Chapter Three

J en had peeked at Lord Frome's account books. Not peeked so much as studied a couple of them carefully. To be fair, he had left them lying open on his desk, which was in the corner of the library. She had meant to just have a quick look but had got caught up following a repeating pattern.

Frome was being cheated, and she ought to tell him. But then she would have to admit she had been snooping, and he had a low enough opinion of her already. Yet she owed a great debt to his grandmother, who had not only snatched her and Mammi from Bristol and given them a home but had encouraged her to have the stones assessed. And Lady Eloisa loved Frome. Aunt Eloise . The darling lady was insisting that Jen call her that.

Oh, sniveling barnacles! She was going to have to tell him. Perhaps the tent in his trousers might predispose him to be lenient. "I might have sort of glanced at some papers that were lying around on your desk," she admitted.

"You what!" Frome turned red. If steam had come out of his ears, she would not have been at all surprised. She shrank back in her chair so she would be harder to reach if he turned violent. Living soft had made her careless. The arms of the chair had her trapped, and she had chosen the seat herself, forgetting that the first rule of survival was to have an escape route.

She couldn't run. Fighting back would be stupid when he was so much bigger, and she had no room to move. Curl up. Protect your head .

Instead, he leaped to his feet and started marching. Up and down in front of her, talking all the time, ranting about hospitality and trust and impudent witches who didn't know their place.

In the middle of one of his marches, he spun around on her, leaning with one hand on the arm of her chair, his other hand, fisted, waving in the air.

Jen threw her arm up to protect her face and hunched herself into a ball.

Nothing happened. Frome went silent. After a moment he said, "I am not going to hit you, Miss Ward." His voice sounded strange as if he was forcing the words through a suddenly stiff throat. It sounded farther away, too.

She risked a peek over her elbow.

Frome had fallen back a few steps and his hands hung empty at his sides.

Cautiously, she unwound herself.

"I was not going to hit you," he repeated.

"I was wrong to read your papers," Jen admitted. "I apologize, Lord Frome. It was just…" She wanted to give him some honesty in return for his non-violence. "I was curious about why you looked so cross and anxious."

That was a mistake. The worried furrow between his brows deepened into anger.

"And I am not surprised," she added, deciding to push her way forward. "Whoever deals with the Chillington Court books has been cooking his accounts. In this year alone, he has marked down the income by at least two hundred pounds and increased the expenses by two hundred and fifty. Maybe more, but those were the altered figures I was able to find."

A succession of expressions crossed Frome's face, settling into the shape of determination. "Show me," he demanded, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her towards him. Perhaps he tugged harder than he intended, for she landed against his body, and he put a hand on her back, holding her against his hard torso.

She assumed his intention was to keep her from collapsing, which was good, for her knees seemed to have turned to jelly, and for a moment, she could not move. Her breasts, pressed against Frome's chest, felt heavier and more sensitive and disclosed a hitherto unknown connection to her groin.

Jen had managed to reach the age of nineteen still a maiden by being fast on her feet, quick with a knife, and quicker with her words, but she was not precisely an innocent. She knew what she was feeling was lust, even if she'd not herself experienced it until she met the pompous, toffee-nosed Earl of Frome.

After a burning moment, he moved his hands to her shoulders and set her back from him, but not before she detected the rigid evidence that his body was as attuned to hers as hers was to his.

"Show me," he repeated, stepping back, and pointing to the desk. The candelabra he collected from the mantlepiece cast its light on his red cheeks, which perversely calmed her own racing heart.

She fetched the other candelabra. The more light the better. Some of the alterations were hard to detect. His desk was clear, but he quickly found the folder with the Chillington Court accounts, and she just as quickly pointed to the first of the changes she had found.

"He could have been correcting a mistake," Frome said. She showed him another, and then another. More than fifty. Every single change increased the income or reduced the expenses.

Frome said nothing as the evidence mounted up.

"There are more, but they are harder to see by candlelight," Jen said, as she closed the book. "I can show you in the daytime."

The earl was silent for what seemed like forever. Jen studied his face, trying to read his mood, wondering if he would return to berating her. At last, he shut his eyes, sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "Have the other books been altered in the same way?"

Jen shook her head. "I cannot tell you. The other set of accounts that was on the desk, Batterwick, was clean. Only one correction, and I think that had been to fix an addition error. It was crossed out and rewritten, not drawn over to hide the change like these are."

"Would you look at the rest?" He was already pulling them out of the drawer from which he'd pulled the Chillington Court books. "No. What am I thinking? It is—" he peered at the clock. "Good heavens! It is three in the morning! Miss Ward, we can take this up again after we have slept." He colored again. "That is, if you are willing to assist me?"

"Yes," said Jen, before she could think better of it. On the one hand, Frome was Aunt Eloisa's beloved grandson, and the dear old lady would want Jen to help him find out who was stealing from him. On the other hand, she should not be agreeing to anything that meant spending time in the company of the annoying, arrogant, and far too fascinating man.

It was too late now. She had agreed. "I will look at the accounts tomorrow. That is, later today. We should sleep."

"Yes. We should go to bed," said Frome, and blushed. "That is, you should go to your bed, and I should go to mine."

Jen nodded. It would be beyond foolish to say the words that popped into her head. Nonetheless, she repeated them in her mind as she climbed the stairs with Frome behind her. Why, Lord Frome, whatever can you be thinking?

She knew exactly what he had been thinking. The mention of "we" and "bed," had sent a succession of images through her own mind, even though she did not have the experience to add detail to the mental pictures.

