Chapter Five
Jacaranda had known dinner would be informal, because Avery was joining the adults, but Mr. Kettering hadn’t ventured an opinion regarding the most suitable dinner hour.
So she’d set the time herself.
He ventured opinions on other topics all throughout the meal. First, the issue was whether Yolanda should have a mount despite her refusal to ride out with her niece. Mr. Kettering allowed as how he couldn’t purchase only Avery a mount, or the girl would think she was being favored. Then the discussion turned to whether one should be allowed to eat dessert if one hadn’t eaten one’s vegetables.
While Wickie and Miss Snyder stoutly declared sweets should be saved as incentive to finish more nourishing food, Mr. Kettering, abetted by the young ladies, decided sweets should always be served to create a pleasant association with coming to the table generally, and children well fed enough to be eating sweets were hardly in danger of starving.
Jacaranda sipped her wine—a rare treat—and listened to the conversation without saying much. The food was good and the company congenial, but her day had been long. When the fruit and cheese were removed, she realized the entire table was waiting for her to signal the end of the meal, almost as if she were—
Well.
She rose, her chair drawn back by Mr. Kettering. He thanked Wickie and Miss Snyder for the company, kissed Yolanda and Avery on the forehead, and wished them all pleasant dreams. Jacaranda had slipped in behind the children to make her escape when a large, male hand landed on her arm.
“A word with you, Wyeth, though I don’t suppose I should be calling you plain Wyeth now that we’re dinner companions.”
“I am plain Wyeth,” she said, frowning pointedly at his hand. “What did you wish to discuss?”
“I wished to invite you for a stroll in the garden,” he replied, leaving his hand exactly where it was. “The last of the light remains, and I’d like to air a certain topic where nobody can overhear us.”
That sounded sufficiently ominous that Jacaranda let him usher her from the room.
“You won’t need a shawl?”
“Our stroll will be brief.” Then too, her escort had a penchant for lending her his jacket.
His lips quirked up, though he said nothing, and then Jacaranda was on the back terrace, her hand wrapped around his forearm.
“You will give my compliments to the kitchen,” he said as they perambulated across the flagstones. “Dinner was excellent and the menu such that both Avery and I found much to enjoy. Please tell Simmons the wines were well chosen, too.”
“I will pass your praises along.” Of course, she’d chosen the menu and the wines. Still, his appreciation lit a small flame of pleasure in the place inside her that sought notice, a pat on the back every once in a blue moon.
“Let’s move away from the house. I do not want an audience.”
“This sounds serious.”
“Not serious, but sensitive. Or maybe I’m sensitive.”
Many people assumed—wrongly—that size and sturdy physique precluded sensitivity. She’d been at risk of making the same error where Mr. Kettering was concerned.
How lowering.
He walked along beside Jacaranda in the fading light, and to her, he looked as tired as she felt. When they’d returned from their outing to the Hendersons, he’d disappeared into the library with a morocco leather satchel and not come out until they’d sat down to dinner.
A groom had been dispatched to Town with a pile of documents, with the expectation that the full moon would allow the entire journey before the man saw his bed.
“Shall we sit?” Mr. Kettering gestured to a folly several yards off the garden path. Jacaranda knew it well, because the folly was one place she could escape to on those rare, lazy afternoons when she had a few hours to read, or nap, or write a letter or two. Afternoons when the owner of the house and his family were properly ensconced in London.
Where they belonged.
“Cushions in my gazebo? What a decadent fellow I am.”
She sat, and he took the place immediately beside her.
“I’m trying to guess how you’d broach this topic, Wyeth, and I think you’d plunge in, no shilly-shallying, no dithering. I have an older brother.”
“A blessing, usually, to have a sibling.”
“Usually,” he said, resting his arm along the bench behind them. “This brother is a fellow of some consequence, or so he thinks. We are not, as the saying goes, close.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
“He and I are sorry as well, or so I think in my more charitable moments. I stormed away from the family seat as a hotheaded young idiot, and we haven’t had much to say to each other since.”
“These things happen in the best of families.” Had nearly happened in her own.
