“I’ll teach you.”
“I have no money.”
“I have more than I need, and you are eminently capable of showing me how to be a better steward of it.”
“Elsmore, I am not suitable. I will never be suitable, and I cannot marry you.”
He took a step closer, and again, Ellie was reminded that she dealt with a powerful man, one who had the means to get what he wanted usually on the terms that suited him.
“You can marry me. You deal with me honestly. You take my interests to heart when you could have easily led me in a dance about my own accounts. You make love with me as if I matter to you.”
Oh, he did matter. He did, he did. But even Elsmore could not forgive a duchess whose associations would drag his name through the gutters and expose his bank to scandal. If Mick’s role in the Butterfield scheme ever came to light, the bank would fail in a week flat.
And this marriage Elsmore proposed would fail even more quickly.
“My antecedents are not proper,” Ellie said, a vast and fraught understatement. “You must take my word for that. I am not a lady, as Devonshire’s mistress was. I am not good ton and I never will be. I care for you, Elsmore, more than I can say, and because I care for you, I cannot be your duchess.”
He was half a step away, and the compulsion to seek his embrace was a physical pain. Ellie stood her ground and saw the battle in his eyes. Elsmore could harangue her and browbeat her, he could interrogate her and wear her down…or he could respect her decision.
Argue with me, Ellie silently pleaded. Bicker and fume and give me the smallest pretext for turning my heartache into anger and resentment.
He kissed her forehead, a brush of warmth in the growing chill. “I will never love another as I love you, Eleanora, and I will not pretend otherwise to spare your sensibilities. We are honest with each other. Your candor is an attribute I have always treasured about you.”
She could never be honest with him. “I am sorry, Elsmore. We would not suit.”
He stepped away, his gaze going to the snowy expanse spreading out from the manor house below. He owned a small kingdom, but more than that, he carried responsibility for a kingdom’s worth of souls. Above all else, Ellie regretted leaving him alone with that burden.
“We should be going,” she said. “Cook will expect us back in time for dinner.”
Elsmore offered his arm, and they descended into the gloom of the stairway without another word.
* * *
Rex wasn’t giving up without a fight, and he had Eleanora Hatfield to thank for igniting his willingness to join battle. For too long, he’d been the doting brother, the indulgent cousin, the dutiful nephew. His largesse was so taken for granted that petty thievery had sprung up among his nearest and dearest.
He’d deal with that affront upon his return to London. For now, he had one more night with Eleanora, and he would use it to give her every possible doubt about her rejection of his suit.
“How did you come to be an auditor?” he asked, tossing another log onto the fire in her sitting room.
“By merest chance.”
She’d been quiet all through dinner, and when Rex would have taken himself off to the solitary splendor of the ducal bed, she’d clasped his hand and led him to her quarters.
“I cannot believe chance alone resulted in your expertise, Eleanora.” He sat beside her on the sofa and draped an arm around her shoulders. She cuddled up as if this had become their routine, which in a very few days, it had.
“I was without means,” she said, “my family having come into some bad luck. My cousins and I were loose on the streets for most of the day, and because dressing as a boy was safer, that’s how I went about. I was slight and easily hid my gender.”
Rex hated that she’d been left to fend for herself, that she’d known poverty and danger. “Go on.”
“I took any odd job, of course. Crossing sweeper, errand boy, porter, links boy. I was loitering outside a haberdasher’s, hoping for some packages to carry, when a gentleman emerged, his footman trailing behind and laden with parcels.”
Rex saw those children every day, cluttering up London’s streets, scavenging its alleys. He’d never considered that some of the destitute were girls whose very gender made them even less safe than the boys.
“Tell me the rest, Eleanora. If I have to call out some old blighter because he disrespected you, I will.”
She kissed his cheek. “You will do no such thing. The gentleman had dropped his receipt. I handed it back to him and pointed out that the total was off by one shilling and tuppence. He asked me how I’d seen that mistake at a glance, and I hadn’t an answer for him.”
