Chapter Six
Jacaranda was nothing if not ruthlessly honest with herself, and thus she admitted she missed her employer. He’d taken a proper leave of the children, conferred briefly with Simmons, and then decamped.
She’d driven him off, perhaps with her kisses, more likely with her speeches about his jewels—angels abide!—and his money. A fine, upstanding speech at the time, but it did nothing to help her sleep at night. She took a few nocturnal swims, doubled her vigilance regarding her housekeeping duties, and prompted Simmons to new heights of fussing and clucking over his footmen.
All for naught.
She missed Worth Kettering. Missed the scent and feel of him standing too close to her, sitting too close beside her in the gig, sending her his silent “time to go” look when the neighbors’ daughters took to batting their eyes. She missed him presiding over the dinner table, teasing, entertaining, and gently chiding Avery for her manners. She missed the sound of his solid boot heels thumping along the corridors and missed his voice, bellowing for her when it was time to depart for their afternoon calls.
Missed kissing him and scolding him.
This missing was a bodily ache, different from the way she missed her siblings, or her home, or her departed parents.
All the while she inspected linens, made lists, drew up menus, and supervised the staff, she was aware of a sense of Worth Kettering’s eyes on her—or somebody’s eyes. The sense was strongest outside, when she took cuttings from the scent garden, or the color gardens, but it followed her into the house sometimes.
She wished her employer really had been that aged, diminutive cipher dithering away in the City. That would have been much easier.
Much.
But staying busy had long been her antidote for every ill, so she headed back up to the third floor. She’d yet to make her morning rounds there, and both girls were downcast at Mr. Kettering’s departure. She opened Avery’s door after a brisk knock, only to find Yolanda sprawled on a chaise with a book of Wordsworth’s poetry.
“Avery’s off to ride that pig, or fly a kite, or give the pig lessons in French,” Yolanda said.
“I’m so bored I almost joined her.”
“We haven’t toured the house yet. Would that alleviate your boredom?”
“Touring the house would at least get me off my backside.” Yolanda closed her book and rose. “Has the post come yet?”
“The post arrives by nine of the clock, if the stages are running on time,” Jacaranda said as they left the room. “He didn’t write today.”
How odd to have this small grief in common with a schoolgirl.
“Again.”
“You could write to him, or to your older brother.”
“To tell them what?” Yolanda stopped at the top of the steps. “I haven’t tried to kill myself lately?”
“Did you?” Jacaranda wanted to drag the girl a few steps back, but instead began their progress down the stairs. “Try to kill yourself?”
“No.” That was all, no explanation, no emphasis.
“Well, then, not much to write about there. You might tell your brother what Avery is getting up to.”
“Wickie will do that,” Yolanda said, moving down the stairs at Jacaranda’s side.
“She will do a version of it,” Jacaranda countered. “A version that leaves out pigs and probably emphasizes penmanship. Then too, you might ask your brother to retrieve fripperies or notions from London.”
This was really too bad of her. No man enjoyed trolling the ladies’ shops.
Though Mr. Kettering should have written to his sister.
“Retrieve fripperies such as?”
“You embroider beautifully,” Jacaranda said. “Have him pick up a particular shade of thread or a hard-to-find measure of hoop. Some sketching paper or special pencils.”
“So he won’t feel so badly for abandoning us here?”
“So you’ll have something to do.” So his sister would approve of him, even if his housekeeper could not.
Yolanda paused with her hand on the crouching-lion newel post at the foot of the steps. “He’ll think I’m glad to see the thread, or the hoop, or the lurid novel, not him.”
No, he would not. “He might pretend he’s that thick-headed. You’ll know better.”
“I should make a list.”
Such a Kettering, this one. “I frequently find a list useful. For example, while I don’t trespass in the kitchen, per se, I do keep track of the larder and the cook’s pantry.”
Daisy had had no interest in learning to run a household, and Jacaranda had learned not to expect her younger sister to share those tasks with her. Step-Mama had been more preoccupied with managing her offspring and her torrents of correspondence than with household details.
“There’s a great deal to know. The laundry and the medicinals alone take organization,” Yolanda said as they finished up in the still room some time later.
“A systematic approach is usually best.” Though how did one take a systematic approach to, say, Worth Kettering and his kisses and naughty propositions? “Labeling helps, unless the staff cannot read. If somebody comes to us without their letters, we teach them.”
