holding up a piece of folded paper. “Casriel generously provided his direction to me, while her ladyship sipped tea and made not the least fuss.”
Worth coasted to a stop, like a ship gliding home to the dock. “Hessian, I love you. I might not have always said as much, or been much of a brother, but I…what?”
Hess passed him the paper.
“I’ve done my part,” he said. “With or without you, I must leave for Grampion in a few weeks. Now what will you do with that address?”
“Nothing, for now. Jacaranda isn’t the only one with some reckoning to do.”
Hess said nothing, but walked with him back to the house where six bleary-eyed young men were rousted, dressed, fed and put on their mounts in record time.
* * *
“I wondered when you would come see me,” Daisy said, hugging her sister.
“I saw you at dinner last week at Dorning House,” Jacaranda replied, though the final dinner of the house party had been more like a mêlée. “I know the children keep you busy, and I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Come.” Daisy took her hand and walked beside her through the tidy manor house. “Her Highness is asleep, and that’s the best time to visit her. Before I can get the tea tray ready, she’ll be up and fussing.”
Daisy led Jacaranda up the stairs to the third floor and quietly pushed open a door left slightly ajar. Still holding her sister’s hand, Daisy crossed the room, stopping beside a white bassinette.
“She’s beautiful, Daze.” The infant had her mother’s perfect skin, a thistledown head of white-blond hair, a perfect Cupid’s bow mouth, and the tiniest, sweetest little fingers.
“She’s beautiful now,” Daisy said. “Give it an hour, and she’ll be a terror. She puts me in mind of my own mother when Mama’s nerves are troubling her.”
They drew back from the sleeping infant, though Jacaranda wanted to linger. She already knew she wasn’t carrying Worth Kettering’s child, and while that was a relief—it truly was—it was also the unkindest cut.
“You’re wool-gathering again,” Daisy said when they’d repaired to a sunny morning parlor.
“I’m sorry. She’s a disconcertingly beautiful child.”
“Eric loves the children, which is why I don’t leave him.”
“I beg your pardon? Daisy Fromm, you aren’t thinking of leaving your husband? You’ve been married but five years.”
Was this why Jacaranda had come home? To prevent her sister from abandoning a marriage Jacaranda had resented for years?
“I know what you’re thinking.” Daisy took one seat and gestured for her sister to take the other. “We have three children, so we must be compatible in the essentials.”
“Daisy, your unwed sister is not the one to receive these confidences.” Jacaranda took her seat, wondering where her dear little sister had gone, leaving this tired, somewhat resigned-looking young matron in her place.
“Grey pulled me aside at dinner and said you and I are overdue for an honest chat. I thought it might help if you knew Eric and I have already descended into tolerating each other.”
Angels abide. “Of course it doesn’t help. Why would it help? What would it help?”
“Jack…Jacaranda, all those years ago, Eric was about to offer for you. He confided in me when we found ourselves on the garden swing in a shockingly friendly moment, one I am ashamed to say I instigated in part because Mama suggested Eric was trying to choose between us. I told him you weren’t inclined to marry. Otherwise, why would you have given me your portion?”
This revelation should have pierced Jacaranda to the quick. Instead, she stifled a curious inclination to snicker. “Oh, my poor Daisy.”
“I am Eric’s poor Daisy.” She fiddled with the tea service, an everyday Jasperware sporting a chip on the spout of the cream pitcher. “I don’t know how you can stand to look at me.”
“You were seventeen,” Jacaranda reminded her, “and Eric didn’t truly love me or he wouldn’t have been swayed by the money.” She’d taken five years to admit that, to see that she’d had a narrow escape.
Daisy glanced around at the tidy comfort of their surroundings. “Enough to buy this place and keep up the three tenant farms fairly well.”
“You’re doing the managing, aren’t you?” Unlike Jacaranda, Daisy wasn’t comforted by ordering a domestic universe for others.
“Eric isn’t a bad man,” Daisy said, peering into the teapot. The scent of a delicate gunpowder provoked memories of Trysting. “Eric is simply in want of guidance.”
“Do you suppose Francine is providing that exact guidance to her baron?” For Step-Mama’s campaign at Bath had borne fruit, and Daisy had a new step-papa, may God help the man.
“She’s beggaring him,” Daisy said dryly, “or she will soon. Grey says the money he’ll save not having to pay Mama’s bills will exceed what he would have spent on three house parties. I’m sorry you were plucked from Surrey, but Jacaranda, Mama was driving us all to Bedlam.”