“You thought everybody did math without thinking about it.”
“Most of my family can, and they’d certainly never seen my ability as remarkable. Numbers behave in a predictable and orderly fashion, and I grasped those rules without much effort.”
While life on the street was predictable only insofar as it involved suffering. The sitting room was toasty, but Rex draped a crocheted afghan around Eleanora’s shoulders.
“He spotted your talent, this gentleman?”
“He spotted the talent of a grubby boy and offered to article me as a clerk. For the first year, I had to maintain the fiction of boyhood.”
And thus did a girl learn to spot every detail of dress, every nuance of gait and expression. “You were able to shed that fiction?”
“I was lucky. My employer was both kind and shrewd. He realized within a month that I did not need instruction regarding the keeping of books or the management of accounts. He was a cloth merchant who also owned mills, and he caught me one day with the silk inventory.”
“Caught you?” Not stealing. Eleanora would no more steal from an employer than Rex would get roaring drunk in the middle of a Mayfair avenue.
“I had never touched silk before, and the feel of it was magic. Nothing is as soft, as smooth and warm, and the way silk loves the light…I was enraptured, and my mannerisms gave me away.”
After a year, in an unguarded moment, she’d faltered in her disguise. “Did he keep you on anyway?”
“I was indispensable by then, and hiding my gender was becoming more and more difficult. He told me to stay home for two weeks, then to apply as a girl for work at his offices. On the Continent, women can be clerks, and my employer traveled back to Hanover frequently. He explained hiring me to his junior managers as a favor he must do for a fellow merchant, and besides, that unreliable Naylor boy had run off, hadn’t he?”
Naylor. Her family name was Naylor. Mr. Hatfield had been a fiction in more than one sense of the word.
“You were soon running his business.”
“I had already been running his business, but in the two weeks that I’d been absent, one of the other clerks had instituted a three-for-five scheme. That was my first audit, and I’ve been auditing ever since.”
This recitation left enormous gaps in Eleanora’s history, but it also explained how she’d climbed from destitution into a relatively comfortable profession.
“And Wentworth and Penrose has no idea what a treasure they have in you.” She was so much more than an auditor. She should have been a bank director, if not manager of the whole enterprise.
“My wages are generous, Elsmore. Wentworth and Penrose treats me well, and I manage my money carefully.”
By purchasing portable items of silver, like an itinerant peddler never welcome anywhere for long. The notion made Rex demented with worry for her.
“Do you fear Penrose and Walden will learn of your humble origins, Eleanora?”
“His Grace of Walden knows something of my past,” she said. “He respects my privacy.”
Well, hell. “Does your privacy require that you sleep alone tonight?”
She rustled about until she was straddling Rex’s lap. “My privacy requires no such thing. I will have my bed to myself for the rest of my days, I’d like to spend this last night wit
h you.”
Even as she commenced kissing him and casting his wits to the night wind, he gathered a scintilla of comfort from what she’d admitted: She did not foresee another man taking his place in her bed, and that was fitting, because he’d never love another as he loved her.
* * *
Ellie’s tale about the great good fortune that had befallen her outside the haberdashery all those years ago was the truth. She could disclose that much of her past only because she and her duke would say farewell on the morrow, likely never to see each other again.
That should have been a relief, should have been a burden lifted, to think of parting from a man who saw her too clearly and cared for her too dearly.
Ellie had cried for days when her mother had moved to France. She’d cried for two hundred miles when she had left her grandparents in York. She’d told herself then that attachments came at too high a cost, and had kept her distance since that day from even her own sister.
The prospect of parting from Elsmore multiplied her capacity for regret by ten, but then, he’d increased her capacity for joy a hundredfold.
“You’ll stay with me tonight?” she asked, curling down against his shoulder.
