Chapter Seven
“What will it take to wake you?”
Jacaranda knew that silky baritone, but in sleep, she did not care to heed it.
“Woman, for the love of God, wake up.” A warm, large hand shook her shoulder, even as both the impatience in that voice and its anxious undertone registered.
She was comfortably face down in her pillows, a fresh breeze coming in her window. She’d been so tired last night a headache had plagued her, and then she’d lain awake pondering that odd exchange with the household despot.
Lips, on her nape. Soft, sweet, tender even, and something warmer and a touch damper than.—
She whipped over to her back. “Were you thieving a taste of me?”
“Good morning, or at least it will soon be morning.” Mr. Kettering sat up, an infernal smile playing over those very same larcenous lips. The room was barely light, and outside Jacaranda’s window, one lone bird chirped a greeting to the day.
“Get off my bed, leave this room, and do not come back, ever. If you have need of me, a maid can bring a note. Good-bye.”
She tried to roll away from him, but that hand was back on her shoulder, staying her. Her bare shoulder.
Her gaze met his, and he appeared to realize at the same time she did that she’d slept without her nightclothes. Beneath the thin old quilt and sheet, Jacaranda was as naked as an opera dancer’s knees.
“Wyeth, you wicked little creature.” His smile became diabolical, and that hand on her shoulder shifted to trace her collarbone. “You’re awake now. As am I.”
“I couldn’t possibly be awake, because I’m in the midst of a nightmare. Will you please take your hand off my person?”
The hand was gone, and so was the smile, then so was the man, for he rose and paced out of touching distance, turning his back to her.
“Thank you, Mr. Kettering, and if you will do me the courtesy to remain like that, I can find my nightclothes, though what earthly use you expect me to be without a hot cup of tea and at least a scone or two I cannot fathom.”
She fished her nightgown from under her pillow while she lectured him and rose to belt her dressing gown around her waist.
“I’m somewhat decent,” she announced. “Except my hair’s a fright, and we’re alone in my boudoir, and that cannot be decent.”
He peeked, then turned around and stepped behind her to lift her hair out of her dressing gown.
“This is not a fright. Your hair could never be a fright, and when I behold you, Wyeth, I thank the Creator you do not indulge in ghastly caps and severe coronets. I found the blanket.”
“Have you been up this entire night searching for that thing?”
She liked the sensation of his hands in her hair, sweeping it up and out so gently. She whipped around and glared at him accordingly.
“Not all night, but I couldn’t sleep, so about an hour ago, I started looking around. Down at the stables, in the playroom, the library. I found it with the soiled linens from the girls’ rooms, and it doesn’t smell in the least like lavender.”
“So we’ll wash it on Monday.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes, for it was inclined to subversive behavior when loose.
“You can’t be seen to wash it, or Avery will think you’re taking her mother’s scent away, not refurbishing it.”
“Then we won’t wash it.”
He glared back at her, which—though she was tempted to snicker at all this blustering over a child’s blanket—also made him look rather magnificent.
“Do not patronize me, Jacaranda Wyeth. We will wash it, as soon as you show me where the blighted soap is. Then we’ll let it hang in the kitchen to dry before Avery is finished breaking her fast.”
“You woke me at the crack of doom to find the soap?”
His glare faltered, and he apparently found it necessary to open her window one additional inch. “You’re always up at the crack of doom. Simmons complains that you make him look lazy by comparison.”
“He is lazy. I like it that way, and he does a fine job, despite both age and laziness. Come with me, and we’ll find your lavender soap.”
The relief that flickered in his eyes caught her off guard, but really, did he think she’d let the household run out of lavender soap? In summer, for pity’s sake?
They washed the blanket, then Mr. Kettering wrung it out between his hands until it was nearly dry. The only scullery maid stirring in the kitchen hared off to fetch the cream from the dairy and the eggs from the henhouse.
“I suppose you’d like me to make you a pot of tea?” Jacaranda extended the offer, knowing she would have her tea, come fire, flood or famine—or Worth Kettering in a rambunctious mood.
“Sit,” her employer ordered. “I’ll make the tea while you have a scone or two. Your disposition might benefit, if the Deity is merciful.” He passed her the basket of fresh scones and put both a jar of raspberry jam and a crock of butter on the table. “Save me at least a morsel, lest I get peckish and wan.”
“Peckish and wan, and given to invading your housekeeper’s quarters at all hours.” Jacaranda let that suffice for a riposte because the jam was wonderful, the scones perfect, and she wasn’t having to make her own cup of tea.
Then too, Worth Kettering had tracked down the prodigal blanket. She very nearly congratulated him for it, but eating her scone was a higher priority. He set a cup of tea before her, then slid onto the bench beside her.
“Budge over. I am owed a scone complete with butter and jam for my heroics this morning.”
She passed him her half-eaten scone, intending to hush him with sustenance, but he took a bite off it as she held it.
She put the scone on the table. “Mr. Kettering, will you cease your naughtiness?”
“Mrs. Wyeth, will you cease attributing base motives to every small gesture of flattery and flirtation that comes your way? This,”—he kissed her lips soundly, a brief, warm, raspberry-flavored kiss—“is being naughty. Now eat your scone, and I’ll make you up another.”
Jacaranda ate her scone, and the one he’d layered with butter and jam after that, it being far too early to debate what was and was not naughty with Worth Kettering, when she was in danger of losing track of the distinction herself.
* * *
The pond had proved a good place to cogitate, so Worth took to swimming nightly. In the water, he thought about his clients and his investments, or at least he told himself that was the purpose of his exertions.