Yolanda left off counting the jars arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves around them. “You teach them?”
“Mrs. Reilly helps, as does Vicar, but yes. How a maid or footman takes to their schooling helps me assess how they’ll fit in best at Trysting. Now, we should have a peek at the library. The footmen are possessive about it, but they’ll be taking their tea break the better to flirt with the new chambermaid.”
“Muriel,” Yolanda said, opening a jar of vervain and sniffing. “She’s friendly.”
“Also pretty, which is both a blessing and a curse. Have you any questions?”
Yolanda took a pinch of vervain and crushed it between her fingers. “When is Hess coming?”
Of course the girl’s loneliness would weigh more heavily than the niceties of separating spearmint and peppermint, or footmen and maids.
“Mr. Kettering did not specify a date, but all is in readiness.”
“Worth will be back soon then.” Yolanda said, dusting the herb from her fingers. “He won’t leave us here to receive Hess without him. That would look rude.”
“From what I understand—”
“They don’t get along,” Yolanda said, peering at the gray dusting the ends of her fingers. “Except they used to. At home, we have portraits of them together. They were peas in a pod, and in Worth’s diaries—”
“You read your brother’s diaries?” Jacaranda had considered herself the only sister in the history of sisters to exhibit such audacity—and courage.
“If Worth had been about at Grampion, in any sense, he might have stopped me from reading them, or respect for his privacy might have at least slowed me down.”
Jacaranda led the way from the still room, which had taken on a confessional air. Or maybe the scent of vervain didn’t agree with her—it was believed to repel witches.
“Suffice it to say I cannot approve of such an action, Yolanda, and I have seven brothers.”
Yolanda sniffed at her fingers and made a face. “You never read their diaries? Never peeked?”
Jacaranda would not lie, exactly. “Only the oldest has a literary bent, and one doesn’t trifle with him.” Though sometimes one defied him outright.
They pattered on as the rest of the house was duly inspected, but it hadn’t occurred to Jacaranda that Mr. Kettering would have to come home—back to Trysting, rather—to host his brother’s visit, assuming he hadn’t waved the man off or diverted him to Town.
The realization was mortifyingly cheering.
* * *
Less than two weeks at his country estate, and Worth had been spoiled for all other residences. Town was noisy, reeking and hot, and his house, which he’d always found adequately maintained, fell short of the standards at Trysting.
The windows were clean, they did not sparkle.
The carpets were beaten, they remained dull.
The food was nourishing, but its presentation unimaginative.
The house was tidy, but not…inviting.
The shops regularly sent over flowers, but the bouquets lacked fragrance and seemed to sit in their vases like sedate arrangements, not spontaneous offerings from nature.
Mimette raised her gaze from the quarterly statement Worth had drafted for her.
“You’re in a hurry, ducks. You usually go over the numbers with me one by one, until I’m fair to run screaming down the street.”
Mimette, or Mary, was a pretty little dancer between protectors at the moment. Her savings were thus of particular interest to her, and Worth had directed that a cold collation be prepared for their session at the kitchen table.
“I’m getting ready to travel again tomorrow,” Worth said, making the decision as the words came out of his mouth. “Not being at my appointed post here in Town has created challenges.”
Not being at Trysting created other challenges.
She gave him a genuine smile. “Challenges for you, maybe. Jones says he’s never seen such peace at the office save for right after Waterloo.”
“When did you hear Jones discoursing so disloyally?”
“He comes to see us dance and brings his friends, and they’re a jolly bunch.”
Another well-trained, competent employee would soon be domesticating. “When I’m not wreaking havoc with their fun, to hear Jones tell it. Your money is working almost as hard as you do.”
“I’d take you upstairs tonight without a thought for the money, Worth Kettering, and it wouldn’t be work neither—though something would be hard. You could do with a tupping.” Her smile was tinged with something else now. Speculation, or maybe sympathy?
“I could.” He nearly rose to take her up on her offer, because tupping had certainly been on his mind for the past week. His cock wasn’t surging in its usual gleeful anticipation of a romp, though, so he kept to his chair.
Mary reached under the table and experimentally groped his flaccid length.
She took her hand away. “Whoever she is, I hope she appreciates you. Should I consider maybe taking more out of the three percents?”
