Forever and a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Grace Burrowes

  The Lady in Red copyright © 2017 by Kelly Bowen

  Cover illustration and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Forever

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  forever-romance.com

  twitter.com/foreverromance

  First Edition: November 2019

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-0027-3 (mass market), 978-1-5387-0028-0 (ebook)

  E3-20190514-DA-NF-ORI

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Preview of A DUKE BY ANY OTHER NAME

  About Grace Burrowes

  PRAISE FOR GRACE BURROWES AND THE ROGUES TO RICHES SERIES

  Also by Grace Burrowes

  Bonus Novella: THE LADY IN RED

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About Kelly Bowen

  Discover More

  Don’t miss these other great reads by Kelly Bowen

  To those for whom math is not a strength

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  Acknowledgments

  For this book to reach my readers, I rely on the good offices of many publishing professionals. My editor, Leah Hultenschmidt, continues to be a joy to work with (even when I’m doing my temperamental artist impersonation), and the whole crew at Grand Central Publishing keeps coming through for me, book after book. I am enjoying the living peedywaddles out of the Rogues to Riches series, in part because I have such a wonderful team to work with. That said, the real foundation upon which my joy rests is you, the reader. You allow me to turn storytelling into a calling, and to claim as a profession work that I absolutely love. Thanks for that. Endless, heartfelt thanks, and happy reading!

  Chapter One

  “Eleanora Hatfield is like the fellow who extracts a bad tooth,” Joshua Penrose said as he set a brisk pace down the walkway. “Your very survival means you allow him to inflict his special brand of agony, though you dread each encounter.”

  “Not a flattering analogy to apply to any female, Penrose.” Wrexham, Duke of Elsmore, paused to examine a flower girl’s offerings at the corner. He and Penrose weren’t due at the bank for nearly a quarter of an hour, after all.

  “How are you today, Miss Marybeth?”

  She had the usual offerings—carnations for the lapel, tussy-mussies to take on a courting call, nose-gays of sweet pea and lavender, small sprays of muguet-des-bois.

  “I’m in good health, Your Grace. And you?”

  He chose a little arrangement of violets and mouget-de-bois. “I’m preparing to prostrate myself before that great institution known as Wentworth and Penrose. Very imposing financial organization. I must look my best. What shall we choose for Mr. Penrose?”

  Penrose bore Marybeth’s inspection with an impatient twirl of his gold-handled walking stick. Marybeth considered him with an odd gravity for a mere girl, then passed over a bright red carnation arranged as a boutonniere.

  “The gentleman would disdain to wear more than one simple flower. He hasn’t your ability to wear posies, Your Grace.”

  “What a wise young lady you are.”

  She smiled, which also made her a pretty young lady. Rex would ask his cook how soon they could hire a new scullery maid, for a London street corner wasn’t safe for the poor and lovely.

  “Go on with ye, Your Grace. I’ve other custom to see to.”

  That was the point. Rex enjoyed cutting a dash, but a duke’s choice of flower stall could mean the difference between the flower seller’s family eating meat that week or going without.

  “And well you should have other custom, when your inventory is so impressive.” He paid a little generously, and would have sauntered on down the street, except that Penrose was trying ineffectually to affix his carnation to his lapel.

  “Let me,” Rex said, taking the flower in one hand and the pin in the other. This necessitated holding his own boutonniere with his teeth.

  Penrose’s expression had For God’s sake, Elsmore written all over it, poor fellow.

  “You’ve been working with Walden for too long,” Rex said, stepping back. “A little color in a gentleman’s daytime attire preserves him from utter forgettable-ness. I notice your partner always has flowers on his desk when I call upon him at the bank.”

  A detail, but telling. Quinn Wentworth, Duke of Walden, had been raised in the slums and was known to pinch a penny until it took a solemn oath never to be spent again. And yet, the man paid good coin for the lilies of the field.

  “Walden wants the bank’s customers to feel comfortable,” Penrose said. “About Mrs. Hatfield.”

  “The bringer of agony.” Rex tipped his hat to a pair of dowagers, and because they smiled at him, he also tipped his hat to the pug one of the ladies held. This occasioned giggling from two beldames who probably hadn’t giggled in public for decades.

  “As long as Mrs. Hatfield is competent to find the errors in my books,” Rex went on, “and she can do so without alerting the London Gazette, I will consider myself eternally in her debt.”

  Perhaps he could make the fearsome Mrs. Hatfield giggle or at least smile. The day—and the night—went ever so much more smoothly when the ladies were smiling.

  Penrose tried to walk more quickly; Rex refused to oblige him. They were early, the autumn weather was gloriously temperate for the time of year—a false summer that could not last—and what awaited Rex at the bank was hardly cause for eagerness.

