Leslie Lafoy (18 page)

“What’s on this list?”

“For the most part, fabric,” she supplied without looking up and seemingly unaware that he’d reached the desk and taken a seat on the outside corner. “Hundreds of yards of fabric. There isn’t a square centimeter of cloth in this
house that isn’t falling apart from rot. The rugs are threadbare. The upholstery is disgraceful. The table linens are all stained and torn. It’s a miracle that the draperies are still hanging at the windows. Mrs. Gladder showed Simone and me all the bedchambers, but I didn’t inspect any of the interiors except from the doorways for fear of what I’d find.”

“A disaster?”

“Why merely suspecting is somehow more comforting than actually knowing for a fact . . . ” She shrugged and shook her head. With a sigh, she laid down her quill pen and looked up at him. “Please tell me,” she said wearily, “that you’re getting an obscene sum of money for the three of us. It’s going to take every farthing of a sizable fortune to make this place respectable.”

“Spend however much you wish, dear Caroline. I enjoy making you happy.”

She blinked, looked down as the blush colored her high cheekbones, and then picked up the pen again, saying, “I realize that at some point you’ll marry and the new Lady Ryland will want to decorate to her preferences, but assuming that you’ll choose someone with even marginally good taste, I’ll make a start of it for her.”

Ah, slightly, delightfully breathless. “It’s that bad?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and enjoying the game.

“It’s beyond my worst nightmares. Are there any changes you’d like to make to the décor?”

“Such as?”

“Well, to begin with,” she answered, still writing, “do you like the colors in your bedchamber?”

“I haven’t given it any thought at all,” he admitted with
a shrug. “Perhaps we should go there and spend some time privately conferring on the matter. We can start with your ideas on the bedding.”

Her hand stilled and she shifted slightly in the chair. After a long moment, she laid down the pen, put her hands flat on the desk, and pushed herself to her feet. “We’ve agreed,” she said slowly, meeting his gaze, “to keep our distance, remember? Leading me off to your room isn’t toward that end.”

“No, it’s not,” he readily agreed, deciding not to remind her that he hadn’t agreed to the strategy in any binding way. “The end it’s toward is ever more enjoyable.”

She sighed. “Am I going to have to battle you every single moment for the next few months?”

“Oh, be honest, dear Caroline,” he cajoled. “It’s your most endearing quality. The larger battle isn’t with me, it’s with yourself. If you’d just give in, we could pass the time quite pleasurably. My room has a running bath. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” she said, gathering her papers into a stack. “Mrs. Gladder told me all about it.”

“It’s the only one in the house,” he added, picking up the quill.

“So she said.”

“Please feel free to use it whenever you like.”

“I wouldn’t dare to impose in such a way.”

“You,” he drawled, trailing the edge of the feather along the curve of her jaw and freezing her in mid-motion, “my darling Caroline, don’t have a cautious bone in your luscious body.” He drew the feather down the length of her neck and over the swell of her breast. “Which, in case you need for it to be stated directly, is
welcome in my bed anytime. My room is on the other side of our adjoining sitting rooms. The door isn’t locked. I checked before I came downstairs just now.”

As the pink deepened in her cheeks, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped back—beyond his reach. “Thank you for the offer, Drayton,” she said tightly. Her smile looked decidedly tremulous as she added, “I’m flattered, but common sense screams for me to decline.”

He nodded and handed her the quill, satisfied with what he’d achieved for the evening. Watching her neaten her stack of papers and then pick up the ink bottle, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“The seamstress will be arriving from the village at any moment,” she explained, moving around the desk. “We’re going to make some serviceable clothing for Simone and Fiona.”

“Until dinner then.”

She stopped and turned slightly back to face him. “Mrs. Gladder was to have told you. I’m having my dinner with Simone and Fiona, Maggie, and Mrs. Miller in the schoolroom.”

Maggie and Mrs. Miller? “Why?” he asked, focusing on the more troubling of the two puzzles.

“As they say, out of sight, out of mind.”

“I promise to behave myself.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll have a complete list and fabric samples ready to send to Jane in the morning. If this house is to be in any sort of presentable condition by the time Aubrey’s mother arrives, there isn’t a moment to waste.”

“Is that your way of saying that you intend to actively avoid me for days on end?”

“Yes.”

“Caroline,” he teased, “haven’t you ever heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

“It’s not your heart that yearns for my company,” she pointed out, walking off.

“True,” he called after her, “but it’s quite happy to go along for the ride.”

He was wondering how lucky he might be when she stopped on the threshold and dashed his budding hopes. “I forgot to tell you something important. Mrs. Miller got Fiona to talk this afternoon.”

“Who is Mrs. Miller? And how did she manage this miracle?”

“She’s the girls’ elderly nurse. A very wise, grandmotherly sort. And she waved an adorable little black and white kitten under her nose. Won Fiona over in a heartbeat. Simone says she hasn’t been silent a single second since. Of course, she talks mostly to the cat, but it’s a step forward.”

“Things are looking up, then,” he observed.

“Yes, they are, actually,” she agreed, smiling brightly. “Good night, Drayton. My sincere regrets to Aubrey and Haywood for missing dinner together this evening.”

“Don’t you regret missing dinner with me?”

“No.”

Drayton laughed quietly as she walked off. Damn, she was fun to spar with. Always surprising, always a challenge. And amazingly, just as fascinating out of bed as she was in it.