“I’ve written her my best wishes and made a few suggestions for how she might curry favor with the baron’s housekeeper. I don’t believe she’ll take my suggestions to heart.”
They shared a sororal smile, then Daisy started giggling and Jacaranda was pouring tea, and five years of distance and hurt were eased aside in an afternoon.
As much as Jacaranda missed Worth, missed him bitterly moment by moment, she took some pleasure in knowing she’d at least put matters right with Daisy, who’d also been manipulated by Francine’s marital schemes. Jacaranda had hired Grey a housekeeper who would not tolerate juvenile behavior from grown men, and she’d written what would likely be her last letter to her step-mother for some time.
Dorning House was again the family home, and yet, the longer Jacaranda missed Worth, the more she realized that home for her was no longer a dwelling, but rather a certain handsome, ruthless, dear and difficult solicitor.
* * *
“You and Daisy must have found something to talk about,” Grey said as Jacaranda rode Goliath into the Dorning stable yard.
“I had to wait for the baby to wake up to properly dote on her.” Jacaranda let her brother help her dismount, a courtesy he wouldn’t have known to offer five years ago.
“Did Fromm show his face?”
“He did. He’s aged.” Not matured, aged. Poor Daisy.
“He has responsibilities,” Grey said carefully. He waited until a groom led Goliath away to speak further. “You didn’t call him out?”
“He offered me no dishonor I didn’t invite, Grey.” Jacaranda looped her arm through his, sparing herself his searching gaze. “I see him now, and he’s not an old man, but he’s going soft in the middle, his hair’s thinning, and he still has puny arms.”
“Puny arms? What has that to do with anything?”
“I doubt he could manage Goliath in a snaffle.” She gently guided her brother toward the house. “Eric has no bottom, so to speak, and he’s lucky Daisy will have him.”
“I see.”
“Do you? How much do you know, Grey?”
“More than I want to. Enough to know the topic can be dropped now and forever.”
“It can,” Jacaranda said, and what a relief that was, not to have to dodge and cringe and tiptoe around the past with either her sister or her oldest and dearest brother. The past was the past, and the future… Jacaranda had decided to return Goliath to his owner in person.
Maybe Worth had known she would?
And yet, Grey looked worried. “Does this mean I can bring up your former employer?”
“If you must.”
“Roberts will be returning to Surrey,” Grey said as he held the front door to the house for her—another small, dear courtesy he hadn’t shown her five years ago. “You could send along a note.”
“A lady does not correspond with a single gentleman to whom she is not related, unless to offer condolences or other socially acceptable sentiments.”
“Jacaranda, the poor blighter’s in love with you,” Grey said when they reached the family parlor. “For once in your life, have pity on the male of the species. Write to him.”
She was well and truly done having pity on the males of the species.
“What I have to say to Worth Kettering can be said in person, Grey. I’ve made the mistake once before of thinking my sentiments were returned, and I was egregiously in error. Now I know my sentiments are shared with the object of my affections, and I owe the man an honest recitation. His affection for me was not in doubt when I left Trysting, I can only hope he still holds me in high regard.”
Vaguely, she heard somebody clearing his throat behind her, but she went on even in front of some embarrassed footman, because Grey needed to let this drop once and for all.
“I have come home, I’ve seen you through the house party, I’ve sorted out matters with Daisy. I’ve put your house to rights, and even dispensed advice to Francine, but it’s time I put my own house in order, Grey.”
She’d known she loved Worth Kettering when she’d left Surrey. Now she knew that she needed him as well. She didn’t need him as a large household needed organization and effort to run smoothly, she needed him as a woman needs to love and be loved.
“Er, Jacaranda?” Grey, who never dithered, was dithering.
“You must simply learn to muddle along without me,” she went on, because this was something Grey should understand. “I have my own life to live, my own matters to tend to. I never told Worth Kettering I loved him. I didn’t think I deserved to impose my feeling on him, didn’t want to risk that he might not—what?”
Grey looked like he’d swallowed bad fish, but he managed to point over Jacaranda’s left shoulder. She turned and saw Worth Kettering standing in the family parlor, his expression arrested while the butler beside him wrung his hands.
“Lady Jacaranda has a caller. Mr. Worth Kettering,” the butler explained, his ears as red as the fall mums gracing the sideboard.
“Worth?” There he was, looking just as handsome and fit as ever, though not particularly happy.