That other thoughts intruded as he circled the pond in alternating directions was plain bad luck.
Thoughts of Avery, wreathed in smiles, unable to let go of his neck when he presented her with her blanket, fresh and fragrant.
Thoughts of Yolanda, admitting she had hopes for him. Hopes?
And many, many thoughts of Jacaranda Wyeth. The colder water in the deep end of the pond was particularly helpful for reining in those thoughts, but she was a puzzle, and Worth could not resist a puzzle.
She desired him, of that he was certain, and he desired her, of that he was more than certain.
But she would not have him, citing fear for her reputation and her well-being.
A frog set up a repetitive croaking in reeds on the stable side of the water, probably singing the froggy version of a serenade to his lady.
Wyeth’s fears were reasonable. No matter how careful a couple was, given enough lust—Worth capacity for lust was not in doubt—conception could occur. Women died in childbirth and from the complications that followed.
No matter how discreet he and Wyeth might be, intimate relations of any regularity took place under the noses of servants, neighbors, and family. Her reputation might suffer, in which case the logical countermeasure on his part would be to—
He stopped dead in the water, momentarily sinking as his limbs stilled and the frog’s croaking punctuated the stillness of the night air.
Marry her.
To consider such a notion ought to have given Worth a fright, but he’d learned that when attempting to solve a problem, no potential solution should be dismissed out of hand. Not on first mention.
Hessian had no children, hadn’t even taken a second wife. Perhaps that was Hess’s convoluted way of punishing Worth, of loading down a younger brother’s conscience in a battle for the moral high ground.
High ground be damned. Conceiving children with Wyeth would be an exceedingly pleasant duty.
As the frog fell silent, and an owl’s hoot floated on the soft, meadowy breeze, Worth turned the idea of marriage to Wyeth over and over in his mind. No matter how often he put the idea aside and told himself to consider some client’s portfolio or financial contretemps, Wyeth-as-wife had taken up residence in his mind. He slogged up the grassy bank, wondering how Hess would react, to know such a fine and beautiful woman had chosen Worth for her own.
The idea of belonging to her and having her belong to him settled the matter. Marriage for them was right, it would work. The opportunity for a decent match was too practical for her not to leap at it, particularly when her intended was an earl’s heir.
Worth toweled off, belted his dressing gown, and turned his steps toward the dark outline that was his long-ignored country seat.
Marriage. Who’d have thought?
* * *
With Worth Kettering back underfoot, Jacaranda felt more and more often as if she were being spied upon. He lurked in doorways, watching her at her ledgers; he stopped by her parlor at tea time and helped himself to most of her sandwiches and at least three cups of tea. He found matters to discuss with her, some of which were legitimately related to his brother’s impending visit.
Many of which were not.
“You’ll accompany me to the Hunters’ this afternoon?” he asked, setting down an empty tea cup. He’d assumed his customary place in the middle of her sofa. His arms were so long that when he laid them along the top, he spanned the entire piece of furniture.
Or maybe her sofa was that short.
“You’re perfectly capable of finding your way on your own, or Goliath is,” she replied, pouring herself a second cup. She always needed at least two for her morning break. “They have no daughters over the age of twelve and no riding pigs. You should be safe.”
“Without older daughters, Mrs. Hunter will be particularly glad to see a woman’s friendly face at her gate, and the weather is perfect for a drive.”
“Simmons’s knees, which are infallible, predict rain later.”
“So we’ll put up the top. Pass over that plate of cakes. Baked goods go stale if they sit out too long.”
He was at his most determined when he was like this, casually tossing back every obstacle she threw at him, assured, relaxed. He would not be deterred, and the Hunters were the last family they had to call on.
“Mrs. Hunter is deceased,” she said. “Mr. Thomas Hunter lives with his three children and his mother-in-law. He’s your best farmer, the most dedicated, for all he’s a young man.”
Mr. Kettering paused in the midst of selecting tea cakes to put on his plate. “You admire this Thomas Hunter?”
“Of course I do. You ought to admire him, too, raising three children, providing for their grandmother, and working your land so it out-produces all the neighbors. When you’re through ruining your luncheon, we can make a quick trip out.”
“Such a Tartar.” He popped a tea cake in his mouth, then held one up an inch from Jacaranda’s lips. “You can lecture me on my shortcomings for the entire journey, both directions, but don’t make me listen to your grumbling stomach.”
She took a bite of cake just to get his hand out of her face, but something…not innocent flavored the exchange–while raspberry icing flavored the tea cake. Yes, he’d taken a bite of scone from her hand earlier that week, but that hadn’t been entirely innocent either—on his part.
“You are tiresome,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll fetch my bonnet and shawl, and then put together a basket of provisions, so we can execute this errand you are incapable of seeing to on your own.”
She left him in her sitting room, munching cake, knowing it was a bad idea to allow him to remain unsupervised in her quarters, but unwilling to tarry in his presence. He hadn’t touched her since his pedagogic raspberry kiss days ago—except for helping her in and out of the gig—but when he didn’t touch her, the feelings his proximity stirred were even worse.
Bodily feelings of heat and vertigo and inconvenient excitement, but feelings of the heart as well.
Jacaranda liked Worth Kettering. Liked him despite his unwillingness to shoulder the responsibility for raising his niece or launching his sister, for he had a point. The earl should tend to both things. The head of the family took on the jobs nobody else wanted. Hadn’t Grey told her that, over and over? Grey had done it, too, and continued to do it. Witness, his letters were the most regular, and she treasured every one.
Despite the fact that her brother now wanted a specific date for her return to the family seat.
