Forever and a Duke

by Burrowes, Grace

  He spoke so calmly, the import of his words took a moment to penetrate Ellie’s misery—and her pleasure at holding his hand.

  “I fear that very possibility. All of the family accounts ultimately run through the bank. If you ask your aunties, they will probably tell you they don’t total those ledgers—whoever you’ve assigned to the accounts at the bank does the actual bookkeeping for them after they make the entries. The same will pertain with your widowed cousin and with your sisters’ pin money. The common factor is not that your womenfolk are cheating you. It’s that their accounting is actually done at the bank.”

  Elsmore came down beside her, his hand still in hers. “How did you come to this conclusion?”

  “I should have spotted it straight off. Who keeps the actual books is not a detail. I was distracted with my money maps, my schemes, my sums.” With you. She’d missed one of the first aspects of the accountability that made auditing a useful undertaking. She’d tracked who bought the market vegetables, who had pin money, where the duchess’s dresses were made, all while she’d neglected to note who tallied the ledger entries.

  “You are not distracted now. Something caught your eye.”

  “The handwriting. Numbers are as distinctive to me as literary penmanship when numbers are all I see, and yet…I didn’t see it. All of the entries for the totals in the various accounts—for your sisters, your aunts, your cousins at university, the widows—are made in the same hand. I’ve stared at those ledgers for weeks, and not seen what was in front of my face.”

  “You were too busy plotting your escape to France, and over a few old paintings nobody cares two figs about.”

  Ellie extricated her hand from Elsmore’s, because apparently she needed to instruct a duke on the realities of scandal for the lower orders.

  “What fate do you suppose a disgraced painter faces, Your Grace?” What fate do you suppose awaits that painter’s family? Ellie did not want to embark on this recitation, but neither could she stand the thought that Elsmore would hear the details elsewhere.

  “A disgraced painter likely has to travel on the Continent for a time, take lesser work, maybe change his name and produce landscapes or casual art.”

  The cat stirred, getting up to stretch with the thorough leisure at which cats excelled. The fire gave out good heat, and the moment would have been cozy except that Ellie’s heart was breaking all over again.

  “That scenario would have been a romp, compared to what Grandfather endured. Bear in mind that the Corsican made travel on the Continent perilous, especially for an Englishman with a family. The earl blackened Jacob Naylor’s name, making it obvious that no scoundrel ever deserved hanging more than Naylor had, and only exceptional honor—and concern for Naylor’s children—stayed the earl’s hand. He told all and sundry that as a well-educated gentleman, he should have known the paintings Naylor found for him were forgeries, and his lordship’s humility—his admission of fault—made that Banbury tale convincing.”

  “Did you ever meet this earl?”

  “I saw him, but a painter’s young granddaughter is not introduced to a peer.”

  “How did your family survive?”

  “You know the answer to that: We survived any way we could. Grandfather did penny sketches in the pubs. His sons and daughters did anything to bring in a little coin. One aunt became a courtesan of some renown, and that wasn’t the worst heartbreak my grandparents had to endure.”

  “Do you believe I would not marry you just because your aunt became a courtesan before I was even sent off to public school?”

  The cat leapt into Ellie’s lap and began circling. “You would not marry a courtesan’s niece and a disgraced painter’s granddaughter. You cannot. You have too much regard for your sisters, for your family, and your bank. Had I only a single wayward aunt, that would be one thing, but a wayward aunt, a forger for a grandfather…I am the last person you can marry.”

  To say nothing of Mr. Butterfield, and, and, and…

  The cat settled in just as a knock on the door had the dog looking up.

  “Food,” Elsmore said, going to the door. “I am famished. I worked through lunch and did not do justice to my supper. Half the bank came by to gawk at me this afternoon, my sleeves rolled up, ledgers all around me. I don’t know whether they were amused or horrified to see a duke wielding an abacus.”

  Ellie was enchanted with the image his words conjured. She’d seen both the Duke of Walden and Mr. Joshua Penrose immersed in such tasks often, and to her, their attention to detail, their conscientious accounting, was the epitome of masculine appeal.

