Worth Lord of Reckoning (13 page)

“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.