“I’m sure you two have things to chat about.” Grey sketched a bow and escaped right behind the retreating butler, leaving Jacaranda ready to melt into a puddle of mortification.
Joyful mortification, if such a thing were possible.
“Have you come for your horse?” she asked, taking two steps into the family parlor.
Worth walked right past her and pulled the door shut with a definitive bang. The next thing she knew, he was kissing her like they’d been parted for years, not mere weeks.
Though weeks could be eternities when a woman was in love.
“So give me the words,” he growled. “Don’t make me drag them from you, because I haven’t come for the damned horse. I’ve come to retrieve my heart.”
“Your h-heart?”
“Say the words, Jacaranda, and then, by God, it’s my turn.”
“I’ve missed you,” she said, searching his face, for his mood was not that of a man glad to hear a lady’s declaration. His mood was like nothing she’d observed in him before.
He dropped his hands from her arms. “I’ve brought you a bank draft.”
“Thank you.” Because he could have resorted to the mails or to a messenger. He hadn’t, and Jacaranda’s heart rejoiced simply to see him.
“Don’t you want to know the amount of the draft?”
“You don’t owe me interest, Worth, not for a few weeks’ loan of such a paltry amount.”
Still his expression gave away nothing.
“I wanted you to have your cottage, Lady Jacaranda. I can go home again to Grampion in part because of you, and I wanted you to be able to buy your cottage, though that’s not all I want.”
He passed her an official-looking paper. Jacaranda couldn’t spare it a glance.
“You mean Complaisance Cottage?”
“If it’s ever for sale, you can afford it now.”
She glanced at the document and saw a sum many times what she’d lent him. “Worth, there’s a mistake. I know you are a conscientious solicitor, but this—”
“Thank the captain of the Drummond. My ship came in, so to speak.”
“Yolanda told me about the Drummond. She was very worried for you.” Jacaranda had worried for him, too, but not about his finances. Never that. “What did you do?”
“May we sit?”
Sitting meant he wasn’t leaving, and Jacaranda would get her turn to speak. “Of course. Shall I ring for tea?”
“Hang the damned tea.”
Hang the damned tea?
“Don’t look at me like I’ve sprouted horns, a tail and cloven feet.” He patted the place beside him. “Sit where my nose at least can plunder your charms.”
That sounded more promising, more like her Mr. Kettering. “Worth, you aren’t making sense.”
“No, I suppose I’m not.” He didn’t say another word until she’d dutifully taken her place exactly where she wanted to be, right against his side. “Better,” he said. “I invested your funds in shares in a ship thought lost at sea. The shares were available for a pittance, the cargo was very valuable, and here you are.”
Here you are, a small fortune, simple as that. “But why?”
“Because when you take your morning tea at your cottage, tossing the crumbs to the sea birds, I wanted you to think of me and the pleasures we shared. I wanted to make you happy, though you’ve said things that lead me to hope I might see this cottage.”
A pure, piercing joy curled up from Jacaranda’s middle. She’d been determined to fight to regain his esteem, but Worth was so generous, so kind, and his actions spoke so very, wonderfully loudly.
“The cottage is leased. Grey has to lease it out when he can, but I’d love to show it to you.”
Worth pushed her hair behind her ear. “Buy out the rest of the leasehold. You can afford it easily, my dear. Put a new steeple on the local church if it suits your whim. You’re modestly wealthy, Jacaranda, and you can do as you please.”
“I have a much better sense now of what will please me.”
“About time you had a care for your own happiness,” he said, glaring at her. “Which brings me to the next negotiating point.”
“You look very stern, Worth, but I am grateful for the money.”
“I care that”—he snapped his fingers before her nose—“for the money. You had ten shares, Jacaranda. I had two hundred, Prinny had two hundred, my brother had fifty, and the other forty were owned by other small investors.”
“Two hundred?”
“I did not think it wise to earn more than my sovereign.”
“Angels abide.” Two hundred? She gave up trying to do the math.
“You are stalling, Lady Jacaranda.” Worth still looked ferociously stern. “I overheard your charming diatribe to your brother and must disabuse you of an odd misperception.”
She did not say a word lest the hope beating in her chest find some foolish admission with which to mortify her.
“In some matters, a lady is not allowed to go first. I love you. Does that put your house in order? I want you for my wife and for my lady—I’m to suffer a damned barony for this summer’s folly. A knighthood simply won’t do when Prinny’s in a magnanimous mood. I want to wake up beside you every morning until I’m so old, I know you’re there only because your fragrance assures me it’s so. If I’d known you were willing, I would have brought a special license with me, for God’s sake. I love you, I will always love you. Is that clear enough?”
