Forever and a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  “Wentworth’s is a fine bank,” Jack said, “though of recent origin. One of the owners has come up in the world in the past few years, but I’ve never heard a breath of scandal associated with the place. Schilling’s is equally respected and has been around decades longer.”

  Jack did not want Edwards sniffing about Ellie’s bank, particularly when Ellie had yet to return from wherever she’d got off to.

  “You don’t particularly trust Dorset and Becker?” Edwards asked.

  Jack helped himself to a larger half sandwich. “I don’t know them well, sir.”

  “So you haven’t heard anything unflattering about Dorset’s. You’re simply unable to venture an opinion?”

  This quibbling was most odd. “I did hear that Dorset and Becker had a recent spot of trouble, sir. Nothing major, just an older client being a bit forgetful. The unfortunate thing is, when there’s a problem with an account or a ledger and that problem is resolved, we tend to go on our way thinking we’re immune to further difficulties.”

  “Like putting a coin in the poor box absolves us of charitable obligations for the week?”

  Was that how the wealthy so easily ignored the suffering of their neighbors? No wonder the church poor boxes were so small.

  “Something like that, sir. Find one error, and you can miss three others.”

  “Then you’re saying Dorset and Becker might have let down their guard?”

  The conversation wasn’t going where Jack had thought it would, but ye gods, the food was wonderful. “To some extent. They might be on the lookout for another crochety old gent, but they wouldn’t see a poor widow standing before them with larceny in her heart.”

  And whatever else was true, Jack suspected Mr. Edwards—who was not Mr. Edwards—had larceny in his heart. He’d barely touched the food and drink, and any man wiping his mouth on monogrammed silk was hardly the sort to frequent the Bull and Baron.

  “Eve did hoodwink Adam into tasting that apple, didn’t she?” Edwards mused.

  “Wasn’t it more a matter of the serpent doing the hoodwinking?”

  Edwards regarded him for a long moment, his air distracted. “Mr. Tolliver, you have given me much to think about. I’ll wish you good day.”

  He set a few coins on the table, gathered up his effects, and sauntered out into the frigid darkness. He’d overpaid by more than a few pennies, but Jack left the money on the table. The food and drink he’d enjoy, while Edwards’s coin bore a hint of ill-gotten means.

  Ellie was living a decent life, Clyde and Pammie were after honest work up north, and Mick wasn’t likely to return to London for some time. Jack picked up the plate of sandwiches and Edwards’s nearly full glass of ale and moved to the table closest to the fire.

  He had a full belly, he was warm, and he’d not put a foot on the far side of the law for nearly half a year. The months of not watching every step, not living like a crook, not avoiding Ellie’s pointed questions and fulminating looks had been dull.

  Blessedly, wonderfully dull.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rex walked into the Dorset and Becker lobby, for once using the front door rather than the private entrance favored by the bank employees.

  How would Eleanora see this place?

  He’d parted from her a week ago, bowing over her hand in the corridor outside of her rooms because he had not trusted himself to see her into her apartment. His final moments with her had been free of begging, pleading, and idiot declarations only because Lord Stephen Wentworth might have overheard any conversation that took place at Eleanora’s door.

  Rex stood for a moment in a corner of the bank lobby, an oppressive gloom affording him anonymity. The skylights hadn’t been cleaned within his memory. The clerestory windows, so necessary to ventilation in the warmer months, were all but covered with soot. The walls behind the sconces needed a good scrubbing, and half the candles in the chandelier were guttered.

  This was all doubtless excused under the heading of economies, though Eleanora had pointed out that clerks could hardly keep accurate tallies of ledgers they couldn’t see.

  The lobby smelled of coal smoke—all of London smelled of coal smoke—with an under-note of muddy boots, damp leather, and ink lending a cramped and tired air to what should have been a dignified and businesslike enterprise.

  “Your Grace.” Old Mr. Ballentyre smiled up at him owlishly. “Good day. Might I help you with something?”

  Ballentyre had been on his way out the door, though by Rex’s reckoning, the lunch hour was still twenty minutes off.