“We need to get over it. I lost one sister to the idiot French and their inability to police their own streets. Hess lost the same sister, and yet…”
“Yet?”
“He and I lost each other long before Moira died. We can’t do anything about her death, but we have Avery and we have each other. He didn’t even tell me about Yolanda. I learned of her from the school, when they couldn’t reach Hess and needed to expel her somewhere safe.”
This was news. “She was sent down?”
“Don’t suppose I mentioned that, did I? I don’t have all the details, but I will be damned if I’ll let another sister of mine fight battles she’s too young and innocent to fight alone.”
Not a one of Jacaranda’s seven brothers had ever adopted that fierce, determined tone where she was concerned.
“Yolanda was fighting battles at school?”
He made a gesture Jacaranda recognized as a sign that he was fatigued, rubbing his hand over his face, top to bottom.
“Have you noticed she always wears long sleeves?”
“I had not. In a girl her age, that would be unusual this time of year.” Also uncomfortable, given the heat.
“Look at her left wrist. The old besom from whom I collected her intimated that Yolanda tried to take her own life. I cannot believe this, but neither have I found a way to talk to my own sister about such a demented notion.”
“You don’t expect me to have that talk, do you?” She was surprised her voice was steady, for these revelations were shocking—and sad.
“If I thought you could, I’d try to foist it off on you, because I hardly have the knack of being brother to an adolescent female, but no. When Yolanda and I know each other better, I hope she’ll trust me with her confidences.”
He wanted his sister’s trust. If Jacaranda hadn’t respected him previously, she’d respect him for that alone.
“You’re wise not to force the matter,” Jacaranda said, though complimenting him felt awkward. “She strikes me as having a full allotment of Kettering stubbornness.”
He sat back, his arm still resting along the bench behind her. “Which raises the earlier topic. My brother will pay us a visit sometime in the next few weeks, and at my invitation.”
“We’ve plenty of room, and the house is in good trim. I wish you’d let me know the dates of his visit, though. Certain of the staff have been given holidays to see family and the like.”
“Isn’t that Simmons’s business?”
“We cooperate, with the maids and footmen, the laundresses and grooms, so we’re never too short-staffed in any one regard.”
“Hessian is only one person,” Mr. Kettering said. “He shouldn’t be too inconvenient, though he’ll doubtless travel by private coach, so that means grooms, a valet, a secretary, a coachman, and an outrider or two. He’ll likely bring a second coach, so the help won’t violate his privacy en route.”
“So I should expect his lordship and eight to twelve other mouths to feed?”
“Everlasting powers.” He rose, taking his warmth from her side. “He’ll expect the state chambers, because the man bears a title.”
“Was that the hard part?”
He stood on the other side of the gazebo, facing out across gardens all but shrouded in darkness. “I beg your pardon, Wyeth?”
“Admitting your brother has a title. Was that difficult?”
“Must you?”
“We are having this discussion where there’s no possibility of being overheard,” she said. “By your design. You and this brother do not speak, and yet you want me to ensure his visit is in every way comfortable.”
“Of course I do.” He turned to face her, but the moon wasn’t up yet, and the sun had fled. In the gathering shadows, Jacaranda couldn’t see anything of his expression.
“You aren’t commanding his comfort simply as conscientious host, though.”
“Wyeth, you are a managing damned female if ever there was one. Hess and I are distant for very good reasons. In hindsight, he did me a favor, and himself a disservice, but it lies between us, a great gaping awkwardness that arose before I’d even reached my majority.”
“Will his countess accompany him?”
He abruptly gave her his back and resumed studying the garden. “She’s dead, has been for five years.”
Nothing in his voice gave away any emotion, but something about the lack of emotion spoke volumes.
“You were in love with her.”
“You are beyond overstepping.”
“I am observing a truth.” One that raised as many questions as it answered, none of them happy.
“I was seventeen years old and callow as only a young man can be, though the young lady and I had an understanding. My brother dangled his title before her, and she fell out of love with me post-haste, so I obligingly did the same regarding her. That is as much explanation as you will have from me, and we will not discuss this again.”
