Beastly Lords Collection

by Baily, Sydney Jane

  She felt sick. She wished she could say the same thing. “Normally, our manservant Henry takes ledgers back and forth to my clients, but this is different. Obviously, Henry can’t meet with Mr. Binkley.”

  “But why is the butler here?”

  She frowned. “I have looked over five years of the Belton estate’s books and found some abnormalities. Funds have gone missing and—”

  A tap at the door silenced her.

  “Jen, whatever you’re doing, do it quickly.”

  It was Maggie, whispering through the door. She went to it and yanked it open.

  “We’re nearly ready. Go get Mr. Binkley and bring him to Mr. Cavendish’s parlor.”

  Maggie frowned. Jenny swallowed and gestured behind her toward Ned, who was even then puffing up his chest and tugging down his coat sleeves. Maggie’s eyes widened in horror, but she nodded and darted off.

  Jenny waited at the study door. This simply had to work.

  Chapter Four

  With Mr. Binkley seated in one of the chairs by the writing desk and Ned on the other side, Jenny hovered by the door waiting for Ned to take charge.

  He gave the earl’s senior servant a broad smile. And said nothing.

  Sweet mother! She glared at him from behind the butler’s back.

  Ned coughed. “Binkley, is it?”

  The butler nodded, then he turned around offering Jenny a quizzical look.

  Luckily, Ned drew his attention back. “Miss Blackwood is my cousin, and she … assists me.”

  “We have met,” Mr. Binkley said. “She seems to be quite a helpful person, showing up where least expected.”

  Ned shrugged, having lost the exact thread of his meaning.

  Binkley clasped his hands behind his back where Jenny could see them. She had a feeling the admiral was trying to quell his impatience.

  “However, this is a rather sensitive situation, as I’m sure you can appreciate after reviewing the ledgers,” the butler continued. “I would prefer we speak in private.”

  Jenny felt cold all over. Ned could say the wrong thing in a heartbeat and the pretense would be shattered. From the look on his face, he knew that.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Binkley, Miss Blackwood is already entirely familiar with the earl’s account. I often use her to transcribe my rather messy handwriting. Chicken scratch as my mam used to call it.”

  Bravo! Again, Jenny could have hugged him.

  “I see.” Binkley turned once more to give Jenny a particularly hard stare. “Perhaps, then, Miss Blackwood, you would mind ceasing to loiter behind my back. It gives me a sense of menace from my days as a foot soldier.”

  Hmm, he certainly oozed discipline, and now she knew why.

  Obligingly, she entered the room and stood beside her desk, trying to look meek.

  Binkley addressed Ned once more. “Because of the delicate matter of revenues dwindling or going missing as you discovered, and because of the situation that occurred three years hence, I’m here to request your presence at Belton.”

  “Why is that necessary?” Ned asked, sounding bored and as if he were now in complete control.

  Jenny wanted to throttle him. After all, this could be her most lucrative client, and they served the earl at Mr. Binkley’s pleasure. Annoy him and he was likely to decide to find a real bookkeeper in Manchester or London.

  “What Mr. Cavendish means is, that he would hate to intrude upon the earl’s privacy,” she blurted out.

  “You will not come into contact with his lordship,” Mr. Binkley said, sounding every bit like an admiral in command of his navy. Again, he gave her a hard stare, perhaps reminding her that she had strayed where she oughtn’t to the last time she was at the manor.

  “Of course,” she muttered.

  He turned to Ned once again. “I must insist that you come to Belton as there are too great a number of ledgers to easily transport. What’s more, I believe you may have questions that could best be answered if I were close by.”

  “I see,” Ned said, then looked to Jenny. She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “In that case, when would you like us to come.”

  “Us?”

  “Well, I must bring Jenny because …”

  “Because of your chicken scratch,” the butler supplied helpfully though not in an enthusiastic tone. “If you can come tomorrow, I’ll have the library clear for you both to work.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Jenny decided this had better be the conclusion of their meeting.