Worth Kettering and Grey Dorning would understand each other in a single glance. They were both men who went after what they wanted and let little stop them. An image came to mind of stallions meeting each other in savage battle.
Jacaranda had stopped Grey, though. Stopped him from imposing one of the most daft head-of-the-family decisions he’d ever come up with.
She was still glad about that.
She was not glad about having to travel in proximity to Worth Kettering, but Mr. Hunter was the last tenant to visit, so she packed her hamper and put aside her liking for her employer.
Also her desire for him.
They tooled out, Goliath in the traces. As they crossed the covered bridge at a smart trot, Mr. Kettering made not even a flirtatious remark. He didn’t need to, not when Jacaranda could recall in wicked detail the feel of her hand getting acquainted with him through his breeches.
Angels abide, what had she been thinking?
“How long ago did Hunter lose his wife?”
“Five years or so,” Jacaranda replied. “She didn’t last a year after the birth of the third child, and while she didn’t suffer, she did linger. Take the next right.”
Goliath turned onto a smaller track, and Mr. Kettering let the horse proceed at a more leisurely trot. “What was her name?”
“He called her Mary Jean, or perhaps Mary Jane. My tenure did not predate her death. Vicar would know.”
“He’d know if her grave has a marker, wouldn’t he?”
“It does not, nothing save a rough stone Thomas hewed himself to resemble a rose. It’s very different.”
“Why hasn’t he remarried?”
“You’ll have to ask him.” She hadn’t kept her tone quite disinterested enough, and Mr. Kettering peered over at her.
“Slow down, sir. This bridge is none too sturdy.” They clattered over a patch of boards, one intended to handle only light traffic.
“How does Hunter get his produce to market over such a paltry excuse for a bridge?”
“He takes the hayfields and makes a slightly longer job of it, I imagine.”
“Wyeth, why doesn’t Reilly note these things? The need for grave markers, the bridges gone rickety?”
“His job is to steward your land,” she said, though she’d had this very argument with Reilly himself. “Trysting has no position described as steward of your people.”
“Yes, it does.” He let Goliath’s stride lengthen as the track ran through an overgrown patch of the home wood. “I hold that position. How much farther is it to Hunter’s?”
“Less than a mile. As the crow flies, this tenancy is close to Trysting, but the creeks and woods and so forth make it longer when you take the lanes. Oh, dear.”
“Oh, dear, indeed.” Kettering drew Goliath to a halt before a substantial tree that had fallen across the lane. “Don’t suppose you packed a saw in that basket?”
“Everything but.”
“I’ll have a look.” He passed her the reins as he climbed down from the buggy.
He released Goliath’s check rein so the horse could crop grass at the roadside, then he inspected the tree. Larger than a sapling, the oak had been down long enough for the foliage to have thoroughly wilted.
“Had I ridden out daily, as my housekeeper advised me to, I would have seen this and had it removed.” Mr. Kettering unbuttoned his waistcoat, then passed both jacket and waistcoat to Jacaranda.
“Your steward is responsible for the land.” She’d given Reilly a schedule, which would have put him on every patch of the property at least twice a month in the growing season. “Perhaps you and he might discuss a schedule.”
“Not perhaps. I’ll find something to use as a lever. If I can get the damned tree loose from where it’s wedged in those rocks, I can probably move it far enough to let us pass.”
Jacaranda aimed her best frown at him. “Rain will soon move in. Why not turn around and let Reilly deal with this?”
“This is England. It’s always about to rain, and what will Thomas Hunter think, to know I’ve called on every tenant save my best farmer?”
She let him disappear into the woods while she visually calculated whether it was even possible to turn the buggy on the narrow lane. Trees and rocks encroached on both sides, great nasty boulders that would not admit of buggy wheels or shod hooves.
This part of the wood was unkempt, better suited for hunting than raising firewood or lumber, but she doubted Reilly had come this way in months. Thomas Hunter could be trusted to look out for his own land, after all, and Reilly no doubt saw the man at services, assemblies and over the occasional pint.
That part of being a steward, Jacaranda could not do for him.
Mr. Kettering came striding back out of the gloomy woods, toting a stout length of dead oak that had to weigh nigh as much as Jacaranda did. He heaved and hoisted and cursed and heaved some more, until the fallen tree was free of the rocks and lying at an angle, still blocking most of the road.
“That’s the hard part,” Mr. Kettering said, taking off his driving gloves and slapping them against his thigh before putting them back on.
That exercise had been trying for Jacaranda, too. Beneath the thin material of Mr. Kettering’s shirt, his muscles bunched and rippled with his exertions, leaving her staring at Goliath’s fundament in sheer defense of her sanity.
“Would you like to put your jacket back on?”
He grinned at her, swiping the back of his glove over his forehead. “I’ve grown a trifle warm, and we’re not done here.”
A fat droplet of rain landed on Jacaranda’s nose.
“We’ll get a soaking now, in any case,” she said, for what sky she could see through the trees had grown ominous.
Mr. Kettering pointed with his elbow. “That way, there’s an empty cottage with a decent porch about twenty yards down that trail. You take the hamper, I’ll fetch the horse.”
A peel of thunder rumbling over the last of his words had Jacaranda out of the buggy and retrieving the hamper post-haste. She didn’t like storms, didn’t like the idea of getting soaking wet where Worth Kettering could find humor in it, didn’t like much of anything about her day so far.
