Chapter Three
“They’ll be forever in there.” Yolanda flopped back against the squabs and knew she was setting a bad example for her niece. Young ladies did not flop, and they did not gripe.
She had a niece, whom she hadn’t known about, just as her brother Worth hadn’t known he had a living half-sister. Having a niece was peculiar, when Avery seemed more like a younger sister and Worth Kettering more like an uncle. A grouchy uncle.
“Wickie won’t tarry,” Avery said in French. “She’s devoted to me, and now she’ll be devoted to you, too.”
“Miss Snyder has that honor,” Yolanda said, happy to practice her French on a native speaker. “At least until Michaelmas term. I wonder how much Mr. Kettering paid her for the trouble of babysitting me for three months.”
Mr. Kettering. Worth. Her brother.
“Uncle has pots of money.” Avery grinned as if Uncle had chocolates in his pockets. “Spending some on Miss Snyder won’t hurt him. She looks sad to me, or angry.”
“She’s nervous,” Yolanda said, switching to English. “She’s one of those mousy little women who toils away in thankless anonymity in the classroom, and dithers over which new sampler to start as if it’s a significant decision.”
“Uncle thanks Mrs. Hartwick, but I don’t know those other words you used—anom de something and blither,” Avery said, peering out the window. “They’re coming now.”
“With food, thank the gods.”
“Uncle says that. Thank the gods.”
Uncle this and Uncle that. The little magpie worshipped the ground the man strutted around on. Yolanda had heard in great, dramatic detail in at least two and a half languages why Avery had reason to appreciate him. Avery had been orphaned in Paris for almost a year after her mother, Moria, had died, but had memorized Worth’s direction, and eventually, thanks to the kindly intercession of her mother’s friends, had been sent to her uncle.
A tale worthy of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels, right down to the way Worth doted on his niece.
Had he asked darling Avery for proof she was related to him?
To them?
Yolanda tucked into a hot, savory cottage pie, silently admitting that her brother may not have believed her, but he’d taken her in, bribed Miss Snyder to chaperone, and now they were off to the country.
He’d apparently bribed the coaching inns along the way, too, because the food was excellent, and the relief teams in harness in mere minutes.
Miss Snyder gave Yolanda a hesitant smile from the other bench. “It’s good to see you eating, my dear. Soon we’ll be at your brother’s estate, and you and Avery can have a nice stroll.”
She patted Yolanda’s knee and took a careful bite of her meat pastry. Miss Snyder slowly, thoroughly chewed her bite, patted her lips with a serviette, then took another slow, small bite.
Another hour, the coachman had said. One more hour, a mere ten miles, and they’d be free to leave the coach.
Had it been more than that, Yolanda doubted anything in the world could have stopped her from running screaming down the road. Miss Snyder, mousy, anonymous, and whatever else could be said about her, had at least chosen her path in life. She could have been a governess, a laundress, a paid companion, or some lusty yeoman’s wife—she was by no means ugly—while Yolanda was reduced to begging a berth from a brother nigh twice her age.
An earl’s daughter with a small fortune in trust—though not a lady by title—and she’d had nowhere to go.
She chewed mechanically, lest the lump in her throat rise up and humiliate her before the brat and the mouse. A young lady with nowhere else to go could not indulge in dramatics, not in the middle of the king’s highway, and not in her brother’s handsome traveling coach.
* * *
“Yolanda had nowhere else to go, you see,” Mr. Kettering said. “May I top off your tea?”
“Was your upbringing so backward you believe an employer should wait on his staff?” Jacaranda’s tone was meant to be prim, condescending even, but what came through was sheer puzzlement. She’d been given to understand a title hung not too distant on Mr. Kettering’s family tree, and here he was, dragooning her into breakfast tête-à-tête and pouring her tea.
“You’ll take sugar with that, to sweeten your disposition,” he said, pushing the sugar bowl toward her. “My upbringing was the best that good coin and better tutors could pound into me, but my mother died when I was quite young, and her civilizing influence soon became a distant memory. Have another raspberry crepe.” He portioned one off his own plate and onto hers. “You’re too thin, Wyeth. Eat.” He sliced off a bite from the crepes remaining on his plate and gave every appearance of enjoying it.
