Forever and a Duke

by Grace Burrowes

  “I don’t like it,” James said, staring into the flames. “I most assuredly do not care for Elsmore nosing about the bank. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  “You were out.” And Eddie had had work to do. “You are frequently out. Ballentyre has developed the ability to waste three hours at lunch and an hour at each of his tea breaks. Elsmore will notice that, if he hasn’t already.”

  Footsteps shuffled past Eddie’s closed door, the watchman stretching his legs no doubt.

  “Do you mind if I use this office for a bit?” James asked. “My own is lamentably chilly and I find I’m in the mood to think bankerly thoughts for a bit.”

  Eddie rose. “Never let it be said I denied you an opportunity to indulge a bankerly impulse. I expect I’ll be here again tomorrow.”

  James studied him. “Will you? Getting ready to bolt, Eddie?”

  And if I am? “My work for the bank is above reproach, James. That I occasionally facilitate relations between a borrower and a lender beyond what the bank can accommodate is certainly no cause for alarm. Many bankers do likewise.”

  And were careful never to document any of it, because the law did so frown on usury.

  “Of course they do,” James said. “I’ll see you Monday, assuming we aren’t dragooned into Sunday dinner with the ducal relations.” He slid his sleeve buttons free, turned back his cuffs, and reached for the ledger he’d brought with him.

  Eddie itched to know what was in the account book. Whatever it was, it had the power to keep James at the bank well after dark, his handsome nose buried in figures for the first time in all the years Eddie had worked with him.

  Perhaps Elsmore should be alerted to this development. On that thought, Eddie turned to leave.

  “Eddie, before you go, one other thing.”

  Eddie pretended a concern he didn’t feel. “If you need some blunt—”

  “Hardly, but thank you. I’ve had occasion lately to rub shoulders with some of the clerks and tellers from other institutions.”

  The institutions James was planning to fleece, no doubt. “If I’m the object of gossip, I’d rather you just say so.”

  James lounged back in the chair and propped his boots on Eddie’s desk. “Don’t flatter yourself. The gossip had to do with Elsmore.”

  “Doesn’t it always? He would do us all a favor if he got leg-shackled.” Though then, a direct heir was likely to appear in short order, and James would be demoted to spare. What a pity that would be.

  James dragged the ledger into his lap. “The talk had to do with Elsmore and the auditor at Wentworth and Penrose, a female. He’s been seen sharing a coach with her, and the clerks at Wentworth’s say a couple weeks back he met with her for most of two afternoons. They are petrified of the woman. They claim she can find a missing farthing in pitch darkness amid gale-force winds.”

  Eddie’s desire to leave became urgent. Leave the bank, leave London, perhaps even leave England. “I can’t say I’d care for such a woman.”

  “She took a holiday from Wentworth’s at the same time my eyes and ears at Dorset House claim His Grace collected all the ducal ledgers for his personal review.”

  “But those ledgers…”

  “Are brought to me at the bank to be tallied at the end of every month. I thought it only fair to warn you. By this time next week, I will be enjoying a change of air. If this auditor is halfway competent, she’ll advise Elsmore to turn the bank inside out once she’s wreaked havoc on the personal accounts. Sooner or later, awkward questions will be asked. I don’t intend to be here when that happens.”

  How delicately a ducal heir referred to utter ruin. “I will wish you safe travels, James. If there’s anything I can do to help, you have only to let me know.”

  Elsmore would be at the theater tonight, but tomorrow morning, Eddie intended to have a very pointed discussion with His Grace. James had taken calculated risks and enjoyed copious rewards. His run of good luck had come to an end, but even that might be turned to an enterprising fellow’s advantage.

  Eddie closed the office door softly and made his way down the corridor as quietly as possible. No need to wake the watchman. The night was young, and Eddie had time to go home, change, and be at the theater in time to join Madam Bisset for the second act.

  “Eddie the Enterprising,” he murmured. “I like it.”

  * * *

  Eleanora’s cousin started on a bowl of cold soup while Rex sorted options and considered Eleanora. She cared for her cousin Jack, but she regarded him with a despair that echoed Rex’s sentiments about his own family.

