Forever and a Duke

by Burrowes, Grace

  The first part of the question—Who ran amok with you, Mrs. Hatfield?—might have been flirtation or worse, an announcement of male interest. Except that the rest of the duke’s question, about a little girl in pigtails, was genuine. He regarded Ellie in some puzzlement, his blue-eyed gaze roving over her as if trying to discern who she reminded him of.

  “I had not the luxury of running amok, Your Grace.” Her family had done more than their share of that. “My upbringing was most humble. Tell me more about Ambledown. Any tenancies?”

  Ellie pretended to study the notes on the page while she reminded herself why her upbringing had been so humble. Humble and perilous.

  “Six farms,” he said. “Possibly five. I’ve asked the land steward to look for a buyer for one of the farms. The tenants decamped for America and failed to apprise the steward of their plans. Neglect resulted.”

  Ellie set down her pencil. “No, neglect did not result. You employ a steward, and his job is to ensure your resources are well cared for. An entire family leaving a district for foreign shores doesn’t happen in the dead of night. Livestock must be fed and watered. A milch cow cannot go for more than a day without attention. Chickens must be let out of the henhouse to forage for daily sustenance or they soon die. No farmer worthy of a ducal tenancy would simply walk away from his animals unannounced.”

  Elsmore studied her from the place at her left hand. No smile lightened his expression, and though he wore a small bouquet of violets and lilies of the valley on his lapel, Ellie had the sense that even without his rank, he’d be a formidable man.

  “You were raised in the country,” he said.

  “Yorkshire.” She regretted that admission as soon as she’d made it. “How many other properties do you have, Your Grace?”

  “In England? That’s the lot of them, as far as I know.”

  In the name of fractions, decimals, and ratios…He’d listed a dozen pieces of real estate, all of them income-producing, all of them staffed year-round except a fishing cottage with twelve bedrooms near Sunderland that had only a couple as caretaker.

  “You have foreign properties as well, Your Grace?”

  He waved a languid hand. “Vineyards in France and Portugal, a villa in Italy I’ve never laid eyes on, a forest in Bavaria. My progenitors believed that if the family had need of something—wool, lumber, brandy—we had best have the means to secure it. Hence, the dukedom developed a tendency to sprawl.”

  Sprawl. He referred to a small kingdom as a tendency to sprawl and did so in a tone between apologetic and disgruntled.

  “Various cousins help oversee the foreign bits,” Elsmore went on. “Cousin James occasionally jaunts up to Scotland for me—he’s the nominal heir, hence my willingness to impose upon him—and he stops in at the fishing cottage en route.”

  “And across all of the properties, investments, businesses, and what not, how much money would you say has gone missing?”

  Elsmore looked around the room, as if he’d misplaced his hat. “Not much, a few thousand pounds? All I know is, this year’s harvests were good, my tenants pay their rents on time, seed and feed prices have dropped since Waterloo, and yet my expenses grew while my income declined, even after I account for fluctuations in corn prices. The discrepancy is five thousand pounds at most, but I cannot justify it.”

  Long practice allowed Ellie to jot that figure down as if all those zeros were commonplace. “That’s in total, or this year?”

  “In the past twelve months. I was hoping you might be able to take a peek at what happened prior to that.” He sounded so hopeful, so…charming.

  I will kill Quinn Wentworth. Ellie put down her pencil, tidied her notes into a stack, and chose her words carefully.

  “Your Grace, while I understand the delicacy of your position, and I wish I could help you, this task exceeds my abilities. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I really must decline the assignment.”

  He rose, braced his hands on the table, and leaned close. “No, Mrs. Hatfield, you really must not.”

  She got to her feet and went nose-to-nose with him. “Yes, I must. I absolutely must decline this assignment.”

  * * *

  Joshua Penrose ambled into Quinn’s office. If the door was open, anybody was welcome to intrude on Quinn, provided they came on bank business. If the door was closed, the angel Gabriel would have been taken severely to task for interrupting.