Well. They were very good, the crepes, the fluffy omelet, the crispy bacon and golden toast. A piping-hot teapot nestled under embroidered white linen, and the room was redolent with the scrumptious scents of a kitchen determined to make a good showing before a long-absent master.
When had anybody, anybody ever, accused Jacaranda Wyeth of being too thin?
“Better,” Mr. Kettering said, when Jacaranda started on her crepes. “Back to Yolanda, if it won’t disturb your digestion?”
Rather than speak with her mouth full, Jacaranda made a small circle with her fork, and for some reason this had her host—her employer—smiling at her over his tea cup.
Gracious saints, that smile was sweet. Mr. Kettering was a dark man, dark-haired, dark-complected, dark-voiced, but that smile was light itself, crinkling the corners of startlingly blue eyes, putting dimples on either side of his mouth, and conveying such warmth and affection for life that Jacaranda had to look away.
Lewis had written that even ladies liked to have Mr. Kettering handle their private business, and in that smile, Jacaranda saw part of the reason why. Mr. Kettering was, damn and blast him, tall, dark and handsome, and blessed with that smile as well.
Thank heavens her term of employment at Trysting would soon be up.
“Your sister seems a typical young lady to me,” Jacaranda said. “Your family hails from the north, do they not?”
“They do, what few of us there are,” Mr. Kettering replied. “My older brother has had the keeping of the girl, but he’s managed it by shuffling her from one exclusive boarding school to another, and he’s lately seen to it she joined schoolmates on holidays and breaks.”
“I gather she will holiday with us here for the summer?”
“Just so.” His first name was Worth, Jacaranda recalled, apropos of absolutely nothing. She’d never met a man named Worth before, much less Worth Reverence.
“What can I do to make her summer more pleasant?” Jacaranda asked. “Young ladies in the area would enjoy meeting her, I’m sure.”
“Then you should take her to meet them.”
“Mr. Kettering, it might have escaped your shockingly egalitarian notice that I am your housekeeper, but your neighbors know my station. You will take your sister calling, not I.”
His tea cup was set down with a little plink! of…not surprise, but disgruntlement, perhaps.
“I hardly know my neighbors in these surrounds, dear lady. Between trying to keep up with my correspondence from Town and seeing to my property here, I do not intend to make time to remedy the oversight.”
Jacaranda had seven brothers, and Mr. Kettering’s tone had the effect of battle trumpets summoning an experienced war horse at a dead gallop.
“You’ve neglected this estate for years, and we’ve managed well enough in your absence,” Jacaranda shot back. “Your sister needs you, and no one else can see to her in this regard.”
He put another half a crepe on her plate. “You don’t spare your heavy guns, do you, Wyeth?”
“I have not the least idea what you mean, sir, except for a general notion that siblings ought to know and care for each other. Family ought to. I can and will make an effort to befriend the girl, and I can take Avery to play with the neighbor’s children, provided you visit them first and send the requisite inquiring notes.”
“I have to visit before my niece can even take her damned doll calling on other children?”
“You must make the girls think you’ll enjoy it,” Jacaranda added, just for spite. “I suggest you start with Squire Mullens immediately beyond the Millers’ tenant holding. He has six daughters.”
His eyes narrowed, and Jacaranda found her crepe wasn’t merely good, it was delicious.
“I have taken a viper to my bosom.” Mr. Kettering slathered butter on a piece of toast, then jam, then sliced it in half and put a triangle on Jacaranda’s plate. “Six daughters?”
“The Damuses have eight girls, but only two are marriageable age.”
“We’ll start with the Damuses, and you will join me for breakfast regularly, Wyeth. I’ll need your familiarity with the parish to plan the girls’ social calendar.” He bent to take a bite of his toast, while Jacaranda was sure he was hiding another smile.