  “Ballentyre, when did our establishment become so dingy?”

  “Dingy, Your Grace?”

  Rex took him by the elbow and steered him to the door that separated the bank’s public and private spaces.

  “Dingy, dank, and uninviting. No wonder Mr. Butterfield was so easily impersonated. It’s a miracle the tellers can see their own accountings.”

  For a week, Rex had avoided Dorset and Becker, focusing instead on settlements to propose for his sisters should the bachelors find their courage. In the back of his mind, Eleanora’s memory had chided him for not confronting what could be more complicated problems at Dorset and Becker.

  “Perhaps Your Grace would like to join me for a bite to eat,” Ballentyre said, stumping along beside Rex. “We’re always pleased to see our directors on the premises, of course, and Your Grace especially, but one does grow peckish.”

  When had Ballentyre become so rotund and so lame?

  “Elsmore.” Cousin Howell stood in the doorway to an office, a ledger book clutched to his middle as if it protected his modesty. “Good day.”

  “Howell, good day.”

  Ballentyre was eating too well, while Howell looked skinny and anxious. Rex noticed these attributes and saw them as reasons for suspicion, which was more of Eleanora’s influence. Howell’s wages were generous. Why shouldn’t he be eating well and dressing a bit more fashionably? Ballentyre’s means weren’t that lavish. Why would he be in a position to indulge gluttony?

  “Was there something you wanted, Elsmore?” Howell asked, setting his ledger aside. “I’m not aware of any directors’ meetings today.” He fluffed his cravat and shot his cuffs, neither of which sported any lace.

  “I want to see how my bank is doing, Howell.” I want to get off my ducal backside and notice what’s right in front of my face, lest Eleanora be ashamed of me.

  Ballentyre stared at the worn carpet.

  Howell looked past Elsmore’s shoulder. “Well, you do have an office here. Don’t let me stop you from occupying it.”

  James happened by, also attired for the elements. Did a bank manager really need a silver-handled walking stick?

  “Are we having a meeting?” he asked. “Elsmore, will you join Ballie and me for lunch? Howell, you should come along as well, and I’ll see if Eddie is free.”

  I did not come here to socialize or be press-ganged into another family gathering. “I must decline, but please enjoy your meal.”

  “Ballie?” James gestured with his walking stick. “Shall we?”

  “’Deed we shall, sir. ’Deed we shall. Your Grace, good day.” He toddled off, James at his side.

  “Do they take lunch together frequently?” Rex asked Howell. Not a pairing he would have anticipated.

  “Mostly on Saturdays. Eddie sometimes goes with them.”

  “And where is dear Edward?”

  Howell sidled back into his office. “Why all the questions, Elsmore?”

  Rex followed him, because a man’s professional space could say a lot about him. Eleanora would have read Howell’s office like a theater program—who mattered to him, what mattered, his aspirations and frustrations…

  Howell took the seat behind the desk. Correspondence was neatly stacked on the blotter, the ink was capped, the pens trimmed and laid tidily in their tray.

  “Rachel and Samantha have attracted the notice of potential suitors,” Rex said.

  “My cousins
are lovely women,” Howell replied. “Of course they have devoted followers. What has that to do with you lurking in corridors and interrogating me about Eddie?”

  “Where is he?”

  Howell twisted a signet ring on his smallest finger. “I’m not sure. The tailor’s, the bootmaker’s. On sale days he sometimes wanders by Tatts. He frequently lunches at one of his clubs.”

  Look for patterns, Eleanora had said, and Eddie was creating a pattern of inattention to his work. “He already has a matched pair of chestnuts and a riding horse. Why attend the sales at Tatts?”

  Howell took off the ring and slipped it into his pocket. “You’ll have to ask him that. I am not my brother’s governess.”

  The same unease Rex had felt when he’d poked his nose into the ducal accounts crept down his spine.

  “I did not mean to imply that you were anybody’s governess.” Rex closed the door and took the chair opposite Howell’s desk. “Have you had occasion to stop by Wentworth and Penrose’s establishment lately?”