He would show me the details if I asked. Jen growled the wanton inside her back into its cave and turned left at the top of the stairs when Frome turned right. "Good night," he said.

"Sleep well," said she.

*

By the morning, Worth had decided he was mad to trust Miss Ward to go through his books. He had been keeping his financial condition secret for eighteen months, ever since his brother's sudden death. The secrecy was partly to keep from scaring his creditors and partly for his reputation. A stray word from her could make that effort pointless.

When she joined him in the library as promised, he said, "You must swear to me you will not tell anyone about…" he wasn't sure what to say.

"That you are broke?" She gave him the cheeky grin that had been driving him mad for weeks. He was desperate to kiss it from her face, and then see if she still found him funny.

"Lord Frome," she told him. "You have my promise. I would like to point out, however, that I figured out your financial state long before I looked at the books." She started counting on her fingers. "One, you are renting out your townhouse and living with your grandmother. Two, you wear black coats all the time, with buff pantaloons in the daytime and black breeches for the evening. This means you can wear the same clothing over and over because one black coat looks much like another."

Worth groaned. Miss Ward folded down a third finger. "Also, the fancy waistcoats you wear—different ones every time you go out—have been cut and made by your valet out of coats from the attic, and then recut and turned to serve again. That was three. Four, your shirts are darned and so are your stockings. Your valet, by the way, is a treasure. And your only servant, which brings us to five."

"Not quite my only servant," Worth protested. "I have servants at my estates." All those he could afford to hang on to, in fact. Family retainers who did not deserve to be cast out to fend for themselves. At least town servants had a chance of finding another position.

"I can't comment on that. But here in London, you live at your grandmother's townhouse, and you use her stables so that you don't have to keep servants. So that is five."

She held up the other hand, but Worth put his hand up in a stop signal. "Enough. You have made your point. I venture to say, Miss Ward, you are smarter than most. No one in Society appears to have noticed any of those things."

"If you do not mind my asking, Lord Frome, why do you care about people knowing? I am certain it is not your fault. I've heard enough from your grandmother to know your brother and father were all about gambling and wagering and wild parties, and that you are not. And one cannot open a newspaper without reading about bad harvests and reduced land incomes."

It was a good question. Smart, like Miss Ward. "Part of it is family pride, I suppose," Worth acknowledged. "But also, I've managed to keep the worst of the creditors satisfied with regular payments. I do not want to alarm them."

"If they are spooked, they might bolt," Miss Ward said, nodding, a thoughtful expression on her face. She was wise beyond her years, and even, her gender. He could only admire her more for it.

And so, Worth accepted the analogy. "And crash the carriage."

"Fair enough. Well, no one will hear anything from me. Shall I take a look, then?"

Weirdly, since he was still telling himself that he didn't trust the lady, Worth was reassured. He set her up at the desk in the window nook with the stack of folders and notebooks, one set for each estate, and retreated to give her space.

She called him back once to ask for writing materials to take notes, and he interrupted her twice to bring her tea, once with some of Cook's maid-of-honor tarts and once with a slice of fruit cake.

She was putting the accounts into two piles. One for those with suspicious amendments and one without. Worth itched to see which estates were in which piles, but he left her to continue and retreated across the room.

Mrs. Bartley came looking for her charge and was alarmed to find her alone in the library with Lord Frome. "Not that I have any fears for Miss Ward, my lord. You were on the other side of the library, and in any case, one cannot miss the fact that you and Miss Ward are…" she blushed and floundered. "Not friends," she finished.

Just as well the lady could not read minds. "Miss Ward is busy," he commented. "I suspect she is not aware of our presence."

Miss Ward, the minx, looked up from what she was reading and winked at him. More aware than he had thought, then. He moved the book he had been reading to cover his instant reaction to her cheeky intervention.

"I will just take a seat by the other window and do my sewing," said Mrs. Bartley. "I shall not disturb Miss Ward, my lord."

Late in the morning, two and a half hours after she had started, Miss Ward sat back and folded her hands. Worth, who had been only pretending to read, looked up as soon as she moved and met her eyes. She nodded.

Mrs. Bartley was bent over her sewing and did not notice.

The accounts were now all in the two piles, one slightly larger than the other. Miss Ward laid a hand on one of the piles and shook her head, then put it on the other pile and nodded vigorously. She then stood. "Mrs. Bartley, what a dear you are to wait so patiently. Is that the cap you have been making for your new grandson?"

The two ladies put their heads together to coo over a tiny piece of embroidered material, then left the room, Mrs. Bartley chattering about an imminent visit to the modiste and Miss Ward putting in a word here and there.

Worth waited until the door shut behind them and then examined Miss Ward's findings, carefully detailed in her notes, which she had also left.

"It requires more study to find everything, but whoever has had the handling of the accounts in the left-hand pile is lying to you, and is presumably stealing from you.

"As you undoubtedly know, the right-hand pile is fine. Did I pass the test, Frome?"

The little witch. He could not help a reluctant smile as he went through the left-hand pile, moving each estate's records in turn until he knew she had pinpointed every estate managed by one of his two factors.

The estates managed by the other factor were all in the right-hand pile.

How long had the theft been happening? That, too, required more study. Still, even if he could stop the level of loss, he had discovered this morning, estates he had been on the point of selling were suddenly looking viable again. If he could recover some of the money, he might even be able to reduce their mortgages!

And he owed it all to Miss Ward and her nosy ways. Tonight, he would begin to repay the debt he had incurred to the lady. In fact, he'd make a start at his club after the calls on his solicitor, the honest factor, and a magistrate—and then the dishonest factor.