  “If Jack is knowledgeable about ledgers and a competent sneak thief,” Rex said, “he’s exactly the man for a quiet investigation of the bank after hours.”

  Eleanora flopped into the reading chair, whereupon the cat leapt into her lap. “Elsmore, do you think embezzlers leave trails of bread crumbs pointing to where piles of cash have been stowed? Do you suppose they simply twist a lock and go about their business, confident that nobody ever comes looking for a spare quill or is curious about what’s kept in a consistently locked drawer?”

  Jack paused with a spoon halfway to his mouth. “If there’s cash on the premises where it ought not to be, I’ll find it. I have a nose for cash.”

  Eleanora put the cat to her shoulder, like a nursemaid with a baby. “And what if the cash isn’t on the bank premises? Only a fool would store it there when safer locations are available.”

  “The bank is the safest possible location,” Rex said. “The windows are stoutly barred, the locks secure, and a watchman stands guard all night.”

  “A watchman,” Eleanora muttered. “You expect Jack to elude the vigilance of a man who’s paid to do nothing but deter intruders. Do you want me to hate you, Elsmore?”

  Jack started on the second bowl. “Do you want me to starve, Ellie? This is work, one old man with a feeble lantern isn’t that hard to dodge, and putting me in the dock when I’ll be in the bank on the duke’s say-so will be a lot harder than if I’m there for my own purposes.”

  Ellie closed her eyes as the cat skittered from her shoulder, up over the back of the reading chair and thence to the floor.

  “If you are caught,” she said, voice tight, “with money in your pockets, or a ledger written in some bank employee’s hand, you will be hanged on Monday next.”

  Jack sat back, a piece of bread in his hand. “I won’t be caught, I won’t nip anything, and it won’t be like that.”

  He and Eleanora exchanged a look, pleading on his part, furious on hers. A silent conversation ensued, one Rex was not meant to understand. The duel ended when Eleanora sneezed.

  Rex passed her a handkerchief, which she glared at before taking out her own handkerchief.

  “I despair of you, Jackson Naylor,” she said. “If you want coin, I’ll give you coin. My lease here is paid up for the rest of the month, and I doubt Lord Stephen will turn you out without warning. He’s more charitable than he lets on. Please tell Cook the cat will need a new owner, for I refuse to bide in England while…”

  Her glower should have cindered Jack on the spot.

  Jack had apparently weathered that fire before, because he sopped his bread in the soup as casually as any drover at his evening meal. “Something about His Grace’s linen looks familiar.”

  “What the devil does that matter?” Rex asked. “I’m properly attired for daytime, and most men wear a neckcloth.”

  Jack gestured with his bread. “Not that linen—your fancy little kercher. Has a unicorn on it. Don’t see many unicorns in my parts of London.”

  “My family crest,” Rex said. “The sixth countess brought Scottish wealth to her marriage. When the family was elevated to ducal honors, the unicorn was a nod to her antecedents. You’ve probably seen the crest on my town coach.”

  Eleanora left her chair. “Did you see this exact crest, Jack, or one like it?”

  He studied his bread. “That one, on a handkerchief, and I recall think
ing, ‘Only a fool would flash that bit of fancy about in a place like this.’”

  “Where were you?” Eleanora asked, crossing to the desk. “Who was the fool?” She gazed at her cousin with the same focus she turned on a fresh set of figures. “Think, Jack, because if a member of Elsmore’s family has been haunting low places, that’s relevant.”

  Jack tore off another bite of bread and chewed. “Not low places. I’ve been looking for honest work, Ellie. Haven’t run a rig or picked a pocket in months. I’ve been over by the City, where the clerks and counting-house bookkeepers stop for their pint.”

  “Not high places,” Rex said. “By the standards of a ducal cousin or uncle, those would be unusual haunts.”

  “He talked like you,” Jack said, cocking his head. “But where…?”

  “Concentrate,” Eleanora said. “See him in your mind’s eye, Jack, like Grandpapa would. Note the details that a portrait would include. What color were his gloves?”

  “Black, kid, lined, very fine. No mending,” Jack said. “A touch of lace at his cuffs, but just a touch. Three capes on his greatcoat. Looked like a Schweitzer and Davidson cut.”