  “I can certainly clear Mr. Cavendish’s schedule for tomorrow. We will see you at half past nine if that suits.”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  In another minute, she had the butler out the door and was watching him climb into the earl’s carriage.

  Leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed, she nearly laughed with relief to see him go. Good Lord, she must have just aged a year.

  Suddenly, Ned was at her side.

  “He didn’t even thank us for going tomorrow on such short notice.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t have to thank us. We work for him.”

  “Oh, right.”

  In the next moment, she felt Ned take hold of her upper arm and with a bit of tugging, uncross it and tuck it under his own, holding it close to his side.

  Ah, the price to be paid. It would be costly indeed!

  “This is rather exciting,” he said. “I’ve never done such a charade. And to think, we are doing it together.” He patted her trapped hand.

  “Yes,” she said, “think of that.”

  *

  Jenny would be nice to Ned. That was her nature after all. What’s more, he was doing her the greatest of favors, but still, did he have to keep reminding her of that? Between Mr. Binkley’s departure and breakfast, he’d mentioned his contribution “to her well-being” at least a dozen times.

  “What a bind I’ve got you out of!” he declared, stuffing his mouth with meat pie at dinner the night before.

  “What a godsend that I was here with Maisie,” he said over porridge and thick bacon rashers at breakfast.

  “This is what comes of being deceitful,” he’d gloated around a mouthful of toast before slurping down his tea.

  As if she’d had a choice, being a woman.

  Jenny already wanted to scream, and they’d only just arrived at Belton Manor. Ned had tried to hold her hand numerous times in the seclusion of his carriage, after insisting they take his old brougham with his driver rather than her open-air gig. Having about decided to punch her cousin in the nose, she felt the carriage wheels turn onto the gravel drive.

  Besides, she thought grumpily, leading Ned around to the side entrance and knocking, she hadn’t truly needed his help. She would have figured something else out if he hadn’t been at hand. Though for the life of her, she didn’t know what.

  The same servant greeted them at the door. Obviously, he’d been told that Jenny wasn’t there to tutor Peter and Alice this time for he took a different route through the hallways and stairs before showing them into a beautifully-endowed library, with floor-to-ceiling books that must have cost a pretty penny.

  “How marvelous.” Jenny had not been in such a room since she’d wandered into the wrong chamber after too much champagne during her first season. Her father had found her sitting in a chair, glass in hand, and perusing a biography of Isaac Newton and his mathematical equations at one of Lord and Lady Jersey’s fabulously extravagant balls.

  There was a large round table with four comfy leather chairs arranged around it, and Jenny and Ned seated themselves each at one of these. On the table were two stacks of leather tomes, presumably ledgers, as they looked like the ones she’d already studied thoroughly. Pens, ink, blank paper, it had all been thoughtfully laid out for them.

  Jenny pulled out her abacus from her satchel. It helped remind her of her abilities, though it didn’t entirely quell the butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

  “Where do we start?” Ned a
sked, leaning back in his seat as if he had no idea what a book was or how to open one.

  “You may find something interesting upon these shelves,” she told him, “or you may take a nap.” For all she cared. As long as he stayed quiet and didn’t bother her. “I will start with the latest ledger and work backward. I find that’s the best way not to be led down the wrong path.”

  She pulled the top book off the stack and found it to be very old indeed.

  That wouldn’t do. Standing, she began to sort the ledgers by decade, until she finally spread open before her the accounts prior to the ones she’d already viewed, six years ago. Then she fell silent and began to read and figure and add and subtract.

  Perhaps an hour had gone by, perhaps more, when the door opened and the admiral entered. At that particular moment, she was hastily writing on a piece of paper while bent over the ledger, her nose nearly pressed to the paper to read the minute scrawling someone had written in the margin.

  Glancing up, she took in Mr. Binkley staring at her and then looking at Ned who was splayed across a divan by the window, an open book on his chest, and snoring lightly.

