Worth Lord of Reckoning (18 page)

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.

Chapter Eight

The storm moved off, until what came down was mostly moisture dripping from the canopy around the clearing where Worth wielded his ax.

Jacaranda Wyeth didn’t want to marry him.

Thunk!

She’d have her pleasure of him, then cast him aside.

Thunk!

She’d dictate her terms, and he was supposed to meekly abide by them.

Thunk!

He was to content himself with bodily intimacy only.

Thunk!

No commitment, no future, nothing to rely on…

God in heaven.

He put up the ax and gathered the split logs along with the detritus of his anger, for he was whining like a rejected opera dancer.

No, he was whining like a society lady propositioned and thoroughly enjoyed by one
Honorable
Worth Kettering, then promptly set aside so he might prowl for fresh game the next night.

Or later that same evening.

God’s holy nightgown.

He sat on the back steps of the cottage, abruptly tired. The overgrown forest around him was beautiful, and his, and yet what did it mean? Woods meant some warmth, the occasional harvest of lumber, some fresh game, all of which his coin would buy him easily.

His coin would not buy him Jacaranda Wyeth, though, not as a mistress and apparently not as a wife.

And still, sitting on that hard plank of oak, what he wanted was her sitting beside him, her hair tickling his nose, her soft lavender scent wafting on the damp air.

“The rain’s letting up.”

How long had she been standing at the door, watching him rust his brain with futile thoughts?

“I could use a spot of tea, if there’s any to be had.” Anything to get her from his sight. Her hair was back in its tidy coiffure. She wore her chemise, his shirt clutched around her, leaving a portion of feet and calves—beautiful feet and beautiful calves—exposed to torment him.

The sight of her brought him a curious blend of lust and shame, for she had rejected him.

Was this how his former amours felt toward him? Covetous, but angry?

He fumed and steamed and pouted for a while longer, but when Jacaranda brought him a mug of honey-sweetened tea, he thanked her cordially and even smiled a bit.

Because by then—he was nothing if not tenacious,
she
had admitted as much—his pride had reasserted itself, his brain had come back to life, and he’d begun to once again plot a means of achieving his objective.

* * *

Worth Kettering was up to something. The scowling man who’d kissed Jacaranda so passionately before he’d left the cottage had turned into a smiling, cordial, gratingly good-natured fellow.

He thanked her for the tea.

He put his shirt back on when she handed it to him.

He suggested they raid the hamper while the rain tapered off, as if they were merely having a parlor picnic, not trying to put a serious misstep behind them.

While they ate, he told her stories about his clients, nothing truly embarrassing, and never naming names.

He helped her tidy up the remains of their meal.

“Is this your way of apologizing?” she asked, putting the lid on the butter crock. “Treating me to your party manners? You needn’t.”

“I’m the helpful sort.” He passed her the butter knife. “I misread the situation, and I can apologize for that. It doesn’t happen often, but at least this time, the only negative consequences devolved to me. You got what you wanted—or did you? Be honest, Wyeth, for I cannot abide dissembling females.”

She set the butter crock on the table and rose. “I am not accustomed to such frank talk. I suppose you are.”

Was it dissembling to not disclose even her real name?

He kept to his seat, which was a relief. If he started purring in her ear, or touching her again, she’d likely spout whatever drivel he wanted to hear.

“Between lovers, a certain openness is usually expected.” He lounged in his chair, one arm casually hooked over the back. “I assume that’s what you want of me, a lover?”

The question was as casual as his pose, but Jacaranda knew if she dared to meet his gaze, she’d see a light in his eyes that wasn’t casual at all.

“I am out of my depth,” she said, needing to see those eyes anyway. “I do not know exactly what has transpired between us. Your attentions felt good at the time, and the experience has left me off-kilter. I’m not sure what’s to be gained by discussion. This cannot happen again.”

“Pity.” He affected a look of bewildered regret, which she did not believe for one instant. “I thought it went rather well, though I assumed you were inspecting a prospective husband, not a prospective lover.”

“Not a lover.” She barely got the word out, hugging her now-dry shawl closer.

He wrinkled his nose, as if catching a rank scent. “A casual romp then? They have their place, I suppose.”

“Not a romp. Not anything beyond a misbegotten moment.” An indulgence.

“So the most intense pleasure you’ve ever experienced is to mean nothing, Wyeth? Those passionate kisses and your body so trustingly naked against mine—nothing?”

His tone danced between puzzled and wounded, but now he had on his solicitor’s negotiating face, and Jacaranda resumed her seat.

“I don’t know what such an encounter means. Perhaps it should mean nothing. We did not… We are not lovers.” He wanted honesty from her, she’d give him honesty—up to a point. Were she to acquaint him with her circumstances in every honest detail, he’d send her off to Dorset in his traveling coach before sundown, because Worth Kettering would not dally with an earl’s unmarried daughter.

“I would like to be your lover.” He ran a pinkie finger around the edge of the jam jar and licked a dab of preserves from his fingertip. “On that, we have both been clear, I think. You wanted something when you climbed into that bed with me, Wyeth. The question is, what?”

The quiet around them held a quality Jacaranda hadn’t experienced before, patient, warm, and even a little comfortable, and it had to do with what had passed between them in that bed—so trustingly.

And with Worth’s present efforts to forge an understanding with her regarding the same experience.

More honesty, then.

“I wanted to know what it was like.” Jacaranda put the lid on the jam jar lest she trace the same path around the rim he had. “The curiosity doesn’t go away, the wanting, simply because nobody offers you marriage. If I’m to be a spinster, I at least want to be a spinster who knows what passion can be like.”

“You’re a virgin?”

She shook her head, overwhelmed all over again by regrets that had plagued her for five years.

“Your previous experiences were not memorable?”

Oh, she could recall every detail of those experiences. “The whole business was disappointing. Very, very disappointing. I was disappointing.”

“That is not possible,” he retorted, and when she looked up, he was smiling at such an absurdity. “You could not possibly disappoint. Put the blame on the idiot who disappointed
you
, Wyeth. That’s where it belongs.” He patted her hand, as a friend might, and Jacaranda suspected her ignorance had been even greater than she’d supposed.

“I want you to think about something for me,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “Think about what you want, and while you consider that, I will offer you what I believe that might be.”

She wanted to tell him the truth without risking that he’d be disappointed in her. She wanted to go home to Dorset that instant. She wanted to kiss him as she dragged him back to the unmade bed. “What do you think I want?”

“An intimate friend, a man you can trust to see to your pleasure without making demands. Someone with whom you can learn about passion, someone who will respect your every confidence and honor your trust, even as you honor his.”

She closed her eyes, because he’d articulated more than she dared to admit, even to herself. And yet, the intimate, trusting friendship he described had abruptly become more unattainable than ever.

“My family expects—”

“Don’t give me an answer.” He traced a pattern over her knuckles, once, but Jacaranda had new respect for his tactile flirtations. “I have made the offer. You consider it at your leisure. Consider it indefinitely, if you like.”

“Your offer is dangerous,” she said, sliding her hand to her lap. “Children result from such offers.”

“I gave you pleasure now without risking conception, Wyeth, and that was a mere taste of what you can have, if you want it. I would never risk your reputation, not even for your pleasure. We’ve already come some way toward developing that friendship, and we can’t undo what’s happened today. I’d rather build on it.”

“I offered marriage, thinking you sought a husband. What honest man of your acquaintance actually wants marriage? Have your brothers galloped up the aisle, one after another?”

No, they had not, not a one of them, not even Grey, and a wife would spare him much. If Grey were married, his pleas for Jacaranda to come home would carry much less weight.