“Only if you’re willing to shift the degree of risk as well,” Worth said, grateful for something to talk about besides tupping. Her hand had felt curiously impersonal, almost unwelcome.
He was about to send her home with a footman when he noticed the tray still held plenty of food. Nobody could eat more than an opera dancer when good, free food was on hand. Nobody. He held his interrogation until the moment of her departure.
“Mary, is your digestion troubling you?”
“Of course not.” She swung her cloak over her arm, an unconsciously graceful gesture more captivating than any gratuitous fondling.
“Mary Flannery, you’re dissembling with your man of business. This is not done. Lie to your priest or your protector, but not to me.”
She sat back down at the table, eyeing the cold, sliced meat, buttered bread, and sliced cheese with something less than appreciation.
“Mary?”
Her hair was flaming red, her skin flawlessly pale, and her figure curvy and fit enough to haunt a man’s most intimate dreams. She was one of seven, the oldest daughter. The boys would get the bulk of the family resources, buying apprenticeships in various trades. She sent money home for the girls, but her papa had a fondness for the bottle and for using his fists on his womenfolk.
“You’d best tell me who the father is.” He sat beside her and slung an arm around her shoulders, wanting to howl with the infernal wrongness of the situation.
“He said he’d keep me,” Mary said tiredly, leaning into him. “He kept me fifteen bloody minutes, tossed me a few coppers, and since then I haven’t been able to… Well, money has been tight.”
“Do you know his name?”
“One of Jones’s friends, but don’t involve yourself. His papa’s a lord, and I was foolish.”
“Does he know?”
“Nobody knows, though I think Estelle suspects and maybe Fleur.”
“Then everybody suspects,” Worth said, thinking through the options. “Are you feeling well enough to keep dancing for now?”
“Until I show, I can dance. That’s the rule, but I’m not tall, or fat like Hera, so I’ve only a few weeks’ work left.”
“Take the rest of this with you,” Worth said, gesturing at the tray. “You’ll be ravenous later. Promise me you won’t do anything silly while I think this over.”
“I’m not the dramatic kind. Mostly, all I want to do is pee and nap.”
“And shock your solicitor,” Worth added, though he applauded her forthrightness. “Before I leave Town tomorrow, I’m to make some purchases for my sister at the shops. Will you be at rehearsal?”
“Miss rehearsal, and you get docked,” Mary reminded him. “I’ll be there.”
She’d made no move to leave his side, and that more than anything else left Worth feeling inadequate, and somehow ashamed. Avery was in the country, it was a pleasant night, and Mary wouldn’t have hatched any ambitious or possessive notions had he taken her up on the offer of a simple tumble between friends. A month ago, he would have blithely tripped up the stairs with her—at least until he guessed about the baby.
Hell and the devil. Fifteen minutes was a simple tumble. Worth’s own record was well under that, and he hadn’t even parted with a few coppers for the privilege.
Think of your opera dancers, Mr. Kettering.
“I will give thought to your situation, but you must not worry,” Worth said. “Thomas will see you safely home and carry the leftovers so they don’t go to waste. But tell me, Mary, can you tat lace?”
* * *
Because Jacaranda’s employer had not the courtesy to send a simple note warning her of his return, she did not rouse herself to greet him when she heard his boots thumping outside the girls’ rooms farther down the hallway.
“I have come to apologize,” he said, pausing in her sitting room doorway, the dust of the road still on his person.
As opening lines went, that traveled some distance toward mollifying her. To proposition one’s housekeeper merited at least a personal apology. It did not merit belaboring.
“Apology accepted,” she said, setting aside the first decent cup of tea she’d had all day. “Shall we send a bath up to your chambers?”
Now that he’d apologized, she wanted to devour him with her gaze, also to ignore him. Staring at her tea cup was a nice compromise, but really, to think such a scandalous proposition was to be forgiven with a few meaningless words...
“I should have sent a note,” he said, inviting himself into her sitting room and appropriating the middle of her sofa. “Mind if I have a cup?”
“You apologize for the lack of a note?”
“Not well done of me, I know.” He poured for himself, and Jacaranda was compelled to stare at his hands. Long, elegant fingers and broad, strong palms. They were warm, those hands, and knowing.
But their owner hadn’t the sense to apologize for his brazen overtures.
