Forever and a Duke

by Burrowes, Grace

  “Ellie has nothing to do with the hiring and firing at her bank.” Various Wentworth and Penrose clerks and tellers had made that plain to Jack in casual conversation.

  “Bankers gossip like laundry maids, to hear her tell it. Can’t hurt to ask her, Jack.”

  Asking Ellie for help would hurt, but would it hurt worse than being a molly boy for nasty old men with a fondness for the birch rod? Would it hurt worse than coming down with the French pox?

  Worse than the shame of dying on the end of a rope when some scheme or rig went sour?

  “This is good shortbread, Pamela. I will miss your shortbread.” Would she miss him? Would anybody miss him?

  She went to the window box and passed him two more squares. “Call on Ellie. She’ll be home at this hour, and if you’re honest with her, she’ll help you.”

  Jack took the shortbread and finished his tea, though it pained him to swill what should have been savored until the cup itself had no more warmth to give. “I’ll stop by again before you leave town, and I want your direction in Scotland, Pamela. Family stays in touch.”

  “Family that’s not in trouble stays in touch. Go see Ellie, and do it now, before you talk yourself into more time wasted in the pubs.”

  She was right. The hour wasn’t that late, and two pieces of shortbread wouldn’t last Jack another day. He donned his coat, kissed Pamela’s cheek, and made his way back to the frigid darkness of the street.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nothing added up for Ellie as it should, nothing remained in its assigned column or on the proper row. She stopped with Elsmore at the foot of the bed, though the bedroom was colder than the parlor.

  “Eleanora, you will regret this,” Elsmore said, a hand on each of her shoulders. “A passionate interlude solves nothing.”

  How that note of patient reason in his voice grated. “I am not trying to solve anything. I am trying to for once have what I want, even if only for a short time.”

  “We already did that,” he said, wrapping her in his arms. “The experience was lovely and heartbreaking. In hindsight, the selfishness was not well done of me. I should have courted you properly and at length. Why don’t you trust me?”

  Heartbreaking? He called the greatest intimacy she’d ever known heartbreaking? “I have confessed to you my grandfather’s scandal and my cousin’s crimes. How can you say I don’t trust you?”

  He rubbed her back in slow circles, and more than kisses or passion, that sweet, intimate touch hurt her heart. I can never have this again. I can never know his embrace again.

  “You would rather subject yourself to my company in that bed than explain to me the real battle we face. I can’t slay a dragon I can’t see, Eleanora, but neither can I make love with a woman who will run from me in the morning. Old scandal, your ne’er-do-well cousin, my own problems at the bank can all be dealt with. You are keeping something from me.”

  Ellie could feel the determination in him, the bone-deep certainty and steadfastness. He was not to be swayed, manipulated, inveigled, or cajoled past this point.

  She rested her forehead against his chest. “You pick a fine time to turn up ducal.”

  “If I care for you, and I very much do, then I cannot bend to temptation when an enemy threatens our future.”

  Where was the man who’d ignored his own accounts for years? The man who sat through evening after evening of society gossip, the man who waltzed on command simply to placate his family?

  “It’s Friday,” Ellie said. “You should be at the theater.”

  “Not unless you allow me to escort you.”

  She slipped from his embrace. “I cannot show my face in public like that. Some dowager viscountess will whisper that I remind her of somebody—I look very much like my grandmother, and she was one of Grandpapa’s favorite models. Because I am on your arm, the gossips won’t rest until my past has been exhumed. You have an embezzler to catch. Perhaps we ought to concentrate on that?”

  She stalked from the bedroom, angry to have been rejected, though a small serving of rejection from Elsmore reminded her of the much worse rejections he and his family would face if she became his duchess.

  “I suspect I have more than one embezzler to catch,” Elsmore said, following her back into the sitting room. “Were I to hire a competent auditor to examine my bank, she’d likely find all manner of rounding errors, transcriptions, incompetence, inflated invoices, and just enough accurate bookkeeping to make the lot of it harder to decipher.”

