Chapter Eighteen

L ady Georgiana Stewart had just made an unimaginably arrogant statement about her own mathematical abilities. Yet the scholarly gentleman sitting before her did not shy away, grimacing with distaste. He smiled.

It was not only the turn of his lips, but the way his sky-at-dusk-blue eyes suddenly appeared to be lit from behind, crinkling at the corners—it took her breath away.

He said, “I won’t get in your way. Just tell me what you’ll need.”

“Oh.” At best, she’d expected him to hand her a stack of ledgers and fire off a plodding set of instructions, then breathe down her neck. Because what else could she have expected him to do? But this man, this unbearably marvelous, sensible man, ceded control over a problem. With a smile. To a woman.

It came to her all at once. A revelation: This is the one .

Her mind began reeling back to every interaction, every moment they had shared since he’d frightened her awake and they contrived to lie to their loved ones. She had known then. And later, when he took it upon himself to put that horse out of its misery, and when he had watched her do sums in her head and been impressed rather than appalled. Rather than intimidated.

Well, no. It was easy to look back and believe she had known all along, but she knew she hadn’t. And she couldn’t be in love with him. She had known him for less than a week. But she could love him, given time.

At once came the horrified realization that she would love him, given time.

She could not marry Lord Taverston.

Georgiana stepped away from the bay window, praying her face had not betrayed every thought in her head, every emotion coursing through her body.

Think, Georgiana. Think.

He had asked her what she needed to proceed. She needed two things: a course to follow and a course to appear to be following. An alibi.

She pulled a Radcliffe novel from the shelf, opened it, and stared blankly while she gathered herself, then returned to the desk.

“I will sit here.” She pointed to his chair, and he quickly stood. “I’ll sit in the light, with the curtain mostly closed, and pretend I’m reading if anyone approaches.”

“Have you read it?”

“Of course not.”

“ The Italian is Olivia’s favorite. I’ll jot down a quick summary. Just in case.”

“You’ve read it?”

“As I said, it’s Olivia’s favorite. Regrettably, she needed someone to gush to about it.”

Georgiana sighed, feeling for him. “Why are you assigned all the worst jobs?”

He looked amused, so clearly he didn’t realize she was referring to shooting the horse. The two were not exactly comparable.

“When we are finished,” she said, trying to sound casual, “will you let me borrow your Woodhouse?”

“Yes.” He shifted his gaze aside. “Or if you’d like, I’ll read it with you.”

He was offering to tutor her. Not in a condescending way. Merely carefully. It would mean continuing to meet in secret.

She slid into his chair. “Have you a clean sheet of paper?”

He produced one. Then he pushed the inkwell closer and handed her an odd metal-pointed pen.

“I’ve never used one of these.”

“They’re very clever. A schoolfellow gave it to me. He’s working on a patent.”

“Hmm.” She set it down. “I think we would be very fortunate to discover any patterns if we just pluck out ledgers at random. I’d like to approach this somewhat differently. I have some questions, but they may seem intrusive.”

“Ha! Well, I think we’ve moved past that. I have faith in your discretion.”

As well he might, given he knew the worst about her.

“Bradwell has been the family’s steward for forty-seven years? Was this all under the Earl?”

“No, my grandfather brought him on.”

“How long did he serve your grandfather?”

He squinted. “Well, that would be arithmetic, wouldn’t it?” He rumpled his already-mussed hair. She felt a tightening in her chest, along with an absurd desire to fix his hair with her fingers. “Father is sixty-two. He rose to Earl at age thirty.”

“So,” she cleared her throat and focused. “I expect we will not need to look at the first fifteen years. But I’ll check one of the early volumes just to be sure. My reasoning is that I want to use major family events as touchpoints. If these…discrepancies started at some distinct time, for some distinct purpose, it seems likely we can identify the trigger by correlation.”

“Give me an example,” Reginald said.

She frowned with concentration. “Don’t take offense.”

“I won’t. It’s a hypothetical.”

Ah, she adored him. How he spoke. How logically his mind worked. How he was not reluctant to admit to having questions.

She decided not to start with the obvious: embezzlement. Instead, she said, “Let us say the Earl wants a particular bill passed, very badly, and stoops to bribery.”

He smirked. “Ha! Good Lord, you’re offensive.”

She refused to be distracted by his teasing. “If we were to check the books around the times of debates of bills you know he supported, we might find a time where money unexpectedly and unexplainably starts to flow out.”

