Forever and a Duke Page 4

“If you will aid me, madam, and put my books to rights, I will deed to you or to the party of your choice ownership of Ambledown in fee simple absolute. The property carries no mortgages, and I assure you it is profitable. Being so close to London, I’ve bided there frequently and can vouch for the integrity of my retainers and tenants.”

  He’d surprised her. Those swooping brows rose, then knit. The brown eyes stared at the errant pencil in the middle of the table. She straightened in her chair, pursed her lips, and shook her head.

  “I cannot leave my post at Wentworth and Penrose, sir, not for the length of time required to investigate your situation. My employers expect loyalty from me, and—”

  “Let’s ask them, shall we? Ask them if you can take a leave of absence. I will double your salary.” If she put the dukedom on sound footing, he could afford to give her three of the smaller estates and be ahead for having done so.

  She rose and snatched up the pencil. “Stop that. Stop trying to bribe me.”

  “Offering the very compensation you’ve longed to earn isn’t bribery. Do you know what rumors of my personal insolvency would do to my bank?”

  “Yes.”

  She likely did not know what rumors of insolvency would do to his mother, aunts, and sisters. Rachel had been out for “several” years, and she’d had no offers for the past two. Mama was worried, Rachel was quietly despairing, and Rex was supposed to bring all to rights with a smile and a nod.

  Mrs. Hatfield paced, the pencil once again behind her ear, and Rex held his peace. He’d told himself that tending to the books was so much financial housekeeping, but then he’d taken a closer look at the figures and admitted he had a problem. Watching Walden’s auditor wrestle with the decision to aid him confirmed that the problem was significant.

  Significant to the point of social disaster.

  The family could remain handsomely solvent and still be ruined, which meant a dozen cousins, three blameless old women, and several uncles would suffer from the taint of scandal. The cousins would likely have to leave the bank’s employ, the aunties would withdraw from society. Rex’s sisters would be doomed to rural spinster-dom.

  And then the bank would fail.

  Unless Eleanora Hatfield took his situation in hand, and even then, scandal might still be unavoidable.

  “I’ll help you,” Mrs. Hatfield said, coming to a halt before the unlit hearth. “I will give you two weeks. You will pay twice my salary for those two weeks because I will very likely work twice as many hours as I ought. I will devote myself entirely to a review of your domestic books.”

  That was an ideal compromise. The banking community was small and gossipy, though Mrs. Hatfield taking a short leave of absence was of no moment, and Rex was confident that she’d not abandon a project halfway through.

  “You are turning up your nose at Ambledown?” Was that arrogance on her part, foolishness, or something else?

  “I am not a country squire, Your Grace.”

  Neither am I, more’s the pity. “What if two weeks isn’t enough?”

  “Don’t be greedy,” she said, gathering up her papers from the table. “I will give you two weeks and report my findings. You will give me complete access to your personal finances and to your time.”

  The analogy of the tooth-drawer came to mind. “Of course. When do we begin?”

  “Immediately.”

  Chapter Three

  Contrary to the myth at Wentworth and Penrose, Ellie could not ingest facts and figures without limit. She was sharpest and most efficient when she alternated careful work with periods of quiet reflection. If the weather was pleasant, she left the bank for a time at midday.

  The excuse of record was to tend to errands, but her real agenda was to clear her head. She would sit watching pigeons in a public square or wander market stalls at the nearest fashionable arcade. Polite society provided an endless, fascinating pageant to a woman who’d come of age intimately acquainted with life in the slums.

  An entire afternoon spent with His Grace of Elsmore had exceeded Ellie’s tolerance for new information, and thus she was pre-occupied on her way home.

  His Grace wore the fiction of a heedless aristocrat well. The elegantly whimsical nosegay on his lapel, the gold pin in his lacy cravat—not a rearing stallion, but a rearing unicorn. The small talk strewn about during what should have been a purely business meeting.

  He was not an idle, stupid bore, more’s the pity.

  “Have you missed me, long lost dearest Eleanora?”

