Worth Lord of Reckoning by Grace Burrowes

firstly what she’d got herself into, and secondly, how Worth Kettering was brother to an earl and not one of his staff or his tenants seemed to know it.

    * * *
     

    Grey was a dutiful boy in some regards, also stubborn. Francine resolved to be more stubborn still.
    “You must put a stop to Jacaranda’s latest nonsense,” she said. She’d chosen her moment well, catching him in the propagation house, where few of the servants and none of the siblings would venture without his permission.
    “Good day, your ladyship.” He didn’t so much as glance up from the plant on the table before him, didn’t offer her a bow or a smile. “If you’d give me a moment.”
    She’d given him years, and had he so much as bothered to set a handsome foot in the London ballrooms? No, he had not. He remained bent over his plant, some sort of knife in his hand and a smock—a servant’s smock—tied about his person.
    “The matter is urgent, sir, or I would not endure the heat and stench you seem to think your precious roses need.”
    How much coin was spent keeping this glass house heated in winter? Paying for gardeners they could ill afford?
    He sliced at one branch, affixed it to the stem of the plant standing in a pot on the wooden table, and held the two together.
    “If you could pass me that length of twine?”
    She snatched up a piece of string about a foot long and flung it at him.
    “The fate of this family’s good name hangs in the balance, and you’re playing in the dirt. What would your father say?”
    He finished tying the two plants together with a small, symmetric bow. “He’d say, ‘Good luck with the grafting, because the crosses aren’t amounting to anything.’”
    “Your sister is courting ruin. What will your roses matter when none of you can find wives because of Jacaranda’s foolishness?”
    His gaze lingered on the rose bush, and for a moment, Francine missed her late husband. He’d gazed at his roses in the same besotted fashion, and occasionally at her, too.
    “Jacaranda is not foolish. Of all my siblings, she’s the least foolish, and we’re none of us looking for wives.”
    The very problem. Until one of the boys married, and married well, Francine was doomed to dwell in poverty, in a house of chaos, noise, and social obscurity—but no longer. Jacaranda would come home, the boys would be married off, the finances would prosper, and all would be well.
    “You should be looking for wives. If you boys would do your duty, this family’s fortunes would come right. You and Will have had plenty long enough to sow wild oats, or graft roses, or whatever it is young men do. If you won’t marry, then you must at least snatch your sister from the jaws of scandal.”
    She drew herself up, intending to punctuate her scold with a sniff, but a sneeze caught her instead. Before she could extract a handkerchief from her bodice, Grey waved his at her.
    “I notice you do not commend your own sons into the arms of the waiting heiresses.”
    His handkerchief smelled of the humid, dirty environs of the propagation house, which meant it bore the same scent Francine’s late husband had often sported. She folded the handkerchief rather than return it to its owner.
    “Do you know for whom your sister keeps house?”
    “I know where she keeps house—a great rambling country house in Surrey, one the owner has benignly neglected for years. He’s a single fellow, reported to have some coin, and Jacaranda has consistently maintained that she enjoys her duties.”
    Jacaranda’s ability to run a regiment with a feather duster in one hand and a list in the other was exactly why she must be brought home.
    “He’s a single fellow, all right, and not much older than you. A bachelor supposedly raising a little niece who’s half-French.”
    Grey took up a broom sized for the hearth and began sweeping the dirt on the table into a small pile in the center.
    “This is not news, Step-Mama. I made some inquiries years ago. I