Forever and a Duke Read online

  “I make good money at the bank,” Ellie said, “and I don’t have to cheat anybody or lie about who I am to earn it.”

  “You lie to yourself, Ellie, my love. That’s worse than lying to all the banks in England. I’ll give Mick your regards when he lets me know where he’s landed.”

  She walked away without looking back, and Jack apparently had the good sense not to follow her—this time.

  * * *

  “We can move on from your aunties’ pin money to your London household accounts,” Mrs. Hatfield said. “You dwell in Town now, and you can compare my findings with what’s before your eyes. Then too, fraud anywhere in your books must eventually find its way to the London ledgers.”

  Rex paced her small parlor, while outside, a light snow was coating the walkways and streets. “You use the word fraud now.”

  “The ledgers suggest willful mishandling of your funds, not simple miscalculations, though I see some evidence of that as well.”

  The theater had run late the previous night, with Mama, the cousins, and the sisters chattering merrily the entire time. James and Eddie had joined the party at the interval, bringing several of their friends, all of them prone to uproarious laughter.

  “My butler—”

  Mrs. Hatfield held up a hand. She wore her version of battle attire today: fingerless gloves and a gray shawl, and she’d again turned back the cuff on her right sleeve. Her dress was dark gray wool, probably chosen because it wouldn’t show ink stains. All she needed was a witch’s hat and a cauldron to complete the portrait of the alchemist at her dark arts.

  “Your butler,” she said, “has too much to do and must rely on his station to effect discipline in the ranks. What he gets is the appearance of compliance with his orders and sloppy books.”

  The cat watched Rex from a perch on the windowsill. Her expression suggested that sloppy books should be added to England’s long list of capital offenses.

  “And my housekeeper?”

  Mrs. Hatfield rose from her desk and swung the kettle over the coals on the hearth. “She’s actually your mother’s housekeeper, isn’t she?”

  My own mother…“You are working up to another revelation. Who is in the dock this time? My mother? My aunts? My house steward?”

  “Come here,” Mrs. Hatfield said, taking one of the two chairs before her desk. “I’ll show you.”

  Rex hated that she had to instruct him on the topic of managing his dukedom, but he liked sitting beside her. Eleanora Hatfield had a sense of calm competence that soothed his temper, and just as she was unraveling his books, he enjoyed unraveling her.

  The rose scent she wore was fine quality. Perhaps not Parisian, but not cheap shop goods either. She had apparently washed her hair recently, for her usual ruthless bun was looser today and less orderly. She wasn’t wearing shoes but, rather, thick, scuffed slippers over black wool stockings.

  Eleanora Hatfield was susceptible to creature comforts.

  She opened a ledger from last spring. “Look here. Do you see any patterns?”

  Rex saw a progression of numbers, each entry neatly labeled and dated. Coal, candles, paper, a set of livery for a new footman, boot black…

  “I see a typical ledger.”

  “Exactly what you’re supposed to see, and if you merely checked this or that column, probably fairly accurate. But look at my totals versus the ones your steward, secretary, or under-butler did.”

  She had penciled tiny figures at the foot of each column. For the most part, the totals were the same, occasionally they were off by a couple of pounds.

  “Always a two-pound variance,” he said.

  “Which suggests somebody is working the three-for-five substitution.”

  “You call these frauds by name, like old friends.” While she referred to Rex as Your Grace. Always, Your Grace, with an occasional prim little sir tossed in for reinforcement. Nearly everybody called Rex sir or Your Grace, so why did it bother him that Eleanora Hatfield did as well?

  “Old enemies,” she said. “I have a theory that most dishonest schemes started off as honest mistakes. Somebody mistakes a three for a five—it’s easy to do. Then they realize that they’ve overstated the total owed by two pounds, and nobody has questioned that figure. The merchant is paid in full according to the merchant’s books, and the two pounds finds an appreciative home in the pocket of a thief.”

  “I detest where this is leading.”