  Ellie marched on without stumbling, barely, despite the tall young man who’d appropriated the place at her elbow. Jack was a clerk today, blending seamlessly with all the other clerks and shopgirls hurrying home to their suppers. He wore a lanky, slightly rumpled mien, his signature good nature beaming from his blue eyes. His dark hair was longish, but clean and recently combed.

  “Throughout all of creation,” Ellie replied, “down through the mists of antiquity and forward into the dimly perceivable future of the race, I have not nor will I ever miss you.”

  “What a gift you have for the understated endearment.” Jack tipped his hat to a lady in a fancy bonnet, and of course, she smiled back at him.

  “What a gift you have for showing up where you’re not welcome.”

  He kept up with her easily. Ellie could not outrun him, could not scold him into slinking off to the back alleys and stews where he belonged. Jack knew well how to appear respectable, usually the better to behave with complete disregard for the law.

  “Some thanks I get for my tender concern, Eleanora. One would think we were strangers.”

  “One wishes we were strangers. What do you want, Jack?” Other than to remind Ellie that she would never be free of the past. Jack and Mick left her in peace just long enough that she began to hope, and then they pounced.

  “I seek only to brighten my day with the merest glimpse of your countenance, dear cousin. To reassure myself that the object of my concern yet thrives, despite the distance between us.”

  “You’re not rolled up,” Ellie said, as Jack charmed another passing lady into a smile. “When you lack funds, your cuffs aren’t clean, your boots aren’t polished, and you pawn your watch.” She’d taken in those details at a glance.

  “Do you know how I treasure you, dearest Eleanora? Do you know how I wish right now you would take my arm in the fashion of two people companionably disposed toward each other?”

  “If I gave you my arm, you’d return it missing a hand.”

  He laughed, and Jack had such a charming laugh, damn him. “I had occasion to chat up one of the lads at your bank over a steak and kidney pie. He said our Mrs. Hatfield was in the conference room all afternoon with some nabob, which got the clerks to speculating. Wasn’t just any nabob either, though the boy of course hasn’t memorized Debrett’s.”

  Jack nearly had.

  “You will leave Peterfield alone, Jack, lest you cost him his position.” Peterfield was the newest messenger, and therefore the hungriest. Not ten years old, still finding his feet among the other lads. Still hanging on every word of gossip that dropped from the indiscreet lips of the clerks when they thought they were private over their nooning.

  Ellie would have a stern word with Peterfield. Jack, like most career criminals, eschewed certain behavior as beneath his dignity. Fortunately for Peterfield, abducting pretty little boys to sell them to the brothels fell into that category. Peterfield had been lucky—this time.

  “I undertook a good deed,” Jack said, “bought a poor lad a meal, and you castigate me for it. Where is your Christian charity? You were brought up better than this.”

  No, she hadn’t been, not after the age of eleven.

  Ellie turned the corner onto her own street, and Jack stayed right by her side. He was apparently feeling bold—or desperate.

  “Lord Stephen is in town,” Ellie said. “I gather he’ll be staying for some time.” She gathered no such thing. His lordship—her landlord—came and went a
s he pleased, where he pleased. Eleanora balanced his books. She did not pretend to know his plans, nor did she want to.

  Jack came to a halt though Ellie’s rooms were two streets on. “You do know how to spoil a man’s day.”

  Jack and his associates would never set foot in the bank, and he’d give Lord Stephen’s property a wide berth. Between those two islands of safety, Eleanora made a quiet, useful life.

  “I need a favor, Ellie.”

  “You need a sentence of transportation.”

  He patted her shoulder. She barely refrained from drawing his cork. She could do it too, and had on more than one occasion.

  “Nothing bad. I simply need you to point out a certain lady to me.”

  As Jack’s favors went, that sounded innocuous enough, but then, they all did at first. “I am a clerk at a bank,” Ellie said. “I do not mingle with ladies.”

  Jack smiled at her, which was utterly wasted effort. She’d fallen for his charm once, half a lifetime ago. Even then, she’d seen the determination in his eyes despite his smiles.

  “You mingle with a duchess,” he said, “and she mingles with ladies. Go for a walk in the park with Walton’s duchess and express idle curiosity. Her Grace will babble as all the fine women do, and you can tell me which pretty face I need to watch for on some dreary Wednesday night.”