“Bradwell would have had to be in league with the Earl.”

“That will be true no matter what we find. Unless Bradwell was acting on his own.”

He scowled at her and was about to protest again, but she kept talking.

“In which case, I expect that instead of finding approximately one hundred and twenty pounds disappearing every year that a particular type of bill comes up, we will find there will be quite small, randomly occurring discrepancies to start, gradually becoming larger and more regular as he grows more confident that he won’t be caught.”

He sulked. “Wouldn’t it be quicker to start from the beginning and look for your gradually increasing thievery?”

“Yes, but I am giving your man the benefit of the doubt.”

The crease of annoyance disappeared from his brow. “All right. But obviously, we are not looking for Parliamentary bribes. What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t as though I’ve done this before.” She dipped the pen in the well and stared down at the empty page. “But I want to try to narrow down the number of books we must examine. If something obvious jumps out, that would be wonderful. If not, once we know the timeframe during which all of this is occurring, we can narrow our focus to try to determine what it is.”

He moved out of her peripheral vision, and she heard him dragging the second little chair closer. Her breath quickened in an odd way. She held up her hand, motioning him to stop.

“I have just a few questions. Then I think you had better go get some sleep.” She added quietly, “And change your clothes.”

His eyes grew wide, and he grasped the top of his shirt. “I beg your pardon. You should have said—I should have—oh, my God! You must think—”

“I think you need some sleep.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll go. Immediately.” He stood immobile, his face as red as a brick.

“Reginald?”

“What?”

“Before you go, tell me when your parents married, how old you all were when you went off to school, and when Crispin went into the army. That should be enough to get me started.”

*

Reginald was certain he would never be able to sleep. He was mortified. He might never sleep again. How could he have—how could she have allowed him to— God ! Talking about embezzlement and bribery while standing around half-dressed.

He was disgusting.

He didn’t see how he would get through the next few weeks without Jasper calling him out. Damn it. For honor’s sake, he would have to allow Jasper the first shot. He snorted. And probably the second shot also. Jasper couldn’t hit a cow at ten paces.

He took off his jacket and boots and sat down on his bed. Shivering, though he was not cold, he pulled a blanket around his shoulders and then lay back to stare at the ceiling.

He could, he was fairly certain, manage to slog through account books without making an arse of himself. Not even he was green enough to imagine this was the sort of activity that would turn a woman’s head. Or a man’s—even if men’s heads were notoriously easy to turn. He could surely work in close quarters with Georgiana for a week or two without putting a knife in Jasper’s back. Huh . As if he could even succeed if he tried. How hubristic to think he—a third son!—could compete with an earl for a duke’s daughter. How ludicrous to imagine competing with Jasper at all.

But. After the next few weeks, after sorting this, after Father…passed, after Jasper ascended to the title and wed, what was he going to do?

He closed his eyes and tried not to picture Jasper and Georgiana together. Setting up their nursery. Throwing Christmas balls at Chaumbers for the good folks in Iversley.

Framingham was not far enough. Nor Bath. Not even Cambridge, not even with twelve untranslated Greek manuscripts awaiting him, nothing, without her, would be enough.

*

The bed shook, and Reginald woke to see that Crispin had flopped down on its edge.

“Are you awake?” Crispin asked.

“I am now.” He sat up and swung his feet, like blocks of lead, to the floor. “What time is it?

“Nearly teatime. What the devil happened to you? Reg! Those are last night’s pantaloons! Were you out on a drunk?”

“Yes, obviously. Because that’s what I do.”

“Did you ride over to the Boar’s Head in Grosling to give Maggie a bang? I know it isn’t your usual practice, but after Annie threw you over—”

If only Jasper, for once, could keep his mouth shut. Crispin was probably wondering what was wrong with Reg that he hadn’t sought out a lightskirt for some convenient solace. Crispin did not see the point in mistresses, preferring, so he said, variety, and the method “pay-as-you-go.”

He muttered, “Maggie is yours.”

With a wicked smirk, Crispin said, “Maggie is everyone’s. That’s rather the point.”

“Everyone’s except mine. And Jasper’s.”

“Oh, right.” He looked at Reginald sideways. “I’d forgotten. Our unwritten, unstated rule.”

Reginald felt his blood run down to his toes. Crispin was surely not saying what it sounded like. He had not let his attraction to Georgiana become obvious.

“If you must know, I spent the night in the library, working on the damned accounts.”

