Chapter Four
“Tell me about your brother Grey,” Worth said, offering his arm to a woman who was not, after all, without a few human failings. “I have a perfectly useless brother in the north, and we’ve him to thank for Yolanda’s charming presence.”
“She is charming,” Wyeth said, sails filling, but then a loud crack of thunder sounded right overhead and she hunched into him.
“Silly woman,” Worth murmured, and his arms went around her without him thinking about it, the same as they might have gone around Avery after a nightmare. Then the rain was too loud on the roof to permit further conversation—or further endearments.
Wyeth stayed bundled against him, not quite shivering with cold, but twitchy with nerves. When the rain changed to hail, she tucked her nose against his neck and held on to him with gratifying tenacity, making no move to lecture or move off when Worth’s hand settled on the back of her head and stroked her hair.
He’d never quite appreciated the potential in rainy days before, nor the value of a horse who was blasé regarding the weather.
“I’m being ridiculous,” she said, when the rain slowed. “I can’t seem to let go of you, though.”
“You have a frightening association with storms like this, and I’m at least good for keeping off the chill.” He rested his chin on her hair, which smelled wonderfully of lavender and sunshine. “You were about to tell me of your brother.”
“Grey is older than I. He became head of the family quite young, and that’s a difficult role when a man has eight younger siblings and half-siblings.”
“You’re the oldest girl?”
“How did you know?”
“How else would you have learned how to command a regiment, hmm?”
“My mama died after my younger brother Will was born. When my step-mama came along, and all the little ones appeared, I enjoyed being the big sister.”
Little ones didn’t simply appear. “I’ve always wished I came from a large family,” Worth said, keeping an ear on the rain. “I have a brother and now a sister extant, and we have Avery. That’s it. While my brother and I are estranged, my sister and I are strangers.”
“Has your brother met Avery?”
“No, he has not, the wretch.”
“He didn’t tell you about Yolanda, did he?”
“Hard to say, because we don’t exactly correspond, though I’ve sent him an epistle over this folly with Yolanda. The storm is moving off.”
“I should move, too.”
No, she should not. “Soon, my dear.”
When she eased her grip a few drippy, quiet moments later, he let her step back, taking her warmth and a luscious abundance of female curves with her. Everlasting Powers, if he’d known his housekeeper was such a goddess, he’d have removed to the country years ago.
To do exactly what, he would not admit even to himself, but getting caught in storms with her was a delightful place to start.
“I’m much braver if I can remain indoors,” she said, moving off to pet his horse. “He’s a stalwart fellow. His name is Goliath?”
“He’s a big, stalwart fellow, so yes, he’s Goliath.”
“Some draft in his lineage?” She winced as thunder rumbled in the distance.
“On the dam side. Let’s watch the water rise.” He tugged her by the arm away from his horse and brought her to the upstream side of the bridge. “I have good memories of storms, of rafting down swollen streams immediately after a deluge, of seeing all my dams swept out to sea by a good downpour. As a boy, it was wonderful.”
“That must be the appeal of sons for many men,” she said, taking a place along the rail beside him. “Men talk of dynasty, legacies and successions, but what a son really means is more forts in the attics, toy soldiers, and dams.”
“How many brothers have you?”
“Seven, and one sister.”
“No doubt you and this sister are close?”
She peered down into the roiling water. “In a way. You’re being very kind.”
“How will I know whose pig to throw a saddle on if I let you come to harm in a storm, Wyeth? Besides, we aren’t enemies merely because we’re different genders.”
“Gender isn’t a detail, either.”
Her gender wasn’t a detail. “I like women, I’ll have you know, and not in the sense you’re about to accuse me of, or not exclusively in that sense.” He turned, resting his elbows on the railing, while she kept to her stream-facing position.
“You like women because they cook and clean and sew?”
“I’ve hired men to do those things in my London household, my dear, but no. I like women because they don’t fight stupid duels over inebriated insults nobody can recall the next morning. Women don’t make rude noises in public or relieve themselves against any handy wall. You have seven brothers, Wyeth, I know now you cannot be shocked. I like women—honest women, that is—because they smell good, because they give us babies, because they…what?”