  Ellie resumed walking, a shipwrecked sailor swimming doggedly for shore. “Whether you are planning to steal the lady’s jewels, forge her portrait, or sell her secrets, I want no part of it.”

  He could do all three. He had done all three, at various times, and he was by no means the worst of the lot. Almack’s held their assemblies on Wednesday evenings, suggesting Jack was looking for a plump pigeon to fleece, one way or another.

  “I kept a roof over your head, Eleanora. A pretty little thing new to London would have been ill-used and you know it.”

  Whatever his scheme, it was apparently borne of desperation. Jack reverted to his Great Protector speech when he was pockets to let.

  “We squatted,” Ellie retorted. “We bided illegally in condemned buildings. We scavenged the middens of the hotels, clubs, and great houses.” Because Ellie had had the sense to know where the best scraps would be and the boldness to root for them.

  The smell of kitchen waste still had the power to make her ill.

  “She needn’t attend Almack’s then,” Jack said. “But nobody gets into that place without having substantial blunt. Makes choosing a mark much simpler.”

  The artist in Jack loved the spectacle of society balls. He stood outside the great houses of Mayfair gawking along with the rest of London’s idlers, and polite society—the hostesses were too ignorant to realize they invited a wolf to their windows—preened for his amusement.

  “Whatever scheme you’re hatching this time, I want no part of it.” One street to go, then Jack would tip his hat and bid her farewell, pray God.

  “Stubborn. How I adore a stubborn woman.” He patted Ellie’s arm as her doorstep came into view. “You can take the woman out of the stews, but she’ll never be a lady. Waltz around at your bank all you please, little Ellie, and that won’t change who your people are. Walden ignores what he knows of your past, but should our history become public, you’d find yourself without a post and you know it.”

  The pity in Jack’s voice nearly undid her. He wasn’t sneering, wasn’t even threatening. In his way, Jack was reminding Ellie that when all of society turned their backs, family was still family.

  “I’m careful, Jack. You be careful too.” She opened her reticule, intent on passing him a few coins, because Jack would never admit if he was down on his luck. He had much more of a conscience than Mick did, though that wasn’t saying a great deal.

  He stayed her with a hand on her wrist. “I am always careful, dearest Ellie.” He touched his hat brim and sauntered off, taking a portion of Ellie’s hard-won peace with him. When they’d courted—such as the destitute courted—he’d had the same ability, like a soldier marching to war. His partings were a little wistful, a little brave, and entirely for show.

  Ellie could never hate him—she had tried to—but she could resent him, and be terrified of his endless capacity for illegal schemes. Mick was a thoroughly charming bounder, while Jack was shrewd, occasionally ruthless, and oddly principled. Mick would leave Jack to deal with consequences, and Jack, being Jack and the oldest of the cousins, in-laws, and step-relations, would take those consequences on the chin without complaint.

  Ellie’s father had had the same stoic quality, and just look how that had turned out.

  * * *

  “I do fancy a proper dinner,” Cousin Howell said, grabbing for a strap as Rex’s coach swayed around a corner. “Excellent wine, everything served hot, pretty ladies to keep the mood cheerful.”

  “You fancy Lady Joanna Peabody,” Eddie replied.

  Howell and Eddie were brothers, and Rex had long ago concluded that it was the sworn duty of siblings to provide truth at the most inconvenient public moments.

  Rex’s oldest sister, Rachel, leapt into the affray. “Lady Joanna is lovely,” she said. “Quite accomplished on the violin, an excellent watercolorist, and more witty than the two of you combined. Of course Cousin Howie fancies her.”

  Howell and Eddie were not twins, but they might as well have been, so closely did they resemble each other. They were blond, a touch over medium height, and blue-eyed, a matched set sharing the backward-facing seat with Rex.