  She set the ledger on the desk. “My audits lead to the truth, Your Grace. Be glad whoever did this accounting didn’t try to work the seven-for-one substitution. Those totals add up faster. I happen to know what coal and candles cost last spring because I keep Lord Stephen’s books for this building. The only other way to spot the problem is to compare the exact figures entered with what was on the merchant’s invoice.”

  She recalled the price of coal and candles—to the penny—from six months ago. “First my womenfolk are trafficking in dresses, now my secretaries—or somebody on my payroll—is fleecing me. I have the sense worse news lies ahead.”

  The kettle began to whistle, provoking the cat to scowling and switching its tail.

  Mrs. Hatfield was out of her chair, swinging the kettle off the coals in the next instant. “Voltaire, you are a fraud. This kettle whistles at least twice a day, and only for the duke do you affect these histrionics.”

  Mrs. Hatfield certainly didn’t bother with any histrionics, which was a pleasant change. “Are you hungry?” Rex asked. “I missed luncheon and could do with a sandwich or two. I could pop across the street in a trice.”

  He expected her to demure out of perpetual self-sufficiency, but instead she went to the window. “This snow might mean business. I love a snowy Sunday.”

  Had she ever before used the verb to love in his hearing? “What else do you love? Books that balance to the penny?”

  She picked up the cat, and it occurred to him that her dark wool dress would also not show cat hair.

  “I enjoy bookkeeping, Your Grace, and I’m good at it. My talent lies there. I need to make an honest living, so that’s what I do. Maybe you feel the same way about being a duke?”

  The question was posed casually, and yet, in her studied attention to the cat, in her half-turned posture, Rex caught a hint of genuine interest.

  “Precisely. The title is my lot, to complain would be ridiculous, and I’m honor-bound to make the best of it. Will sandwiches do?”

  She nuzzled the cat, who nuzzled her back. Was this how the aunties had started down the path of eccentricity? Only a cat to keep them company?

  “If the shop has a good soup—pepper pot, fish chowder, beef and barley—I’d like some of that as well.”

  Rex shrugged into his coat and left the buttons undone. “And another bottle of wine. The last vintage was surprisingly good. Can you answer a question for me?”

  “Of course, Your Grace.”

  “Why did you kiss me?” Despite getting to bed well past a decent hour, despite the eternities of socializing Rex’s evening had demanded, that question had robbed him of sleep.

  “You kissed me first, sir.”

  A gratifyingly nonsensical answer. “I kissed you because a gesture of affection under the circumstances seemed appropriate. I hope I did not offend.”

  The ever articulate, always competent, not-to-be-daunted Mrs. Hatfield looked away. “You did not, and I hope I did not presume.”

  “You rather did,” he said, tossing his scarf around his neck. “I adore you for it. Feel free to presume again whenever the mood strikes you.”

  He left her by the window, looking once again quite self-possessed. She was doubtless deciding how to explain to him that yet another trusted hireling was plundering the ducal coffers. So why was Rex’s imagination fixed instead on images of Eleanora Hatfield plundering the ducal person?

  * * *

  Lord Stephen Wentworth’s first toy had been a wooden duck on a string. He’d acquired this treasure at the age of eight,
far too old for such a nursery diversion. His father had been dead for a month, and thus—for the first time in Stephen’s life—personal possessions had become possible. He’d been too lame to do more than jerk the duck two feet at one go as he’d hobbled from chair to chair.

  Then he’d used his bootlaces to extend the duck’s leash—what need had a crippled boy for boots when he was barely able to walk?—and angled the leash around a table leg. He’d observed the duck’s progress by the hour, until his curiosity overcame his good sense, and he’d dismantled the toy in an effort to understand its workings.

  The inner mechanisms of that childish amusement—pulleys, weights, levers, wires—had formed the basis for the first lift he’d designed and for a crane the Navy had commissioned for its shipyards. He’d been figuratively dismantling ducks ever since.

  And now, a ducal duck was quacking about in Stephen’s building, a situation that demanded investigation.

  “I can understand that Elsmore needs to tidy up his books,” Stephen said, “but what specifically about that exercise requires him to roost in Mrs. Hatfield’s rooms by the hour?”