“Not well done of you, indeed,” she managed. “Help yourself to cream and sugar.”
“I don’t suppose you could order us a tray?”
“It’s tea time.” She rose and went to the door to signal a footman. “I am the housekeeper, I can conjure a tray of victuals on occasion. Your sister and your niece will want to greet you.”
While Jacaranda abruptly did not.
“I want to greet them, too, but first I wanted to inquire as to how soon we can accommodate my brother.” He downed his cup of tea in one swallow, his throat working while Jacaranda tried not to stare at that, too.
He was the most aggravating man.
“I’m ready now,” she said, not liking the sound of the words as they hung in the air.
“What constitutes ready?”
“You’ll interfere?”
“I’ll take an interest,” he said, holding his cup out for a refill.
Jacaranda obliged, willing to consider he might have apologized as artfully as he knew how.
“May we tour the state rooms, say, tomorrow morning?” he went on. “The stable master ought to be notified he’ll have extra teams to deal with.”
“Roberts knows,” Jacaranda said, adding cream and sugar to his tea. “I’m sure Simmons told him, or Reilly. The extra linens have been washed and the curtains beaten and rehung. The good silver is polished to a shine, the lace table runners aired.”
“Lace table runners?”
“All of them, because we don’t know how long your brother will be joining us.”
“Probably only long enough to collect Yolanda and assemble his entourage again.”
“What if Yolanda doesn’t want to go, but would rather stay here in the south?” Jacaranda asked, giving his tea a stir.
What was wrong with older brothers? They always assumed they knew best, always marched out smartly with their plans, never asked even an opinion, much less permission of their sisters.
He scowled at the tea she offered before accepting it from her. “If Yolanda wants to stay in the south?”
“With you.”
He took a turn staring at his tea cup. “I run a bachelor establishment in Town. I always have, and I’m not connected, as my brother is.”
“Your bachelor establishment boasts at least one small female child and her nanny.” Jacaranda stirred her tea slowly, though it needed no stirring. “You may not be titled, though I suspect you could easily be knighted if you chose, but you are most assuredly connected. Wickie says you’ve paid several calls at Carlton House.”
“Any pair of deep pockets is welcome to call on Prinny, and I’ve been considering Avery’s situation. She’s legitimate, or I think she is, though with the French these days, one can hardly tell.”
Jacaranda’s ire at his disrespectful proposition, at his abrupt absence, and his lack of warning regarding his return fueled her rising irritation at his dunderheaded notions of family.
“You are not thinking of sending that dear little child north with a stranger who’s never so much as patted her head?”
“He’s an earl, and he’s her uncle.” Mr. Kettering rose but kept his tea cup. Jacaranda suspected he did so in order to have something to stare at. “If Yolanda goes, it really won’t be that much of an adjustment to add Avery to the earl’s household, too.”
“Worth Kettering, you have gone completely ’round the bend. Yolanda cannot be seen to disappear to the north, as if she were some eccentric spinster at the age of sixteen—or a girl in disgrace. She will need a Season, you’ve said so yourself, and she will need her family.”
“No girl comes out at sixteen. Even I know it isn’t done.”
Perhaps it was a measure of his upset—over not having sent a note?—that she had to point out the obvious to him.
“In less than a year, she will be seventeen, and many girls do make their bow at seventeen. They marry at seventeen, they conceive and even bear children at that age. My own sister wed at seventeen, and very properly.”
He set his tea cup down on its saucer hard and turned his back to her. Something like compassion reared its inconvenient head, but Jacaranda kept her lips closed. Let him squirm. He might treat her cavalierly—she was a woman grown who could hold her own—but his younger relations deserved better.
“Hess and I will discuss it,” he said, turning back to face her after a long, silent moment.
“You ought to discuss it with the young ladies. You propose to play skittles with their lives. Avery should at least visit the family seat before you force any move on her.”
“She’ll love it,” Mr. Kettering said, crossing his arms and leaning back on Jacaranda’s window sill. “Hess keeps one of the best stables in Cumberland, and he’s well liked by all. The house itself is gorgeous, stately and yet still a home, and the grounds are spectacular. We never have trouble with the help. Working for the Ketterings is a plum passed down from father to son and aunt to niece. She’ll settle in at Grampion and never want to leave.”