He’d cornered her neatly, making her attendance at breakfast a show of consideration for the children, not an order.
“I will join you for breakfast.” She took another bite of a crepe so light it nearly levitated off of her fork. “And only breakfast.”
“Oh, fair enough, for the present. Now finish your meal. I’ve a notion to look at that bump on your head.”
As if Worth Kettering’s notions bore the same weight as celestial commandments or royal decrees.
“No need for that. I’ve quite recovered.” Jacaranda chewed her toast carefully, for even toast required mastication, and the effect was to pull on that area of her head still lightly throbbing.
“You’ve put every bite to the same side of your mouth, my dear. Your injury pains you. Did you sleep well?”
“I did.” After a time. “I usually do.” Particularly when her pillow was swathed in silk.
“I usually don’t,” he said, frowning at his tea cup.
“Perhaps the country air will agree with you.” She’d meant to say it maliciously, because he was so great a fool as to think correspondence from Town more important than a newly discovered sister.
“Intriguing thought. So what would a conscientious landowner do, were he facing my day?”
Papa had been nothing if not conscientious about his acres, and Grey followed very much in Papa’s footsteps.
“A conscientious landowner would ride out. He might take his land steward, particularly after an absence, or take a few of his favorite hounds.” Or he’d take a few of his more boisterous sons, and the house would, for a few short hours, be blessedly peaceful. “He’d look in on his tenants, especially those with new babies or a recent loss.”
“I like babies.”
Oh, he would. Jacaranda finished her toast.
“Will my steward know of such things? Babies and departed grannies?”
“The Hendersons lost a child this spring, a bad case of flu,” Jacaranda said, pushing her nearly empty plate away a few inches. “A little girl named Linda. She had always been sickly, but they’d got her through the winter and were hoping she’d turned a corner.”
He took a bite from the half crepe she’d left on her plate, chewed and arranged his fork and knife across the top of his plate. “You want me to call on these people?”
“I’ll pack you a hamper. They’ve many mouths to feed.”
“I can’t ride over with a hamper on Goliath’s quarters.” He lifted his tea cup, examined the dregs, set it down. “Come with me?”
A request, not an order. Good behavior must always be rewarded. “To call on a tenant, I can accompany you. Their wives will be glad of another woman to chat with.”
“You know their wives?”
“When your tenants have illnesses or particular needs, they send to us here and we provide what aid we can. The English countryside remains a place where one’s neighbors are a source of support, and of course I know their wives.”
He folded his serviette in precise thirds and laid it by his plate. “Where else do I need to show the flag?”
“These calls, the first you’ve made in years, aren’t showing the flag.” She regarded him with some displeasure, for the crepes had been very good, while the company was vexing. To deal with this man, she’d need her strength. “These people labor for your enrichment. Their welfare should concern you.”
“It should,” he agreed easily enough, giving Jacaranda the sense he’d lost interest in her scolds. “Let’s have a look at that knot on your head, hmm?” He rose to stand beside her chair, clearly prepared to hold it for her, as if she were…a lady.
He’d love nothing more than if she fussed at him for that while he stood over her, so she held her tongue.
“Over by the window.” He drew her to her feet and tugged her by the wrist to the light pouring in the east-facing window. “Turn yourself, just”—he took her by the shoulders and positioned her to his liking—“like that.”
When he stepped close, she got a fat whiff of delicious, clean man. He used some sort of shaving soap that made her want to lean closer and intoxicate her nose on his woodsy aroma. The fragrance had spicy little grace notes, as well—even his scent held unplumbed depths.
“You must have a busy day of your own,” he suggested, carefully tilting her head in his big hands.
“Industry is its own reward.” He had offered the gambit to distract Jacaranda from his fingers tunneling through her hair, and that was decent of him, so she rallied her manners. “In truth, I have done as much preparation for your visit as I possibly can, but the house is always kept in readiness, so the burden of additional work is not great.”
“Then you might enjoy coming along with me on these tenant calls?” Gently, gently, Mr. Kettering moved his touch over the knot at her temple. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“A little.” While his touch was lovely.