  “I have not. Gentlemen don’t spy on other gentlemen.”

  “I don’t propose that you spy, Howell. I propose that you remain alert to your surroundings, that you watch and you see, you listen and you hear…I’ve given the ducal estate books a good going over, because as soon as my sisters bring some hopeful swain up to scratch, the solicitors will descend like starlings on a crust of bread. I was not pleased at what I found.”

  Howell took out his penknife—plain, no engraving on the handle—and put a finer point on a goose quill that hadn’t needed trimming. “What did you find?”

  “I found a duke who is never too busy to stand up with one of the aunties’ regiment of goddaughters but who hasn’t a clue about the price of coal. That same duke squires his sisters about wherever they please to go but hadn’t realized the steward in Northumberland has all but gone blind. I have become complacent, Howell. I’m a titled footman ordered here and there by my family while I neglect the financial duties I have been charged to execute since my birth.”

  Howell, rather than provide Rex with excuses and remonstrations, looked thoughtful. “You are somewhat under petticoat government, true enough.”

  “And I love the ladies dearly, but if the family is to thrive, I also need to attend to my ledgers.”

  Howell swept the trimmings into his palm and dumped them in the dustbin. “That is a bloody lot of ledgers, Elsmore.”

  “The sooner I begin, the sooner I’ll know where we stand. Any recommendations for where I should start?”

  “With mine,” Howell said, going to a cabinet beside the window. “I don’t mind telling you that Ballentyre has grown a bit lax, and I’m as prone to mistakes as any man.” He took out a pair of volumes bound in green leather. “I suspect we’d get better results from old Ballie if the review happened prior to his daily pilgrimage to the pub rather than after.”

  “Ballentyre always reviews your weekly tallies?”

  “And I review his, which is becoming a thankless task.”

  “What about Eddie and James?”

  “They trade ledgers, as Ballentyre and I do.”

  The family swell and the family man-about-town traded ledgers. A month ago, Rex would have shrugged and gone whistling on his way. He could hear Eleanora Hatfield warning him that shrugs goeth before a fall.

  “If you would be good enough to have your ledgers brought to my office, I’ll begin there.”

  Howell piled a third volume on top of the first two. “Elsmore, you might not like what you find here at the bank either.”

  “I don’t expect perfection, Howell, but I do expect us to uphold the trust our customers place in us, and they are not paying me to waltz.”

  * * *

  “Eleanora, êtes-vous en bonne santé?” The Duchess of Walden held out a plate of cinnamon biscuits to go with her polite question.

  “I am in good health, thank you, Your Grace. No sweets for me.”

  The duchess sat back and stroked the ears of the hound seated at her knee. “No sweets, two sips of tea, longing glances at the window, and you haven’t attempted a word of French since you arrived. I have never before seen you daunted, Eleanora. Not when your sister nearly died in childbed, not when you had to battle Lord Stephen for a peek at his estate ledgers, not when His Grace demanded you travel about the realm as his personal avenger of financial sloth and inaccuracy.”

  I was daunted. I am almost always daunted, but I could admit that only to Elsmore. “Perhaps a megrim or a head cold stalks me.”

  “Or a broken heart?”

  The dog, an enormous black hellbeast, came over to Ellie’s chair, sat, and put its chin on her knee.

  “I never cry.”

  The dog gazed up at her, and that—kindness, even from a dumb animal—had a tear slipping down her cheek.

  “I hate this.”

  “But you love Wrexham, Duke of Elsmore.” The duchess spoke gently, which only sent a second tear following in the path of the first.

  “His familiars call him Rex. It suits him. I must never see him again.” Ellie fished out the handkerchief he’d given her, the one she took with her everywhere. She didn’t use it to wipe her eyes—her tea napkin served for that purpose. Instead, she traced the crowned unicorn rampant on his coat of arms.

  “Did he tell you that you must never see him again?”

  Oh, this hurt. This gentle peeling away of layers of heartache hurt and hurt and hurt. “He did not. I’m thinking of moving to France or at least of returning to York.”