She spied the cottage, recalling it from when the estate had boasted a game keeper. The place was minimally stocked as a gamekeeper’s cottage, one duty Mr. Reilly was happy to conscientiously oversee. She suspected he trysted with the occasional willing woman here, or perhaps, given his timidity and Mrs. Reilly’s lack of an understanding nature, with the occasional lurid novel.
No matter. The cottage was warm and dry, and Jacaranda reached its covered porch just as the random drops coalesced into a steady shower. Several minutes later, Mr. Kettering came up the trail, leading Goliath. He waved as he took the horse around to the shed in back, his shirt already soaked to an indecent degree.
A solicitor ought not to sport such muscle. The Regent should sign a decree forbidding such a display, at least before susceptible women.
And what woman wouldn’t be?
“Everlasting powers.” Mr. Kettering came stomping and dripping onto the porch moments later. “You warned me, Wyeth. Go ahead and say it.”
“You cut yourself.” She scowled at his bleeding knuckles. “And your shirt is soaked, and the weather is hardly your fault.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, because the temperature had dropped, and her own clothing wasn’t exactly dry.
“Let’s see what we can find inside. Right now, a towel wouldn’t go amiss.”
He felt above the lintel, found a skeleton key where any schoolboy tall enough would know to look for it, and unlocked the door.
He gestured Jacaranda to precede him inside, then paused in the doorway. “I was about to say, Reilly needs a talking to, given the state of the bridge, the woods, and his idea of where to hide a key, but he’s at least kept this place in good shape.”
He had, or his lady friends had. The cottage barely needed dusting and lacked the mildewed scent common to neglected dwellings. The wood box was full, the windows were clean, and on the shelves above the sink, a few faded towels sat neatly folded.
Over in the corner, an old tester bed was made up, knitted blankets folded across its foot, canopy nowhere in evidence.
Jacaranda rubbed her arms as another rumble of thunder sounded, even louder than the last one.
“The storm is still gaining on us,” Mr. Kettering noted. “Best get a fire going, and I hope you won’t mind if I get out of this wet shirt.” He wasn’t asking permission. He was disrobing as he spoke, removing shirt, boots and stockings.
Jacaranda tried not to watch.
While the rain against the windows began a steady roar, she took longer to remove her bonnet than she ever had in her life. Her fingers shook, and her insides felt odd, and she could not get the image of Mr. Kettering’s damp, naked chest out of her mind. She also could not get her dratted bonnet off, a hairpin having caught on some part of the straw or wiring.
“Wood’s nice and dry,” Mr. Kettering said, scratching a flint and steel over some dead pine needles. A spark obligingly leapt, and to Jacaranda, even that—the spark falling on dry tinder, the flames eagerly licking up into the air—had prurient connotations.
What on earth was wrong with her?
“That should take the chill off.” He rose in one graceful flex of muscles. “We’ll hang your bonnet from the rafters, and it will be dry in no time.”
Her only good bonnet would be ruined if she kept fussing at it. Her gaze fell on a box on the mantel, one decorated with a carving of the belladonna flower.
“Sit.” She patted the back of a ladder-back chair then retrieved the box, finding it contained the same supplies its twin did at Trysting. “I’ll clean up your knuckles.”
He obliged but turned the chair backward so he could straddle it and extended his hand.
“This situation is fortuitous,” he said.
“Finding a box of medicinals was fortuitous.” She dabbed a clean cloth on his knuckles. “You are still bleeding.” She held the cloth snugly over his abused flesh. “I thought you had gloves on.”
“Had to take them off to work with the wet harness and buckles, but I like holding hands with you, Wyeth. Take your time, and don’t forget to kiss me better.”
She peeked at his knuckles, then closed the cloth over them again. “You are tenacious.”
“So are you. I like that about you.”
He could not know how susceptible she was to such a compliment. “My brother says I’m unnaturally stubborn for a woman.” Now, where had that come from?
“With seven brothers, you’d have to be.”
She took the cloth away again. “This might sting a bit.”
She applied a pungent brown astringent, and he winced, so she blew on his knuckles to ease the sting.
“Let it dry, and don’t be mucking about in the ashes or Goliath’s stall until it does.”
“Goliath has an open shed,” Mr. Kettering said. “He can amble around or crop some grass, and I dipped him a bucket from the cistern out back. Now, we’re safe and warm, and he is, too. What shall we do with this boon?”
“Boon?”
“I told myself to be patient.” He stood and crossed to the braided rug before the hearth. “I told myself sooner or later, I’d catch you in the pond, or reading late at night, or in some situation where we’re guaranteed privacy.”
“The rain should let up soon,” she said, a sense of unease rising at his words.
“I can be very quick,” he went on, casually unfastening his falls. “When I want to make a point.”
He stepped out of his damp breeches and hung them from a nail on the rafter nearest the fire. And that gesture, that simple reaching, without a stitch on, was so blatantly, masculinely beautiful, Jacaranda wanted to tell him to hold the pose so she might memorize it. His skin was darker above his waist, but the musculature of his arms, legs, belly, and back was all of a smooth, powerful, healthy male animal piece.
Blessed angels, he was beautiful.
He took the towel he’d been sitting on and wrapped it around his waist, and Jacaranda wanted to weep.
“Like what you see, Wyeth? I like what I see, too.”
“You will not come any closer,” she said, holding up a hand.
He stopped in his tracks. “Suppose not. I’d like it much better were you the one to do the approaching.”
“In God’s name why?” She couldn’t keep her eyes averted, much as common sense was screeching at her to do just that. When she looked, she wanted to touch, and if she touched, she’d want to be touched.
“A fellow needs to know his attentions are welcome,” he said, subsiding onto the raised stone hearth. “What better sign of welcome than when a woman makes the overtures?”