“The bleeding did not resume,” he said, slipping his fingers from her hair, but not stepping back. “I’m glad you won’t mind showing me about the farms.”
He was smiling down at her again, pleased with himself, the lout, and before Jacaranda could beg to differ with him, he patted her arm.
“We’ll wait until after lunch, so I can fire off a few letters first, otherwise I’ll never be up to dandling babies and pinching grannies.”
“Please say you would never pinch a grandmother!”
Now he did step back, his eyes dancing.
“My dear Mrs. Wyeth, I would pinch a granny, but only because she pinched me first. I know a number of grannies who aren’t to be trusted in this regard. A shameless lot, for the most part. Complete tarts. Makes one look forward to his own dotage. Shall we say, one of the clock?”
“I’ll have luncheon moved up to noon,” she said, not taking the bait no matter how succulent, no matter how close to her nose he dangled it while looking the picture of masculine innocence. “In deference to the fact that the girls traveled for much of the day yesterday, I’ve planned luncheon as a picnic meal on the back lawn.”
“I’m dining on the ground with children, being pinched by grannies, and acquiring a lot of smelly, drooling hounds, and you expect the country air to agree with me? You are an admirably cruel woman, Jacaranda Wyeth. I’ll meet you at the coach house at one.”
* * *
“How are you ladies settling in?” Worth put the question to his sister and his niece, who both looked quite pleased to be eating outside amid bugs and breezes, not a tablecloth in sight.
Avery, as was her habit, went chattering off in French, lightened by a dash of Italian, with the occasional foray into her expanding English vocabulary. The coach ride had been interminable; the horses had been very grand, but not as grand as Goliath; the coach fare had been very good, if difficult to tidily consume in a moving vehicle; and Miss Snyder had been as quiet as a moose.
“Mouse,” Yolanda corrected, smiling—the first time Worth had seen that expression on his sister’s face since her arrival at Trysting.
“What is the difference? Mouse, moose, you know I refer to a little creature for the cat to eat.”
“There is a difference,” Yolanda said. “Worth, have you pencil and paper?”
He passed over the contents of his breast pocket, and Yolanda started scribbling.
“Where have you seen a moose, Yolanda?” he asked, selecting a cold chicken leg to gnaw on.
“In books, unless you count Harolda Bigglesworth. Poor thing had a name like that and dimensions to match, but she was very merry.”
“Shall we invite her out to the country with us?” Worth had to admit the chicken was delicious, and with a serviette wrapped around one end, not so very messy.
“We shall not,” Yolanda said as she sketched. “She’s been engaged to some viscount since she was a child, and association with the likes of me would not do.”
“Your brother is a perishing earl.” Worth waved his chicken leg for emphasis. “Why not associate with you?”
“Your moose,” Yolanda said, passing the sketch over to her niece. “He’s a grand fellow, nigh as big as Goliath, and he lives in the Canadian woods.”
“My goodness, he looks like a cross between a cow and a deer, but what a nose he has!”
Worth peeked over Avery’s shoulder.
“You are talented,” he said. “Talent is worth money, you know. I have a client who will make a tidy living painting portraits, a very tidy living. You should develop your art, Yolanda.”
“Drawing is one thing they let you do,” she said, tucking the pencil behind her ear.
“They let you do?” Worth set aside the chicken bone, for he’d eaten every scrap of meat on it.
“When you’re on room restriction at school, you have your school supplies to entertain you, but only those, so I drew a great deal. Avery, will you eat every bite of that potato salad?”
Avery made Yolanda earn her salad by teaching her a half-dozen German words. Yolanda made Avery try to copy the moose, with comic results. All in all, it was a pleasurable, nutritious way for Worth to pass an hour with his…family, out of doors. On that thought, he pushed back to sit on his heels.
“My dears, I must away to impersonate a country squire. While I’m chatting up the neighbors, I can ask if any ponies are going begging in the surrounds.”
“Oh, Uncle!” Avery’s jubilation at the prospect of a pony knew no linguistic bounds, but Yolanda merely smiled at her niece and toyed with a bite of cheese.
