Page 33 of His Lordship's True Lady
“You and she would suit,” Worth said. “And not merely because a crooked pot needs a crooked lid. She’s no featherbrain, and neither are you.”
“I’m a boring old stick.”Who would slay dragons to win more of Lily Ferguson’s kisses.“Miss Ferguson seems to like Daisy, and Daisy her.”
“Hess, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, ten years from now, Daisy will be making her bow, and it’s you Miss Ferguson would be seeing over the tea and toast each morning. Do you like her?”
As a younger man, Hessian would have dismissed the question. Marriage, he would have said, was about esteem, respect, and duty. He was a widower now, and he’d been married to a woman who hadn’t particularly liked him, even as she’d spoken her vows.
“I enjoy Miss Ferguson’s company, and we share a common perspective.”
The mare craned her neck, indicating that Hessian was to scratch her great, hairy ear. He obliged, though it would result in dirty fingernails.
“What perspective might that be?”
“That life isn’t an endless exercise in frivolity, that a child’s welfare matters, that polite society is mostlyridiculous.”That kisses should be delightfully unrestrained.
“All people of sense can agree on that last, but if Miss Ferguson is such a paragon of breeding and wisdom, why hasn’t she married previously? She’s an heiress, she’s not hard on the eye, and if nothing else, you’d think Leggett would select a husband for her from the advantageous-match category.”
Wealthy and titled, in other words.
“I’m advantageous,” Hessian said. “Or getting there.”
The mare butted him in the chest. Had she been so inclined, she could have sent him sprawling on his arse in the dirt. Worth too could have dealt a few blows—ridicule, incredulity, dismay—but he was instead looking thoughtful.
“You are in every way an estimable fellow,” Worth said, “and nothing would make me happier than to see you matched with a woman deserving of your esteem, but your first question is about Leggett, and it’s regarding him that I must raise a reservation.”
Hessian scratched the mare beneath her chin, which she also seemed to enjoy. “Miss Ferguson says he runs off the fortune hunters. All I know of the man is that he was a friend of our papa and is quite well fixed.”
“Is he? I have my fingers in financial pots that involve everybody from King George to the seamstresses on Drury Lane, and never once have I crossed paths with Leggett. Now he’s apparently sniffing around at my club, making discreet inquiries about a venture I’m putting together with some Americans. Why?”
“Because you are a genius at making money.”
“Why is Leggett only now coming to need that genius?”
“Perhaps he’s investigated all other possibilities, made a sufficient sum, and hopes by investing with Worth Kettering to make a more than sufficient sum. I have taken every bit of the investment advice you’ve offered, and in a very short time, my finances have come right.”
More than come right. Over the next five years, Hessian would accumulate capital at an astonishing rate, thanks to his brother.
Worth approached the mare, who pinned her ears. “She honestly likes you. You walk in here and command the notice of the most finicky female I know.”
“She recognizes a yeoman at heart when she sees one. I have never thanked you for dispensing that financial advice. I am deeply grateful.”
Worth wandered back to his gelding, who was affecting the horsy version of a wounded look. “You follow my advice. So many ask for it, then ignore it. I owed you after the way I left Grampion Hall in high dudgeon as a young man. You looked after Lannie, you extended the olive branch, you manage the ancestral pile. Had it not been for Jacaranda’s influence, I might still be sticking my figurative tongue out at you and ignoring your letters.”
Hessian had never considered that Worth felt guilty over the rift between them, which had been a case of mutual youthful arrogance more than anything else.
“I’m the earl,” Hessian said, giving the mare a final pat on her nose. “I’m supposed to extend olive branches and all that other. Might we regard the topic of past misunderstandings as adequately addressed and instead return to the issue of Walter Leggett?”
Worth was a jovial fellow, often gratingly so, but for a moment, in the shadows of the stable, he looked very much like their father. The late earl had been dutiful, stern, and nobody’s fool, though kind too. He had loved his children, but he’d lacked a wife at his side as his boys had made the difficult transition to young manhood.
“You have a gift for understatement,” Worth said, “and yes, we can discuss Leggett, except I know very little about his situation. Over the years, everybody’s fortune get an occasional mention in the clubs. This fellow’s stocks took a bad turn on ’Change. That one married his spare to an heiress. Some other man is mad for steam engines—as I am—and yet another just bought vineyards in Spain, of all the dodgy ventures. Leggett’s name doesn’t come up.”
Hessian found a pitchfork and brought the mare a serving of hay from the pile at the end of the aisle. “So he’s discreet. Not a bad quality in a fellow.” The next forkful went to the gelding, and thus every other beast in the barn began nickering and shifting about in its stall like drovers trying to get the attention of the tavern maid.
“Discretion is a fine quality, but I’m nosy,” Worth said. “Will you also sweep the aisle, fill up the water buckets, and muck the stalls for me?”
“I miss Cumberland.”
Worth took up a second pitchfork. “I miss Trysting.”
