Worth Lord of Reckoning (5 page)

But, still, she was cold. Her lips were blue, her teeth chattered, and her eyes had turned to chips of periwinkle ice, for her discomfort was no doubt
all his fault
.

“For God’s sake, come here.” He grasped her by one fine-boned wrist and pulled her into his embrace. “You will catch an ague with all this damned pride, pardon the language.” He scooped her up against his chest and settled with her on the sofa, her “d-d-don’t you d-d-dare” hissed right in his ear. He twitched an afghan down from the back of the sofa and draped it over her as she squirmed in his lap.

“Hush, woman. You’re cold, I’m warm, and a chill can be dangerous. Tolerate my proximity for five minutes, and I’ll leave you in peace.”

He ran his hand over her back, feeling the tremors of her shivering.

“Cuddle up and hold your tongue,” he admonished. “You know you will otherwise crawl between cold sheets and fall asleep without getting warm. That misery can be avoided if you’ll simply—”

“I hate you.”

Then she subsided against him and didn’t even lecture him when he rested his chin on her damp hair.

“Of course you do, but might you care to enlighten a fellow as to why?”

She burrowed closer and remained silent, suggesting her body didn’t hate him.

“I have it.” He gathered her into a more snug embrace as another chill shuddered through her. “If I have to ask, I don’t deserve to have it explained to me.”

“Brilliant.”

“But hardly original. One wants a little originality in a lady’s vituperations.”

She made a huffy noise against his chest, but at least she’d stopped shivering.

* * *

Jacaranda gave up verbally fencing with the wonderful heat source in whose arms she was nearly drowsing. She’d pay a price for this folly tomorrow, and likely for the remaining weeks of her tenure in his employ, but Worth Kettering was wearing silk and velvet, he smelled like a fresh breeze through a cedar forest, and in his arms Jacaranda felt, at least for these moments,
safe
.

He was big, brusque, officious, and far too astute, but he was offering her—pushing on her, really—a comfort more seductive than wealth or chocolate.

How long had it been since she’d been held this way? Likely since infancy. In her childhood, her papa’s and step-mama’s energies had been taken up with the younger children, particularly with pretty little Daisy, who’d had weak lungs as a child.

Then had come the tribulations of adolescence—height, nicknames, and the odd attentions from boys much older than Jacaranda.

She shoved that thought and all the bewildered, shameful memories that went with it aside and rubbed her cheek against the silk of Mr. Kettering’s dressing gown.

He would have to wear silk.

“You’re falling asleep, Wyeth, my dear.”

Before she could struggle off his lap, he rose, easily, without grunting or straining or remarking on her size, and walked with her into her bedroom. He’d closed the window, probably in deference to the candle he’d lit by her bed, but that small consideration meant the room was free of drafts.

He set her on the edge of the bed, went around to the other side, and turned down the covers.

“Don’t suppose you’d invite me in to warm up your sheets? I excel at warming sheets.” He stacked throw pillows on a chair, a man at ease in a lady’s bedroom. “No witty rejoinder, Wyeth? Shall I worry about you in truth?”

“I am speechless at your crude suggestions,” she managed. “Both my bedroom and sitting room doors have stout locks. Must I use them, or have you acquired minimal notions of gentlemanly conduct at some point in your misspent youth?”

A housekeeper did not speak so disrespectfully to her employer, but he hadn’t been serious about joining her in bed—she hoped. He’d been offering an insult as a bracing conversational slap to one whose wits had been wandering.

Or perhaps—intriguing notion—his remark had been intended as flirtation, a sad comment on the realities of Town life.

“Many would agree with the misspent part,” he murmured, lifting back her covers. “Scoot in, my dear, or you’ll start shivering again, because your hair is still damp.” He frowned at that realization, the candlelight making him a displeased Bacchus. He took off his dressing gown and laid it over her pillows. “Your pillows won’t take the wet.”