  “No shouting from the conference room,” Joshua said. “What do you suppose they’re up to?”

  Quinn had left his door open precisely to monitor developments down the corridor. The conference room sat between his office and Joshua’s, but by design, the walls allowed little sound to carry.

  “I expect Mrs. Hatfield is interrogating Elsmore more thoroughly than he was ever quizzed at Eton.”

  “Harrow. The Dorsets are a Harrow family, and they’ve been known to send the occasional younger son to Cambridge.”

  “How broad-minded of them.”

  Quinn’s younger brother Stephen occasionally lectured at Cambridge, also at Oxford and various Continental institutions. He was in London at present, though he no longer stayed at the ducal town house when in the capital.

  Joshua took a love seat situated beneath a window and helped himself to a biscuit from the tray on the low table.

  “Eleanora is doubtless interrogating, but what is Elsmore doing?”

  “Reciting,” Quinn said, giving up on the lease agreement he’d been reading. “Or confessing.”

  “Why did he come to us?” Joshua said. “Why not have a word with the army of solicitors he employs, why not set a cousin or uncle to the task? A thorough examination of the books could be a simple exercise in prudence, a modern measure for modern times. We have an auditor on staff and have nearly since we opened our London doors.”

  They didn’t have merely an auditor, they had Eleanora Hatfield, the most observant, logical, financially astute person Quinn had the pleasure to know.

  “Family money is delicate,” he said. “Discretion must be assured, and solicitors can be put in situations where loyalties are divided.”

  “When did you start speaking duke-ish?”

  “In plain banker-ish, the source of Elsmore’s problems might lie quite close to home. He describes the situation as trivial—one tally a little short, another even less than that—but the problem is significant enough that he’s handling it both quietly and with the most competent resource he could bring to bear. Don’t mistake Elsmore’s charm for a lack of shrewdness.”

  Joshua munched another biscuit into oblivion. He favored raspberry glazes and had been known to add butter even to those.

  “How does Elsmore know of our Mrs. Hatfield? Eleanora fancies herself something of a secret weapon.”

  “I might have mentioned her over steak and port.” To Elsmore, in whom Quinn placed as much confidence as he did in any peer.

  A muted exchange of words sounded through the wall behind Quinn’s desk.

  Joshua was on his feet in the next instant. “I’ll not have him intimidating her. If Elsmore thinks his rank entitles him to rude behavior with an employee of Wentworth and Penrose, he is sorely mistaken.”

  Quinn remained seated. He was married, he had three daughters and two sisters. “Wait. Elsmore will not get the better of this exchange.”

  Joshua paused, hand on the door latch. “How can you tell?”

  “Firstly, he is in no position to bargain. Eleanora has no use for peers of any stripe, while Elsmore would not have asked for our help unless he had no alternatives. Secondly, they must sort themselves out without an audience lest somebody be needlessly humiliated.”

  “If Elsmore belittles Mrs. Hatfield, even implies a casual slight…”

  “Joshua, it isn’t Mrs. Hatfield’s dignity that’s imperiled. Have another biscuit and tell me what you think of this lease.”

  The exchange from the conference room continued in muted, emphatic tones. Joshua brought the tray of biscuit
s to the desk, picked up the lease, and took a seat.

  * * *

  The common view of dukes was likely that they were refused little and indulged much.

  Ha.

  Mrs. Hatfield glowered up at Rex as if he’d threatened to burn the Union Jack, curse out loud in the nave of St. Paul’s, and—high crime, indeed—announce that two plus two equaled five.

  “I am not up to the challenge you put before me.” She hurled that thunderbolt with such absolute certainty that Moses would have scampered down Mount Sinai intent on scribbling her words at the bottom of his stone tablets.

  Or possibly across the top.

  “You audit this entire bank,” Rex said. “I’m told you not only audit the ducal estate books, but you also supervise the ledgers for every member of the Wentworth family. His Grace of Walden—not noted for praising anybody or anything except that family—has sung rhapsodies to your acumen.”

