When at last he set down his cutlery, she drew out a few sheets of folded foolscap from a pocket hidden in the folds of her dress.
“Those would be the sums, I collect,” he said, eyeing the papers with loathing.
“A few notes, only,” she said. “Merely some examples to support the main premise. The main premise is that you are being grossly overcharged and overprovisioned, and that, in short, members of this household have been cheating you.”
It was, perhaps, the last thing he could have expected to hear her say. He understood the words but couldn’t take them in. He looked at the papers in her hand. He looked at her, into her troubled countenance.
“I never expected this in a household so well run,” Zoe said. “I didn’t suspect anything was amiss until Harrison made such a fuss about letting me see the records. Even then cheating was only one of several possibilities that occurred to me.”
“Harrison,” he said. “Cheating me.” It was beginning to sink in, though he still felt numb.
“The first thing I noticed was the quantity of provisions,” she said. “It might have made sense if you entertained on the most lavish scale every single evening. But I know you don’t. You dine away from home most of the time, according to Osgood, who keeps track of all the invitations and appointments. I haven’t yet sent for your cook—or any of those who might be involved—to hear how they explain the quantities and prices. I didn’t want to do this until I’d spoken to you.”
“I can’t…” He remembered her sitting in the library, toiling over the books until long after midnight. She’d still been at it when he left in a sulk.
Yesterday afternoon and night and early this morning she’d studied and calculated.
“Oh, Zoe.” He held out his hand, and she put the notes into it. He looked down, and the notes and numbers were a blur.
“I know such things happen,” she said. “My sisters warned me. They said I must immediately study the records, and talk to the upper-level staff, to show that I understand how a household is run. They said I must assert myself at the beginning, or I would leave a void and others would move in to fill it. Then I should never have control. I knew this was true, because it’s the same in the harem.”
He hadn’t understood at all. He’d inherited his title. He’d inherited his position in the world. He’d never had to assert himself or prove who he was. The Duke of Marchmont simplywas.
“Sometimes the cook or another orders more than can be used, and sells the extra,” she went on. “Sometimes they make arrangements with, say, the butcher. He charges more than what the correct price should be, and he and the servants split the profit. But it isn’t only the food and drink. Your laundry bills are ludicrous, even for a fashionable gentleman. Some of the tailor bills are forgeries, I think. I would not be surprised if we discover that some of the merchants whose names appear on the bills don’t exist.”
He stared blindly at the notes in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “One expects to discover minor pilfering. That happens everywhere, and it’s nearly impossible to prevent. This is beyond anything I could have expected. It’s very, very wicked. A betrayal of trust of the worst kind.”
The first blank shock was ebbing, and anger rushed in to fill its place. Harrison, whom he’d trusted, who’d stood before him, so piously correct yesterday.
A part of him still didn’t want to accept it.
Yet he knew in his heart it was true.
His trust had been betrayed.
All the same, he saw with painful clarity how easy he’d made it for others to betray him.
He gave the notes back to Zoe, rose from the table, crossed the room, and pulled the rope, to summon a servant.
A footman appeared within minutes.
“Send Harrison to me,” said Marchmont. “Now.”
“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” said the footman. “Mr. Harrison isn’t in the house.”
Zoe wasn’t surprised when they discovered that the house steward had run away, apparently during the night.
When his rooms were searched, his belongings—and a number of things that didn’t belong to him—were gone.
Mrs. Dunstan had gone out to the market early this morning and had not come back. Neither of them had warned Dove and Hoare. These two must have assumed that the new duchess would never in a million years make heads or tails of the household records, else they’d have vanished, too.
By the end of the day, after questioning every member of the staff, Marchmont was left in no doubt whatsoever that his upper servants, led by Harrison, had been systematically siphoning off a portion of his income—and this had been going on for as much as a decade.
Hoare, for instance, had cultivated a network of tailors, glove makers, haberdashers, laundresses, and so on, all of whom overcharged His Grace and split the excess with the valet, who paid a percentage to his other partners in crime. The others—cook, butler, housekeeper—did the same in their own spheres.
Some of the lower servants knew what was going on, some suspected, and some knew nothing. Those who knew had been afraid, until now, to inform. They believed that no one would take their word against Harrison’s, and they were terrified of what he would do if they tattled.