“You are prissy and old-fashioned.”
“You think because I’m such a large fellow I can’t be fastidious?” He let her have her smirk, because it confirmed the weather was no longer unnerving her. “You think because I respect women for their inherent bravery I’m old-fashioned?”
“Bravery in what regard?”
“Leave childbearing to men and the race wouldn’t last a century. All children would have to be born capable of cutting their own meat, washing their own soiled nappies, and talking themselves out of nightmares—twenty times in a twenty-four-hour period, and multiply that times the number of toddlers underfoot. Don’t forget they’d have to teach themselves how to do sums and read, for men hardly know themselves after three years of university.”
She gave him a funny, half-smiling perusal, then pushed off the rail.
“If we keep Goliath to the walk, we can likely find our way home now.”
“You don’t mind the occasional shower when we pass under a tree? I can send a closed carriage back for you.” He didn’t want to. He wanted to settle her right beside him on the gig again, and abruptly, the prospect of visiting his tenants shifted from drudgery to something approximating a pleasant duty.
Particularly if he could manage to dodge a few more storms with Wyeth in the process.
“A little rain isn’t what unnerves me, Mr. Kettering, and I don’t melt.”
He handed her up, having sense enough to keep to himself the thought of circumstances under which she might, indeed, be made to melt.
* * *
Worth Kettering was kind.
The realization disconcerted Jacaranda, because it required her to admit she’d been hell-bent on finding fault with him. He’d handed her down from the gig, bowed over her hand as if they’d been on a social outing, then winked at her and left her in peace.
She understood what that wink meant: The secret of your chicken-heartedness is safe with me.
Oh, but he didn’t know the half of it. Yes, she was uncomfortable out in storms, but he didn’t know she’d heard him call her “silly woman,” and the affection in his tone had sent her insides prancing about. Nobody referred to her as silly, though five years ago, she’d been worse than silly. Nobody held her, stroked her hair, or offered her their jacket when she took a chill.
And nobody on the entire face of the earth wore as enticing a scent as Worth Kettering.
He’d be gone soon, though. Trysting was merely a place to find his balance with Yolanda and Avery under the same roof. If Jacaranda were lucky, a few more weeks and Mr. Kettering of the warm jacket, delicious scent, and rogue’s wink would be on his way.
Then she would be on her way. She’d promised, after all, and the usual pleas and threats in Step-Mama’s last epistle had borne a desperate edge.
“Mrs. W!” Old Simmons’s voice was raised in a quavery approximation of a shout. “Mrs. W? Ye must come quick to the children’s rooms.”
He wheezed down the kitchen steps, looking mortally relieved to have found her.
“The young ladies be in a taking, Miss Snyder is wringing her hands, and ye must come.”
“You sit, Mr. Simmons, and catch your breath. I’m on my way.”
She did not run, though. Simmons had already set a questionable example for the junior staff with his haste and shouting. She also suspected Yolanda and Avery were engaged in a version of finding their balance with each other, and among young ladies who were family, that way would not always be smooth.
“Girls, please stop shouting,” Miss Snyder was saying when Jacaranda arrived at Avery’s room. “I meant no offense, not to anybody. We’re to help each other in this life and—Mrs. Wyeth, hello. I apologize on behalf of the children for the racket.”
“These two are old enough to make their own apologies for cutting up the king’s peace. Now what has caused this uproar? Avery, you first.” Jacaranda closed the door and stood with her arms crossed, barely resisting the urge to tap her foot.
Avery launched a righteous volley in English liberally garnished with French, explaining that dear Wickie was off in the village on her half day, but the Miss Snyder creature attempted to brush Avery’s hairs in Wickie’s absence, and while an aunt might brush a niece’s hairs, Miss Snyder was nobody to be assuming such privileges. Not nobody at all, of less consequence than a moose.
Yolanda looked abruptly away, and Miss Snyder looked down at her hands.
“Yolanda, what have you to say?”