  “Snuff box?” Eleanora asked.

  “Didn’t see one.”

  “What about a hat?”

  “Lock, or similar quality,” Jack replied. “He was a fine gent.”

  Rex listened to this exchange with growing dismay. “Did the fine gent give you a name?”

  “Edwards,” Jack replied around the last mouthful of bread. “But that wasn’t his name.”

  Edwards? Would Eddie have used that name as an alias? “Did he have a walking stick?” Rex asked. “A cane, anything of that nature?”

  Eleanora put her palms on the blotter and leaned across the desk. “Think, Jackson. You took note of this man for a reason. Amid the noise and stink and crowding of some pub or tavern, this fellow sat down and made an impression on you. You took in the details, because we were taught to look carefully. Fancy beaver hat, touches of lace, fine tailoring…what was in his hands when he took a place at your table?”

  “Walking stick,” Jack said. “Silver handle, dark wood. Might have been mahogany because it held a nice, high shine. Brass ferrule rather than gold. He hooked it on the edge of the table, set his gloves next to it, his handkerchief atop his gloves. We talked about the little problem His Grace’s bank recently had with a certain Mr. Butterfield. Mr. Edwards was familiar with that situation.”

  Eleanora straightened, her gaze swinging to Rex. “You know this man. You know which of your managers or cousins has been chatting up out-of-work pickpockets and swindlers.”

  “Ellie,” Jack began, “I’m not a swindler these days. I’m going honest, or I would if anybody would hire me. The fancy gent apparently has taken up with Beveridge Larson, and that association recommends him to no one.” Jack took the lid off the crock of soup and poured the remaining contents into an empty bowl.

  “It does cross my mind,” he went on, “that if the fancy gent intends to play the Old Man on some unsuspecting bank, then Larson resembles him more nearly than I do. They are of a height and built the same, while I have been missing the regular occasion of nutrition lately.”

  The dog rose from the hearthrug and pressed against the side of Rex’s leg. The weight was comforting, an anchor against a reeling sense of betrayal.

  “The fancy gent is my heir apparent,” Rex said. “The fancy gent trolling for the next Mr. Butterfield is my cousin James. My friend, the closest thing I have to a brother.”

  “Enterprising fellow,” Jack said, spoon scraping the last of the soup from the crock. “Give him that, but stupid.”

  “Greedy,” Eleanora said. “The greedy ones eventually get caught. Now that you know where the problem is, nobody need break into any banks.” Her smile was overly bright and false.

  “Now that I know at least one of the cheaters,” Rex replied, “I have more need than ever for a look around the premises after hours before anybody has reason to get nervous.”

  Eleanora’s smile disappeared. “You are not putting my cousin at risk, Your Grace. Once the authorities get hold of someone, no amount of consequence can overcome the corruption of the thief-takers, magistrates, and beadles. There is no justice for one such as Jack, and even you can’t change that.”

  Eleanora’s gaze promised slow death to any duke who’d gainsay her. She’d find a way to destroy him if any harm came to Jack, and make charges of embezzlement a mere nuisance by comparison. With the backing of the Duke of Walden, Lord Stephen, and Wentworth and Penrose as an institution—to say nothing of Walden’s duchess—she could do it.

  “I’ll be careful,” Jack said, picking up his bowl and slurping the soup directly from it. “I’m always careful, Ellie. You know that.”

  “Careful isn’t good enough,” Eleanora snapped. “Careful never earned a man a pardon or a commutation. Jack Naylor, I will disown you and tell the rest of the family to do likewise if you attempt this foolish errand.”

  Rex shoved aside his fury at dear cousin James—who dressed to the nines, worked when he pleased to, and stole from widows—to focus on the argument between Eleanora and her cousin.

  “I’ve been disowned before,” Jack said, setting aside the empty bowl. “Don’t much care for it, but I’m surviving. If His Grace pays me to sneak about the bank after hours, then he’ll have to give me an honest job, won’t he? I’ll know his secrets, and he’ll want me to keep them to myself.”

