“He would, though unlike my financial circumstances, the manner of my father’s death is widely known among the ton.” He did not miss the shadow that crossed Olivia’s features and wished he had not phrased it in a way that underscored her exclusion from that circle. “He was called out for cheating. I believe a great deal of brandy had been consumed and there was also the matter of a slight toward Lord Ashcroft’s wife. Ashcroft took my father to task, swords instead of pistols, and skewered him in front of his seconds and the estimable Dr. Pettibone.”
“Then your father’s cheating was—”
“At cards,” Griffin said flatly. “Although adultery has been mentioned in some versions of the story. It depends on the mood of the wags as to whether it arises in conversation.”
“It cannot have been an easy time for you or your family.”
Griffin was quiet, reflecting. “No, it was not.”
Olivia regarded his strong profile bathed in firelight. His scar was not visible to her at the angle she observed him, but the tic in his cheek was. For all the blunt speech, he was not indifferent to his father’s passing, nor his mother’s for that matter. She inched closer but remembered that he had avoided her earlier and did not try to touch him now.
“How did you come to take possession of the hell?”
“I won it.”
“Oh.”
“At faro. Wright Hall was my marker. This Putnam Lane property was the owner’s.” His lips lifted in a humorless half smile. “Did you think I never made a wager?”
She shook her head. “You might have lost everything.”
“I bet the turn.”
Olivia could hardly believe what he was telling her. Betting the turn meant he’d wagered he could correctly call the order in which the last three cards of the deal would appear. “I repeat: you might have lost everything. You had only a one in six chance of calling the turn of those cards.”
“It paid five to one.”
“I know what it pays. Did you value your home and lands so little?”
“I wagered the house, not the lands. I was not entirely foolish, and Wright Hall was in a sad state at the time.”
“Still…” She let her thoughts go unspoken, certain he’d heard a great many lectures and second guessing regarding what could have been his folly.
“I won,” he reminded her, following the turn of her mind. “That counted for something, though no one was prepared for me to manage the hell, least of all my mother and my wife. But I saw the possibility of finally being done with the creditors, restoring Wright Hall to its former grandeur, and making all the properties prosperous again. Exposing my reputation to another layer of tarnish seemed little enough in the way of cost.”
“Your accounts suggest that you have a successful business here.”
“I do. I’ve beaten back most of the creditors. Wright Hall will always be the work of a lifetime as it should have been for my father and grandfather. As for the properties, they are producing income again, though not yet in a manner that will support all that must still be accomplished.” Griffin turned entirely to face her. “There are always unexpected expenses, losses that cannot be recovered.”
Olivia nodded a bit jerkily, embarrassed at the reminder of her role in both what was unexpected and unrecoverable.
“You take it all too much to heart,” Griffin said, watching her. “I was speaking of neither the damage to your room nor your brother’s debt. There is expense and loss that has little enough to do with this establishment. My sisters, all three of them, needed to make good marriages if they were to be properly protected. Arranging those was no simple matter, not when our father had died in such an ignominious fashion. My mother insisted that each one of them have generous settlements to avert suspicion from our true financial state. Some of the best properties were discreetly sold to provide for them, and I am only now in a position that I might be able to purchase them back.”
“Do your sisters know?”
“I couldn’t say. I’ve never told them, and they’ve never mentioned it to me. They do not approve of my activities here, if that is what you are asking.”
Olivia supposed that it was. His isolation was not so dissimilar to hers. She had not realized that until now. It occurred to her that his sisters didn’t want to know the true cost of their good marriages. If they suspected, they avoided confirmation by never asking the question directly. Olivia understood that. There were questions she was avoiding as well.
She distracted herself by looking back at the desk. Reconciling the accounts seemed more important just now. “I should return to my work. I have not yet examined the receipts.” She turned to go and never knew that Griffin’s hand had come within a hairsbreadth of restraining her.
She went through the receipts carefully, checking her figures against Griffin’s. He was no longer hovering at her shoulder, but had cleared a space for himself on the edge of the desk and set a hip there while he observed her. Nothing she’d heard caused her to revise her opinion that he was mistrustful, but she better understood the reason for it.
Olivia returned the quill to its stand, stoppered the ink well, and sat back. She closed her eyes, rubbed them with her thumb and middle finger, and almost sighed at how good it felt to relieve the pressure building behind them.
“You’re done?” he asked. “You found it?”
She nodded and pointed vaguely in the direction of the ledger. She heard Griffin slide it across the desk toward him. Opening her eyes a fraction while she massaged her temple, she said, “It is the easiest error to make and the most difficult to find. You simply transposed some numbers. Not once, but twice. It speaks to your diligence that it does not happen more often. These accounts are the sort of thing that should be done with a clear mind, not one that has been fogged by obscenely late hours, tobacco, perfume, and drink.”