  The dog rose, perhaps inspired by the scent of food.

  “I told Wentworth to procure a bone for your wolf,” Elsmore said. “Scraps of fish for the tiger. Shall we eat in the other room?”

  Not the bedroom, please merciful angels, not the bedroom. “At the desk,” Ellie said, “and then you must be going.”

  “So you can move to France, covered in the shame of a scandal that had nothing to do with you and was forgotten before you were born?”

  “Not before I was born. I was ten years old when the earl ruined us, and I recall our fall from grace well. One day I was a happy girl living on a pleasant property at the edge of town. The next, everything was being sold, except my favorite doll. I do not relish the thought of a similar fate befalling the Dorset family.”

  The duke set a crock of soup on the blotter and removed the lid, sending savory steam wafting to Ellie’s nose. Pepper pot, her favorite.

  “I’ll fetch the butter,” she said, for Ned Wentworth had purchased bread and cheese to go with the soup.

  Also a bottle of wine.

  * * *

  If the public learned that a bank employee—doubtless one of Rex’s own cousins—was embezzling from the Dorset family, the bank would be ruined. Rex’s womenfolk would be dragged into that affray and his own name blackened, but all he could think about, all he could see, was that Eleanora was miserable.

  She hadn’t been sleeping well, clearly, and she probably wasn’t eating regularly. Lord Stephen might be able to confirm that last suspicion, but Rex wasn’t about to give his lordship another opportunity to spread innuendo in Eleanora’s direction.

  She’s still afraid of the scandal…

  “Why France?” Rex asked, as he ladled servings of soup into two bowls. “Why not Scotland, Ireland, Italy? Why France?”

  “I’ve always wanted to go,” Eleanora replied, helping herself to one of the bowls. “The Duchess of Walden has been teaching me a little parlor French. I’m told one can live very economically there.”

  Rex took the chair opposite the desk and sampled his soup. Not quite as hot as he liked it, but tolerable.

  “One can hide in France,” he said. “Are you hiding from me, Eleanora?” Or was she hiding from the law, another victim of some scoundrel with more consequence than conscience? The question destroyed his appetite.

  “Your sisters will soon be settled, Your Grace. They will doubtless turn their attention to seeing you settled then, and your account books—all of them—will be subjected to a most thorough examination. Perhaps you should focus your energies on the challenge of enduring that ordeal.”

  In theory, she raised a daunting prospect: How would Rex find a duchess if his bank was sunk in ruin and his family no longer received? Polite society could be that vindictive, and his ducal rank would only make the retribution of the club gossips and hostesses more gleeful.

  But then, he had found his duchess. She was sitting across from him, nibbling buttered bread, looking pre-occupied and disgruntled.

  “I can weather old scandal, Eleanora. Hell, I’m about to weather new scandal, if I can’t figure out who among my cousins, uncles, family friends, and my mother’s godsons has stolen from the family accounts.”

  She put down her bread. “That only makes the whole business worse. You are correct that old scandal is bad enough—very bad—but add to that Mr. Butterfield, add to that
an embezzler, add to that a duchess of dubious antecedents…even you, Elsmore, can’t charm your way past that much wrongdoing.”

  He’d forgotten about Butterfield. “What aren’t you telling me, Eleanora?”

  She resumed eating, but Rex doubted she was tasting her meal any more than he was tasting his.

  “What is the point in telling you anything, Elsmore? You go on your way, doing as you please, ducal consequence ensuring that what you please is what everybody pleases. My life has been the opposite. What I wanted, what I longed for, was held away from me by every agent of Providence I encountered.”

  She got up to pace, the dog pausing in his devotions to the ham bone, the cat hovering over her fish in the corner.

  “I was born the wrong gender for my profession,” Eleanora went on. “I was born to the wrong family for a girl who desired above all things to be respectable. I was sent to London in the wrong company at the wrong age for the wrong reasons.” She fetched up against the hearth, her back to Rex as she stared into the flames. “I fell in love with the wrong man at the wrong time.”