  “You cannot blackmail your way into an honest job,” Eleanora retorted. “And you aren’t breaking into any bank if I can help it.”

  This argument was not about an evening of peering in dark corners at Dorset and Becker, though Rex wasn’t sure what the true issue was.

  “Eleanora is correct, Naylor. You cannot blackmail your way into an honest job, but neither will you know any dirty little secrets if the evening goes as planned.”

  “He is not trespassing on bank grounds,” Eleanora said, folding her arms. “I will not have it.”

  “You are leaving for France, madam,” Rex said, gently, lest she lay into him with her fists. “But as it happens, nobody need trespass anywhere. I have a key to the bank, I am a director, and a major shareholder. If I choose to take a prospective employee on a discreet tour of the premises, that is entirely within my purview.”

  Eleanora sank onto the sofa. “I give up. I wash my hands of the both of you. Break into as many banks as you please and take yourselves on an uninvited tour of Carlton House while you’re about it. This is madness, and will profit you nothing. Jack, you are putting your trust in a duke who will be ruined by scandal should a word of any of this become known. Tread lightly.”

  “We’re doomed, Your Grace,” Jack said, dusting crumbs into his soup bowl. “When Eleanora gets all chilly and polite, there’s no talking sense to her. We might as well drop by your bank and have a look about.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “My problem,” James informed the empty room, “is that I lack a ruthless streak.”

  Eddie’s office was cozy, the appointments tasteful. The watchman had come by once, and James had waved him off with assurances that he need not look in again. The old fellow had shuffled back to his brazier, happy to commune with his flask rather than traverse chilly corridors.

  A sketch hung on the wall opposite the desk, though in the dim light of sconces and candles, the youths portrayed by the artist were more shadow than form. Elsmore had been caught with the three bachelor cousins, lounging about on a picnic blanket after a cricket match.

  A foursome of good-looking young men, though the image somehow managed to portray that Elsmore’s team had won. The duke half-reclined on his side, like a Roman statesman, a plate of grapes before him. The other cousins sat in equally relaxed postures, but they lacked Elsmore’s sense of…

  Something. Self-possession, self-assurance. Something unfairly denied the duke’s cousins, and most especially denied his heir.

  A nois
e down the corridor disturbed James’s musings, which was fortunate. He had put right what he could in the family ledgers and had only to collect his funds and his personal account book, and then he could be on his way.

  Dover by morning was too much to hope for on winter roads, but Dover by noon was entirely possible. The tides and winds might leave him kicking his heels for a day or two if he was unlucky, and few boats would sail on the Sabbath under even favorable conditions. Money could solve that problem, if the weather was obliging.

  James banked the fire in the hearth, blew out the candles, and bid a silent farewell to Cousin Edward and to all the cousins. He’d hoped to play out the game a little longer, but a smart man knew to put safety ahead of wealth. He donned his coat and hat, took up his walking stick, and made his way down the corridor, past the snoring watchman, and into his own office.

  He had no warning that anything was amiss—and why should it be? The moment he opened the door, he perceived that a room that ought to have been in pitch darkness was illuminated by a pair of carrying candles on the mantel. His first thought was that a charwoman had carelessly left lamps behind, but then a movement caught his eye.

  “I know you.” The man at James’s desk was vaguely familiar, though not a bank employee. “What the hell are you doing in my office plundering bank records after hours, trespassing, sneaking about, and doubtless thieving from your betters?”

  A memory came to James of a pub, a fellow down on his luck who knew a bit too much about the bank’s troubles. Instinct had warned James away from that man—he’d been too honest, too knowledgeable about criminal logic, as a thief-taker would be—and here he was.

  Where he should have never been.

  “Mr. Edwards.” The fellow rose. “Jackson Naylor at your service. What a strange hour for you to be attending to bank business. Perhaps you can explain why the false bottom in your desk drawer conceals nearly two thousand pounds in banknotes?”

  “Naylor, is it now?” James spat. “This is a bank, exactly where most prudent people choose to store their money, myself included. The more pertinent inquiry is whether your affairs are in order, because I will most assuredly be summoning the watch and informing the authorities of your criminal activities. Bank robbery is a capital offense.”