  “You aren’t thinking at all.” The duchess handed Ellie the half-finished cup of tea, and Ellie drank, not because her hostess was a duchess, but because she was Jane, wife of Quinn Wentworth, and the mother of his three daughters.

  “I feel as if I have lost every whit of sense and direction I ever had,” Ellie said, folding Elsmore’s handkerchief in careful eighths. “My sums no longer interest me. My work has become boring.” She tucked the handkerchief away and stroked the dog’s head.

  He scooted closer, as if he’d climb into her lap on the least provocation.

  “Perhaps your work has served its purpose,” the duchess said. “His Grace was able to step back from the bank once the children came along, though until that point, he struggled to keep up with the bank, the estates, his siblings, me.”

  “The Duke of Walden struggled?” The only struggle Ellie had seen her employer endure was the struggle not to thump the heads of any who brought waste, inefficiency, or sloth to their work.

  “My husband knows exactly how to go on in business,” the duchess said. “Exactly, precisely. His sense of true north is unwavering. He doesn’t lie, cheat, steal, go back on his word, or—to hear him tell it—make exceptions. A bargain is a bargain, his word is his bond, and all that other huffing and puffing. A two-year-old is a very different article from a mortgage agreement.”

  “You’re saying His Grace could not distinguish between family and business?”

  The dog settled at Ellie’s feet, his chin on the toe of her boot.

  “Walden could not distinguish between life and business. He knew great poverty as a child, and no safety whatsoever. For him, safety boiled down to having so much money that nobody could jeopardize the welfare of those he loved.” The duchess took a sip of her tea, looking elegant even in so mundane a gesture. “I do believe my darling puppy has fallen in love.”

  I have fallen in love. As true, lamentable, and wonderful as that sentiment was, something in the duchess’s words tickled the edge of Ellie’s mind.

  “I haven’t delivered my final notes to Elsmore yet,” she said. “I have most of my report written, and it’s all very tidy, but I read over it, and feel I’m missing something.” Ellie was missing him, of course, but she was also failing to see a pattern that should be obvious. An important pattern that hovered just beyond her awareness.

  “Elsmore’s sister, Lady Rachel, appears to have attached the affections of a suitor,” the duchess s
aid. “Lord Jeremy Bledsoe. Excellent lineage, sweet young man. Elsmore will soon have more family, and he’s already awash in relatives.”

  “He puts the male cousins without other prospects to work at the bank,” Ellie said. “I know the head of the family is expected to use his influence for the benefit of his relations, but…”

  The dog sat up.

  “But?” the duchess echoed, a cinnamon biscuit halfway to her mouth.

  “But all of the family accounts…” Ellie could not disclose Elsmore’s financial arrangements to anybody. “There is a common thread, and I missed it.”

  All of the family accounts were handled, ultimately, through the bank, where more family was employed. Ellie had pointed fingers at Elsmore’s sisters, aunts, mama, and widowed cousin when, in fact, they were very likely not the issue.

  “Your Grace, please excuse me. An urgent matter of business requires my attention.”

  The duchess set down her biscuit untasted. “I’ll have the coach brought around for you.”

  “I haven’t time to wait for the coach, ma’am. I’ll just be leaving.”

  “Take the dog,” the duchess said, rising. “Lord Stephen can send him back with a footman. The poor pup hasn’t been getting enough exercise because the weather has been so disobliging, but today is at least sunny.”

  The dog was on his feet, looking toothy and hopeful.

  “Very well, I’ll take Wodin, but I really must be on my way.”

  * * *

  “Elsmore, a pleasure.” Lord Jeremy bowed, shook hands, and took the seat opposite Rex at the table for two. Rex had asked the waiter for a spot in the corner where a man could see who else was in the room without half of them eavesdropping on his conversation.

  “My lord, the pleasure is mine.” Rex had nearly declined the invitation, because what mattered this empty ritual, when the outcome for his lordship and Lady Rachel was all but assured? And yet, Rachel mattered to Rex very much, and being seen to share a meal with Lord Jeremy was a step in a dance that led to Rachel’s wishes coming true.