The ledgers, being ledgers, offered no comfort.
From outside came the sound of hammering, singing, and general Christmas preparation. The fair was in a few days. He could endure a few more days of this, then return to London and forget all about Marianne Whitby and her dangerous eyes and her flour-dusted hands and the way she made him want to be someone who knew how to bake pies properly.
A few days. How bad could it be?
Through the window, he saw Marianne emerge from the bakery carrying another tray, this time walking slowly and carefully. She glanced up at the inn, and for a moment, their eyes met across the square. She smiled, quick, almost shy, then hurried on her way.
Alaric touched his fingers to the window, then realized what he was doing and snatched his hand back.
A few days.
He was never going to survive a few days.
The truly alarming part was that he wasn't sure he wanted to.
Chapter 7
"Your Grace appears to be glaring at those ledgers with unusual intensity, even for someone reviewing accounts that have been mismanaged for the better part of three years."
Alaric didn't look up from the columns of numbers that had been swimming before his eyes for the past hour, refusing to resolve themselves into anything resembling sense. Not because the mathematics was particularly complex, he'd been managing estate accounts since he was sixteen, but because every time he tried to focus on the figures, his mind wandered to flour-dusted hands and coffee-colored eyes and the way Marianne Whitby had felt pressed against him in the snow.
"These numbers are deliberately obtuse," he muttered, making another attempt to add the same column he'd been working on for twenty minutes.
"The numbers, Your Grace, or your ability to concentrate on them?"
"The numbers, Grimsby. Fletcher's handwriting looks like someone gave a spider ink and let it dance across the page in the throes of either ecstasy or death."
"How poetic. Though I suspect Your Grace's difficulty has less to do with penmanship and more to do with the fact that you've been staring at that same page since breakfast, which was two hours ago."
"I'm being thorough."
"Your Grace has added that column seventeen times."
"The numbers keep changing."
"The numbers are written in ink. They're incapable of change without direct intervention."
"Then someone is intervening."
"Yes, Your Grace. That someone is your wandering attention, which seems to be focused on the bakery across the square rather than the ledgers on your desk."
Alaric finally looked up to find Grimsby standing by the window, looking out at the village square with an expression of mild amusement. "I'm not watching the bakery."
"Of course not, Your Grace. You've merely glanced out the window forty-three times in the past hour."
"You counted?"
"I had little else to do while Your Grace was definitely not watching for a certain widow to emerge from her establishment."
"I'm concerned about village commerce. As the steward, I should understand the patterns of local business."
"Naturally. And this has nothing to do with this morning's incident involving pastry and compromising positions?"
"There was nothing compromising about the position. We've established it was gravitational inevitability."
"If Your Grace says so. Though I should mention that the story has evolved somewhat in the retelling. The current version involves Your Grace sweeping Mrs. Whitby into a passionate embrace while pies rained from heaven."
"That's absurd. Pies don't rain."