  Elsmore was angry. Not merely annoyed, irritated, or ducally impatient, but quietly furious.

  “Why do you say that? A smart embezzler cloaks himself in the respectability of the institution from which he’s stealing. He wants as much probity and rectitude around him as he can summon.”

  “Or she does.” Elsmore considered Ellie, his gaze unreadable. “Is that why you’re determined to elope, Eleanora? You’ve been made to take responsibility for somebody else’s wrongdoing and you fear the noose?”

  She feared the noose. She absolutely feared the noose. “And if that were the case? If I myself had committed crimes?”

  He tore off a bite of her buttered bread and offered her the rest of the slice. “You are incapable of breaking the law, excepting possibly to rescue your damned almighty employer. You’d likely do the same for his duchess, maybe for your dodgy family members or your cat. If that’s the case, Eleanora—you were backed into a corner and exigencies arose—then we will sort them out.”

  Ellie took the bread and stuffed it into her mouth, because she did not know what to say. He’d face even criminal wrongdoing for her?

  The man was flat barmy. “You don’t know how impossible it is to do as you suggest, Your Grace.”

  “I can’t know. You won’t tell me what the difficulty is. I have had warrants quashed before, Eleanora—though granted, they were old warrants resulting from boyhood pranks gone wrong. Shall I provide you the details?”

  “You shall take your leave of me,” Ellie said.

  The cat had apparently finished her meal for she stropped herself against Elsmore’s boots. He picked her up, and cat and duke turned upon Ellie gazes that both looked pitying.

  “I won’t take you to bed, so you turn me out into the street,” Elsmore said, petting the cat. “What of my failing bank, Eleanora? Can you resist that lure?”

  No, she could not. “You likely have not a failing bank, but an ailing bank. Hire your own auditor—quietly, discreetly—and have him go department by department. As the auditor makes his way from innocuous peripheral measures to those closer to the seat of the problem, whoever is guilty of wrongdoing will slip away, probably with his pockets full. You will avoid scandal and clean house, though it will take weeks if done carefully.”

  “That’s how you began at Wentworth and Penrose?”

  “I liked you better when you were lazy and charming.”

  “I was never lazy,” Elsmore said, setting the cat down in the reading chair. “I was simply misguided.” He crossed the room to don his coat. “I wish you would help me, Eleanora, but I mean to put my bank on solid footing with or without your aid. I also wish you’d allow me to help you. Your grandfather sank the whole family in scandal, and your cousins threaten your livelihood. If you have a brother or a father, you’d likely have to disown them on general principles, but I am not those men. I am the man asking for your hand in marriage.”

  Ellie did not have a brother and she no longer had a father. “You are the man whose proposal I have refused. One day you’ll—”

  He put a finger to her lips. “I will not thank you. Don’t turn up arrogant on me now, Eleanora. You insisted I look where I didn’t want to look, and now you keep me in the dark. I will never thank you for that. I appreciate the warning regarding my bookkeeping, but I was already stumbling to the same conclusion. The books at the bank are far from pristine.”

  He was leaving, and if Ellie were smart, she’d wish him farewell and be on tomorrow’s pa
cket for Calais.

  “You think there’s more than embezzlement going on at the bank?”

  Elsmore left his coat unbuttoned and whipped his scarf over his shoulder. “I suspect there’s every sort of graft and mayhem neatly obscured by the sort of accuracy to which you have devoted yourself. The issue isn’t whether somebody is embezzling, it’s how many of my relations are either stealing from the bank or ignoring those who do.”

  And he apparently had no idea who, no idea which smiles were false, which were genuine—if any.

  “You will be dragged down with them,” Ellie said. “If the problem is that extensive, you will be accused of turning a blind eye to it, profiting from it. You cannot charge into the middle of this and expect to emerge unscathed.”

  He kissed her cheek. “A token, as I ride into battle. Wish me luck, Eleanora. I’ll need it.”

  She wanted him to stay, to explain to her every shred of evidence he’d collected from his bank ledgers, and she wanted him to go to the theater, there to be handsome and charming for the rest of his evening, and the rest of his life.