His voice had taken on a chilly, flat quality, and Jacaranda wished she’d brought a shawl after all. What sort of young lady could have fallen out of love with Worth Kettering, even in his most callow incarnation?
“Here.” His coat, redolent with his scent and his warmth, dropped over her shoulders. He snugged it around her, then resumed his place beside her. “Youthful follies have a particularly potent ability to make one feel like a flaming idiot even years later.”
Idiot folly was not entirely the province of youth, though Jacaranda had indulged in her share. She ought not to enjoy the warmth and luxury of his coat, or its scent, but she was making a bad habit of it.
“You are extending an olive branch to your brother now.” Or was the overture more in the direction of Mr. Kettering’s youthful self?
“I don’t know about an olive branch.” He ranged an arm along the top of the padded bench again. Jacaranda had been hoping he’d do that. “Yolanda will have to be launched in some fashion, even though she’s a by-blow. She’ll need to snare a fellow, need a settlement, and her brothers must put aside their petty squabbles for her sake.”
“Right.”
“Wyeth… Jacaranda…”
“Hush.” She kept her eyes on the part of the far horizon glowing faintly with the promise of moonrise. “I have many siblings. Do you think I am in great charity with all of them?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t countenance anything less, particularly from the males.”
“I was seventeen once, too.” Twenty even. Twenty, plain, too tall and more lonely than she’d even known. “My oldest brother is not at all happy that I choose to remain in service. None of my brothers are. My step-mother is nearly hysterical in her demands that I return home.” Though Jacaranda’s continued absence didn’t seem to bother Daisy.
“And you have a deal of brothers. You must have been very foolish, to need to defy them all so badly.”
Perceptive man. “I was almost foolish, which amounts to the same thing.”
“This involved a toothsome swain, I take it?”
She remained silent, and in that silence, she forged an understanding with her employer, something in the nature of a truce, but with a dash more compassion to it.
“Men are the very devil.” His arm came around her shoulders in a friendly squeeze, but then it stayed there and became half an embrace.
Jacaranda should stand up, remark the lateness of the hour, or suggest it was time to get back to the house. She knew she should, but the moon was rising, and she’d never in her more than twenty-five years watched a moonrise with a man’s arm around her shoulders.
Mr. Kettering seemed lonely, too. A bit lost, even.
The first sliver of incandescent moon lipped up over the horizon, and Jacaranda marshaled her resolve to leave.
“Don’t.” Mr. Kettering slipped his hand into hers. “Not yet.”
She subsided, letting herself have more of his warmth, not at all sure what was transpiring between them save a shared moonrise. She let her head fall to his shoulder and felt his hand stroking over her hair, once, twice.
She closed her eyes, the better to savor the sensations, the soft night air with a hint of cool, the silvery moonshine spilling over the gardens, the warmth and scent of the man beside her, and the simple pleasure of sharing a few moments with someone who’d also once been young and foolish.
When the moon was well up, Mr. Kettering drew her to her feet, but kept that arm across her shoulders as they wandered to the house. When they reached the back terrace, he stopped, kissed her forehead, and opened the door for her, then bowed, turned, and walked back the way they’d come, until Jacaranda could no longer see him for the shifting moon shadows.
* * *
Mr. Kettering wasn’t at breakfast the next morning, much to Jacaranda’s relief.
He’d been companionable, that was all. No man in his right mind would make overtures by moonlight to an oversized spinster housekeeper.
She didn’t have to inquire regarding his whereabouts, because he’d left a note by her place at the table.
Mrs. Wyeth,
I’ve taken my pony for a gallop and will inspect the home farm with Mr. Reilly this morning. You may impress me into exactly one tenant call after luncheon. If you would please draft notes for one neighbor call per weekday thereafter, I would appreciate it. We can discuss the children’s schedule when next I see you.
Yours respectfully,
Kettering
Respectfully.