  Great brown eyes framed in long lashes and swooping brows showed momentary confusion.

  “You exaggerate, sir.”

  Most women adored honest compliments and didn’t get enough of them. “Walden himself claims you have saved Wentworth and Penrose much embarrassment and even more liability. You are the conscience of this whole institution and the confidante of a fabulously solvent dukedom. You can help me. You simply choose not to. Why?”

  She clearly had her reasons. Mrs. Eleanora Hatfield likely did nothing without at least three sound reasons rounded to the nearest unassailable conclusion.

  She subsided into her chair. Rex stayed on his feet.

  “I know the Walden dukedom,” she said. “I’ve had years to learn its patterns and peculiarities. I know the people who populate it. His Grace has taken me with him back to Yorkshire, so I can make the acquaintance of the staff at the ducal seat and instruct them on proper accounting. His sisters, Lady Althea and Lady Constance, have established their accounts in keeping with my guidance. Your situation, however…”

  Her gaze fell to a dozen pages of meticulously penciled notes.

  “That you don’t know my situation is an advantage,” Rex said. “I am familiar with the patterns and personalities. You will bring the fresh eye.”

  “I would help you if I could, but your financial picture is very different from the Walden holdings.”

  “Certainly it is. Walden’s duchess could buy and sell me with her pin money.”

  Mrs. Hatfield stole a glance at him, then checked her watch. That glance told him she was re-arranging her artillery, choosing the words best suited to conveying a difficult message to a difficult duke.

  “The two dukedoms differ, sir, in that the Walden money hasn’t had three hundred years to develop bad habits and poor deportment. People deride new money as if it doesn’t spend as well as the other kind, but give me new money over old any day. New money has no dark past, no airs and graces, no social bonds that transcend law and custom to afford it powers money ought not to have.”

  What an extraordinary perspective, and how passionately she adhered to it. “You disdain to help me because my lineage dates back centuries? Walden outranks me. His title is thirty-seven years older than mine, and yet you work for him. What is it that truly troubles you? You must know I will pay handsomely for your services.”

  She rubbed her fingers across her forehead, the first sign of human frailty he’d seen from her.

  “Listen to me, Your Grace. The Walden dukedom had but five properties when I undertook its rehabilitation, none managed by family. His Grace and I, or Lord Stephen and I, went property by property examining revenue and expenses. We sacked the stewards whose books were suspicious—which was all of them—and hired people whom I could train to keep proper books.”

  She switched to using her thumb to make slow circles on her temple. “Bringing that situation to rights was relatively simple. The Wentworth family books have always been spotless, and the bank has always been well run. By comparison…”

  She sent him a look of sheer pity, which was both novel and unsettling. Nobody pitied a duke. “By comparison?”

  “The situation with the Walden dukedom was like a seventy-four gunner that needed some caulking below the water line. We looked in the usual places, sealed up the boards, and made a basically sound vessel seaworthy again.”

  “And my dukedom?”

  “A splendidly appointed seagoing yacht to appearances, full of your family and employees on holiday. The vessel hasn’t had any maintenance since the day it was launched, is not scheduled for dry dock anytime soon, and has headed for the open ocean while taking on water in three dozen places, with a storm bearing down fast.”

  Rex liked that she was honest. He did not like that her opinion confirmed his own suspicions. “I still seem to have pots of money.”

  “If you can gradually diversify your holdings beyond crops and livestock, you will likely always have pots of money, but you do not have control of that money to the extent that you should. I would have to undertake extensive study to ascertain how much of the problem is due to plain error and how much comes from other sources.”

  That much honesty was a bit daunting.

  Rex resumed his seat. His solicitors muttered about cits in trade, standards being abandoned, and England always needing her farmers, and yet, land rents had been dropping since the war had ended. Mrs. Hatfield advised diversification, while she refused to render aid.

  “Other sources of the bookkeeping problem,” he said slowly. “Sources such as theft?”