“I thought you understood I am not interested in your overtures.” With the last of her resolve, she turned her face so the brim of her bonnet took him from her sight, and that was…a mercy.
“You’re interested in my overtures. You’re not interested in earning coin by returning them. I applaud your scruples. The alternative makes a great deal of sense to me upon sober reflection.”
Sober reflection eluded Jacaranda where Worth Kettering was concerned. “A great deal of sense?”
“I’m not without sense, Wyeth, but I am without clothes. Why don’t you come investigate the bargain I’m offering?”
“What bargain?”
She was reduced to inane questions, in part because he’d chosen that moment to cross the room and crack a window, the better to help the fire in the hearth catch. The Italian masters hadn’t sculpted a man as breathtaking as Worth Kettering. He was a mature David, he was Vulcan, he was the exponent of all that was attractive and dangerous in a healthy adult male.
And he was nigh naked in a secluded cottage with her.
“That should draw better,” he said. “I’d suggest getting you out of your wet things, but then you’ll stay in them until lung fever carries you off. I’m not sure what motivated you to keep your bonnet on indoors, though.”
She resumed tugging at the infernal bonnet, but the ribbons were damp, which made working the knot difficult. “I’m not as wet as you. You were out in the rain longer.”
“If you need help with your bonnet, I am happy to oblige.” He bounced down onto the bed, and the creaking of the ropes had Jacaranda’s insides bouncing as well. “You brought a brush in your reticule, didn’t you?”
“Comb. I can see to myself.” Though when she removed her bonnet, she would look a fright.
He flopped back on the mattress so his legs hung over the side of the bed, and his words were addressed to the rafters.
“I may not have moved in quite the highest circles, but I am gentleman enough that you must know I wouldn’t force you. Let me get rid of that bonnet for you, Wyeth. You fancy it, and it’s fetching, in a rural sort of way. At the rate you’re going, you will soon be bald and the bonnet fit only for consumption by William the Famous Draft Sow.”
He wouldn’t force her. Jacaranda could be stark naked and the only woman left on earth, and he wouldn’t ever force her. That realization settled her down enough that she gave up ruining her bonnet and her coiffure.
“Come here, closer to the fire.” He sat up and patted the bed beside him, hiking a knee onto the mattress.
“How can you be so casual about being nearly…about being undressed like that?” She lowered herself to the mattress as if it were not up to her weight, as if it might start moving without notice.
He shifted, and the bed bounced. “I can strut about as God made me because I am a man in the presence of a female who likes the look of me unclothed. Then too, my clothes are wet, and wet clothes don’t flatter much of anybody. Damned uncomfortable, too, and in the most inconvenient locations. How many pins do you use, for pity’s sake?”
“My hair is thick and takes a lot of pins.”
But not so many that his deft fingers couldn’t work under the brim of the bonnet to withdraw the offending pins that snared the bonnet onto her head. He set the pins on the bedside table, lifted the bonnet away, and her hair went tumbling down her back in a single thick braid.
“You have the knack of smelling luscious, Wyeth.” He buried his nose in a handful of her hair. “Diabolical of you.”
“You have the same knack. Few men do. Will you sniff at me all afternoon, or surrender my bonnet?” She’d prefer the sniffing, of course. Vastly prefer it.
He rose and hung her bonnet on a nail along the same rafter that held his clothing, then returned to the bed. “You’re still sporting a few pins, and when attending a lady, I am nothing if not thorough.”
She didn’t feel so much as a tug or a yank on her scalp as he withdrew the last pins from her braid. He was that careful with her—or that experienced at tending to a woman’s hair. She was still marveling at his skill when a boom of thunder literally shook the cottage.
“I hate storms,” she said, hunching in on herself. “In Dorset, we don’t get the Atlantic storms they do in Devon and Cornwall, or not so many, but we get the Channel weather, and it’s bad enough.”
“You’re safe here, Wyeth.” His arm came around her shoulders, and his lips applied themselves to her temple. “Perfectly safe.”
He sat back a moment later, and Jacaranda wondered what that embrace had been about. Reassurance? When he was wearing only a towel? His arms had been warm and strong about her, and the reassurance in his voice had been convincing.
“My mother died in a storm,” she said, back to him. “She was out on the water with a boating party, and the weather came up suddenly. Some of them made it back, but she wasn’t a good swimmer.”
He brushed a hand over her nape. “I am sorry, love. How old were you?”
“I was nearly three, Grey was six, Will about five.”
“I was eight when my mother died. There’s no good age for a child to lose a mother.”
“You think about Avery losing Moira, don’t you?” She did not glance over her shoulder, for the conversation had taken an unlikely turn, though she preferred it to his ridiculous banter.
“Of course I do.” Another caress, this one pretending to tuck a lock of hair over her ear. “I think of Yolanda, losing both parents, and I realize whatever differences I might have had with my father, he at least did me the courtesy of surviving until I was able to make my own way in the world. Parents are supposed to see to that much.”
He regretted the terms on which he’d parted from his father. Jacaranda could hear his regret, could feel it in his hand tracing the curve of her shoulder.
“I had my papa until I was seventeen, and my step-mother is still at home.” Though Jacaranda wondered who was running Grey’s domicile, for dear Step-Mama hadn’t the knack.
“She was left with a lot of children. A lot of boys.” Another slow caress, this time under her damp braid, over her nape.
“She was, but Grey was down from university before Papa died, and Step-Mama hasn’t had to manage all the boys herself. Grey takes his responsibilities seriously.”
“As do you.”