She pondered that single word while she inventoried the linens set aside for the state chambers. Each of the earl’s dozen or so servants would require lodging, and the valet and secretary would expect modest guest rooms with a footman between them at least. Then came the discussion with Cook, who was equal parts pleased and dismayed at the thought of so many more mouths to feed, particularly when one of those sported a title.
“They are no different from you or me, Cook,” Jacaranda warned her. “They eat when they’re hungry, they sleep when they’re tired, or they should.”
Though they tended to drink a fair bit, in Jacaranda’s experience, and sometimes to impose on the chambermaids.
“If you say so, Mrs. W, but I don’t suppose you’d be willing to look over the menus in advance?”
“I suppose I would, because we don’t know when this relation of the Ketterings’ is descending. You’ll want to stock up now, and I will approve the expenses.”
She made her regular inspection then, finding the new chambermaid had neglected to open the drapes in the downstairs parlor, and the downstairs footmen were taking rather too long to clean the glass lamps in the corridor sconces. She informed them exactly when the new girl would take her break—the young lady seemed canny enough—and tracked Simmons down to his favorite place to nap, the butler’s pantry.
He went into transports to think the master of the household was having company, and titled company, and when Jacaranda left him, he was for the first time in her memory counting the silver she’d counted once a month for five years.
Her stomach was rumbling as she climbed to the third floor to check on Yolanda’s new room. She found Avery with her aunt, both girls holding hands in the middle of the room.
“You start slowly, so you can learn to move the same time I do,” Avery was saying. “Now, with me. Step, behind, step, kick. Again, step, behind, step, kick.”
Yolanda dropped her niece’s hand. “Hello, Mrs. Wyeth. Avery is teaching me a dance.”
“Not one you’ll need in any ballroom, I take it?”
Avery grinned and executed a lovely pirouette in arabesque. “Not for the ballrooms. Uncle’s opera dancers teach me their dances while we wait for him in the kitchen.”
“His—!” Jacaranda shut her mouth with a snap. “Yolanda, is your room more to your liking?”
“Very much.” Yolanda smiled back at her, as if Uncle entertaining opera dancers—plural—wasn’t a scandalous situation for a small child to know of—for any child to know of. “I can see the drive and the stables and side terrace. Trysting is really a lovely house. I’m surprised Worth doesn’t spend more time here.”
Jacaranda’s surprise was easily contained. The wilds of Surrey suffered a paucity of opera dancers, after all.
Opera dancers. Plural. In the kitchen. Teaching Avery scandalous dances.
Angels abide.
“Luncheon should be ready, so you’ll want to freshen up.” Jacaranda left them, step, behind, step, kicking amid a flurry of giggles, and knew the need to strangle her employer.
Men had urges over which they exercised not one bit more control than they had to. Jacaranda knew this.
“No better than they should be, the sorry lot of them,” she muttered as she careened around a corner and ran into the principal author of her distress.
“You!”
“Me?”
“Mr. Kettering, you will excuse me.” She leveled her most righteous glare at him and tacked left to circumnavigate him, but he stepped back and cut her off with his sheer, bodily presence.
“No, Mrs. Wyeth, I will not excuse you when you’re clearly in a temper.” His fingers manacled her wrist, and just that touch, warm, strong, and altogether male, made her temper snap its leash.
“I detest no man more than he who takes advantage of female innocence. You destroy something that can never be replaced, never repaired. Innocence doesn’t become merely wrinkled or tarnished, it’s gone forever. You leave in its place betrayal and a sorry knowledge no lady should have to bear.”
“What are you going on about?”
“Step, behind, step, kick.” She wrenched her wrist from his and would have flounced off, except he snatched her wrist again and pulled her into an empty bedroom, kicking the door closed behind them.
“Explain yourself, Wyeth. You aren’t a woman who flies into a taking easily, so I’m doing you the courtesy of hearing you out.”
He stood between her and the door, fists on his hips, and in the ensuing silence, Jacaranda realized anew that her employer was one of few people on the face of the earth who might have no trouble physically subduing her.
He was large enough, strong enough, and sufficiently unconstrained by manners when it suited him.
“Your light-skirts are teaching Avery indecent dances in your kitchen.”