Worth Kettering was homesick. The longing poured out in his words, in the distant memories behind his eyes, in the wistful expression softening his features.
“You want them to have what you’ve rejected?”
“What I cast aside, as a youth.”
“Let them have what you had as a youth, what you still have.” She rose, too, and stood with her arms crossed. “Give them a choice.”
“Hess is the head of our family, and his decisions will be final.” Reciting the words seemed to settle something for him, but not for Jacaranda.
“You are Avery’s guardian. Wickie told me so, and you are the only person on this earth who loves her like family. You came to Yolanda’s rescue when dear Hess was off shooting out of season in Scotland.”
“Cut line, Wyeth. We can have this argument twice daily until Hess shows up, and it won’t make one bit of difference.”
“Then we’ll have it three times a day. Or four, or twelve.”
He was scowling at her one moment, and then his lips quirked up, even as he dipped his chin to hide it.
“You are a terror, Wyeth. Did you know that?”
“I am a housekeeper, one whose family begs her to return home with each monthly letter. You thwart family at your peril, sir.”
When she might have disclosed that she had heeded her family’s importuning and would soon be turning in her notice, she was cut off by one footman arriving with a tray of food and another with a fresh tea service. Mr. Kettering resumed his place on the sofa, and Jacaranda settled into her rocking chair, grateful for the distraction and the distance.
“I am famished,” he said, helping himself to a ham and cheddar sandwich. “I will show you every courtesy at dinner, but you’ll forgive me my lapses now. I stopped only long enough to water Goliath and let him blow.”
Jacaranda took a nibble of sandwich as she considered that interesting tidbit and which lapses he referred to. Lapses. Plural.
“How are matters in London?” Small talk, suitable to ingesting sustenance, she hoped.
“My house is a disgrace. My steward is a conscientious fellow, but the things you could teach him, Wyeth. I’ve half a mind to send him out here for a tutorial.”
“After your brother departs, I should have time.” Assuming she didn’t return immediately to her brother’s house. “If your steward takes his duties seriously, he’ll not quibble about a chance to discuss them with another of similar enthusiasm.”
“You are a terror who doesn’t speak like any housekeeper I’ve known.” He was back to frowning at her. “Where is this family who begs you to abandon me?”
“Down closer to the coast. Another sandwich?” Abandon him?
“Please.” He regarded her in silence while she put more food on his plate. Rather than allow him to study her at any length, Jacaranda cast another lure.
“Tell me more about your family seat. How many acres does it encompass?”
And he was off, waxing eloquent about a place that sounded like a medium-sized slice of heaven, for all it was two hundred miles north and he hadn’t seen it for half a lifetime.
Leaving Jacaranda to wonder if Worth Kettering had been banished, or if he’d exiled himself all those years ago.
* * *
The blasted woman pled a headache at dinner and took a tray in her room. Worth was aggravated at first, because he and Wyeth had settled nothing with that tea and crumpets sparring match upon his arrival, then he was relieved. They were under the same roof, he was bone tired, and perhaps she was as well.
He was restless, though, so he bade his womenfolk good night and ducked out with a towel, dressing gown, and soap, and enjoyed the privacy of the pond. The moon came up as he finished his swim, casting undulating ripples of light over the dark surface of the water.
That play of dark and light reminded him of Jacaranda Wyeth’s hair and of how she moved.
Shaking that thought away, he dried off, shrugged into his dressing gown, and made his way to the house. On a whim, he took himself up to the third floor, where his sister and his niece slept.
He hadn’t sent them any notes either, which was truly reprehensible of him. His housekeeper deserved a note, his womenfolk needed one. As he stood in the doorway of Avery’s room, he recollected all the times his mother had hared off in high dudgeon, threatening never to return. He’d been relieved when she’d come blithely sailing home, though that slight, low-down sickness in the gut had never left him as he’d waited for her next dramatic exit.
“Is she still snuffling?” Yolanda stood across the hallway in nightgown and wrapper. “The poor little thing was disconsolate. I thought she’d never drop off.”
“Disconsolate?” Why would Avery be disconsolate when he was back with them again?
“Her manka went missing, and she was nigh hysterical. She was hysterical.”
“Her what?”
“Manka, or mankit,” Yolanda said. “It’s how she refers to the nursery blanket her mother embroidered for her. We couldn’t find it anywhere, and finally Wickie told her big girls don’t have blankets and if Avery didn’t settle down, she wouldn’t have a doll either.”