Yolanda took a moment to compose herself, for which Jacaranda respected the girl.
“Miss Snyder was only offering to help, and Avery went off on a grand scold, and that was wrong. I am not brushing my niece’s hair until she apologizes.”
“I shall not apologize to somebody I don’t know for forbidding her to brush my hairs.”
“And yet,”—Jacaranda treated Avery’s tousled hair to a slow perusal—“you can hardly come to table with your hair looking like that, can you, child? The hedgehogs will ask to make the acquaintance of your hairdresser.”
Avery got a look at herself in the cheval mirror and was too young to hide a grin. “Wickie will be back, and she can brush my hairs.”
“If she pleases to,” Jacaranda said. “Who pays Wickie’s salary, Miss Avery?”
“Uncle.”
“So from whom will Wickie take her orders?”
“Uncle, but she listens to me, too.”
“Miss Snyder will listen to you, too, so what do you wish you’d said to her?”
Avery studied her reflection in the mirror, biting her lower lip.
“Miss Snyder, I do not know you, and you are not my Wickie. I would not have you brush my hairs. I will brush them myself, but thank you for wishing to help.”
“You love your Wickie,” Miss Snyder said. “Nobody should be insulted by that. Which brush would you like to use?”
Problem solved, Jacaranda repaired to her sitting room, intent on regaining her own balance, with herself, by herself. Alas, Mr. Reilly, the land steward, patrolled the door to her parlor, a relieved smile blooming on his face when he spotted her.
“Our dear Mrs. Wyeth! There you are, and how are you on this fine day?”
Subtlety was not Reilly’s forte, but he was good-hearted, if timorous. The middle of the month would soon be upon them, the master was in residence, and Reilly wasn’t about to forgo his monthly cup of tea.
“I am fine, sir, and you?”
“Ready to spend an hour with a gentle lady,” he said, bowing slightly. “I don’t suppose you have a pot of tea on hand?”
“We’ll ring for a tray.” Like Mr. Simmons and half the footmen, Mr. Reilly indulged a sweet tooth at every opportunity. “How is Mrs. Reilly?”
He prattled on about his wife’s sister’s cousin’s something or other, then wandered around to discussing his various children, at least one of whom was the brightest scholar ever to go up to university, then tiptoed up to the topic of the day with all the stealth of William, the amazing draft sow.
“I suppose I’ll be handing my report to his lordship this month rather than entrusting it to the king’s post. Quite a change, quite a change. But a good change, a happy change, one might say.”
“Tempus fugit, Mr. Reilly.” Jacaranda was spared further polite blather by the arrival of the tea tray. She served her guest his usual: no milk, three sugars, and six tea cakes. When Mr. Reilly was enthusiastically ruining his dinner, she started the list for him.
“The Hendersons’ cottage roof is starting to leak in the front room, and the Porters’ oldest son is making noises about going into London to look for work.”
“Is he now? The boy will need a character, and he’s a hard worker.”
“His mother is most anxious to think of him in London, when he’s never set foot from the shire before, but he’s a good man with a horse, and there are horses everywhere.”
“That he is.” Reilly held his cup out for another serving, for demolishing tea cakes at such a great rate was thirsty work. “Any other little details you’d like me to include?”
She went on, recounting progress made by the tenants on various projects and needs foreseeable in the upcoming month. Early summer was a lovely time of year, when the crops were ripening, the weather mild, and a thousand pesky repairs and put-off projects could be tended to if one were diligent and organized.
Reilly’s pencil and paper were out before she’d finished her list, as they usually were. He always thanked her for noting a few trivialities he’d missed and made noises about a woman’s eye being sharper about certain things. Then he showed up a month later, smiling, inhaling cakes and biscuits, and reducing ten flooded acres of barley to a triviality.
Jacaranda didn’t mind, really. An estate prospered when the senior staff were congenial and cooperative, and she was out and about with the tenants more than Reilly was. Her successor would be apprised of how things went on, and Trysting would continue to prosper.
Yolanda tapped on the door not two sips after Reilly had left.