He locked the door, then stalked over to peer down at her. “Is it the location of the dancing, the nature of it, or the nature of the instructors you object to?”
“She’s a little girl! Her mother would have wanted you to protect her from such influences, not parade them and their unfortunate morals before the child.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” Jacaranda shot back. “Those women cannot help their circumstances, I know that, too, but if you intend to prey on them, can’t you at least do it where Avery has no knowledge of it? Gentlemen are expected to exercise discretion even when they can’t exercise control.”
“You have a very bad opinion of men, don’t you?” His tone was curious, and he was standing entirely too close. “For example, if I kissed you right now, you’d wallop me at the least and probably ban me from my own house. I adore a ferocious woman.”
“You seek to turn the subject, and crudely. Avery should not be exposed to your debaucheries.” If I kissed you? Despite Jacaranda’s considerable anger at the man before her, her gaze dropped to his mouth. Damn him to Hades, it was a beautiful mouth, even when it wasn’t turned up in that faint smile.
“Come sit with me, and I will explain to you what transpires in my London household. As a courtesy, mind you, because you’re concerned for the child, not because you’re entitled to explanations. One must always be mindful of setting unfortunate precedents.”
When she didn’t move, he took her hand and led her to a window bench. The cushion could accommodate them both—barely.
“Avery likes the opera dancers, you see.” He kept her hand in his and drew his fingers over her palm. He had an ink stain on his right cuff—ink was the very devil to get out—and his touch was mesmerizing, soothing and arousing at once.
Arousing?
“Avery likes the dancers, or you do?”
“We both do. Moira went to Paris to study art during the Peace of Amiens, and then remained, against my judgment and Hess’s. Nobody wanted her there, but I suspect she was enamored of Avery’s father and unwilling to come home. Then she was unable to come home, and I didn’t become aware of Avery’s existence until the False Peace.”
“I know the French are not as judgmental regarding their diversions, but the child is in England.”
“She is.” He laced his fingers with hers, and Jacaranda bore it, because her employer was a man who liked to touch. He touched his niece and his sister, he patted Wickie on the shoulder, and he put his arm around his housekeeper in the moonlight.
He also entertained opera dancers in his very home. She tried to withdraw her hand.
“You will hear me out, Wyeth, because I will not repeat this tale. Moira’s artistic aspirations came to naught, and when Avery’s father died, Moira eventually supported herself at the opera comique, if what Avery tells me is accurate. The dancers remind Avery of happy times with her mother. I gather the child became some sort of backstage mascot. I have an opera dancer to thank for the fact Avery arrived safely to these shores.”
“You justify your choice of paramour on this basis? Your lapse of discretion?”
“Do you imagine opera dancers don’t age, Mrs. Wyeth? Do you imagine they don’t fall sick or suffer injury? You can turn your ankle and put it up with ice and arnica for a fortnight if you need to, but if they twist their ankles, they don’t eat.”
“For God’s sake, you don’t expect me to believe you paw these women out of charitable impulses?”
“I do not paw women, not any women, ever. If you must know, I handle investments for my opera dancers, you fire-breathing little besom.”
And then he kissed her.
He settled his lips on hers, gently, so gently, while his hand came up to caress her jaw, then her hair, then to rest softly on her throat, so his thumb could brush over her cheek. His touch was sunbeam-light, warm as a breeze, and left wicked, wicked pleasure drizzling over her skin and into her mind. His mouth treasured hers, parting so his tongue could tease and taste and coax at her lips. When he eased away, Jacaranda’s own mouth was parted, and her wits—and her indignation—had deserted her utterly.
“The opera dancers won’t come to my office in Mayfair,” he said, dropping his hand. “We meet in my kitchen, instead, where I can insist they eat some decent food, and my footmen can see them safely home. I do not paw them, though they’re a great deal more honest about their willingness to be pawed—and do some pawing of their own—than their so-called betters. I’ll see you after luncheon.”
He rose and left. Jacaranda stared after him, unseeing, her hand cradling her jaw while she stifled an unaccountable urge to cry.