“Yolanda? What say you? Shall we find you a gallant steed so you can canter about the countryside and turn all the lads’ heads?”
Yolanda studied her cheese. “Good heavens, no, thank you. I’ve heard regular riding can make a girl’s figure lopsided.”
“So we’ll teach you to drive,” Worth suggested, “or fit you out with a left-side saddle and a right-side saddle, and you can alternate.”
“That’s what I shall do,” Avery interjected. “I shall ride with Uncle every day.”
Worth drew a finger down her nose. “No, you shall not. This is England, and it rains too frequently for daily hacks. Well, think about it, Yolanda. I must call upon the neighbors, many of whom are possessed of offspring whose acquaintance you should make. We’ll be here for months, and I can’t have the two of you growing lonely or bored.”
Particularly not when Yolanda had been both at her fancy school.
He got to his feet and made for the coach house, but the meal, surprisingly pleasant though it had been, had left him more convinced than ever that Yolanda was hiding a great deal.
* * *
Hess Kettering, more rightly, Hessian Pierpont Kettering, Earl of Grampion, perused the first correspondence he’d received from his baby brother in five years.
Get your lordly arse down to Trysting before Michaelmas or I’ll send Yolanda home on a mail coach.
“You’ll go, won’t you?” Lady Evers’s eyes held concern, but only the concern of a friend. They’d tried a dalliance years ago, but neither of them had put any heart into it, and the friendship remained. Now she was spending a pretty summer morning in his library, sipping tea with him at his desk, and fretting over him—to a friendly degree.
“Worth is telling me the girl is safe with him for at least another few months,” Hess said, “maybe even asking me to give him those months, but he’s also issuing an invitation.”
“He’s hurting, Grampion. You’re head of the family, and that puts the business of reconciliations squarely on your handsome shoulders. If this is the invitation you get, then this is the invitation you accept.”
Surely only a friend would address him with that blend of amusement and admonition?
“Worth was always prone to dramatics, and that’s what got us into this situation in the first place.”
Not quite true. A young woman’s duplicity had done more than a little to stir the pot of familial estrangement.
“You could have gone after him,” Lady Evers said, pulling on her gloves. “He wasn’t even quite an adult all those years ago.”
Hessian came around the desk to scoot her chair back, now that he’d endured tea, scones, and the beginnings of a scold.
“Papa decided against retrieving him—a younger son must be allowed his pride, according to the earl—though I think it broke his lordship’s heart, and then I was too busy marrying to go haring south on a goose chase.”
“Your only brother and heir is not a goose.”
“He acted like a goose.” So, apparently, had Hessian.
Her ladyship tactfully pretended to peruse a portrait of Hess’s mother hanging over the fireplace, one she’d seen dozens of times. The two bore a resemblance, something Hess noticed only now.
“Were you the soul of probity at age seventeen, Grampion?”
Yes, he had been, more fool him. He slipped her arm through his, because the time had come to gently herd her toward the door.
“I was seventeen, and that’s as much as I’ll admit. If I’m to heed Worth’s summons, a journey of two hundred miles will take some preparation. What have you heard from Lucas?”
She prattled on about her oldest son, spending a summer in the south between public school terms, and in her voice Hess heard pride, longing, and love. Not for the first time, Hess regretted the lack of children in his own household. Grampion was beautiful, the land graciously generous, the views spectacular.
But lonely. His only consolation was that Worth had no children either, no wife, no family about except a little niece who likely understood only French, and now Yolanda, a near adult and about as sunny-natured as a hurricane.
Still, Hess wouldn’t remain in the north, without niece or sister, while Worth had both, though neither would Hess go galloping south and solve all the family’s problems himself—again.
* * *
“Tell me about these Damuses,” Worth said as he settled onto the seat of the dog cart beside Mrs. Wyeth. Goliath—trained to drive as well as ride, like any proper mount of his breeding and dimensions—was in the traces, which had required loosening the harness by a few holes in all directions.