  “Mrs. Hatfield,” Penrose said, “is one of those annoying people who can glance at an entire page of figures
and spot where somebody read a three as a five. Her acumen is unnerving, and she doesn’t understand how unusual she is.”

  Penrose was a lean, tall blond who did justice to exquisitely tailored morning attire, especially now that he’d deigned to adorn himself with a lowly carnation. His origins were vague, but he looked every inch the London nabob. Rex knew Penrose’s partner better than he knew Penrose, but he trusted both men.

  Under the circumstances, Rex had no choice but to trust them.

  “Isn’t it in the nature of an eccentric,” he said, “to believe themselves the pattern card of normality? One of my aunts collects shoes. She goes on and on about them, and no matter how often the subject is changed, she brings the conversation back to shoes as if no other topic merits discussion.”

  “You dare not refer to our Mrs. Hatfield as eccentric,” Penrose said, looking about as if checking for eavesdroppers. “She will reciprocate with her own opinion regarding you, the king, the Corn Laws, and half the bills pending in Parliament.”

  “You are protective of your auditor,” Rex said. “You needn’t be. I respect ability wherever I find it.” Then too, beggars could not be choosers, especially not ducal beggars.

  They came to another intersection and Rex flipped the crossing sweeper a coin. “How’s business, Leonidas?”

  The boy caught the vale in a grimy paw. “Right stinky, Your Grace, thank you very much.”

  “Glad to hear it. Try calling your enterprise odoriferous instead. You’ll sound like a duke.”

  “Odor-ripper-us,” Leonidas replied, grinning.

  “Almost. Odor-if-or-us.”

  “Odoriferous. My enterprise is odoriferous and that means my job stinks. Thankee, Your Grace.”

  Penrose made a sound that might have been distress and cut across the street the instant a coach and four had rattled past.

  “Enterprise and enterprising were last week’s words,” Rex said. “He likes big words, and I like to cross the street without stepping in horse droppings. A fair exchange.”

  That observation spiked Penrose’s guns for about six paces, then, like the stalwart financier he was, he regained his verbal footing, more’s the pity.

  “Regarding Mrs. Hatfield,” he said. “What she has, Your Grace, goes beyond ability. She was one of our first customers, because she had known His Grace of Walden previously. His reputation for fair dealing preceded him, which is why, when her statement arrived with a mistake amounting to tuppence, she demanded to see the bank partners. She looked about at the clerks, pointed a finger at one of our most promising lads, and accused him of failing to focus on his duties.”

  “Imagine that, a bank ledger failing to hold a fellow’s attention.” Rex knew of no stronger soporific than column after column of figures. He’d inherited the Dorset and Becker Savings and Trust at the age of twenty-one, a singular irony when a man had little aptitude for bookkeeping and inadequate time to tend to his own finances.

  “Mrs. Hatfield looked at a dozen young fellows,” Penrose went on, “all dressed about the same, and picked out the one who’d made a minor error. When we went back through his work—at her insistence—he’d made two other mistakes, one for eight pounds. His calculations were usually so accurate that the man assigned to verify them hadn’t paid adequate attention either.”

  Penrose had clearly been fascinated with this two-penny drama, while Rex simply wanted to be done with the day’s business. No previous Duke of Elsmore had ever had to bother his handsome head about two pounds, much less tuppence.

  Hence, Rex’s present difficulty. “How did Mrs. Hatfield identify the culprit?”

  Penrose paused at the foot of the steps that led to his bank’s impressive double doors. “The young man had taken on a second job copying a silk merchant’s daily receipts each evening. His clothing was rumpled from having been slept in. He was pale, his eyes were slightly bloodshot, and he had a wax stain on the cuff of his shirt though the bank uses lamps rather than candles in the counting room. She not only spotted those details immediately, she also connected them to her missing tuppence. The boy was tired and his work grew sloppy as a result.”

  “Mrs. Hatfield sounds impressive.” Also like she’d get on well with the aunties. Rex could picture them, a quartet of unrepentant old besoms, cackling like the Fates over tattle and tea.

  “Impressive is the right word. I feel it fair to warn you she does not generally hold aristocrats in high regards, sir.”

  “Neither do I, Mr. Penrose. Always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a woman of sound sensibilities. I’m sure we’ll get on famously.”

  * * *

  “My grandmother, whose good opinion of me ranks among my greatest treasures, pounded a few simple rules into her progeny.” Eleanora Hatfield spoke calmly, as one must when addressing one’s misguided employer. “Foremost among her rules is to never involve myself in the affairs of the peerage. Peers are trouble, and dukes the worst of the lot.”