His arms came around her, so welcoming and sheltering. “Of course, if you want me to, Eleanora. That you find me acceptable for a dalliance but not as a suitor is puzzling.” His tone balanced humor and genuine bewilderment. His touch on her back was beguilingly gentle.
My cousin stole from your bank and put your whole family at risk of ruin. A hanging felony, and probably the least impediment to further dealings with Elsmore. My other cousin has worked every rig and scheme known to the criminal mind, and my father taught them everything they know. Instead, she kissed Elsmore with all the regret in her, for the time they could not have together, for the truths she could never share with him.
She kissed him for joy too, though. For parts of herself reclaimed from banishment, for physical pleasures she’d never thought to experience again. She kissed him for being an honorable man whom privilege might have made a lesser creature by far.
“Eleanora, if we don’t remove to the bed now, I will soon be naked in your sitting room.”
She loved seeing him naked. “Talk,” she said, drawing the pin from his cravat. “Idle male boasting, which never did win fair maid.”
He rose with her wrapped around his waist. “Indifference,” he said. “Grand, impenetrable female indifference, which has prompted more male foolishness than drink and arrogance combined. Do you truly want me to share your bed tonight, Eleanora? I will not take offense regardless of your answer.”
Guilt singed the edges of the emotional riot in Ellie’s heart. She was being greedy, demanding another night with him and then abandoning him.
“Elsmore, if I could have the rest of my life with you, as your mistress, your paramour, your wife, your steward—anything—I’d like nothing better. Our stations are too different, and you’d come to regret our association. You must believe me when I say that—”
He braced her back against the door jamb and kissed her. “You believe this drivel you’re spouting. Pray do me the courtesy of not telling me what to believe, for I know my own heart, Eleanora.” He’d spoken gently, but his kiss was ferocious, unlike any of his previous overtures. When he carried Ellie to the bed, his embrace spoke of determination and primal desire, not of courtship or ducal affection.
And that unfettered male need freed Ellie to match him passion for passion. That they should part was necessary—and wrong, so very wrong. That she could love him and know that her regard was returned was right and true and good.
Clothing became a foe to be vanquished. His coat went sailing to the reading chair, her dress was flung over the vanity. Breeches ended up draped over the privacy screen, stays fell to the floor. Before Ellie could untie the garters holding up her stockings, Elsmore had her on the bed, more than six feet of aroused duke pinning her to the mattress.
“Please, Elsmore. Don’t make me—”
Then he was inside her in one unerring, glorious thrust, and Ellie’s body took flight. He laughed, redoubling her pleasure, then went still, nuzzling her neck.
“Elsmore, I will have my revenge for that.” She’d meant to sound authoritative, not as if she’d just won the local hill race.
He wrapped her close. “Do you promise, Eleanora? Will you take your revenge until we are the most sated and spent pair of lovers this side of myth?”
“I will give it my very best effort, you varlet.”
He began to move, slowly, and she did give it her very best effort, but before the cold winter dawn arrived, she also gave in to silent, wrenching tears.
* * *
Low ceilings, roaring fires, and bodies densely packed on settles and benches ensured that the average London tavern was warm even on a winter evening. Jack Naylor found that loitering at the Bull and Baron was still a challenge for a man with a functional nose.
The stink of wet wool, mud, sweat, and worse filled the pub’s air. As long as Jack nursed a pint—and a lady’s pint at that—the innkeeper said nothing, though his wife cast Jack many a chiding glance. She was small, dark-haired, and nondescript, also as quick as a bullwhip with a hard word for an overly flirtatious tavern maid.
Jack would have found friendlier surrounds, but this was one of several pubs catering to the clerks and accountants employed at the nearby banks and counting houses. He sat at the end of a long communal table and listened for word of anybody getting ready to quit his post or any business that might be hiring.
So far, the effort had been fruitless. The Bull and Baron was his last stop, the taverns closer to the City having been a waste of coin and time.
“Mind if I join you?”