  Quinn took his time cutting a piece of steak, which Stephen had learned was not a tactic intended to control the conversation but, rather, the focus a man needed when polite manners had been learned later in life. Here at Quinn’s club, if his etiquette should falter, the lapse would be remarked.

  “Eleanora is going through the dukedom’s estate books, property by property,” Quinn said. “I’m sure she has questions. Unless Elsmore wants to announce to all of London that his staff and womenfolk are robbing him blind, she can only put those questions to him in person. Pass the salt.”

  Stephen first salted his own steak, then passed over the cellar. “Do these questions require regular infusions of hot soup, fresh bread, and roasted beef taken tête-à-tête with Elsmore?”

  Quinn set down his knife and fork. “If you are spying, I will inform Jane.”

  Stephen held two people in limitless respect. The first was his cousin Duncan Wentworth, who’d been his tutor and traveling companion through Stephen’s self-destructive adolescent years. Duncan had recently abandoned bachelorhood for the charms of the married state, and Stephen was happy for him.

  Overjoyed, in fact. Very damned happy, indeed.

  The other person whom Stephen held in unreserved esteem was Jane, Duchess of Walden. She’d married Quinn when he’d been a plain mister come to a very bad pass, and rescued not only Quinn but also his siblings in ways Stephen still had not dismantled to his own satisfaction.

  “You’d tattle to Jane because I merely note the comings and goings outside my window?”

  “You sit up in your apartment like an eagle in his eyrie, spinning tales about all the mice on the street below. Jane would be disappointed in you if you intruded on Mrs. Hatfield’s privacy.”

  Jane’s disappointment was nothing short of a curse. She’d been the first person to hold Stephen accountable without respect to his disabilities. He’d never thanked her for that and wasn’t sure he ever would, because how could words convey gratitude that surpassed all understanding?

  “What do we know about Mrs. Hatfield, Quinn? Who are her people? She never has callers, but she goes out every other week or so and doesn’t return with any packages. She sometimes departs with a package or two, or with a particularly bulky reticule. I assume she’s paying social calls.”

  “Stephen, leave it alone. Design something clever. Translate more Catullus. Devise a new cannon for the Army that actually hits what it’s aimed at. Nobody appreciates a meddler.”

  The steak was overcooked. Stephen couldn’t ignore that any more than Quinn could chase the last of the Yorkshire growl from his speech.

  “Catullus is for naughty boys. Have you ever wondered why Eleanora isn’t married?” Stephen had, and not simply because she was comely. Eleanora Hatfield would keep a man on his toes.

  “Some women prefer independence to the married state, particularly when contemplating the perils of childbearing. She has the lot of us at the bank for company, and I believe some family accompanied her when she moved south. Cousins, siblings, I’m not sure which, and it’s none of my business.”

  Meaning Quinn carried some secret or suspicion he wasn’t willing to share with his only brother.

  “Quinn, for pity’s sake, think. Mrs. Hatfield goes about her duties at the bank, setting a sterling example of integrity and devotion to duty. She’s not one of the clerks or tellers, and she prefers it that way. She never puts a foot wrong, and now she’s rescuing Elsmore from potential scandal. Have you considered that he might steal her away from us?”

  Quinn split his baked potato open and forked three pats of butter into the steaming middle. Eating like this—from most expensive item to least costly—was an artifact of poverty. Stephen made it a point to do otherwise.

  “Elsmore is honorable. He won’t poach.”

  “Elsmore is single, wealthy, spending substantial time alone with our Eleanora, and seeing firsthand what a treasure she is. I don’t mean steal exclusively in the business sense.” Though losing her as an auditor would be a blow.

  “You mean steal, as in steal her heart?”

  The Quinn of old would have found that notion laughable, but then Jane had stolen his heart. Stephen was quite willing to be victimized by similar larceny where his own organ of sensibility was concerned, but apparently no lady was sufficiently interested—or courageous—to attempt the theft.

  “I mean precisely that,” Stephen said. “Eleanora’s wages are generous, but Elsmore can set her up for life.”

  Quinn mashed melted butter into his potato, then took a sip of his wine. “If that’s what makes the lady happy, then we wish her the best and hire a replacement.”