“The Damuses are not an old local family,” Mrs. Wyeth said as they clattered out of the coach yard. “She was a Dacey, and he’s the second son of a baronet in Dorset. Their holding was willed to him by a grandmother, and she brought a good settlement to the union , so they prosper.”
“With twelve children, that’s not all they do. How about the Hendersons? Have they leporine inclinations?”
“Leporine?”
“In the nature of a hare, similar to caprine, or vulpine, in the nature of a goat, or a fox, you know?”
“My Latin is rusty. The Hendersons are a young couple who moved here from Dorset when his cousin left the property for London. They’ve three boys yet, now that Linda has passed on. The land is good, but they haven’t been farming it for long, and it takes time to learn the way of a piece of ground.”
What manner of housekeeper was brought up on Latin?
Worth turned Goliath onto the lane. “Ground is just there. What do you mean, learn the way of it?”
“This field tends to get boggy in spring, but mostly in the one corner, so you might plant that corner later. That field is perfect for oats, but doesn’t do quite such a good job with barley. A particular irrigation ditch is always the first to back up when the leaves come off in the fall. That sort of thing.”
Agricultural land was like women then, full of idiosyncrasies and quirks. “How come you, a housekeeper, to know about that sort of thing?”
“I wasn’t always a housekeeper, Mr. Kettering. My father was responsible for a great many acres, and land doesn’t farm itself.”
So her father was likely a steward to some lord. Worth hoarded up that information the way some of his clients hoarded their denarii and sesterces.
“What do the Hendersons do well?”
“Her people are Irish on her mother’s side, which is part of the reason they left their home county.”
“We’re superstitious about third-generation Irish, are we?”
“I haven’t asked her for the particulars, but Mrs. Henderson can tat lace so delicate it hardly catches sunlight. Mr. Henderson has a magnificent sow by the name of William.”
“A sow named William, and my livelihood depends on such as these?”
“The boys named the pig, because she lets them ride her, so she’s in the way of a porcine charger.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to ride this great pig?”
“Don’t let me stop you, if that’s your inclination.”
He deserved that, and it was worth the insult to know Wyeth was enjoying herself. “Goliath would never bear the shame if I rode a pig. Is there a marker for the child’s resting place?”
She was silent for a moment, and Worth was pleased to have surprised her. He’d surprised himself, but he knew what it was to lose a family member, and to some people, a marker would be important.
“We’ll go by the church on the way over,” Wyeth said. “We can look.”
They found the grave but no marker, and the curate intimated none had been ordered. Worth drew the man aside, made arrangements for something befitting a girl child, and handed Wyeth back into the gig.
“How is it you know French, Wyeth?” He slapped the reins on Goliath’s shiny black rump before his housekeeper could remark his discussion with the curate.
“I had a good upbringing, and French is not a difficult language.”
A steward’s daughter might have a good upbringing, if her father served the nobility. “Where did you have this good upbringing?”
“Dorset.”
Dorset, from whence the beleaguered Hendersons hailed, though from Worth’s observation, they did not know they were beleaguered. The lady of the house had a sadness in her eyes, but she was much loved by her beamish young spouse and doted on her menfolk. Worth dutifully asked to see the magnificent sow and, while the boys rode her around the yard, inquired of Mr. Henderson if Mrs. Henderson might consider parting with some of the exquisite lace gracing their spotless cottage.
“Whyever would a grand fellow like yourself be in want of lace?”
“I’m not, personally, but I’m also not such a grand fellow that I’d pass up an opportunity to make a coin or two. Lace like that is becoming scarce, and all the fine ladies in Town will pay dearly for flounces, ruffles and mantillas. I know modistes and tailors who’d die for as much of that lace as they could get their hands on.”
“You’d buy Trudy’s lace?” Henderson was tall, rangy, blond and ruddy. He was also besotted with his round, red-haired Trudy, and appropriately protective of her.
“If you’re willing to part with your goods,” Worth said. “I’d take a commission, for arranging the London end of things, but there’d be coin for you and yours as well.”