* * *
Wyeth’s kiss was a puzzle, and Worth spent most of his solitary luncheon in the library trying to decipher it when he should have been reading quarterly earnings statements.
She wasn’t a virgin with regard to kissing; he’d bet his honor on that. She’d been startled to find herself lip to lip with him, but then she’d been curious, and then she’d been interested, and then she’d been…interesting.
One kiss was obviously not enough. He must needs kiss her again, to see if that cool, cautious curiosity could be made to burn out of control. He would parse the taste of her down to something describable, not merely “lovely” or “delicious” or “womanly.”
Then there was the sound of kissing her. That soft indrawn breath of surprise, the sigh of acceptance, the hungry little moans in the back of her throat, the rustle and slide of her gown against his breeches, the almost-groan when she opened her mouth for him.
This great feast of the senses that was kissing her, he’d have it again. They would have it again, because if ever there was a woman from whom “no” meant “Absolutely Not Ever,” it was Jacaranda Wyeth, and not even her mouth had said no.
Her kiss—her very body—had said yes.
How long would it take for her mind to realize that?
* * *
The week went flying by for Jacaranda. She was dragooned into the tenant calls after lunch, and worse, into calls on neighbors. Mr. Kettering was as stealthy about his tactics as a drunken draft sow.
“Doesn’t the Damus holding lie between the Tarmans’ farm and Trysting?”
“Why don’t we nip in and say hello to the…Stevens? No, Steppins?”
“That’s Squire Brent’s place, isn’t it? I think Goliath could use a drink.”
And there she’d be, smiling and curtsying to the Damuses, the Steppins, and the Brents—and their myriad daughters.
“You are a fraud, Mr. Worth Kettering.” They were returning from a call on the Wilders, who were tenants of longstanding, and the Kerstings, local gentry whom Jacaranda knew mostly from market and churchyard pleasantries, though she could hardly keep straight the names of their four daughters—the twins were not identical, thank God.
“Fraud is a serious offense.” He steered Goliath around a turn in the lane. “In what regard do I stand accused?”
“You are afraid of young ladies.”
“Flat terrified. Will you take the reins for a moment?”
He handed her the ribbons before she could protest, and then she had to sidle closer to the middle of the seat in fairness to the horse.
“They can’t truss you up and drag you to the altar,” Jacaranda said. “This horse has a lovely mouth.”
“So do you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your mouth is lovely, when you aren’t pinching up your lips to scold a defenseless single man for his perfectly understandable fears. The young girls can’t tie me up, but they can waylay me in the rose arbor, or stumble against my person in the garden, feel faint as we’re dancing at the local assembly. They know how to set tongues wagging, and many a man has been ruined for less.”
“You account yourself irresistible.” She didn’t bother keeping incredulity from her tone.
“I account a net worth of several hundred thousand and climbing irresistible.”
“Boasting of such a thing is vulgar.” They tooled along in silence for about a quarter mile. “Vulgar, but impressive.”
In truth, he’d been complaining more than boasting. Another quarter mile went by, and Jacaranda began to relax, because Goliath was as steady as he was magnificent.
“Is that why the opera dancers trust you? You’ve made yourself wealthy, so they conclude you can help them?”
“I don’t know why, but it’s like that story of the widow’s mite. Those ladies trust me with what little they have, and I will be God-damned if I’ll let it come to harm. The lordlings trying to stretch their quarterly allowance so they can gamble deeper and wench away every night don’t seem nearly as worthy of my attention.”
“Robin Hood, then, with a dash of arrogance thrown in.”
“Where have you put your mite, Wyeth?”
He might have been sliding a hand up her thigh, so silky and intimate was his tone. The topic of her hard-earned coin was in some ways more personal than, well, kissing.
Some ways.
He wasn’t teasing, not about her money. So while he pretended to study the barley fields ripening around them, Jacaranda told him which investment projects had some of her coin, which funds a little more, which ones she’d discarded as poorly managed or too speculative.