  Sweet mother! She should have set him up at least to look the part.

  “Ahem,” Mr. Binkley cleared his throat. They both looked at Ned who didn’t stir.

  “He’s taking a bit of a break while I transcribe some notes. Can you tell me, Mr. Binkley, did the earl himself, the young one, I mean, the current one, keep the books until the time he went away?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Because even though there were already some systemic changes occurring in the ledgers and in the estate’s revenues over the last six or seven years, they changed drastically three years ago.”

  “Ah, yes. It was his lordship’s cousin who maintained the ledgers.”

  “Tobias Devere?”

  “Yes, starting approximately seven years ago, I would say. Sir Devere was adept at numbers and asked the earl’s father if he could take over the household accounts, and then it grew to be the entire estate that he handled.”

  Odd, she thought, with an estate as vast and wealthy as the Devere’s, that they didn’t have a professional bookkeeper in their employ.

  “And before Sir Devere, who kept the ledgers?”

  “His lordship, the previous earl, had an estate steward who has long since departed.”

  Ned snuffled in his sleep, and they both looked at him for a second.

  “And the current earl has no interest in the accounts, eight years ago or since?”

  “I’m afraid he never had a head for it, Miss. Not that he wasn’t interested in his family’s estates. That would be an incorrect assumption. Lord Devere, now Lord Lindsey, was always a participant in the running of this manor and of his father’s vast holdings. He understood its workings and the needs of its people.”

  Before he became a despondent recluse. And now?

  She kept that question to herself.

  “I see.” Jenny flipped a few pages back and forth. “Who handles the accounting now?”

  Mr. Binkley clasped his hands behind his back and looked down at her. “Apparently, you do.”

  She felt her cheeks redden and glanced at Ned again. Useless creature. The butler had seen through their charade, no doubt. Yet, she shouldn’t assume that was what he meant.

  “What I meant to ask was who has been handling this since his lordship and his cousin went abroad?”

  “I knew what you meant,” Mr. Binkley said. “The old earl was alive for two years of his son’s absence.”

  That told her nothing. She smiled encouragingly. Was there more?

  “Not any one person,” the butler added.

  For the first time, Jenny had the feeling that he was withholding something from her.

  “I have made some entries, and the earl’s valet has kept some accounts. Even the housekeeper, Mrs. Keithley, whom I don’t believe you’ve met, has been called upon to give a reckoning. She was visiting her sister in Gloucestershire when you were here before. Hence the reason no one brought your tea.”

  Jenny frowned. What a slipshod method. And the admiral, by his discomfort, knew it.

  “I don’t quite understand how the heir to the earldom and his cousin, who I suppose was also a potential heir, could both go to war and leave the entire estate without an overseer, no disrespect meant to yourself, of course.”

  “None taken, Miss, I assure you.”

  At that moment, Ned snored particularly loudly and awakened himself. He sat up, blinking, recalling where he was and why he was there. Then he saw Mr. Binkley and jumped to his feet.

  “Yes, as I was saying, the ledgers show some grave discrepancies.”

  Jenny nearly laughed but simply sighed, and Mr. Binkley had the grace to keep silent.

  “I will continue to delve further,” she told the butler, giving up on the pretense entirely. “Now that I have a better understanding, I will look more closely at the recent issues. At least I’ll be able to tell you where to go looking for lost income.”

  “She means that I will, along with her help—” but Ned stopped when she sent him a quelling look.

  Only after Mr. Binkley left did Jenny realize she still didn’t know why the estate had been left to flounder after the earl’s passing without someone truly in charge. It was unconscionable.

  *

  Jenny heard the screams and couldn’t ignore them. She wished she could simply creep past the closed door to the earl’s chamber, yet her heart would have had to be made of stone. All she wanted was a blasted cup of tea but had got quite lost on her way from the library.

  “No,” Lord Lindsey yelled, for she was certain it was he.