“Come in, Yolanda.” Jacaranda peered into her teapot. “I can offer you a cup, if you’re of a mind.”
“No tea, thank you.” She advanced into the room, looking about with obvious curiosity. “Your sitting room is lovely.”
“My retreat, at least it feels that way.” Or had felt that way. “What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to ask if I could move to a different room.”
“Of course, but is the bed not to your liking?”
“The bed is quite acceptable, but I’m five doors down from Avery, and I noticed the room across the hall from hers isn’t occupied.” She wandered around the parlor, inspecting much, touching nothing. She did lean in to sniff the white roses in a crystal vase by the window.
Her brother sniffed bouquets in the same manner.
“I can have you moved before tonight.” Jacaranda rose, giving up on her tea. “If your current room is lacking in some regard, I’d rather know about it.”
“Avery has nightmares,” Yolanda said. “Mrs. Hartwick sleeps down the hall and has poor hearing, or she’s unwilling to answer when Avery taps on her door at night. If Avery knows I’m right across the hall, she might rest easier.”
“She’s had a trying start in life, what with losing her parents. What shall I tell your brother regarding this change of venue for you?” Jacaranda gave her roses a drink from the pitcher on the mantel, and wondered if Yolanda might enjoy wearing a touch of rose-water scent. Young ladies could be shy about such things.
She certainly had been.
Yolanda paused before a piece of framed cutwork near the door. “Do you have to tell Worth anything?”
“He strikes me as the sort of fellow who will notice.” He’d notice if his sister adopted a fragrance, too, more evidence that he leaned in the direction of being a good brother. “He doesn’t hole up in the estate office, or spend the day riding out with his steward and his hounds. He’s restless, I think, and unpredictable.”
Yolanda paced off to study a miniature of Jacaranda’s mother, a cheerful, competent woman who’d stood nearly six feet tall.
“My brother Hess said Worth has always been prodigal, a vagabond. How can he say that when Worth left home at age seventeen and has been well established in London since finishing at university?”
“Siblings sometimes see each other more clearly than anybody else.” Though sometimes siblings were blind. “When will you be available for a tour of the house?”
Yolanda went back to studying the cutwork, a project Jacaranda had taken on when Daisy had become engaged, and snipping something nearly to bits had appealed strongly.
“Me? Why would I tour the house?”
“You are the closest thing your brother has to a hostess here. Some girls your age are married and presiding over their own homes, children on the way. I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t at some point show you about the place.”
“Avery will want to come.”
The words held such a mix of resignation and resentment, Jacaranda smiled. How many times had she felt the same way about Daisy? Dear, little, innocent, bothersome, pesky, adorable Daisy.
“Avery will play with the Hendersons’ boys some fine morning later this week, and she will adore their riding pig.”
“A riding pig?”
“For small children, the beast is quite impressive, and we can use that time for more mature pursuits.” Though Mr. Kettering had made a lovely fuss over William, too—perhaps because the pig was female?
“Good heavens, a riding pig. Well, yes, a tour of the house sounds preferable, if more sedate. Shall we say the next sunny morning?”
“We shall, and Mrs. Hartwick and Miss Snyder will be grateful for a break, I’m sure.”
“They will.” Yolanda’s smile was dazzling, a more innocent version of her older brother’s. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Jacaranda made a mental note to regard any smiling Kettering with caution. “Please do ask.”
“We’re to take supper en famille, with Wickie, Miss Snyder, Worth, Avery and myself all together. Will you join us?”
Jacaranda hadn’t seen this coming and could barely stand the expectation in Yolanda’s blue eyes. “Join you?”
“Avery is comfortable with her precious Uncle Worth, but I hardly want to spend the entire meal hearing about French mice or German mice, for that matter. Wickie and Miss Snyder are both in awe of Worth because he’s quite…well, he’s different from their usual fare. They didn’t exactly put me up to asking, but they noted you seem to deal with him comfortably.”
A little too comfortably, at least in the midst of rainstorms. “What about you, Yolanda? Does the prospect of dinner conversation with your brother loom uncomfortably for you?”