“That dressing gown is silk.” She lifted her legs to get under the covers, else he’d stand there half-clothed all night waiting for her. “I’ll ruin it.”

“I can’t have you courting a chill. I thought we’d established that. A scrap of cloth matters little compared to the smooth running of my household.”

To her horror, he sat at her hip and brushed her hair back from her forehead, then turned her head gently with a thumb to her chin.

“This scrape might start bleeding again. Try to sleep on your right side.”

She obligingly shifted to her side—anything to make him go away.

“Good night, Wyeth.”

“Good night, Mr. Kettering.”

He rose and moved around the room, cracking her window a hair, blowing out the candle. She heard him moving in the other room, then felt the lovely weight of the afghan spread over her blankets. The light from the sitting room disappeared as he closed the bedroom door, and still she heard him, tidying up all the trays he’d brought in.

For nothing. She hadn’t eaten, hadn’t used the warm water, hadn’t had a final cup of tea.

But she did sleep.

Eventually.

Chapter Three

“They’ll be forever in there.” Yolanda flopped back against the squabs and knew she was setting a bad example for her niece. Young ladies did not flop, and they did not gripe.

She had a niece, whom she hadn’t known about, just as her brother Worth hadn’t known he had a living half-sister. Having a niece was peculiar, when Avery seemed more like a younger sister and Worth Kettering more like an uncle. A grouchy uncle.

“Wickie won’t tarry,” Avery said in French. “She’s devoted to me, and now she’ll be devoted to you, too.”

“Miss Snyder has that honor,” Yolanda said, happy to practice her French on a native speaker. “At least until Michaelmas term. I wonder how much Mr. Kettering paid her for the trouble of babysitting me for three months.”

Mr. Kettering. Worth.
Her brother
.

“Uncle has pots of money.” Avery grinned as if Uncle had chocolates in his pockets. “Spending some on Miss Snyder won’t hurt him. She looks sad to me, or angry.”

“She’s nervous,” Yolanda said, switching to English. “She’s one of those mousy little women who toils away in thankless anonymity in the classroom, and dithers over which new sampler to start as if it’s a significant decision.”

“Uncle thanks Mrs. Hartwick, but I don’t know those other words you used—anom de something and blither,” Avery said, peering out the window. “They’re coming now.”

“With food, thank the gods.”

“Uncle says that. Thank the gods.”

Uncle this and Uncle that. The little magpie worshipped the ground the man strutted around on. Yolanda had heard in great, dramatic detail in at least two and a half languages why Avery had reason to appreciate him. Avery had been orphaned in Paris for almost a year after her mother, Moria, had died, but had memorized Worth’s direction, and eventually, thanks to the kindly intercession of her mother’s friends, had been sent to her uncle.

A tale worthy of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels, right down to the way Worth doted on his niece.

Had he asked darling Avery for proof she was related to him?

To
them?

Yolanda tucked into a hot, savory cottage pie, silently admitting that her brother may not have believed her, but he’d taken her in, bribed Miss Snyder to chaperone, and now they were off to the country.

He’d apparently bribed the coaching inns along the way, too, because the food was excellent, and the relief teams in harness in mere minutes.

Miss Snyder gave Yolanda a hesitant smile from the other bench. “It’s good to see you eating, my dear. Soon we’ll be at your brother’s estate, and you and Avery can have a nice stroll.”

She patted Yolanda’s knee and took a careful bite of her meat pastry. Miss Snyder slowly, thoroughly chewed her bite, patted her lips with a serviette, then took another slow, small bite.

Another hour, the coachman had said. One more hour, a mere ten miles, and they’d be free to leave the coach.

Had it been more than that, Yolanda doubted anything in the world could have stopped her from running screaming down the road. Miss Snyder, mousy, anonymous, and whatever else could be said about her, had at least
chosen
her path in life. She could have been a governess, a laundress, a paid companion, or some lusty yeoman’s wife—she was by no means ugly—while Yolanda was reduced to begging a berth from a brother nigh twice her age.