“You’re quite sure?” How she would love teasing him, and managing his households, and his babies, and his—
“I said…” He was winding up for a shouting match, and then he fell silent. He slid to his knee, and not in any romantically debonair posture. He laid his cheek against her thigh and circled her waist with his arms.
“I love you,” he said, quietly but clearly. “I did not feel it fair to inflict my sentiments on you when all you wanted was a frolic or some comfort when far from home. Then, I did not feel it fair to inflict my sentiments on you when your family needed you so. After that, I did not think it fair to make you choose between my importuning and setting things to rights with your siblings. I finally get up my courage to come here and pluck you from your fairy cottage, and I find you telling your damned idiot brother—”
She stroked her fingers over his hair.
“You didn’t let me have my turn, Worth. I’m slow at this business of setting things to rights. I must have a turn, too.”
“I’m a solicitor. We’re long-winded, and I’m not finished.” He subsided against her knees. “I love you, you make my house a home, you brought my family together. I have my brother back, a sister…” He fell silent again, holding her as if his every dream and wish hung on her next utterance, though he had to know how she felt.
Jacaranda took a moment to let wonder and joy flood through her while she tried to organize words that would equal the ones he’d given her. She slid to her knees, too, holding on to him as if he was her every happy memory, including those yet unborn.
“I love you, Worth Reverence Kettering. I love the physical strength and competence of you, the way you sit that great black beast as if you were born on his back—and he misses you, too, by the way. I love your mind, it’s as quick and brilliant as lightning, and I love your kindness to the opera dancers, and to me, and your family, and I love your generosity, for I know of no other who would share a fortune with both the Regent and the small investors, I love your body—”
He smothered the rest of her litany with his kisses, and right there on the floor behind the locked door to the Dorning family parlor, Lord and Lady Trysting conceived the first of their many lovely daughters.
They turned out to be great strapping beauties, with their father’s head for money and their mother’s ability to manage anything—and anybody—they took a fancy to.
And they all, all of them, with their cousins and uncles and eventually with some brave aunties as well, lived happily ever after.
THE END
Continue reading for an excerpt from The Captive, by Grace Burrowes (July 2014), first book in The Captive Hearts trilogy
“Your Grace, you have a caller.”
Christian had been at his London town house for three days and nights, and still his entire household, from butler to boot boy, seemed helpless not to beam at him.
He’d been tortured, repeatedly, for months, and they were grinning like dolts. To see them happy, to feel the weight of the entire household smiling at him around every turn made him furious, and that—his unabating, irrational reaction—made him anxious.
Even Carlton House had sent an invitation, and Christian’s court attire would hang on him like some ridiculous shroud.
The butler cleared his throat.
Right. A caller. “This late?”
“She says her business is urgent.”
By the standards of London in springtime, nine in the evening was one of the more pleasant hours, but by no means did one receive calls at such an hour.
“Who is she?”
Meems crossed the study, a silver tray in his hand bearing a single card on cream vellum.
“I do not recall a Lady Greendale.” Though a Greendale estate lay several hours ride from Severn. Lord Greendale was a pompous old curmudgeon forever going on in the Lords about proper respect and decent society. An embossed black band crossed one corner of the card, indicating the woman was a widow, perhaps still in mourning.
“I’m seeing no callers, Meems. You know that.”
“Yes, quite, Your Grace, as you’re recovering. Quite. She says she’s family.” Behind the smile Meems barely contained lurked a worse offense yet: hope. The old fellow hoped His Grace might admit somebody past the threshold of Mercia House besides a man of business or running footman.
Christian ran his fingertip over the crisp edge of the card. Gillian, Countess of Greendale, begged the favor of a call. Some elderly cousin of his departed parents, perhaps. His memory was not to be relied upon in any case.
Duty came in strange doses. Like the need to sign dozens of papers simply so the coin earned by the duchy could be used to pay the expenses incurred by the duchy. Learning to sign his name with his right hand had been a frustrating exercise in duty. Christian had limited himself to balling up papers and tossing them into the grate rather than pitching the ink pot.
“Show her into the family parlor.”
“There will be no need for that.” A small blond woman brushed past Meems and marched up to Christian’s desk. “Good evening, Your Grace. Gillian, Lady Greendale.”