“Papa did too.” She stifled a yawn, because those little touches of his and the rain on the roof were combining to send an insidious languor through her. Then too, the fire was warming the interior of the cottage nicely. “Papa told me he remarried to ensure Will and Grey wouldn’t be overly burdened managing the family’s holdings.”
“You believed him?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Five extra spares, Jacaranda?” His tone held humor, and when she glanced at him over her shoulder, his eyes did as well.
“Papa was very conscientious.” While Step-Mama was very delicate, if her letters were to be believed.
“Just as you are conscientious about my house?” His arms went around her again, and he pulled her back against the warmth of his chest.
“I try.” Though he would have to find a successor for her soon. She ought to tell him so.
“You succeed beautifully.”
When he complimented her like that, and held her this way, Jacaranda felt beautiful, too.
Trouble invariably had the ability to entice and please while promising certain disaster.
“The rain isn’t letting up.” She made the observation to fill the silence stretching between them, though she didn’t move. He didn’t either, but remained sitting behind her on the bed.
“Which means that rickety little excuse for a bridge might be washing out,” he said. “If I were you, I really would get out of that wet dress, Jacaranda Wyeth. Keep your chemise on if you want, but don’t take a chill for the sake of modesty. I first came upon you in sopping wet nightclothes, if you’ll recall. I’ve seen your treasures, you’ve seen mine, and nobody has gone insane with thwarted lust.”
He had seen her treasures, or all but, and the dress was damp.
“I do not want to encourage your wrongheaded notions,” she said, getting off the bed. “Neither do I consider myself the stuff of insane lust.”
Or even sane lust.
“I could not imagine encouraging your wrongheaded notions.” He lifted the covers and scooted under. “What? My clothes are wet, and unless you want me prancing about in a towel—which I’d be happy to do, so greatly do I seek to court your notice—then the least ridiculous place for me to be is under these covers.”
He tossed his loin-towel onto the hearth and made a great display of getting comfortable under the covers.
“What am I to be doing, prancing around in my shift while you stay warm and cozy?” She started to unbutton her bodice, back turned to him, when his voice came floating over her shoulder.
“You should join me in this nice, cozy bed. We’ve much to discuss.”
“Such as?” Her impending remove to Dorset wasn’t something she’d bring up unless she was fully clothed and her hair neatly pinned.
“How you like your pleasures, for one thing. How I like mine, for another.”
“I will not be your mistress.”
“No, but that leaves sensible alternatives, which I am prepared to offer you. Come to bed, love, so we might discuss them like sensible, if nearly naked, adults. It’s time you had a little of what you want out of this life.”
That was such a startling pronouncement, Jacaranda had no ready retort. With her back to him, she mentally reviewed his words, for a trap lurked among them somewhere—and a truth.
“I have a great deal of what I want in this life,” she said, getting back to her unbuttoning.
“I’m sure you’ve told yourself that.” A pillow suffered a solid blow. “I’ve kissed you, my dear, more than once. You’re hungry for a man, you might as well admit it.”
Love. My dear. “I’m hungry for a— You are beyond audacious.” Though he was not wrong. She was hungry for one man in particular, drat him.
“Taking you a long while to get out of a simple walking dress, Jacaranda Wyeth.”
“Just Wyeth will do. How can I share a bed with you when you’re talking such rot?”
“How can you not?” She heard the bed creek and suspected he’d rolled over to inspect her progress. “You take a chill easily, and I give off a deal of heat. Come to bed, and we’ll talk.”
“Close your eyes.”
He did, the soul of docility, as she peeled out of her damp dress, hung it on yet another handy nail, got off her damp stays—thank God for old-fashioned jumps—and gingerly lifted the covers to climb in.
“Don’t make me regret this.”
“I said we’d talk, Jacaranda. You know my mouth is good for at least that.”
She saw no point in arguing with him when he wasn’t making any sense, neither did she scold him for the use of her given name.
“So talk to me, my dear.” He rolled to his side, closer to her. She ought to flop to her side, give him her back, and start discussing the Damuses’ marriageable daughters. “Tell me what pleasures you enjoy the most.”
What sort of question was that? “I adore a perfect cup of tea. You?”
“We’re English. Of course we must have our tea. Tell me something you like that you haven’t shared with another, ever.”
His voice blended with the patter of the rain and the crackle of the fire to invite confidences Jacaranda might yield to him, if she could only figure out his objective. “What is this in aid of?”
“Because we’re to be intimate, Jacaranda Just-Wyeth-Will-Do. I’ll not talk of coin, I’ll not pester and flirt, I’ll simply give you the pleasure you want, on your terms. You’ve won, love. I’m capitulating to your very sensible view of the matter. Have your way with me.”
“I’ve won?”
“That’s right.” He traced her hair-line with a single finger. “From this moment forth, my duties include your regular and profound pleasuring, so start my instruction.”
Regular and profound pleasuring? “When did you make this decision?”
One moment he was lying at her side, sleepily perusing her, the next he was over her, crouched like a tiger guarding a juicy meal. She had only an instant to meet his gaze, to see the startling heat and purpose in his eyes, before his lips were firmly moving over hers.
He tangled a hand in her hair to prevent her from evading him, but when the first moment of surprise wore off, the worse shock set in: Jacaranda didn’t want to evade him. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to reason, she most assuredly didn’t want to flirt.
She wanted him.
And he was offering himself on her terms.
His kiss gentled as that realization brought her arms around his shoulders and had her seeking his mouth with her own.
“Better,” he muttered.