  Ten  

DRAYTON FINISHED OFF THE CONTENTS OF HIS MORNING
cup of coffee, set it back in the saucer, and pushed the whole thing out of his way.

“So,” Haywood drawled, pacing back and forth in front of the desk, his hands clasped behind his back. “If the tenants are saying that this year’s crop is going to be slightly less than last year’s because of the timing of the rains . . . ”

“And,” Aubrey contributed on cue as Drayton continued to work, “if the granary manager is saying that he can’t possibly store it all . . . ”

“But with the same storage facility in which he didn’t have a problem with capacity last year . . .”

“Then the question is where last year’s surplus went and whose pocket the proceeds of its sale lined.”

Drayton didn’t bother to look up at his friends. “Which is exactly the same question we formulated at three yesterday afternoon. And again at seven yesterday evening.”

“We’re posing it again,” Haywood countered, “just to keep it fresh in your mind as you’re busily adding up your little columns there.”

Aubrey picked up Drayton’s empty cup and carried it to the sideboard, asking, “Any conclusions reached?”

“Actually, the conclusion is the one we suspected right from the start,” he admitted, laying down his pen and leaning back in the chair. “Thompson’s ledger figures don’t add up to the same total that the farmers’ receipts do. He seems to have skimmed, as a general rule, between twenty-five and thirty percent off each transaction.”

“Do Rudman’s figures match Thompson’s?” Aubrey asked, handing him a fresh cup of coffee.

“Are you expecting them to?”

“Not really.”

“As far as I can tell,” Drayton said, eyeing the totals on the four separate sheets of paper before him, “Thompson skimmed his portion as it came in from the fields while Rudman took one bushel out the back side of the granary for every five that came in the front.”

“That’s a fairly hefty loss.”

“Between forty-five and fifty percent overall,” Haywood summarized, nodding. “Give or take a bushel or two.”

“And that’s just a portion of it,” Drayton went on. “Thompson’s rent figures are short—by roughly fifteen percent—compared to the totals recorded on the farmers’ receipts.”

“He skimmed that, too?” Aubrey asked, leaning over to inspect the sheets for himself. “Good God, the man’s a greedy enough bastard.”

“What he is is wealthy.”

“Well,” Haywood said on an indignant huff, “it would seem that your estate manager and the granary keeper have some explaining to do.”

“If either one of them has a brain in his head,” Aubrey countered, “they spent the night hightailing it for the Continent.”

Drayton shrugged. “Only if they spoke with each other to learn that we had possession of both their account ledgers.” He sipped while the two considered that possibility and then added, “And only if the farmers happened to mention over pints last night that we’d collected their receipts for last harvest.”

Aubrey nodded slowly. “I can’t quite envision Thompson and Rudman knocking back a pint or two at the village pub. Can you?”

“They let anyone in there, you know,” Haywood assured them. “Terribly low clientele.”

“Which means,” Aubrey concluded, a grin spreading over his face, “the odds are good that our two thieves are right where we left them.”

“More importantly,” Drayton pointed out, “they haven’t thought it necessary to hide the money they’ve stolen over the years. Haywood, as I recall, you once studied a bit of law.”

He cleared his throat and smiled sheepishly. “A brief but terribly misguided episode of my life.”

“Did you happen to last long enough at it to know whether this evidence is sufficient to secure a magistrate’s order?”

“If he’s an honest magistrate,” Haywood answered, “he should be quite impressed with it, actually. We’ll need a local solicitor to formally frame the petition, but that shouldn’t take but an hour or two at the very most.”

Aubrey stepped to the sideboard to snag a bun from the tray, saying, “I should think that the greater trick will
be to find a solicitor who isn’t, one way or another, in the pocket of either Thompson or Rudman.”

Haywood grinned and wagged a brow. “Ah, how incredibly fortunate that ferreting information is my specialty.”

“All right,” Drayton said, gaining his feet and gathering together all the papers on his desk. “Take a tilt at it, Haywood,” he added, handing it all over. “Let’s aim for placing our thieves firmly under the court’s thumb by noon today.”

“With extreme pleasure, your grace.”

He was just out the door, the ledgers and papers tucked under his arm, when Aubrey swallowed the last of his pastry and observed, “If the man ever actually focused all his abilities in a single direction for longer than a day, he’d own the world.”

Drayton nodded and grinned. “But that would please his family.”

“What he needs is a good woman to settle him down and make him focus.”

He considered the notion for a moment, then shook his head. “Our definition of what makes a woman good and his are wildly different.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aubrey countered with a laugh. “He seems to have an appreciation for Lady Caroline.”

Drayton blinked, not the least bit amused. “He hadn’t better.”

“Oh, not in his usual sense,” his friend hastened to assure him. “He actually seems to be in respectful awe of her.”

If Aubrey thought that possibility was any more acceptable than Caroline being another of Haywood’s casual
conquests . . . The matter needed to be addressed directly and seriously. “Has he put you up to making a petition on his behalf?”

“Not yet, but he’s decidedly heading that way.”

“Nip it before his feelings are bruised,” Drayton instructed, picking up his cup and saucer.

“Is that the guardian, the duke, or the man talking?”

He heard the edge in Aubrey’s tone and knew that an honest answer would earn him a few pearls of Aubrey’s Wisdom of the Peerage. It would be infinitely easier to lie, or even to hedge. But the very idea of finding himself having to contemplate an evasion . . . “All three,” he admitted, glaring down at his coffee.