  The look she sent him over her shoulder—bewildered, impatient—confirmed that Rex was that man.

  How could such a joyous revelation result in such misery?

  “I fell in love with the right woman,” Rex said, rising. “I can finally see the right way to go on with my family. I am at last in possession of the means and motivation to run my bank properly. I need only hurl a few thunderbolts, banish a knave or two, and earn your trust and I can share my life with the right duchess—the only duchess—for me. If she will have me.”

  “And you think you can hurl those thunderbolts and banish those knaves with nobody the wiser?” Eleanora asked as Rex stalked across the room. She watched his approach, her mouth pressed into a bitter line.

  “I will for damned sure try, Eleanora. My happiness has lately come to matter to me, as has yours.”

  They were within kissing distance, close enough that Rex caught a whiff of roses. Close enough that desire was trying to crowd out rational thought and largely succeeding.

  Eleanora took a taste of him, her kiss flavored with butter.

  Rational thought galloped off the field. “Do that again. Please.”

  “That was my farewell kiss,” she said, patting his chest once. “Mr. Butterfield’s impersonator was my cousin. The scheme he ran was one my family has perfected through long practice. My own cousin stole from your bank, Elsmore, and if that doesn’t render me ineligible to be your duchess, somebody should appoint a guardian to see to your affairs.”

  The words were simple enough: Mr. Butterfield…my cousin. Rex grasped their import with the part of his mind that could plan crop rotations for his Surrey property while he endured a minuet in a Mayfair ballroom.

  “Did you know your cousin was planning to steal from my bank?”

  Eleanora backed up a step, her bum hitting the edge of the reading chair. “I should have known, but I’ve tried to distance myself from that branch of the family. The Old Man is a long game, taking weeks or months to do well. Mick had first to earn Mr. Butterfield’s confidence and learn his accounting habits. Then he had to wait for inclement weather to render the ruse convincing. We are crooks, Your Grace, but we have learned to be competent crooks.”

  “You did not know of this plan?”

  “I did not, not specifically.”

  “Where is Mick now?” Rex was asking questions because he ought to, because his obligations to his bank required it of him.

  “Out of the country, possibly in Scotland, now that I think on it. I was told the Low Countries, but that was likely to throw me off the scent.”

  Rex advanced until he and Eleanora were toe to toe. “Who else knows of your connection to Butterfield?”

  “Some of my family members, but as I said, I keep my distance from them and they keep their distance from me. They would never approach Wentworth and Penrose, for example, because they know I work there.”

  “I don’t care that”—Rex snapped his fingers—“for your cousin’s schemes, Eleanora. He’s banished himself, and very few at the bank even know of the problem. What is the real reason you are fleeing to France?”

  She had a reason, Rex was as certain of that as he was that two plus two equaled four.

  “Take me to bed,” Eleanora said. “Time enough to discuss looming scandal later, but right now, all I know is that I want you to take me to bed.”

  She was distracting him, luring him away from answers she did not want to give, answers that were somehow worse than a grandfather sunk in ruin and a cousin who’d stolen from Rex’s bank in broad daylight.

  “You will tell me, Eleanora. If you truly wish to leave the country, I won’t stop you, but at least do me the courtesy of explaining why being my duchess is such an awful prospect.”

  “The prospect is wonderful,” she said, “but I would make an awful duchess.” She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom.

  * * *

  “Who knew how much there was to move?” Pammie said, looking around her little parlor.

  She’d taken down Jack’s sketches from the walls, packed up her crockery, and untied the bundles of dried herbs that had hung from the rafters.

  To Jack’s eye, the parlor had gone from humble to bleak. “Why not wait until spring?” he asked, taking the larger of the two chairs before the hearth. “Why go north now, when it’s too bloody cold and dark even here in London?” Jack would have put that question to Clyde, but Pammie’s husband was apparently avoiding him.

  “Clyde’s cousin has some work,” Pammie said, extracting two cups from a wooden crate and swinging the kettle over the coals on the hearth. “Loading ships or unloading them, probably both. It’s good work for a man like my Clyde. The harder the work, the better he likes it.”