It was better, better without many clothes, better in a bed, better with the rain pattering steadily on the roof and all the privacy in the world. Her hands went questing all over his back, learning the smooth, warm map of muscle and bone. She curled her fingers over his biceps, holding on hard as his tongue made teasing forays into her mouth.
And legs! A revelation, to learn that a kiss could even involve her longest, strongest limbs. The ones she’d wanted to twine around him on the bridge, the ones she could clutch about his flanks so tightly now.
The kiss built, like a fire finding a nice, cool draft to feed on, spreading out through her body, taking over her reason. She sank her hands into his hair and arched her hips up, only to meet a hard column of flesh against her belly.
“Easy,” he murmured against her neck.
“We have to stop,” she said, even as she got a hand over his muscular backside and clutched him hard.
“We do?”
“We’re not married.”
He smiled against the juncture of her shoulder and her neck. “Then we’ll stop soon, but because we’re here for your pleasure, we’ll see to a few details first.”
Jacaranda had seven brothers. She’d overheard a lot, and she knew there could be pleasure for women, for some women. Wicked, lucky women. She went quiet beneath him and smoothed a hand through his hair.
Worth Kettering would give her this pleasure, on her terms.
She shouldn’t.
She absolutely shouldn’t.
But his discretion was utterly trustworthy, and when would Jacaranda Wyeth, aging spinster, rural housekeeper, ever have the chance to learn of these pleasures, if not with him? It wasn’t that men like Worth Kettering came along so seldom, it was that they never came along. Never. Not in Dorset, not in Surrey, not in London’s most fashionable ballrooms, not anywhere Jacaranda Wyeth had been or would be in the future.
She repeated the caress, not for him, though he seemed to like it, but for her. She found pleasure in simply stroking his hair, feeling the silky clean abundance of it slipping through her fingers. He closed his eyes and moved into her hand.
“You will show me these details, Worth Kettering, but we cannot… That is, I don’t see how, without…”
“Bless you. Trust me, we won’t. I won’t. This is for you.”
His voice had changed to a husky whisper, his body above hers became somehow languid, his muscles softer and more sinuously powerful. Under the covers Jacaranda went from warm to hot.
Wonderfully hot with a slow, spreading excitement that started in her middle and had her sighing against his chest.
“I’ll show you.” He sipped at the spot below her ear. “You’ll let me show you.”
She tucked a leg around his hips. “Show me soon, please?”
“Not soon.” He lifted up, and no smile lit his handsome features. “This is for you, and we’ll do it right. I promise you that, and I keep my word.”
She hid her face against his throat as one of his big hands cradled the back of her head.
He held her like that, sheltered by his warm, naked body and tucked snugly against his strength. In the middle of all the pleasure and wonder and curiosity, Jacaranda withstood a spike of…hurt, of loneliness for herself, for all the times she’d needed to be comforted and treasured and known thus, and it had been denied her.
Daisy had this precious intimacy. Had had it whenever she pleased for the past five years.
“Hold on to me.” His voice was raspy, and then he rolled them so she straddled him.
She burrowed down onto his chest, for if she sat up, her breasts would be very much on display, despite her shift. “This is novel.”
“You are shy. One would not have surmised this, given how you campaign around the house like Wellington on a forced march.”
His hands moved on her, stroking her hair, her back, her shoulders. God help her, there was pleasure in these simple caresses. Pleasure, comfort, and something soothing.
Caring?
“I cannot help my size. Or my name.”
“What has your name to do with the matter?” He gathered her closer. A hug, but more than a hug, too.
“My brothers are creative little intellects, and my name was an endless challenge to them.”
“So you were Jack the Giant?”
“And Jack Boots. Jackanapes, Beanstalk, and all manner of unflattering appellations. I honestly do prefer Wyeth. Grey says my mother called me that.”
“She called you by your last name? I suppose that’s better than my father’s appellation for me.”
“Which was?”
“Spare. Hess he referred to exclusively by his title, and I was Spare. ‘Spare, why aren’t you at lessons?’ That sort of thing.”
“You have such a beautiful name.” She murmured his name because that was a pleasure, too. “Worth Reverence Kettering.”
He closed his eyes, and she feared she’d misstepped, but then his arms closed around her again. Perhaps the unforeseen spikes of loneliness were not unique to her.
She leaned forward and kissed him, intending it as a comfort to him, to them both, but then his palm cradled her jaw, and he shifted his body, bringing his erect flesh up against her sex. With his tongue and his hips, he started a slow, undulating rhythm, and she fell into it, moving with him, catching his sighs in her mouth, giving him her own.
“Let me touch you,” he whispered, slipping that hand from her jaw to her collarbone. “Lift up one inch, Wyeth. I want to touch you.”
“Close your eyes,” she said, for she knew good and well where he sought to put his hand. She lifted up, letting her own hands trail over his shoulders and chest. “You are beautiful,” she said. “Breathtakingly, unfairly beautiful. Why is such size handsome on a man and ungainly on a woman?”
His eyes opened, and she wanted to cross her arms over her breasts, but she also wanted, more than anything, to not be ashamed.
“Listen to me,” he said, untying the bows down the front of her chemise, even as his gaze stayed locked with hers. “A man of my size can find few women who don’t feel like dolls in my arms, much less in my bed. I’ve tried to find pleasure with the daintier females, Wyeth, but they cultivate an air of frailness that’s at least partly genuine.”
His words were so…so unexpected, Jacaranda didn’t protest at his caresses to her bare midline.
