Page 39
“Perhaps Geoff lacks an f?” she ventured.
He looked. G-e-o-f.
“Geoff lacks a number of things,” he told her. “The extra f is the least of his worries.” He handed the letter back. “Perfect. You’ll enclose the list you wrote up and seal the envelope.”
She hesitated.
“Your brother . . .” She licked her bottom lip, full as a drupe. Dear God. He couldn’t look at her mouth without comparing it to a damned fruit. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
He could have hired a male amanuensis, a former parliamentary shorthand writer, twenty years his senior. A man who jotted down 150 words per minute with one hand and churned out fair-copy transcripts with the other. Thin-lipped. Bald as an egg. The sort who never made an error, or asked a question, or fell into his arms.
This was his doing. Entirely.
“He doesn’t own the things in Umfreville House?” Miss Finch leaned her forearms on the mahogany slope of the lap desk, which he used on his worst days, in bed.
He gave a small shrug, shaking off the thought of her in his bed, flushed and tousled. He’d know, then, if her lips tasted like plums or berries, or perhaps peaches.
He spoke in a roughened voice. “He owns the things he’s bought with his wife’s money.” He extended his legs again and propped his boots on the footstool. He tried for a smoother tone. “The ancestral portraits, however, are mine. And the heraldic tapestries. The storied davenports. That majolica ewer, the one Geoff dashed to pieces. You might have noticed the fragments.”
“Dunno.” She shot him a frank look. “There were rather a lot of fragments.”
He scoffed. “Not all fragments were created equal. That ewer was fabricated in a maestro’s workshop during the Renaissance.” He glanced at the letter in her hand. “I might have you add a postscript to my letter. Geoff owes me compensation.”
“But he is the duke.” Her brow knotted. “Shouldn’t he own the ancestral everything? And you—you should be an army captain.”
“Do you admire men in uniform?”
She rolled her eyes. “The jackets are smarter than the men, usually.”
He laughed. Another thing about Miss Finch. In her presence, he kept forgetting their formal arrangement, a convenient oversight that allowed him to indulge their pleasant rapport. He didn’t draw hard distinctions between employees and friends, but he did make sure he remembered that he held power over people he paid.
He would not take this flirtation too far.
“So you were never in the army?” she asked.
“I hate to disappoint.” He poured himself more cognac. “But I’m a consummate civilian. And I inherited everything, anything that wasn’t strictly settled on the heir.”
“The account you mention in the letter. Why does he control it?”
Signorina Bonaccorso was still singing, more softly now. Miss Finch sat very close. He could smell the scent diffusing from her hair, roses, and he could smell citrus as well, diffusing no doubt from the fresh oranges crammed in her purse.
His hand tightened around the glass of cognac. “Perhaps you’d like to manage my finances as well as my correspondence?”
“I should manage my mouth.” She slumped, a full-body cringe. “It’s not my business. Forget I asked.”
“No, it was a reasonable question.” He drew a breath through his nose. “I descend from a long line of notorious bankrupts. Their debts never kept them from gambling, or collecting silver, or adding wings onto the manor homes. My grandfather broke the entail and sold off the castle in Ireland, the Scottish hunting lodge, the house in Somerset . . .”
Miss Finch’s round eyes had grown even rounder. He decided to skip the rest.
“In short, he repaired the family fortune, somewhat, but my father and . . .” His voice caught in his throat. “Mother spent it freely.” On, among other things, his treatments, his stays in private sanatoriums, the residence at Bournemouth, where he was meant to fade out of existence.
“I was nineteen when my mother died,” he said evenly. “My father died a year later. I inherited enough real property to invest substantially in ventures that have continued to prove profitable. While my beleaguered brother drowned in debt. So, I, loyally, signed over those investments, as a lifeline.” His lips curved into a humorless smile. “But shortly thereafter he took his own steps to secure the dukedom. He married an heiress, Fanny Smith. As you know, they lived happily ever after.”
She gazed down at the letter, straightening it so the corners of the paper lined up with the corners of the desk.
He continued slowly. “Over the years, our dealings have been friendlier than the other day might lead you to assume. At the very least, we’ve stayed out of each other’s way. I never threatened to sell his rugs out from under him, and he deposited income into my account each month. That is, until this week, when he closed the account altogether. He hopes to influence what I write. No more insulting his friends.” Now he bared his teeth. “My good word isn’t for sale.”
Claud’s face popped into his mind. Geoff knew exactly how to tip the balance in his favor.