  Quinn Wentworth, who had the great misfortune to be the Duke of Walden, drummed his fingers on the blotter of his massive desk. His nails were clean now, but Ellie had known him when he would have literally dirtied his hands doing any honest work.

  “You don’t mind involving yourself weekly with the bank’s wage book, Eleanora Hatfield, and I number among the realm’s peers.”

  Ellie wanted to pace and wave her hands, but had learned long ago that women were denied the luxury of speaking emphatically, if they wanted to be taken seriously. Of course, when she spoke moderately, she was also brushed off at least half the time, particularly by her own family.

  She remained seated across from the desk, hands folded in her lap. “Correct you are, Your Grace, and look how you thank me for making a single exception to Grandmama’s cardinal rule. You shove me out the door to chase down a missing penny for some fop who cannot be bothered to tally his own estate books.”

  “Madam, we are not shoving you out the door.” His Grace adopted the wheedling, now-be-reasonable tone that made Ellie want to shut herself in the bank’s vault. When Walden spoke to her like that, his blue eyes all earnest innocence, her grandmother’s sage advice might as well have been instructions for the care and feeding of spotted unicorns.

  “A few weeks,” the duke continued, “a month at most, and you’ll have His Grace of Elsmore’s situation put to rights. You glance at a set of books and see what’s amiss with them. Your powers of divination are legendary. For you to ferret out the problem with Elsmore’s family accounts—”

  “Need I remind you, sir, that I am a bank auditor. I will have no truck with a ducal family’s ledgers.”

  Walden sat back, a financial king comfortable in his padded leather throne. “You inspect my household books. You do the monthly reconciliations for Lord Stephen and other members of the Wentworth family.”

  “You cannot help that you’ve become a duke,” Ellie shot back. “I’ve overlooked that sad development for the past six years, and I’m willing to continue to extend you my tolerance because you are a decent man, you pay honest wages, and your title was none of your doing.”

  Her profession of loyalty had apparently sent her into some sort of verbal trap. A slight shift in His Grace’s expression, a hint of a smile in his eyes, foretold her doom.

  “Elsmore cannot help his birthright either. Is our own Mrs. Hatfield, defender of balanced ledgers and retriever of lost pennies, really such a snob?”

  Not a snob. Sensible. “When did we lose you?” Ellie retorted. “You were one of us, born to scrape out a living as best you could, fated to dread cold and consumption along with most of the rest of England. Now you ask a favor from me on behalf of one of them.”

  The duke’s smile died aborning, replaced by the signature Quinn Wentworth glacial dignity.

  “You lost me,” he said, “the moment I held my oldest child in my arms. Elizabeth will make her come-out someday, God willing, as will her sisters. Elsmore was the first peer to acknowledge my title, the first to le
ave his card. His mother and sisters call on my duchess. When my Bitty makes her bow, she’ll have her pick of the bachelors, in part because several years ago, Elsmore opened doors for the Wentworth family.”

  That recitation sealed Ellie’s fate.

  If His Grace considered himself indebted to the Duke of Elsmore, then Ellie’s job was forfeit should she refuse this assignment. Quinn Wentworth was loyal to his employees, but he was fanatically devoted to family.

  A quality to be respected, most of the time. “I love working for Wentworth and Penrose,” Ellie said. “I love the smell of the beeswax polish on the wainscoting, love how sunlight comes through the windows because you insist they always be clean. I love…”

  She loved the sense of safety here, of having a worthwhile place and knowing it well. Her family could cheerfully racket from one misadventure to another. Ellie had to have peace, order, and respectability.

  “You love how the clerks live in dread of your raised eyebrow,” His Grace said. “Love knowing which messengers favor licorice candy and which prefer peppermint. We’re your family, so on behalf of that family, I ask you to extend a courtesy to another institution. If one bank fails, all banks suffer, and rumors about His Grace’s personal finances would send Dorset and Becker straight into the cesspit.”

  He had her there. A bank might start the week solvent and, on the strength of nothing more than club gossip about a single bank director, end the week floundering.

  “I don’t want to do this. Why can’t Elsmore’s solicitors manage this task?”

  “I didn’t want to be a duke, Eleanora. Elsmore’s solicitors should already have seen any irregularities in the estate books. That they either failed to notice them or declined to mention them means the lawyers can’t be relied on. This project should be your idea of a holiday. Say you’ll do it, and I’ll introduce you to Elsmore.”

  Wentworth and Penrose had given Ellie a job when most banks considered women fit only to scrub the floors after hours. There were exceptions of course. Lady Jersey ran Child’s Bank. Her Grace of St. Alban’s managed Coutts, but Ellie was neither a countess nor a duchess. Quinn Wentworth and Joshua Penrose had opened the door to respectability for her, and thus, Ellie would always be in their debt.