“With a typical woman, I cannot express my passion,” he went on. “I must move about carefully. And at the risk of forever losing your esteem, I have to say the fit with such women is abysmal. One can be joined at the mouth, or elsewhere, but both at the same time without contortions. For a man who takes his kissing as seriously as his swiving, the result is eternal frustration. You are perfect. I would not give up one iota of your height and strength, not if God Almighty promised me the earth to see it so.”
He settled one hand over either breast. “You are perfect, Jacaranda Wyeth.”
And then she was perfectly shocked, because he leaned up and put his mouth to one breast, while his bare hand fondled its twin. All the arousal he’d awakened previously danced inside her like cloud lightning on a hot summer night.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, using his free hand to caress her ribs and stomach. “Perfect, marvelous, and lovely.”
He didn’t merely kiss her breasts, didn’t simply take her nipples one by one into the heat of his mouth, he made love to her. He pumped fresh air on the internal conflagration of her arousal, then shifted his hand down, and down, and conjured white-hot sparks with just his thumb.
She flinched.
“Settle, love.” He stroked his thumb over a particular knot of feminine flesh again, deliberately, letting her become accustomed to such an intimate caress, though Jacaranda feared there was no becoming accustomed to the sensations he evoked.
Somebody groaned, a soft, tormented exhalation.
“Stay with me, Wyeth.” He tugged gently on her nipple with his teeth. “Let me give you this.”
“Too much.” She hung her head, while moving her hips minutely against his hand.
“Let yourself have this pleasure of me,” he said, his words harsh and soft at the same time. A span of seconds went by, the only sounds the slight creaking of the bed ropes, the rain, the fire in the hearth, and Jacaranda’s breath, coming more and more quickly.
“Worth?”
“Let it”—another delicate nip—“happen.”
“Blessed, everlasting, merciful…Worth…”
Her body seized with pleasure, burned with it, consumed her with it. He drove his finger up into her, and the pleasure roared hotter and harder, shaking her like thunder shakes even a sturdy structure.
She might have shouted his name, she might have whispered it.
Jacaranda curled onto Worth’s chest fraught moments later, panting and dazed, grateful for his arms around her and the beat of his heart beneath her ear. She could not speak, and her body still hummed with the sensations he’d caused.
While her mind was in complete eclipse.
Of all the kindnesses Worth had shown her, she accounted his silence as foremost among them. When she awoke from her doze, she was still sprawled on his chest, his hands still moving slowly on her back and shoulders.
“You’re with me again?”
“I am awake,” she said, hiding her face against his neck.
“And?”
“And what?”
The rain pounded down on the roof, the fire crackled cheerily, and Jacaranda blushed mightily.
“Will I do, Wyeth? A man can’t be kept in suspense about these things, and most of us fellows take to direction on this one limited matter surprisingly well.”
“I cannot think how to respond.” Understatement, or perhaps cowardice, so she tried harder for honesty. “I cannot think at all.”
“That is an acceptable reply, but don’t fret. We’ll have years to learn one another’s pleasures.” He kissed her temple, and Jacaranda knew she ought to take exception to something he’d said.
Years.
“Years?” She made the monumental effort to lever up and beheld a man in the grip of an ominous kind of cheer. “What do you mean, years?”
“We have chemistry.” He patted her bottom. “We won’t be like some couples who are lucky to make it past the honeymoon without a disgust of each other.”
She swung her leg over his hips and scooted back against the headboard so they weren’t touching. “What honeymoon?”
“Whatever honeymoon you want. Suppose it depends on when we tie the knot, but Portugal is lovely in the autumn. I contemplated matrimony once before, as a much younger fellow, if you’ll recall. Even then, I didn’t favor a long engagement.”
“Tie the knot?” She drew the covers up under her arms, while he lay recumbent beside her, arms behind his head. His smile was a little too smug, and the downy fur of his armpits a little too masculine—and much too intimate.
A lot too masculine.
“You can’t think we’re obligated to marry now,” she said. “Even I know what happened in this bed cannot start a baby.”
“Wyeth, I said we’d do this your way. I said you’d have what you wanted. You won.” He sat up, too, no longer smiling but just as masculine. “We’ll marry.”
“I don’t recall you proposing,” she shot back. “I don’t recall you asking for my opinion on this lifelong commitment.”
“You’re a female.” He nodded once as if to assure himself of his conclusion. “You’re a decent female with whom I intend to have relations, ergo, you sought marriage. I’m offering, you’ll accept, and we’ll have relations. I’m more sure of that than ever.”
“I did not seek marriage,” she said, quietly, vehemently. “I am attracted to you, true, badly, badly attracted. And it won’t serve, I know that as well. But if I sought anything, it was in the nature of what you just willingly shared with me, and I thank you for it.”
“You sought merely to dally? With me?”
She nodded, not sure what all his question revealed, or what it concealed. He’d sought marriage—with her?
“You are rejecting my perfectly honorable offer of marriage?”
He was honorable, damn him, while she was purely, utterly flustered. He posed a simple question, while she could not think, for all the emotions, untruths, and complications whirling inside her.
“Marriage would never work, not between us.” And she’d never be able to explain to Grey, much less to Step-Mama why all her promises to come home had to be broken.
Again. Worse, how would she explain to Worth that yet another woman hadn’t been entirely honest with him?
“Marriage between us would work,” Worth said, flipping the covers back. Naked, he came around the bed and snatched at his breeches. “It would work splendidly.”
He leaned down, seized her chin in his fingers, and kissed her soundly. “It would.”
The next thing Jacaranda heard was an ax biting into a solid length of wood, hard. The ax blows fell again and again, until a rumble of distant thunder obliterated the sound from her hearing.