  “Do you want to see your family members hanged?” she asked, as Elsmore strode for the door. “They will be. Murderers get transportation, but English judges take a very dim view of those who mishandle money.”

  She’d said too much, but at least she had his attention.

  “People put their life savings into my bank, Eleanora. They entrust their entire security to me. I turn a blind eye to this pilfering and I become as reprehensible as the embezzlers and cheats.”

  “Elsmore—Wrexham—what about the duty you owe your family? When you are tried in the Lords for fraud and misfeasance, what about your sisters and widowed cousins? What about the boys at university who will no longer have your consequence to open doors for them?”

  His scowl suggested he hadn’t followed the path of righteousness to its logical conclusion, straight into a briar patch of conflicting loyalties.

  “I must go,” Elsmore said. “The sooner I identify the swindlers, the sooner they can be dealt with. Goodnight, Eleanora. Safe journey.”

  Two words, and they hurt, though they weren’t meant to. “Good luck, Your Grace. Be careful.”

  He pulled on his gloves and again, the cat stropped herself against his boots, the traitor.

  Elsmore picked Voltaire up and passed her to Eleanora. He turned to go, and a knock sounded on the door.

  “Are you expecting company?” he asked.

  “At this hour? Of course not.” Ellie brushed past him and moved the little pear-shaped metal flap to peer into the corridor.

  Jack stood on the other side of the door, staring straight at the spy-hole. He was bare-headed, meaning he’d pawned his hat, and he was alone. He was also family, and he wouldn’t be here if he had anywhere else to go.

  Ellie opened the door. “Jack, this is unexpected.” She purposely stood in the doorway lest Jack see that she had company.

  “Pammie and Clyde don’t want me going north with them. My landlord cut me loose a week ago. I have two pieces of shortbread to my name, and nobody is hiring a bookkeeper, accountant, clerk, or porter answering to my description. I’m desperate, Ellie, and unless you are willing to help me, my options are to starve or go back to picking pockets.”

  Oh, Jack. Why now? Why offer that confession when Elsmore could hear every word?

  The door opened wide enough to reveal Elsmore at Ellie’s side. “You understand bookkeeping?” the duke asked.

  “I do.”

  “Eleanora?”

  “Your Grace, may I introduce to you my cousin Jackson Naylor, part-time scapegrace. Jack, Wrexham, His Grace of Elsmore, full-time nuisance. Jack has an excellent eye for numbers, but he’s also a competent sneak thief, housebreaker, confidence trickster, and a fair hand cheating at cards. Oh, and he’s as talented an artist as Grandfather ever was. Elsmore is as smart as he is well mannered, Jack, so don’t think to run a rig on him.”

  Jack stepped into the parlor. “You’d kill me if I tried to run a rig on him.”

  I won’t be here to kill you. I’ll be in France. Wodin stood, gaze alert and fixed on Jack. “I’d kill you,” Ellie said, “and feed the pieces to my four-legged friends.”

  “What if he ran a rig for me?” Elsmore asked. “Or did a little discreet reconnoitering on my behalf?”

  “No.” Ellie nearly shouted, which had all the occupants in the room—dog, cat, and both men—regarding her quizzically. “You will not involve my cousin in arguably illegal schemes to extricate your family from impending ruin. I won’t have it.”

  “What does it pay?” Jack asked.

  “Jack, no,” Ellie said, lowering her voice by dint of sheer will. “You could swing for it. Breaking and entering, attempted theft, trespass. You know what can happen. Transportation would be the most you could hope for, and claiming you were on some errand for a duke would not save you.”

  Jack was gaunt. His clothing hadn’t been pressed in ages. He didn’t stink yet, but Ellie knew intimately the progression from respectability to desperation, and Jack was one step away from wild schemes and criminal misconduct.

  “I can swing for a little nosing about on His Grace’s behalf,” Jack said, “or I can be found frozen to death in some church doorway, my clothing stolen before I breathed my last. Forgive me, Ellie, if I at least hear what your duke has to say.”