“Prudent choices, though if you diversified more, you might see a faster gain with only a slight increase in risk.” He went on to suggest a modest revision to her investment strategy, and before Jacaranda knew it, they were approaching the covered bridge.
“Pull him up,” Mr. Kettering said. “He’s been tooling around like a good lad. He’ll appreciate a chance to blow in the shade.”
“You’re not about to kiss me again, are you?”
Because it would be like him to lull her into lowering her guard with talk of funds and interest and projects, then ambush her with another one of those lovely, devastating kisses.
“Kiss you? Why, Mrs. Wyeth, for shame, and me such a virtuous lad and quite timorous where the ladies are concerned.”
He popped out of the gig and came around to hand her down, except when Jacaranda gained her feet, he cupped her elbows and stood entirely too close.
“Would you like me to kiss you?” His eyes were grave, not a hint of humor in them, and his scent came wafting to her on a warm summer breeze. “Don’t answer me with words, Wyeth.”
He dipped his head, and then he was kissing her again, but this kiss was different. The first time he’d kissed her, he’d been making a point. She still wasn’t sure what exactly his point had been, something about her judgmental nature and how much he missed his sister, probably.
This kiss was about mouths, and bodies, and the unholy pleasure of being caught up against his solid, muscular length on a soft summer day. His mouth moved over hers as deftly as an artist’s brush, leaving hues of longing and unnamable sensations in its wake. He worked his kissing slowly, a seductive gentleness to every touch, even as he held her more firmly to him.
Jacaranda tucked up as close to Mr. Kettering as she could get, going up on her toes despite the warnings clamoring forth from her common sense. Those warnings weren’t a matter of conscience, or morals—she was indulging in a mere kiss, and in more-or-less private—what was imperiled was her very survival.
Somehow, though, survival did not weigh in on the side of storming away in high dudgeon. Survival had nothing to do with indignation, but had everything to do with clinging to the man whose tongue was probing along her lips in delicate entreaty.
“You’re too good at this,” she said against his teeth.
“We’re good at this, and we’re barely getting started.”
His one arm went around her shoulders, while the other settled low across her back, anchoring her more snugly and angling her so he could get a hand on her derriere and his mouth back where it belonged. He didn’t clutch at her, though, he secured her so she could kiss him back without having to worry about remaining on her own two feet.
He tasted good. Like spearmint and heat, and he had the knack of asking permission with his mouth, of inviting with his tongue, and assuring with his big body. She could kiss him for a long, long—
“Mr. Kettering, what are you doing?”
He’d scooped her up and hefted her to sit on the bridge railing, bringing the sound of rushing water closer, which was somehow appropriate.
“I’m experimenting. Such an important matter wants a bit of science.”
Then his mouth was back, but Jacaranda sat a shade higher than she’d stood, so she could wrap her arms around his magnificent shoulders and sink her hands into his dark, silky hair. Then he wedged himself between her knees, and oh, it felt imperative that she bring at least one leg around his hips and show him exactly—
He broke the kiss and captured one of her hands. “We’re at risk for indiscreet behavior, my dear. This is a public thoroughfare.”
She dropped her forehead to his shoulder while he took that hand of hers and stroked it over his falls.
Angels abide!
He was a generously proportioned man in a particular state of reproductive anticipation. His hand dropped away. Hers did not.
“Getting even, Wyeth?”
“Getting acquainted.” She shaped him carefully, telling herself this was the only occasion she’d be permitted to indulge her curiosity. She was tempted to linger, but he drew in a sharp breath near her ear.
“Did I hurt you, Mr. Kettering?”
He shifted his middle back a few inches. “You torment, but I don’t think you understand that. Did I hurt you?”
She lifted her head to frown at him, to fathom his meaning.
“You did not injure me, if that’s what you’re asking, though why such an inquiry is germane, I know not. This was a stolen kiss, and they are not, by reputation, painful.”
“Please don’t tell me this is your first stolen kiss.”
“Kisses have been stolen from me,” she said, considering him. “Not with me.” She lifted away from him, but had to keep a hand on his shoulder for balance.
“I’m to be your first in at least this?”