“I’ve known him less than ten days,” Yolanda said, sounding both annoyed and perplexed. “And yet we have the same laugh, the same sibling, the same niece. He got me out of that awful school the first time he was asked, which is more than I can say for our benighted brother the earl. I don’t know Worth well, but I have an opportunity to change that now, so yes, dinners with him will be important to me.”
She had her brother’s careful diction, his rational mind, and his ability to mask true emotion behind an articulate fa?ade. On a young girl, those abilities struck Jacaranda as a little sad.
“I’ll join you, provided your brother doesn’t object to eating with the help,” Jacaranda said. “For the first week, anyway, and then we’ll see how it goes.”
“Oh, thank you!” She fired off another one of those dazzling smiles, threw her arms around Jacaranda’s neck in an exuberant squeeze, then whirled and disappeared, all in the same instant.
While Jacaranda wondered firstly what she’d got herself into, and secondly, how Worth Kettering was brother to an earl and not one of his staff or his tenants seemed to know it.
* * *
Grey was a dutiful boy in some regards, also stubborn. Francine resolved to be more stubborn still.
“You must put a stop to Jacaranda’s latest nonsense,” she said. She’d chosen her moment well, catching him in the propagation house, where few of the servants and none of the siblings would venture without his permission.
“Good day, your ladyship.” He didn’t so much as glance up from the plant on the table before him, didn’t offer her a bow or a smile. “If you’d give me a moment.”
She’d given him years, and had he so much as bothered to set a handsome foot in the London ballrooms? No, he had not. He remained bent over his plant, some sort of knife in his hand and a smock—a servant’s smock—tied about his person.
“The matter is urgent, sir, or I would not endure the heat and stench you seem to think your precious roses need.”
How much coin was spent keeping this glass house heated in winter? Paying for gardeners they could ill afford?
He sliced at one branch, affixed it to the stem of the plant standing in a pot on the wooden table, and held the two together.
“If you could pass me that length of twine?”
She snatched up a piece of string about a foot long and flung it at him.
“The fate of this family’s good name hangs in the balance, and you’re playing in the dirt. What would your father say?”
He finished tying the two plants together with a small, symmetric bow. “He’d say, ‘Good luck with the grafting, because the crosses aren’t amounting to anything.’”
“Your sister is courting ruin. What will your roses matter when none of you can find wives because of Jacaranda’s foolishness?”
His gaze lingered on the rose bush, and for a moment, Francine missed her late husband. He’d gazed at his roses in the same besotted fashion, and occasionally at her, too.
“Jacaranda is not foolish. Of all my siblings, she’s the least foolish, and we’re none of us looking for wives.”
The very problem. Until one of the boys married, and married well, Francine was doomed to dwell in poverty, in a house of chaos, noise, and social obscurity—but no longer. Jacaranda would come home, the boys would be married off, the finances would prosper, and all would be well.
“You should be looking for wives. If you boys would do your duty, this family’s fortunes would come right. You and Will have had plenty long enough to sow wild oats, or graft roses, or whatever it is young men do. If you won’t marry, then you must at least snatch your sister from the jaws of scandal.”
She drew herself up, intending to punctuate her scold with a sniff, but a sneeze caught her instead. Before she could extract a handkerchief from her bodice, Grey waved his at her.
“I notice you do not commend your own sons into the arms of the waiting heiresses.”
His handkerchief smelled of the humid, dirty environs of the propagation house, which meant it bore the same scent Francine’s late husband had often sported. She folded the handkerchief rather than return it to its owner.
“Do you know for whom your sister keeps house?”
“I know where she keeps house—a great rambling country house in Surrey, one the owner has benignly neglected for years. He’s a single fellow, reported to have some coin, and Jacaranda has consistently maintained that she enjoys her duties.”
Jacaranda’s ability to run a regiment with a feather duster in one hand and a list in the other was exactly why she must be brought home.
“He’s a single fellow, all right, and not much older than you. A bachelor supposedly raising a little niece who’s half-French.”