  He sauntered across the room and took the chair behind the desk, while Elsmore closed the door.

  * * *

  “Why aren’t you at the theater?” Eddie asked, for James wasn’t dressed to attend the theater, and James did very much like to be seen on Drury Lane. He usually flirted the evening away with his mistress, whose box was opposite Elsmore’s. Now he stood in the doorway to Eddie’s office, a ledger tucked against his hip.

  “Why are you still here?” James settled into the chair across from Eddie’s desk and set the ledger on a corner of the blotter. “You are hardly what I’d call a dedicated bank employee, my boy, and the hour grows late.”

  That was the point—for the hour to be so late that nobody else was on the bank premises. An old watchman snored his nights away in a chair by the hearth in the lobby, periodically rousing himself to trim a few wicks or take a piss in the alley. Other than that, the bank should be deserted this late on a Friday evening.

  “I am better able to concentrate when the place is quiet,” Eddie replied. “I have considered the possibility you’ve raised that Ballentyre will retire or be rendered too infirm by gout to do his job. When that happens, a fresh set of eyes might be looking over our books, James, and my ledgers need some attention.”

  A lot of attention. Eddie had nearly finished tidying up the past year, but that left four previous years in disarray.

  “I thought you or I would get Ballentyre’s post,” James said, crossing an ankle over one knee. “You’re welcome to it, by the way. I’m content with my lot for now.” He spoke as if the bank belonged to him, and any post he pleased to have could be his.

  “I am not content. My books are in order, more or less, but your haphazard review of them has left every inaccuracy and error in plain view. Howell says yours are in worse condition yet.”

  James sat up. “When the hell did Howell go poking his nose into my ledgers?”

  “When you were indisposed a few Saturdays ago. I gathered up your account books, but Howell apparently got his mitts on the one dealing with the Oxford allowances. I don’t know as he suspects anything more than sloppiness, but—”

  “You are only telling me this now? Plodding, dull, dear Howell has had a thorough look at one of my accountings, and you didn’t think to mention this to me?”

  “If he hasn’t said anything to you, then he likely corrected your errors and went on to the next set of figures. Not like Ballentyre’s clerks are models of accuracy and diligence these days.” Though Eddie’s books were increasingly in order, and that felt oddly satisfying.

  James rose and dumpe
d half a bucket of coal onto the hearth, an extravagance, for Eddie did not intend to tarry much longer.

  “Our lady cousins are likely to marry this spring,” James said, stirring the coals to stoke the flames. “My days as keeper of the family exchequer are coming to an end.”

  “I’d hardly say that. The aunties, the widows, the college boys, the pensioners…there’s much more than their ladyships’ pin money to oversee.”

  James straightened, the poker in his hand. For a moment, illuminated by the rising flames, with the length of wrought iron in his grip, he bore little resemblance to a duke’s heir preparing for an evening of cards with his friends.

  “That’s not the point, Eddie. The point is, you have allowed Howell the Hopeless to sniff at my books. The cousins are soon to be married. Elsmore will likely start hunting a bride after that, and with the joys of family life could well come an increased interest in the bank. I do believe it’s time I saw more of the Continent.”

  “You just returned from Scotland.”

  “If you are smart, which you believe yourself to be, you might consider a repairing lease in the north yourself.”

  What nonsense was this? “I thought you were about to double your money with some scheme directed at our competitors? The Butterfield trick played on the unsuspecting?”

  James lounged against the mantel. “That was before you told me Howell has had a go at my books, before dear cousin Samantha told me she has every confidence of following Rachel to the altar. The situation here is changing, and a prudent man doesn’t wait for change to overtake him.”

  Eddie closed his account book and locked it into a desk drawer. “Elsmore was on the premises for most of the afternoon. Planted the ducal backside in his office and didn’t stir except to have a clerk bring him more ledgers. Very odd business.”

  Very odd, unnerving business, which had inspired Eddie into occupying the seat behind his desk well past dark.