“It’s your height,” she said, turning her head to watch the water below.
“Let’s get you down, and you can explain that remark.”
She hopped off the railing, but his hands were anchored on her hips, and all over again, she endured the strange puddling of heat in her middle that his kiss—their kiss—had caused.
“Naughty woman.” He still wasn’t smiling, but he seemed pleased.
She turned her back to him to study the freshet below. Was she naughty?
“Shall we negotiate now?” He made himself comfortable beside her, elbows on the railing. “Or would you prefer to settle your nerves first?”
“Negotiate?” She rather enjoyed the present state of her nerves.
“Surely it hasn’t escaped your notice we’re suited to a certain type of liaison, Wyeth. I’d compensate you handsomely, enough that you could put off your housekeeping and go about in Town.” He watched the water, not her.
“Were it to our mutual liking,” he went on, “we could even move you into Town, though there’s no telling how long these things will last. I’m a decent protector, though it’s been quite a while since I took on the role. I’d see you got out, to the theatre, Vauxhall, the shops. Life can’t be work all the time, even for me. I suppose that’s rather the point, on my end.”
Inside, where Mr. Worth Kettering’s piercingly blue eyes would not bother to see, Jacaranda’s luncheon took to heaving disagreeably.
“No, thank you, Mr. Kettering. Shall we be on our way?”
“No, thank you, Mr. Kettering?” His brows knit, in consternation or indignation, she cared not which. “That was not a Mr. Kettering kiss, Wyeth.”
“And I am not a whore. Goliath is sufficiently rested, and I must see to your dinner preparations.”
“Not fair, Wyeth. I did not force you.”
“No, you did not, nor will you, ever. I rely on that remaining artifact of gentlemanly sensibility when I ask you to take me home now.”
“You’re not interested in at least hearing the numbers?”
“For God’s sake, I know you are a man, but I did not take you for a very stupid man. I am insulted, you dolt, not by your kiss, which was lovely, dear, sweet, and generous, but by the implication I would whore for another like it. I enjoyed it, I thank you for it, but I have no interest in your jewels or in being your fancy piece. Think of your opera dancers, Mr. Kettering.”
She climbed into the gig and sat, hands folded in her lap, forbidding herself to say more. He must have grasped the fundamental point, for he climbed in beside her.
“Shall I drive?” she asked.
He nodded, tersely, and she tried to make charitable allowances, for he was a man and one likely used to getting his way.
Several hundred thousand times over.
And yet, he sat beside her right up to the Trysting front door, silent, unreadable, and looking like he cared not one whit for the fact that a mere housekeeper was driving him around the countryside, and refusing his offer of protection.
* * *
He’d blundered badly—and with a woman.
Worth was comfortable making the occasional shaky investment, though less and less as his instincts and information-gathering skills had been perfected.
But with a woman…
He’d made two errors, in fact. At least two. The first was offering Jacaranda Wyeth a more or less permanent position as his mistress, when Worth had learned long ago that mistresses were a tricky lot. They became bored, and even jewels and outings weren’t enough to placate them. Eventually, they resorted to provoking his jealousy, or worse, trying to get with child. No matter their skill in bed, their beauty, their wit or other charms, he parted from them at that point, with stern admonitions to himself to choose more wisely.
Wisely had come to mean temporarily. He sought the short-term, and very short-term, and very, very short-term liaison, and everybody was happier all around.
So he’d blundered and undertaken a negotiation of terms for an extended liaison.
The heat of the moment accounted for that lapse, aided by Wyeth’s kisses, by her boldness, by her hand on his falls, getting acquainted.
Then the second, worse blunder. He’d offended the lady.
What had happened?
His housekeeper sailed into his house ahead of him, her skirts swishing. Her magnificent body had happened. Her lush, naughty mouth. Her common sense and quietly relentless compassion. Her sweet, summery scent, her phenomenal derriere, those perfect breasts, her heat, her hands…
Then that prim, hurt tone. Think of your opera dancers, Mr. Kettering.
He was on his horse and headed for London before the dinner bell sounded.