He forced himself to refocus on the aviary. “I don’t suppose you have a dossier of all bird purveyors in the region, as well as the ideal feed and habitat conditions of a captured partridge?”
She glanced up. “I can compile it by tomorrow.”
Benjamin blinked in surprise. He had been jesting. Noelle clearly was not. He leaned back in his chair. Grandfather might have appointed her to Benjamin’s side, but he had no intention of treating her like an employee.
“No need,” he assured her. “Partridges are plentiful and research is unnecessary. It’s just a bird.”
She lifted her shoulder. “I am a competent clerk. I don’t mind handling the partridge situation for you.”
“It’s not a situation,” he said. “I myself am quite competent. If I can help run Parliament, I can handle a partridge.”
“As you wish.” Her expression was skeptical at best, but she returned her attention to whatever she had been working on without further commentary.
Benjamin tried not to be offended by her obvious lack of confidence in him. He might be out of place in Cressmouth but he was far from helpless. Such a simple project would be completed in no time. He would check the castle cellar for champagne, and stock the aviary with precisely one bird. Easy enough. He did not need her help.
Yet he could not deny his admiration of her organizational skills. The documentation she had prepared on the local workforce had been incredibly thorough. He had no doubt she would be able to deliver just as exhaustive a report on the care and feeding of partridges, the ideal time and place to purchase fowl, and the best ways of encouraging nesting upon arrival. Whatever she thought of him, he did not wish for her to believe a duke might require such molly-coddling. In fact, this was a wonderful opportunity to prove himself.
Due to his estranged relationship with his grandfather, Benjamin had correctly assumed he would neither inherit the castle nor its coin.
Given his grandfather’s eccentricities, perhaps Benjamin should not have been surprised to discover the old man had left the castle in trust for the use of the entire town as a whole. It belonged to everyone and no one at once; the beating heart of a vibrant community.
Such a philanthropic plan might sound neat and tidy to someone who had never actually had tomanagea population of any size. Benjamin, however, had spent years dealing with budgets and infrastructure and dissenting opinions. Nothing was easy.
No doubt, Grandfather had believed his mad decision to donate the castle to an entire town no more capricious than his decision to squander the Marlowe fortune on the creation of a Christmas village in the first place.
Although Benjamin was unaffected personally by such whimsy—his title and wealth came from his father’s side of the family—he could not walk away without assuring himself that Cressmouth wouldn’t fall apart before the solicitor could make sense of the accounts.
Benjamin let out a resigned breath. He dealt with books and numbers and policies on a daily basis. The least he could do was look over the journals of record to ensure the castle’s affairs were in as much order as possible.
“Where are Fuzzy Wig’s notes?” he asked. “While I’m waiting on the aviary renovations, I might as well take a look at the accounts.”
Noelle tensed as if the offer had caused offense. Nonetheless, she directed him toward low shelves at the rear of the room. The bookcase was packed with bound volumes with a year engraved on each spine. He frowned. For a short period of time around five to ten years ago, there were two journals for each year.
Curious, he collected the volumes spanning the past dozen years and carried them to his desk.
As Benjamin flipped through the books, Mr. Fawkes’s hand slowly and inexorably devolved from clean and precise to an unintelligible scrawl. Numbers were no longer summed, but scribbled. Annotations as to what items were even being referenced began to appear as afterthoughts at best.
Unease churned in his stomach. This wasn’t something he could resolve in an afternoon. Organizing this level of chaos, checking the facts, filling the gaps… It would take months to put to rights.
Months Benjamin did not have.
Heart heavy, he reached for the next journal. This one was the first duplicate. He let out a deep breath before lifting the cover.
This was a different hand. Bold. Confident. Unerring. He recognized it at once. Its architect was the same woman who had just handed him a fully researched report containing every detail even peripherally related to his grandfather’s aviary. His esteem rose even higher.
Noelle had done more than fill in the blanks. She had checked and cross-referenced, trimmed duplicates and computed tallies. This wasn’t merely a correction to Mr. Fawkes’s missteps. It was a masterwork. Its information and presentation more precise and illuminating than any previous volume.
Quickly, Benjamin flipped through the remaining journals. He was not surprised to discover more of the same. Mr. Fawkes’s contributions, increasingly incomprehensible. Noelle’s, stunningly thorough. He was in awe of the quality. Parliament had voted acts into law that weren’t half as elegant and detailed as this.
The year the duplicate journals ceased must have been the year she fully replaced her mentor. Benjamin was astonished Mr. Fawkes had managed to mentor her at all with the books in such disarray. Noelle must have taught herself everything she needed to know by performing the painstaking research required to remake Mr. Fawkes’s journals into something useful. Good God, she was clever.
Noelle hadn’t become Grandfather’s “clerk.” She had become his savior, and Mr. Fawkes’s as well. The counting house—and every account the castle was responsible for collecting or paying—would be in complete disarray without Noelle’s timely rescue. Benjamin could not help being impressed at how smart and capable she was.
No wonder she’d had every detail about the aviary at her fingertips. It wouldn’t exist without her. None of Grandfather’s projects would.
Had her patrons even realized what a treasure they had? If Grandfather truly cared about his aviary, he would’ve put Noelle in charge. She would have had it stuffed with partridges in a trice. Two of every bird in England, no doubt.
He frowned. WhyhadGrandfather assigned the task to Benjamin, of all people? He knew the least about Cressmouth of anyone named in the will. Grandfather had to have realized Benjamin wasn’t invested in the outcome. He wouldn’t be bothering with the partridge and the champagne at all if the fate of his mother’s locket didn’t hang in the balance.