“If they are in that much of a state, leave them for Benjamin. That’s what Jasper will be paying him for.”

“Believe me, at this point, I would like nothing better than to dump the whole mess into Benjamin’s lap.”

Crispin pulled a small cloth bag from his pocket, pulled open the drawstring, and plucked out a couple of nuts. “Why don’t you?” He tossed them into his mouth.

Reginald hesitated. He couldn’t involve Crispin. He shrugged. “I will. But there are a few stray bits missing and I don’t want Benjamin thinking I did a half-arsed job.”

Crispin snickered and munched a few more nuts. “You’ve never been half-arsed in your life.” He looked up. “You’re more of a whole arse.”

Reginald stood and went to his dresser. The water in his washbowl looked filmy. Yesterday’s wash water. Barclay needed a talking to.

“Did you come to wake me up for a reason?”

“No reason.”

“May I ask you then, to get the hell out?”

Crispin grinned at him. Then asked, “What’s missing?”

“What?’

“From the receipts? What’s missing?”

“I don’t know. If I did, it wouldn’t be missing.” He downplayed it more. “I warned Jasper I was likely to stumble onto his gambling debts.”

Crispin laughed. Then said, “But that would have come out of his allowance. Bradwell wouldn’t have bothered itemizing the trifling bits that we spent. Can you imagine?”

“Hmm.” The devil. The allowances. By now, Georgiana would have discovered how much he was worth. How much smaller could he possibly be made to feel? His allowance was not insubstantial, but to a duke’s daughter, it would appear paltry.

“Well,” Crispin said, “I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad for you. Item one: books. Item two: coffee. Item three: books.”

Reginald pushed back. “You forget. Item four: opera singer.”

“Yes, but Bradwell would have said, ‘Good show, lad. About time.’”

“Ha, ha. As you leave, can you find a footman to send Barclay up?”

Crispin put the bag of nuts back into his pocket. “I suppose I need to be direct. Though it goes against the grain. Are you all right, Reg?”

“All right? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“For one thing, look at you. For another, you slept away the entire day.”

“Was it charades or whist?”

Crispin blinked. Then he said, “All right. I’ll give you a pass on the hiding and pretending to sleep. But the third thing is Mr. Tibury.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He had forgotten about Mr. Tibury. “That bothers me about as much as Plodgett does.”

“It bothered me. And it bothered Jasper. And not only because Father didn’t consult him. It was unfair of Father not to have mentioned something to you.”

“If anything, I give Father credit for knowing that I wouldn’t care. And stop looking at me like I am a dissection specimen. I’m telling the truth.”

Crispin stopped inspecting him and turned to studying his own hands. “If we’re being truthful, I give him credit too. I was a little concerned that he may not be in his right senses. That happens with apoplexy, you know. I worried that he’d been bamboozled. But he was sound asleep when I went to sit with him last night, so I went through his correspondence.”

“How contemptible of you.”

“I found Tibury’s references, and they are not only legitimate but strong. Very strong. I suppose you could say that it gave me some satisfaction to be proud of the old dog. I suspect, sick as he is, he considered the matter very carefully and concluded Tibury was the best man.”

“Thank you?”

“Well, face it, Reg. You’ve never expressed any actual interest in the church. Maybe theology as a concept, but not service to the church. I’m not saying you would not be a fine clergyman if you put your mind to it. You could do anything you set your mind to.” He smiled. “Except soldiering, of course.”

Reginald felt moved by his brother’s concern. “I don’t want to be a clergyman. That’s the truth of it. But I’ve never had the courage to tell the Earl I don’t.”

“An awkward and largely unnecessary conversation. But he’s still of sound mind. You could still talk to him.”

Reginald shrugged. Crispin had always been tighter with Father than he was, except for that one horrific row, which had blown over quickly enough. Crispin didn’t avoid awkward conversations—he barreled right in.

“Maybe. Though it will sound pettish to tell him I don’t care what he gave to Tibury because I didn’t want it anyway.” He picked up his wrinkled jacket from the floor and winced. “Barclay will also believe I was out on a drunk.” He threw it onto a chair and turned back to his brother. “Crispin, I am going to piss now. So unless—”

“I’m an officer in the King’s Army. Pissing men don’t faze me. Unless you plan to aim for my boots.”

“I won’t miss.”

Crispin hopped up. “Don’t be late for tea. Jasper is convinced you’re sulking and if he scolds you publicly, I’ll have to find another apple.”