An earl’s daughter with a small fortune in trust—though not a lady by title—and she’d had nowhere to go.

She chewed mechanically, lest the lump in her throat rise up and humiliate her before the brat and the mouse. A young lady with nowhere else to go could not indulge in dramatics, not in the middle of the king’s highway, and not in her brother’s handsome traveling coach.

* * *

“Yolanda had nowhere else to go, you see,” Mr. Kettering said. “May I top off your tea?”

“Was your upbringing so backward you believe an employer should wait on his staff?” Jacaranda’s tone was meant to be prim, condescending even, but what came through was sheer puzzlement. She’d been given to understand a title hung not too distant on Mr. Kettering’s family tree, and here he was, dragooning her into breakfast tête-à-tête and pouring her tea.

“You’ll take sugar with that, to sweeten your disposition,” he said, pushing the sugar bowl toward her. “My upbringing was the best that good coin and better tutors could pound into me, but my mother died when I was quite young, and her civilizing influence soon became a distant memory. Have another raspberry crepe.” He portioned one off his own plate and onto hers. “You’re too thin, Wyeth. Eat.” He sliced off a bite from the crepes remaining on his plate and gave every appearance of enjoying it.

Well. They were very good, the crepes, the fluffy omelet, the crispy bacon and golden toast. A piping-hot teapot nestled under embroidered white linen, and the room was redolent with the scrumptious scents of a kitchen determined to make a good showing before a long-absent master.

When had anybody, anybody
ever
, accused Jacaranda Wyeth of being too thin?

“Better,” Mr. Kettering said, when Jacaranda started on her crepes. “Back to Yolanda, if it won’t disturb your digestion?”

Rather than speak with her mouth full, Jacaranda made a small circle with her fork, and for some reason this had her host—her employer—smiling at her over his tea cup.

Gracious saints, that smile was
sweet
. Mr. Kettering was a dark man, dark-haired, dark-complected, dark-voiced, but that smile was light itself, crinkling the corners of startlingly blue eyes, putting dimples on either side of his mouth, and conveying such warmth and affection for life that Jacaranda had to look away.

Lewis had written that even ladies liked to have Mr. Kettering handle their private business, and in that smile, Jacaranda saw part of the reason why. Mr. Kettering was, damn and blast him, tall, dark and handsome, and blessed with that smile as well.

Thank heavens her term of employment at Trysting would soon be up.

“Your sister seems a typical young lady to me,” Jacaranda said. “Your family hails from the north, do they not?”

“They do, what few of us there are,” Mr. Kettering replied. “My older brother has had the keeping of the girl, but he’s managed it by shuffling her from one exclusive boarding school to another, and he’s lately seen to it she joined schoolmates on holidays and breaks.”

“I gather she will holiday with us here for the summer?”

“Just so.” His first name was Worth, Jacaranda recalled, apropos of absolutely nothing. She’d never met a man named Worth before, much less Worth Reverence.

“What can I do to make her summer more pleasant?” Jacaranda asked. “Young ladies in the area would enjoy meeting her, I’m sure.”

“Then you should take her to meet them.”

“Mr. Kettering, it might have escaped your shockingly egalitarian notice that I am your housekeeper, but your neighbors know my station. You will take your sister calling, not I.”

His tea cup was set down with a little
plink!
of…not surprise, but disgruntlement, perhaps.

“I hardly know my neighbors in these surrounds, dear lady. Between trying to keep up with my correspondence from Town and seeing to my property here, I do not intend to make time to remedy the oversight.”

Jacaranda had seven brothers, and Mr. Kettering’s tone had the effect of battle trumpets summoning an experienced war horse at a dead gallop.

“You’ve neglected this estate for years, and we’ve managed well enough in your absence,” Jacaranda shot back. “Your sister needs you, and no one else can see to her in this regard.”

He put another half a crepe on her plate. “You don’t spare your heavy guns, do you, Wyeth?”