  Glancing down the hallway, she fervently hoped to see some member of the staff, but it was quite deserted. No doubt everyone at the manor was used to his strange torment and ignored it.

  Another shout and then deep moaning permeated the door, and almost unthinkingly, Jenny placed her fingers on the handle and turned it. Her heart pounding, she pushed the door slowly open and glanced inside into utter darkness.

  Surprised, she hesitated before entering. At that hour of the day, the room should be filled with bright sunlight. Instead, it was as dark as pitch.

  Regardless, when she heard Simon Devere moan again, she moved toward him, ignoring the gooseflesh that arose on her arms. Her eyes were quickly becoming accustomed to the minimal light that had followed her in from the corridor.

  After a moment, she could make out the shape of a large, four-poster bed to her right, but the earl was not in it. His tragic sounds were coming from directly in front of the heavily draped windows. Under foot was a thick carpet that she crossed as quickly as she dared, not wishing to trip and land at his feet.

  Instead, she ended up standing before a man who was fast asleep yet sitting up in a winged chair and obviously having a terrible nightmare.

  She could not even make out his features, just overly long hair and a pale face against the darkness. Should she pull back a curtain? Should she touch him to awaken him?

  The earl thrashed suddenly, screamed loudly, and awakened, sitting bolt upright. He seemed to be staring right at her but said nothing, showing neither surprise nor alarm at her appearance. Then he looked to his left and right, down at his own lap. Finally, he gripped the armrests and breathed deeply.

  “My lord,” Jenny began, and he looked at her again. “I am sorry to intrude upon your privacy, but you were in distress. I sought only to awaken you.”

  He cocked his head.

  At his continued silence, she had a momentary fear that the Earl of Lindsey was indeed out of his mind.

  “I will fetch Mr. Binkley.”

  As she turned, his arm snaked out and he grabbed hold of her. She nearly yelled with surprise, but before she could, he gasped.

  “I can touch you,” he murmured.

  “My lord? Are you well, my lord?”

  “You are a well-spoken demon,” he said, his voice
low and scratchy with misuse.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My nightmares never beg,” he told her. “They usually cause me to beg.” He looked around his room again, then back at her. “I’ve never dreamed you before.”

  “I am no dream, my lord.”

  He sighed. “For all I know, I am in my cell in Burma, dreaming that I am in my room at home.”

  “I assure you, you are home.”

  “You cannot assure me. I have had this dream too many times though without you, to be sure. I will awaken in a minute and smell the stench of the prison. That’s always my first clue as to where I am.”

  “If you were sleeping in your cell, my lord, don’t you think you would smell it even here, in your dream home?”

  He nodded. “That makes sense.” Then he frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. “Yet nothing really makes sense, does it? I was just there. I know it.”

  “No, you were here. You were screaming. I heard you. I’m sorry to intrude but you are definitely sitting in a chair in Sheffield, England.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “Maybe for the moment,” he allowed after a pause, “but in a very few minutes from now, I may find myself back in Burma. You, with your soft voice, will disappear. I’ll be on a hard, dirty floor with flea-infested vermin crawling over me, skin itching with no relief and I’ll be freezing because the sun has gone down, it’s monsoon season, and I’m only wearing thin rags. Or I’ll be boiling hot because the blazing sun is shining harsh against the prison wall. And I’ll be very thirsty.”

  Jenny was mesmerized by his words, vividly imagining the terrible conditions and wondering how anyone could survive for any length of time. Yet, they said he’d lived in the prison for nearly two years before he was rescued by British soldiers.

  “I’m thirsty now by the way.”

  The earl said it in such a matter-of-fact manner that she nearly missed his words.

  “Oh,” Jenny exclaimed, glancing around. If only she could see better. But there, by his elbow on a small round table was a pitcher of water and a glass.

  “If you release me, I’ll get you a drink.”

  He hesitated. “You will not disappear if I release you?”