“You wish me to examine your account book?”
He frowned. “You are not usually a slow top. Of course that is what I wish. Did I not say I couldn’t find my error?”
“You did.” She picked her way around the stacked books and over the discarded, crumpled pieces of paper lying on the rug and managed to maintain her grave demeanor as she seated herself. Easing into the chair with Griffin’s scent and the contour of his body captured in the soft, gently worn leather was unexpectedly like being wrapped in his arms. She had an urge to draw her legs under her and curl in the cradle he’d unwittingly made for her. It was perhaps fortunate, she thought, that he came to stand directly behind her shoulder, which had exactly the opposite comforting effect.
Olivia looked up at him. “You mean to watch over me?”
In every sense. Griffin did not say it aloud, simply nodding instead.
“Very well.” She leaned forward to take a proper look at the chart of accounts. In very little time she was able to forget his presence altogether.
Olivia had always been aware of the profit at the faro table, but she’d had no knowledge of what the other games brought in each night. One of her eyebrows kicked up as she reviewed the columns devoted to vingt-et-un, roulette, dice, and the private card games. Everything was recorded neatly in Griffin’s meticulous hand. Each page, every column, revealed the faint tracing of his dry quill as he’d checked and rechecked his work.
After Olivia had examined the income, she turned to the expenditures. Once again, she lifted an eyebrow. She clearly saw the costs of operating the hell: the wages of the staff, their board, the liquor bill, the outlay for repair and replacement, and a host of incidentals, many of them recorded in a kind of code that she could not make out.
She picked up a quill but did not dip it in an inkwell. Much as he had done earlier, she used it to make small, nearly invisible ticks next to various items. “You have receipts for all of this?” she asked, pointing to the line for repairs.
“In the box there.”
Nodding absently, Olivia continued her examination. Griffin turned a good profit, she noted, though she could not quite make out where it went save for that portion that he turned back over to the establishment. She imagined that accounted for his indecipherable codes. It was not her place to question anything unrelated to why he was asking her to review his work. She did, however, venture an observation.
“You are singularly mistrustful.”
Griffin stared down at her bent head. Her long cascade of fiery curls tempted him to disregard his judgment and sink his hands into the flames. That would only serve to frighten her, which was the very thing he had been bent on avoiding this last week. To have her name him singularly mistrustful was rather like the accusation of the pot to the kettle. He hadn’t mistaken her reluctance to go with him, nor missed the way her steps faltered when they neared his bedchamber. She would have gone with him if he’d led her there, he knew that, but it wasn’t the manner in which he wanted her to come to him. He had been trying to provoke her interest if she had but the wit to know it.
“Why do you say so?” he asked, curious.
Olivia tapped the point of her quill against the ledger. “Because you do all of this yourself when you are perfectly able to employ someone. That strikes me as mistrustful. You do not administer the affairs of your estate in such a fashion.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you are always here. You must engage the services of a steward or a secretary, someone who oversees the rents and income of Wright Hall and your other properties. They would be sadly neglected otherwise, and it stretches the imagination to suppose you tend to your affairs here with such diligence while allowing every other thing to go begging.” She lifted her head and caught her hair in one hand, sweeping it aside as she turned to look over her shoulder at him. A small vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows as she considered what she’d just said. “I don’t suppose I can have it both ways, can I? If you are by nature mistrustful then it does not follow that you would allow anyone else to manage your other properties, not if you value them as—”
“Perhaps you are simply wrong,” he said, interrupting.
Shaking her head, she turned a bit more in her chair and hit upon the truth she had not seen before. “This is your income, isn’t it? The hell is almost the whole of it. You operate this establishment because it is the lifeblood for all that came before, the bastard child that supports the family’s rank and privilege.”
Griffin stepped back from the chair. His hands fell to his side. For a moment he did nothing save breathe, then his fingers curled into fists and he nodded once. “It is known to only a few,” he said quietly. “You understand that it would…” His voice trailed away. He would not ask for her silence. She did not owe him that. He avoided her hand when she would have reached for him in spite of the fact that he had wanted nothing so much as her unsolicited touch since she’d left his bed. Her touch. Not her pity.
Unfolding his hands, Griffin walked to the fireplace and poked at the flames. He did not hear her cross the floor, only sensed her presence when she was standing just behind his right shoulder.
“How did it happen?” she asked.
He shrugged, his attention on the fire. “In the usual way of such things. A long line of heirs dedicated to living outside their means. Bad investments. Failure to respect the land or the needs of the tenant farms. Committing too little money to the property. Daughters requiring dowries. Sons acquiring gaming debts, Bon Street creditors, and mistresses.” He set the poker in its stand. Words came then that were reluctantly given. “Sons acquiring wives who vowed for richer or poorer but could not accept that they must live in reduced circumstances.”
“Your wife?” asked Olivia. “Was she such a one?”
“My mother, actually. My wife made other promises.”
Olivia did not venture a second question regarding her ladyship. To do so felt extraordinarily self-serving. “Is your mother living?”
He shook his head. “She died seven years ago, only a few months after I came into possession of this hell. There are those who say my decision to operate the establishment contributed to her death, though they are kind enough to only whisper it my presence.”
She wondered if he whispered the same to himself. It would not surprise her if he did. He was not the sort of man who shifted responsibility. “Mason told me your father died some ten years back.”
“He did.” Griffin glanced back at Olivia for the first time. “Did he tell you how?”
“No. He regretted his momentary lapse in protecting your privacy.”