  Clyde did prefer manual labor, which made no sense to Jack at all. “Where is Clyde?”

  “Doubtless having a pint or two.” Pammie fished a tea strainer out of another box. “He unpacks a box as fast as I pack it, and then the children get involved. We’ll arrive in Scotland with neither quilt nor thimble to our names.”

  The children were asleep in the other room, darkness having fallen some hours ago. Jack would miss the little beggars, which was proof he’d lost his wits.

  “You’ll stop in York?”

  “I’d like to bide there for Christmas,” Pammie said, as the kettle began to whistle. “Clyde wants us in Scotland for the New Year, so we’ll have to get right back on the packet come Boxing Day.” She used the edge of her shawl as a potholder and took the kettle from the coals to pour boiling water into the two cups. She set the strainer over the larger mug. “Grandmother always had the best plum pudding.”

  To mention that plum pudding to a man who hadn’t eaten for two days was cruel. “Don’t suppose you have some shortbread to go with this tea?”

  The tea was again real China black, the scent hitting Jack like the music of a skilled violinist gusting up a cold, dark alley—beautiful and bittersweet.

  Pammie went to the window box and produced a pitcher of milk. “What will you do with yourself, Jack?”

  “I could go north with you.”

  She set a single square of shortbread before him. “Clyde said you’d best wait until we’re settled. We’ll be staying with his cousins at first. When we have our own place, you can visit.”

  Visit, not join them. Jack took the strainer from his tea and set it in Pammie’s cup. “I might look Mick up.”

  “You haven’t heard from him, have you?”

  Jack shook his head. “Better if we don’t, for a time. You aren’t having any shortbread?”

  Pammie took the other seat, settling into her chair and wrapping her shawl about her. “I had some earlier.”

  “I could pop up to York with you, look in on the elders.”

  “They’d tell you to bide here, so Ellie’s not all alone.”

  Not what she’d said the last time they�
��d conversed. Jack took a sip of tea, the heat alone a benediction. “Ellie wants no parts of me.”

  “She wants no parts of your schemes, no parts of you trying to get under her skirts.”

  Jack leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His feet were thawing for a change, he had a hot cup of tea, he was out of the elements. Sleep dragged at him, as did a weariness of the heart. He’d seen the gin-drunks snoring their last in the city streets. At the end, there was no shivering, no cold, nothing but peace.

  “I am not trying to get under her damned skirts. I am trying to make her smile. Those bloody nobs she works for have starched all the joy from her. She used to laugh with us, Pammie. Now, she acts as if we’re not fit to touch her hem.”

  “That is not fair, Jackson Naylor, and you know it. She calls on me and the brats regularly, but she can’t afford to risk her job for scapegrace ne’er-do-wells like you and Mick.”

  Old ground, which they’d plowed before. “I have looked for work with every agency and service in London. I have worn my bum numb in the taverns by the City, listening for word of an opening, a new venture, anybody who would take on a man who can keep honest books. Nobody wants that kind of help, not from me, not at any price.”

  Jack had returned to the Bull and Baron in hopes of sharing another pint with Mr. Edwards, but to no avail. The publican reported that Edwards had been in again twice, but had left in the company of Beveridge Larson, a fellow of less than sterling reputation.

  “You sit about in pubs because you like to swill ale,” Pammie said. “If you were truly interested in finding honest work, you’d do the obvious.”

  Jack had to eat the shortbread. He’d asked for it, and to slip it into his pocket would be pathetic. He bit the sweet in half and chewed slowly, the buttery texture as much a pleasure as the sweetness.

  “What’s the obvious?” Jack could find work in the brothels—he wasn’t bad-looking—but it wasn’t in him to put up with what a molly boy did to earn his keep.

  “Ask Ellie for help,” Pammie said, tapping the tea strainer against the lip of her cup. She let the strainer drip for a few moments, then set it aside on the hearthstones. The leaves would doubtless be used again, probably for the children.