Grey took up a broom sized for the hearth and began sweeping the dirt on the table into a small pile in the center.
“This is not news, Step-Mama. I made some inquiries years ago. I myself have a niece. I wasn’t aware this condemned a man to a housekeeper-less existence.”
“The child must be his by-blow, and now it’s said he’s collected an illegitimate half-sister from boarding school.”
He swept the dirt off the side of the table, into a dustbin from which dead rose branches protruded. “Many a duke has provided for his by-blows. I’d think less of the man if he sent this sister into service when he has the means to provide for her.”
Grey had read law, and it had addled his brain. Either that, or he was wallowing in guilt for having permitted Jacaranda’s queer start five years ago.
“Jacaranda’s employer is no duke, and her place is here, with her family.”
“It is,” Grey said, setting the rubbish aside. “I write to her every month and remind her of that, but when I cannot afford to dower her, when she has no interest in marriage, and when her own sister is raising up babies on our very doorstep, Dorset might not be the happiest place for Jacaranda. She has promised to come home, you know.”
She’d always promised to come home, then left her own dear step-mama to contend with more unruly young men than any one lady’s nerves could tolerate.
“Her employer has removed to Surrey with his unsavory relations, sir. Do you think Jacaranda’s reputation will not suffer?” The innuendo in Herodia Bellamy’s letter had been unmistakable. “Jacaranda will be lucky to return with her virtue intact.”
Grey untied his smock and hung it on a nail. Next he’d stride off on some errand known only to him.
“If Jack’s employer attempts so much as an untoward smile in her direction, she’ll geld him. Jack deals well with men and their households.”
He at least sounded wistful. Francine took heart from that.
“She should be with family, and I’ve let you indulge her wayward notions long enough. You have until the end of summer to make her see reason, sir, or I’ll take matters into my own hands.”
He looked at his hands, which were large, elegant, and dirt-stained. “I’d advise you against anything foolish, Step-Mama. We muddle on well enough here without Jack, and she’s entitled to some happiness.”
Francine was entitled to some happiness. She was entitled to spend her summers in Bath, where Captain Mortimer spent his, where Baron Hathaway spent his, and half of Francine’s correspondents spent theirs.
She was entitled to a single week free of menus and feuding parlor maids and accountings—of which Jacaranda had been prodigiously fond. She was entitled to the occasional new gown, a riding mare of her own, a small equipage. So many things she was entitled to, but they all hinged on Jacaranda bringing order to the household so Francine could get her sons married off and her finances in order.
Running the empire had to be a simpler undertaking than managing a lot of overgrown boys and their muddy boots.
“I am never foolish,” Francine said, though she was growing desperate. Captain Mortimer spent altogether too much time with Penelope Shorewood, and Baron Hathaway had threatened to leave early for the grouse moors.
“You are never content,” Grey said, wiping his hands with a dingy towel. “Your sons love you, you have Daisy near at hand, her babies to dote on, and still, you can’t leave Jacaranda in peace. Haven’t you done enough to jeopardize her prospects?”
Stubborn—as stubborn as his father, his brothers, and his sisters.
“A girl with her limitations never had much in the way of prospects, but what little remains to her will vanish if her employer brings his London cronies to the country with him. You know what house parties can be like for the help.”
His lifted his jacket from the nail beside the one on which he’d hung his smock. “No, I do not know what house parties can be like for the help. My step-mother cannot bestir herself to organize a house party, though we have plenty of room, and such an event would be a simple way to introduce my brothers to any number of eager young beauties without incurring London expenses.”
Good God, he was serious. He expected her, Francine, to spend hours planning banquets and archery tournaments and picnics and gracious—
“My nerves are troubling me,” she said, heading for the door before Grey could abandon her to his weeds and mud. “I ask you to take a proper interest in your sister’s welfare, and you fail to act, as usual. What would your father say?”
That parting shot was low, but Francine had seen too many barons and captains and even squires resume marital bliss with her friends and correspondents. If Grey would not take action to bring Jacaranda home, then Francine would.