William came to a halt, like any well-trained mount, then—with the two little boys bouncing happily on her back—trotted off in the direction of the chicken coop.
“Trude’s proud of that lace,” Henderson said. “We’ve shown the boys how to tat a little, too.”
“You know your lady best. Discuss it with her and send word of your decision. Seems a shame to keep work that fine a secret, though, and I could use the coin.”
Henderson looked him up and down, from his brilliantly white cravat to his shiny riding boots and all the Bond Street finery in between. “Takes a bit of the ready to trick yourself out like a swell.”
“More than a bit. Now, you’re a married fellow. What is the secret to politely prying two women apart when a man needs to be on his way?”
Henderson’s expression turned sympathetic. “Can’t be done. Trude gets to visiting in the churchyard, too, and the boys have walked halfway home before I get her in the cart.”
“Don’t suppose that pig knows how to drive?”
“The boys are working on it. They want to be famous throughout the shire for training the realm’s first draft pig.”
Worth complimented the boys on William’s accomplishments, scratched the pig’s hairy chin, and took his housekeeper by the elbow to remove her from the Hendersons’ front porch.
“Mrs. Henderson’s a genius with her lace, isn’t she?” he observed when he’d handed Wyeth up.
“The whole family can do work like that, but it’s hard on the eyes. We’d best hurry. Looks like we’re in for a squall.”
“Goliath is the steady sort, and he must live up to the standards set by that pig. He’ll get us home safe and sound. What did you ladies talk about?”
“The usual.” She pulled her shawl closer. The temperature, which had been summery warm, was dropping as the breeze picked up. “The boys are growing, the crops are coming along, she misses her Linda, but may be carrying again already.”
“The fences were not in the best repair, and I suspect one corner of the cottage roof leaks.” Though Henderson hadn’t mentioned either problem.
“Your steward will have a list of tenant repairs for you,” Wyeth said, eyeing the sky. “A short list, but he’ll want to show it to you before he spends any coin on maintenance.”
“I know this steward you mention. Mr. Reilly sends me reports each month almost as detailed as yours. Is the weather always so changeable here?”
“This is England, so yes.”
It might have been Worth’s imagination—or wishful thinking—but it seemed to him she bundled closer to his side.
“Your bonnet might get a soaking.” She likely had only the one. “May we impose on a neighbor along the way to the manor?”
“The Hendersons are the closest tenants, and the church is kept locked on weekdays.”
“To prevent felons from taking refuge?”
She made no reply, and from the south came a long, low rumble of thunder.
Worth gestured with his chin, because his hands were on the reins. “A covered bridge, about half a mile ahead. We’ll make it.”
Goliath gave them his best bound-for-home trot, and a gust of rain spattered down, but they made the covered bridge before the heavens opened up. To Worth’s surprise, his housekeeper’s gloved hand was manacled around his arm when he drew the horse up in the middle of the bridge.
“You are pale as a winding-sheet, Wyeth. Is your head paining you?” He set the brake and wrapped the reins, unwilling to move until she loosened her grip.
She slipped her hands to her lap. “I hate to be out in storms. When I was a girl, I saw a tree struck by lightning, a lovely old oak I’d been playing in an hour earlier. The tree went up in flames and became an ugly, charred skeleton. My brothers thought it wonderfully dramatic. I hated it. The tree had been refuge for me.”
“Brothers can be the worst.” He climbed down and came around to her side of the gig. She sat straight as a lamp post, clutching her shawl around her as if a winter gale rather than a summer storm threatened. “Get you down, Wyeth. The weather must have its fifteen minutes, and Henderson said the corn can use the rain. Tell me more of these disgraceful brothers.”
He lifted her from the seat before she could protest, then she stood beside him, looking pale and shivery, while he untied her bonnet and set it on the seat.
“The one I’m closest to is Grey, and he’s a good brother.”
Worth settled his coat around her shoulders. He liked the look of her in his clothes already, and this was only the second time he’d offered her his coat.
Fast work, though, even for him.