The gent was too well dressed to be a clerk. His gray wool greatcoat had three capes, and his walking stick looked to be carved mahogany with a silver handle and a brass—not gold—ferrule. His attire spoke of prosperity and good taste, rather than great wealth.
A manager then, or investor of some sort.
“Please have a seat,” Jack said, opting for public school accents. He was in his accountant’s attire, shabby around the edges but proper enough.
“You’ve been working on that pint for nearly an hour,” the gent said. “Might I buy you another?”
Another pint was good, failing to notice an observant stranger was bad; but then, Jack had been focused on the clerks and working men, not the occasional swell.
“Thank you kindly,” Jack said, extending a hand. “Jason Tolliver, at your service.”
“Mr. Tolliver, good evening. You may call me Mr. Edwards.”
A lie for a lie. A promising start to a conversation. “Evening, Mr. Edwards. Beastly cold out.”
Edwards signaled for a waitress and ordered two pints and a plate of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.
The hour was growing late by the standards of workingmen, which meant Jack and Mr. Edwards had their end of the table to themselves.
“Are you in the banking line, Mr. Tolliver?”
“As it happens, I am an accountant, sir.”
Edwards put a pair of fur-lined black gloves on the table. “Do you perchance work for Dorset and Becker? I am new to London, but have heard good things about them.”
This man was no more new to London than Jack was in line for the throne. The cut of his coat alone testified to Bond Street tailoring, and his gloves hadn’t been stitched by any provincial seamstress.
“Dorset and Becker is a venerable institution, sir, though their clerks prefer the Handy Harper, two streets to the east. The fellows enjoying a pint here are mostly employed by Wentworth and Penrose, while I am not at present affiliated with any specific bank.”
The tavern maid came over with two pints and a plate heaped with toasted sandwiches. Jack’s mouth watered at the scent of the hot ham and cheese, though he focused on draining the last of his lady’s pint before accepting the larger drink.
“This
is too much for one person,” Edwards said. “You must help me with it, lest I commit the cardinal transgression of wasting good food.”
The charm fell flat, but Jack wasn’t in a position to quibble. “Generous of you, Mr. Edwards. Where do you hail from?”
“Lately, I’ve been sojourning in the north. Peebleshire was my most recent billet before traveling south.”
He wasn’t from Peebleshire, unless Peebles had started producing English toffs with Eton diction and Oxford vocabularies.
“Pretty up that way, I hear.” Jack waited until Edwards had chosen a sandwich, then selected the smallest of the lot. “Cold though, I imagine.”
Now came the interesting part of the discussion, when somebody made an offer, and somebody else considered that offer. Jack could casually comment that it was a hard time of year to be out of work, or he might intimate that it was too bad the banks weren’t hiring—for they apparently weren’t. Instead, he focused on appreciating some of the best food to be had anywhere in the realm, good old English pub fare.
“Cold doesn’t begin to describe the Borders this time of year,” Edwards said, tearing off a corner of his sandwich and popping it into his mouth. “As one familiar with the local financial community, Mr. Tolliver, where would you put your trust, if you had to choose a bank? I’m looking for an institution of spotless character, one that puts reputation before any other consideration.”
So great was Jack’s pleasure at good, hot food and a fresh pint that he answered with only half a thought.
“Dorset and Becker goes back for centuries and caters to the nobs. Schilling’s is Quaker-owned, and they tend to be cautious with their coin. Wentworth and Penrose isn’t so high in the instep, but some say that makes them ferociously careful with their customers’ money.”
Ellie, at least, was unfailingly cautious when it came to Wentworth and Penrose accounts, and that doubtless kept the whole place on the proper side of prudent.
“Wentworth and Penrose, you say?” Edwards took out a silk handkerchief bearing a coat of arms monogrammed in gold and red. He patted his lips, his display of breaking bread apparently concluded, and laid the handkerchief next to his gloves.
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