“I had such hopes for Mrs. Hartwick.” The woman had been the most promising of a succession of nurse-governesses, but this—
“She wasn’t unkind. Big girls don’t have blankets.”
“No,” Worth countered, “they have keepsakes, and mementos, and I happened to see that your effects include a doll, who occupies pride of place on your mantel.”
She raised her chin, every inch a Kettering. “Your point?”
“Avery’s blanket must be found.”
Yolanda crossed the hall, went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I have hopes for you, brother. Good night and happy hunting.”
Yolanda took her leave on that cryptic remark, and Worth opened the door to Avery’s room. No candle had been left burning in the darkness, no doll tucked under her covers beside her. When Worth lowered himself to her bed, he saw her smooth little-girl cheeks were tear-stained, and her mouth worked silently, as if in want of a thumb.
“Best not wake her.” Wyeth was silhouetted in the door in her nightclothes, her hair down and unbound.
The sight caused an obstruction in Worth’s breathing. “You heard the racket?”
“She was pathetic.” Wyeth advanced into the room. “The first honest tantrum I’ve seen since my brothers were very young.”
“Was it your idea to threaten her dolls?”
“Angels abide, of course not.” She took a rocking chair a few feet from the bed. “When children are tired and aggrieved, they can’t respond rationally to threats, though it isn’t my place to interfere in the nursery.”
“Some would say it isn’t mine.”
“Some would say sending the child to Cumberland to live among a whole new set of strangers is not merely convenient for you, but in her best interests.”
He brushed a lock of Avery’s hair off her forehead, silently ceding his housekeeper points for tenacity and courage. “Where’s her blanket?”
Wyeth rocked slowly, the tempo conveying bodily fatigue, maybe even sorrow.
“I thought that’s what the fuss was about. I’ll unleash the whole staff tomorrow. Blankets don’t just get up and walk away. Unless the blanket has flown back to France, we’ll find it.”
“What if the pig ate Manka?” Avery asked sleepily. “William is always hungry. What if we never, ever find her? She’ll be all alone.” Her breathing hitched, and her little face screwed up, and she was in Worth’s lap before the first tear could think of falling.
“We will find her,” he assured her. “Mrs. Wyeth has said it will be so, and I say it will be so. We’ll turn out every maid and footman and tell all the house cats to look for her. Hmm? Maybe your dolls saw Manka going for a great lark in the laundry cart, and she’ll come back from her adventure all clean and smelling of sunshine.”
“She doesn’t want to smell of sunshine. She wants to smell like my m-mama.”
“Like your mama?”
The blanket was years old and had literally been dragged through the gutters of Paris. The hems had a few tattered vestiges of once-lovely embroidery, but the blanket couldn’t possibly smell of Moira Kettering now.
Wyeth shifted to sit beside them on the bed. “Did your mama’s scent resemble this?” She held a long, dark lock of her hair under Avery’s nose.
“Yes! That’s the Mama-flower. Manka always smells like that. I want to sit in your lap.”
She hiked herself away from her uncle and appropriated her perch of choice.
“Lavender,” Wyeth said, kissing the child’s crown. “Both the Kettering households use it for laundry and linen scents. I use it on my person.” She shifted away and resumed her rocking chair, the child in her lap.
“Tomorrow, your uncle can show you where the Mama-flower grows here. Now is when it blooms, and the scent is quite, quite lovely,” Wyeth said. “Did your mama ever sing to you when you were tired?”
“Mostly in English, which wasn’t my best when I was small.”
The slow rocking went on, and Wyeth’s hand traced an easy pattern on the child’s back. Worth felt his eyes growing heavy, and a heaviness elsewhere, too.
Not desire, though that hummed along quietly in his veins whenever he thought of the woman sitting a few feet away. Something calmer and sweeter pooled in his chest, having to do with seeing Wyeth with other children, babies even.
Everlasting Powers, save him.
“Can you hum the tune your mama sang?” Wyeth asked in drowsy tones.
And soon Wyeth had lullabied the child right back to sleep, her voice a lovely, true alto that brought comfort and peace in the darkened room.
“She’s out like the proverbial candle,” Wyeth said after a few minutes of silent rocking. “Can you lift the bedclothes?”