  Their wardrobes told a different tale. Howell was sober to a fault, his linen tied in a simple knot, his walking stick a plain oak article with a dull pewter handle. He’d been dubbed Howell the Hopeless in the schoolyard. Eddie, by contrast, cut a dash and had styled himself Edward the Elegant. His cravat pin, sleeve buttons, watch chain, and walking stick all sported ornate gold fittings. Howell wore no boutonniere. Eddie’s lapel was adorned by a bouquet of tiny purple orchids with gold foil wrapped about the stems.

  Howell looked like a footman in his Sunday finest, unaccustomed to riding inside so fine a coach. Eddie looked like he owned the coach or aspired to.

  Lately, half of Rex’s waking hours had been spent rolling around London in wheeled conveyances crammed with his cousins, aunts, and uncles. He also escorted his sisters at least once a week, more if Mama was insistent.

  And that didn’t count her goddaughters, who were legion, and not a one of them married yet.

  “Howie fancies who and what he cannot have,” Edward said, elbowing his brother as if they were eight years old. “That’s his specialty, pining from afar. Next he’ll be penning sonnets and wandering beneath the full moon.”

  Howell refrained from retaliation, proving that even Dorsets eventually matured.

  “Howell appreciates good company,” Rex said. “A fine quality in any gentleman.” Though too much fine company left Rex longing for the peace and quiet of Ambledown.

  “And whose fine company are you appreciating these days, Elsmore?” Cousin Eddie had the most annoying smirk. “The fellows at the club were talking about starting a pool, and your name figured prominently in the discussion.”

  “How gratifying to know that my marital prospects or lack thereof provide amusement to my peers.” Rex had spoken more sharply than the moment called for, but ye gods…A Gloucestershire cheese-rolling was more decorous than polite society on the topic of an unmarried duke.

  Rachel sent him a look, one she’d been sending him frequently in recent weeks. Part warning, part commiseration.

  “Elsmore will take a bride when he’s good and ready,” she said. “A man with eleven male first cousins needn’t be overly worried about his title’s succession.”

  “Ah,” said Eddie, “but not a one of us eligible male cousins is married yet. Perhaps I should drop James’s name into the betting pool.”

  James, the cousin who at present had the honor to be the Elsmore heir, showed no signs of succumbing to Cupid’s arrow. When Rex escorted his party to the ducal the
ater box, he did spot James across the theater and one tier down. At James’s side sat one of London’s most exclusive courtesans, the rest of her court crowded around her. The ducal contingent ignored James’s coterie, though James himself would be cordially acknowledged should he appear alone in the passage.

  Rex generally avoided the corridor, but at the interval, Mama of course had plans for him.

  “We must greet dear Lady Wollmerton. Come along, Elsmore. If you want the latest on dit, you could ask for no finer source.”

  Rex did not want the latest on dit, or even last week’s on dit. He rose and edged around a pair of lady cousins arguing about hats.

  “Of course, Mama. Rachel, are you joining us?” Please, grant me at least one ally.

  “Don’t be daft.” Rachel waggled gloved fingers at him and blew him a kiss.

  After Mama had stopped to admire the coiffure or whitework or necklace of five successive—unmarried—goddaughters, Rex turned her back toward the box.

  “Have we really nothing better to do than parade about a chilly passage pretending to be thrilled to see people we saw twice last week?” he murmured.

  “Nonsense, darling.” Mama smacked his arm with her fan. “What is a ducal son for, if not parading about at the theater? I do think Rachel will soon bring that nice Lord Jeremy up to scratch.”

  Mama had thought Rachel would bring Nice Lord Somebody or Other up to scratch for the past five years. Rex had a firm understanding with his sisters, however. They married whomever and whenever they pleased, not before. If his ducal authority meant anything—and he wasn’t sure it did—it meant that he could preserve his sisters from the dreaded advantageous match.

  “Lady Guilfoyle.” Rex bowed and endured a re-recitation of the same gossip he’d already heard several times in the past half hour. Lord Pritchard’s heir had stumbled into the Serpentine on Sunday trying to rescue a lady’s glove from peril. As a result—how unfortunate!—passersby had been treated to the sight of a soaking wet male form, and the glove—even more tragic!—had been ruined.

  “But you know,” Mama said, “if one must be subjected to the particulars of the male physique, at least the specimen on display was a credit to his gender.”