  “You won’t find her like again, Quinn. She takes apart ledgers like I take apart clocks. And you said Elsmore is cleaning up his accounts in anticipation of offering for a duchess. Where will Eleanora be when Elsmore ruins her good name, interferes with her livelihood, and then goes prancing on his way with a new duchess? Does that sound to you like a recipe for happiness? No other bank will hire a disgraced female as an auditor, and we owe that woman much more than her wages reflect.”

  “Have some more wine.”

  “I don’t care for port. I don’t care for the Duke of Elsmore, and right now, I don’t care very much for the Duke of Walden, either.” Wentworths were honest with each other, though the intensity of Stephen’s sentiments came as something of a surprise even to himself.

  “Are you in love with our auditor, Stephen?”

  Oh, perhaps. Stephen did still fall in love, but he’d learned to watch his own periodic descents into infatuation with a sort of fatalistic amusement. His passions eventually passed, nobody the wiser, and he went back to designing cannon and dismantling watches.

  “I am in love with anybody who defends the integrity of your bank, Quinn. You and Penrose opened for business with nothing more than audacity and ambition to your names. Eleanora Hatfield spared you from even a hint of scandal, sorted the honest clerks from the dishonest, and is the reason you have the cleanest books in London. She was instrumental in setting your dukedom to rights, but she’s only human. If Elsmore waltzes into her bedroom and anybody gets wind of that, the blot on her escutcheon can’t be repaired with a monthly reconciliation.”

  “Stephen, she is an adult. She is free to conduct her private life as she sees fit.”

  Was that Jane talking, or Quinn? Something about the way Quinn studied his wineglass wasn’t characteristic of his usual forthright manner.

  “You are unwilling to remind Elsmore of his manners,” Stephen said, “because you don’t want to offend a bloody duke. You have become a moral invertebrate like the rest of the bedamned peerage.”

  “That is quite enough, Stephen. Perhaps I don’t want to offend Eleanora. She toils away at the bank year after year. If she takes leave, it’s only to attend a sister in childbed. Should she dec
ide to sample Elsmore’s charms, that is her affair.”

  “And when the gossips and tattlers spread word that His Grace of E has been seen with a new fancy piece on his arm? What then?”

  “Stephen, you grow tiresome. Will you have some trifle, or must I finish my meal alone?”

  Stephen pushed his plate aside, though the steak was all but untouched—that much more for the kitchen staff.

  “You must enjoy your trifle in solitude, not because I suspect you of abandoning your principles, though I do, but because the damned snow is making travel on foot treacherous. The sooner I’m back in my eyrie the better.”

  “Do you know how badly I long to beat the hell out of you?”

  “The sentiment is mutual, dear brother, but Jane would never forgive me for taking advantage of an old man’s slower reflexes.” Stephen arranged his canes and pushed to his feet. “My love to Jane and the girls.”

  “Jane and I have had this discussion, Stephen, about Elsmore.”

  Quinn’s marriage was a clock Stephen could not take apart. The mechanisms were mysterious and invisible, and a prudent sibling didn’t pry.

  “And?”

  “Jane is of the opinion that Elsmore’s discretion is to be trusted.”

  “His discretion—which means the discretion of fourteen footmen, three coachies, eight grooms, a legion of personal secretaries, a valet and under-valet, three chambermaids, and a housekeeper, not to mention his own mother, from whom Jane herself has collected a store of interesting rumors. All that discretion is very reassuring indeed, but what of Elsmore’s honor?”

  “Elsmore’s honor is to be trusted, and yet, it’s my own darling brother bruiting the lady’s business about in a club.”

  “In the deserted dining room of a private club.” And if the discretion of a gentlemen’s club could not be trusted, civilization was at an end.

  “Besides,” Quinn said, “Eleanora’s discretion is to be trusted as well. She has never been careless of her reputation before.”

  Spare me from happily married older brothers. “Quinn, Elsmore enters the building at a pace that can only be described as eager, and two hours later, he slouches out into the elements, head down, scarf drawn up, not even watching where he’s going.”