He obliged, then covered the child up when Wyeth stepped back and arched her spine, hands low on her back. While she gazed down at the sleeping child, Worth found a cloth doll to tuck in with Avery and bent to kiss the child’s forehead.
He also left her door cracked, so light from the sconces in the corridor might reach her room.
“My thanks,” he said as they moved down the hallway. “God help whoever misplaced that blanket.”
“The child herself likely misplaced it. You love her, you know.”
“Always a fine thing, when a woman tells a man what he feels.”
She stopped outside her door and peered up at him in the dim light. “I simply wore a soothing scent. You needn’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.” He wasn’t, exactly, but he was made hungry in some regard by what had just transpired. Rather than examine that hunger or admit the loneliness of spirit behind it, he opened the door to Wyeth’s sitting room and peered inside.
Candles burned, and a modest fire danced on the andirons. The room was cozy on a night Worth would have said was almost warm to begin with.
“I’ll build up your fire,” he said, moving past Wyeth into her room.
“You needn’t.” She followed him in. “I lit the fire only to dry my hair. I’ll open my windows, because it’s nearly stuffy in here now.”
Stuffy and thick with lavender. “I’ll bank your fire then.”
He made a thorough job of a simple task, because otherwise she’d shoo him out of her quarters, when he wasn’t in any hurry to leave.
“Before,” he said, back to her as he knelt in front of the hearth, “when we were on the bridge? I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“My guess is you did not mean much of anything.”
“Oh, I meant something.” He straightened and put the poker aside. “We’ve chemistry between us, and indulging that chemistry could be lucrative for you, Wyeth.”
She neither took a place on her small sofa, nor hovered by the door, but simply stood her ground at the center of the room.
“What you offered might have been lucrative in terms of coin, but costly otherwise. We need not discuss this again. Ever. ”
That gave him something to think about, which might have been an adequate distraction, except it was late, they were alone, and a bed was close at hand.
Her bed.
“Most choices involve costs and benefits, my dear. You consider the costs almost exclusively.” He recognized in another a trait he had honed to a fine business advantage in himself.
Her smile was such as a tutor might bestow on a particularly dim pupil. “You offered me illegitimate children I can’t support, loss of reputation, potential loss of health, loss of long-term income and standing, loss of my family’s regard, for starters. Let’s assume I don’t die in childbirth, as so many women do, and for what? A few kisses, some stolen pleasure? A little coin?”
A lot of coin, half his fortune maybe, because he could always replace the money. With her, that point would merit him nothing.
“Few of those losses would accrue unless you chose to be indiscreet. I’d protect your reputation the same as I would Yolanda’s. You’d gain a few assets, paltry though they might measure in your estimation.”
While this discussion alone might cost Worth his dignity, for rather than negotiating, he was perilously close to…wheedling.
“What could I possibly gain from an illicit liaison with a man who can’t admit he loves his niece as if she were his own?”
The finer points of her logic escaped him. Taking care of Avery was his privilege and his duty—and Avery was his, unless Hessian decided to snatch her away to the north.
He sauntered close to the pillar of good sense standing where his Wyeth ought to be.
“You would gain pleasure, in which your existence is decidedly deficient, madam.” He spoke gently, lest she turn the argument right back around on its source. “You would gain a friend in this life, a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, someone to provide bodily comfort when running your empire weighs too heavily. In short, you would gain a part of me I don’t lend easily, but one you might find worth having.”
He was close enough to catch the part of her scent that wasn’t simply lavender, but summer flowers, and her. She regarded him with some puzzlement, and he would have given a lot to know which particular rabbit trails her febrile feminine brain was coursing.
“A part of you not lent easily,” she said, “with interest, principle subject to collection without notice. Too much risk in those terms for a prudent investor. Nothing but risk, really. Good night, Mr. Kettering. We’ll find Avery’s Manka in the morning, won’t we?”
He bowed and withdrew, knowing that if he touched her, the argument would progress in a different and equally fruitless direction. In her convoluted-to-him, crystal-clear-to-her way, Wyeth had communicated something in what she hadn’t said.
She viewed a part of him was worth having, but not on the terms he’d offered. She wanted a different balance of risk and reward. That was progress, and all any negotiation wanted to remain viable was a bit of progress from time to time.