  “Embezzlement, theft, graft, schemes…yes. When a sum such as you have mentioned is leaking from your books, you are very likely being fleeced.”

  That conclusion had hovered at the edge of Rex’s mind like a persistent housefly, an explanation that fit the facts but not the logic or the intuition.

  “Then that’s all the more reason why you must help me. If somebody familiar to me is stealing from the family coffers, I cannot be expected to see the patterns you allude to.”

  She closed her eyes and she might have murmured something in French. “To untangle your situation could take months, and I do not have months to lend you.”

  “I do not have months to borrow from you either. Repairing my yacht, as you term it, has become urgent. We’ll resolve it before the Season has ended.” His mother, sisters, aunties, and cousins sailed with him on that yacht. Taking on more water was unacceptable.

  Mrs. Hatfield’s glower was back. “We shall do no such thing. I have a job, and my first loyalty is to Wentworth and Penrose. I have no desire to become your financial bullyboy, restoring order to your books by main force.”

  No bullyboy had ever approached his duties with such an air of feminine exasperation. No bullyboy had such fine brown eyes or had the power to distract Rex with an ink-stained thumb.

  Mr. Hatfield was a lucky fellow, and not simply because his household books were in order.

  “May I trust your discretion, madam?”

  She tested the point of her pencil against her fingertip. “A bit late for that, Your Grace.”

  She was trying not to smile. The battle was waged mostly in her eyes, though a certain quirk of her lips betrayed the conflict as well. Rex batted aside a desire to make her smile, not only because that pursuit was irrelevant to the present discussion, but also because he’d likely fail.

  “I am of an age to marry,” he said.

  She waved a hand in a do-go-on motion.

  “I have no younger brothers, and thus must take a wife. My sisters in all likelihood will take husbands before I myself am married.”

  “The aristocracy marries. This is hardly a confidence, Your Grace. You’ve mentioned any number of cousins employed on your various properties, several at your bank. I’m sure one of them is eager to oblige if you fail to produce a legitimate son. Fortunately, you have aunties to ensure your choice of duchess is sound, and I wish you the joy of your courtship.”

  Perhaps Mr. Hatfield was not such a lucky man after all. His wife clea
rly held the institution of marriage in no affection whatsoever, though the fault for that might lie at the feet of the husband.

  None of your business, old man.

  “I will take a wife and at least make a good faith effort to see to the succession.”

  She stuck the pencil behind her ear. “Such a sacrifice on your part, seeing to the succession. Never did mortal man engage in comparable heroics for such a noble cause at such great risk to his own well-being. I commend you for it.”

  Not even Rex’s male cousins would have fired that salvo, though the lady had a point.

  “Forget about me, then,” Rex went on, “but recall my three sisters. Any one of them could bring a fellow up to scratch at tonight’s soiree, and I could be in settlement negotiations next week. What do you suppose a detailed examination of my books would reveal?”

  Mrs. Hatfield gazed into the middle distance, as if counting butterflies dancing on imaginary sunbeams. “Looming chaos, thinly veiled graft, perhaps even somebody hoping to make you look like the thief.”

  Ye thundering heavenly choruses, Rex had not thought of that. “You have a pessimistic view of life.”

  She went to tidy a lock of hair by sweeping it over her ear and had apparently forgotten about the pencil, which sailed onto the table and clattered past her reach.

  “An auditor’s lot results in an unflattering view of human nature, sir.”

  Rex took a moment to assess strategy. An assertion of rank would likely provoke not simply a smile but gales of laughter. Nobody told this woman what to do, not even the Duke of Walden. She apparently prowled the bank at liberty, poking her nose wherever she deigned to poke it.

  She was a stranger to flattery or perhaps its sworn foe.

  Attempted bribery would earn him summary eviction from the premises.

  What did he have that Mrs. Eleanora Hatfield—and Mr. Hatfield, if any such fellow existed—wanted badly enough to take on the challenge of untangling his books?