She bobbed a miniscule curtsy suggesting a miniscule grasp of the deference due his rank, much less of Meems’s responsibility for announcing guests. “We have family business to discuss.”
No, Christian silently amended, she had no grasp whatsoever, and based on her widow’s weeds, no husband to correct the lack.
And yet, this lady was in mourning, and around her mouth were brackets of fatigue. She was not in any sense smiling, and looked as if she might have forgotten how.
A welcome divergence from the servants’ expressions.
“Meems, a tray, and please close the door as you leave.”
Christian rose from his desk, intent on shifting to stand near the fire, but the lady twitched a jacket from her shoulders and handed it to him. Her garment was a gorgeous black silk business, embroidered with aubergine thread along its hems. The feel of the material was sumptuous in Christian’s hands, soft, sleek, luxurious, and warm from her body heat. He wanted to hold it—simply to hold it—and to bring it to his nose, for it bore the soft floral scent of not a woman, but a lady.
The reminders he suffered of his recent deprivations increased rather than decreased with time.
“Now, then,” she said, sweeping the room with her gaze.
He was curious enough at her presumption that he folded her jacket, draped it over a chair, and let a silence build for several slow ticks of the mantel clock.
“Now, then,” he said, more quietly than she, “if you’d care to have a seat, Lady Greendale?”
She had to be a May-December confection gobbled up in Lord Greendale’s dotage. The woman wasn’t thirty years old, and she had a curvy little figure that caught a man’s eye. Or it would catch a man’s eye, had he not been more preoccupied with how he’d deal with tea-tray inanities when he couldn’t stomach tea.
She took a seat on the sofa facing the fire, which was fortunate, because it allowed Christian his desired proximity to the heat. He propped an elbow on the mantel and wished, once again, that he’d tarried at Severn.
“My lady, you have me at a loss. You claim a family connection, and yet memory doesn’t reveal it to me.”
“That’s certainly to the point.” By the firelight, her hair looked like antique gold, not merely blond. Her tidy bun held coppery highlights, and her eyebrows looked even more reddish. Still, her appearance did not tickle a memory, and he preferred willowy blonds in any case.
Had preferred them.
“I thought we’d chitchat until the help is done eavesdropping, Your Grace. Perhaps exchange condolences. You have mine, by the way. Very sincerely.”
Her piquant features softened with her words, her sympathy clear in her blue eyes, though it took Christian a moment to puzzle out for what.
Ah. The loss of his wife and son. That.
She pattered on, like shallow water rippling over smooth stones, sparing him the need to make any reply. Christian eventually figured out that this torrent of speech was a sign of nerves.
Had Girard blathered like this, philosophizing, sermonizing, and threatening as a function of nerves? Christian rejected the very notion rather than attribute to his tormenter even a single human quality.
“Helene was my cousin,” the lady said, recapturing Christian’s attention, because nobody had referred to the late duchess by name in his presence. “The family was planning to offer you me, but then Greendale started sniffing around me, and Helene was by far the prettier, so she went for a duchess while I am merely a countess. Shouldn’t the tea be here by now?”
Now he did remember, the way the first few lines of a poem will reveal the entire stanza. He’d met this Lady Greendale. She had a prosaic, solidly English name he could not recall—perhaps she’d just told him what it was, perhaps he’d seen it somewhere—but she’d been an attendant at his wedding, his and Helene’s. Greendale’s gaze had followed his young wife with a kind of porcine possessiveness, and the wife had scurried about like a whipped dog.
Christian had pitied her at the time. He didn’t pity her now.
But then, he didn’t feel much of anything when his day was going well.
“Here’s the thing—” She was mercifully interrupted by the arrival of the tea tray. Except it wasn’t simply a tray, as Christian had ordered. The trolley bore a silver tea service, a plate of cakes, a plate of finger sandwiches, and a bowl of oranges, because his smiling, hopeful, attentive staff was determined to put flesh on him.
His digestion was determined to make it a slow process.
“Shall I pour?” She had her gloves off and was rearranging the tray before Christian could respond. “One wonders what ladies do in countries not obsessed with their tea. Do they make such a ritual out of coffee? You take yours plain, I believe. Helene told me that.”
What odd conversations women must have, comparing how their husbands took tea. “I no longer drink tea. I drink…nursery tea.”
A man whose every bodily function had been observed for months should not be embarrassed to admit such a thing, and Christian wasn’t. He was, rather, humiliated and enraged out of all proportion to the moment.
“Hence the hot water,” she said, peering at the silver pot that held same. “Do you intend to loom over me up there, or will you come down here beside me for some tea?”
He did not want to move a single inch.
She chattered, and her hands fluttered over the tea service like mating songbirds, making visual noise to go with her blathering. She cut up his peace, such as it was, and he already knew she would put demands on him he didn’t care to meet.
And yet, she hadn’t smiled, hadn’t pretended grown dukes drank nursery tea every night. Whatever else was true about the lady, she had an honesty about her Christian approved of.
He sat on the sofa, several feet away from her.
She made no remark on his choice of seat.
“I suppose you’ve heard about that dreadful business involving Greendale. Had Mr. Stoneleigh not thought to produce the bottle of belladonna drops for the magistrate—the full, unopened bottle, still in its seal—you might have been spared my presence permanently. I can’t help but think old Greendale did it apurpose, gave me the drops just to put poison in my hands. Easterbrook probably sent them from the Continent all unsuspecting. Greendale wanted me buried with him, like some old pharaoh’s wife. Your tea.”
She’d made him a cup of hot water, sugar, and cream—nursery tea, served to small children to spare them tea’s stimulant effects.
“I’ll fix you a plate too, shall I?” A sandwich, then two, as well as two cakes were piled onto a plate by her busy, noisy hands.
“An orange will do.”
She looked at the full plate as if surprised to find all that food there, shrugged, and set it aside. “I’ll peel it for you, then. A lady has fingernails suited for the purpose.”
She set about stripping the peel from the hapless orange as effectively as she was stripping Christian’s nerves, though in truth, she wasn’t gawking, she wasn’t simpering, she wasn’t smiling. The lady had business to transact, and she’d dispatch it as efficiently as she dispatched the peel from the orange.
Those busy hands were graceful. Christian wanted to watch them work, wanted to watch them be feminine, competent, and pretty, because this too—the simple pleasure of a lady’s hands—had been denied him.
He took a sip of his nursery tea, finding it hot, sweet, soothing, and somehow unsatisfying. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to state the reason for your call, Lady Greendale?”
“We’re not to chat over tea, even? One forgets you’ve spent the last few years among soldiers, Your Grace, but then the officers on leave are usually such gallant fellows.” She focused on the orange, which was half-naked on the plate in her lap. “This is just perfectly ripe, and the scent is divine.”
The scent was…good. Not a scent with any negative associations, not overpowering, not French.
“You are welcome to share it with me,” he said, sipping his little-boy tea and envying her the speed with which she’d denuded the orange of its peel.
Peeling an orange was a two-handed undertaking, something he’d had occasion to recall in the past three days. This constant bumping up against his limitations wearied him, as Girard’s philosophizing never had. Yes, he was free from Girard’s torture, but everywhere, he was greeted with loss, duress, and decisions.
“Your orange?” She held out three quarters of a peeled orange to him, no smile, no faintly bemused expression to suggest he’d been woolgathering—again.
“You know, it really wasn’t very well done of you, Your Grace.” She popped a section of orange into her mouth and chewed busily before going on. “When one has been traveling, one ought to go home first, don’t you think? But you came straight up to Town, and your staff at Severn was concerned for you.”
Concerned for him. Of what use had this concern been when Girard’s thugs were mutilating his hand? Though to be fair, Girard had been outraged to find his pet prisoner disfigured, and ah, what a pleasure to see Girard dealing with insubordination.
Though indignation and outrage were also human traits, and thus should have been beyond Girard’s ken.
“You’re not eating your orange, Your Grace. It’s very good.” She held up a section in her hand, her busy, graceful little lady’s hand. He leaned forward and nipped the orange section from her fingers with his teeth.
She sat back, for once quiet. She was attractive when she was quiet, her features classic, though her nose missed perfection by a shade of boldness, and her eyebrows were a touch on the dramatic side. A man would notice this woman before he’d notice a merely pretty woman, and—absent torture by the French—he would recall her when the pretty ones had slipped from his memory.
“Now then, madam. We’ve eaten, we’ve sipped our tea. The weather is delightful. What is your business?”
“It isn’t my business, really,” she said, regarding not him, not the food, but the fire kept burning in the grate at all hours. “It’s your business, if you can call it business.”
Something about the way she clasped her hands together in her lap gave her away. She was no more comfortable calling as darkness fell than he was receiving her. She’d barely tasted her orange, and all of her blather had been nerves.
Lady Greendale was afraid of him.