Confusion stole over Jane’s face. “Not particularly—a situation I, too, find odd given the nature of this party. None of the other girls can claim any more attention than I, which is why Lady Emily is in such a foul temper. In fact, the only person it seems he’s singled out in any way is”—an expression befitting a much more experienced society miss gleamed in Lady Jane’s eyes—“you.”
Liliana flushed, dropping her gaze to the cobbled path at their feet. She ran a slippered toe along the crevices of the stone and managed a wry laugh. “Stratford feels nothing more for me than an intense relief that after next week, we shall never see each other again.” The ball that had been in her throat moved down to her stomach, turning it suddenly sour.
Lady Jane laughed and the moment passed, but Liliana’s feeling of sickness lingered. She took a deep breath.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve decided I do want that pair of gloves I saw in the last shop after all,” Liliana said, bowing her head before sidestepping the girl.
“Shall I come with you?” Jane asked.
Liliana waved a hand behind her. “No, thank you. I’ll only be a moment. Join the others and I’ll meet you all at the tea shop soon enough.”
She didn’t look to see if Jane followed, only strode down the street with brisk steps. She welcomed the bracing breeze on her hot face. Her feelings regarding Geoffrey were becoming more and more of a muddle. The foolish emotions that had overcome her while talking to Lady Jane proved that.
The sooner she got this puzzle solved and left Somerton Park and Geoffrey behind her, the better. She hoped her next stop would finally provide her with some answers.
Geoffrey was finally getting some answers, much as he didn’t want to hear them.
“Someone’s been systematically siphoning money from my family for at least ten years?” Geoffrey shoved a hand through his hair, which was a more civilized alternative to slamming his fist into the desk, as he really wished to do. Damn it all. He’d tasked his man of affairs with poring through the estate accounts in hopes of disproving that his brother had been being extorted. Not the other way around.
Clive Bartlesby—another ex-soldier and trusted friend Geoffrey had taken on—flattened his lips, his eyes crinkling as his head moved in something between a nod and a shake. “It seems so, sir.”
“Henry, what did you do?” Geoffrey muttered aloud, as if his dead brother could hear.
“Do you think it could have something to do with that letter you asked me to look into?” Bartlesby asked. “That your brother may have been paying the blackmailer all these years, and now that he’d dead, the bloke’s trying to collect from you?”
“I’m not sure.” Henry had been a profligate, utterly and shamelessly dissolute. A wastrel of the first order. And yet…“As earl, Henry would have had control over the money. He wouldn’t have had to steal from himself to hush anything up. You and I both know he spent indiscriminately,” Geoffrey said, referring to the past months he and Bartlesby had labored to clean up his brother’s financial messes.
“Unless he didn’t want anyone else in your family to find out what he was paying for.”
Geoffrey ran his fingers down the row of columns again, tapping at one entry in particular. He then flipped the pages back and repeated the motion, one page after another after another. Not so close as to be immediately noticeable, but when taken together…
“Bloody hell.”
“Exactly. And it’s not just in the rents.” Bartlesby grabbed another book, flipping it open. “See here, in the records of annual wool sales from your northern estate. The price received from each buyer, while never exact, is fairly consistent. Yet right here, the income is recorded as approximately two hundred pounds less than usual. I checked with this particular buyer, and he insists he paid the same as the others.” He looked up at Geoffrey, his face cringing slightly, as if Geoffrey were a lord of old and he the poor messenger about to get his head lopped off for bearing bad news.
Geoffrey let out a long breath. “It’s the same with produce, grain, household accounts and so on. But there’s no pattern to it. Taken so sporadically over all of my family’s vast properties, it’s no wonder none of my stewards caught on.” He walked to the shelf behind him, grabbed a glass and decanter and poured a drink—to hell with the fact that it was barely ten in the morning. His back, already stiff from his morning ride, tightened further, as it often did during times of stress. He offered a snifter to Bartlesby, but the man declined.
“Yet, I’m hard-pressed to figure how it was done,” Geoffrey said. He placed his finger on a column, pointing to one of the suspect entries. “Look at this. There’s nothing to differentiate it from the entry above or below it, aside from the number. Nothing crossed out, no change in handwriting even. Nothing to indicate at a glance there’s aught amiss.”
He pulled out a register from the estate in Northumberland, then another from here at Somerton Park and yet another from his estate on the coast. “Each of these books is kept by a different steward, yet the same problem exists.”
Bartlesby remained silent, standing with his hands behind his back.
“Yet you say this has been going on clear back to a couple of years after my father’s death?”
Bartlesby nodded.
Damn. “Several of those estates have had more than one steward over the years. We’ll need to track down each man and interview him.”
Geoffrey closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. His day had started out so well. He’d returned from his morning with Liliana refreshed, rejuvenated and more than a bit aroused by her—not only physically, though there was indeed that, but intellectually. Deeply. Curiously.
But when he’d arrived back at the manor, he’d been informed that Bartlesby had arrived from London and awaited him in his study. Geoffrey opened his eyes and looked at his man of affairs. “I’ve seen no out-of-place entries since my brother’s death. Have you?”
Bartlesby shook his head. “Not one.” The man looked road weary and exhausted.
“Go. Get yourself a meal and have Barnes settle you belowstairs. After you’ve rested, there will be plenty of time to put our heads together and sort this new development.”
“Thank you, sir.” The man nodded and left the room.
Geoffrey resumed his seat and picked up the account books. The first suspect entry he’d noted was in the fall of 1805. He grabbed a fresh quill and vellum and began tallying his figures with the ones Bartlesby had uncovered. The amounts were small, almost unnoticeable at first, growing ever larger like cresting waves as the years went on. When he reached the last book and scratched the final mark, the number astounded him.
Energy prowled through his limbs, bringing him to his feet. His instinct was to leave today, to visit each of his four estates and interview every last steward who had ever worked for the house of Stratford. He supposed he could send Bartleby in his stead, but that had never been Geoffrey’s style. He wanted to get to the bottom of this right now, himself.
Instead, he refilled his drink. He couldn’t leave Somerton Park now, not when influential men like the Earls of Northumb and Manchester and others would be arriving in two days. He may be new to Parliament, but Geoffrey understood that much political maneuvering was done outside of London, over drinks and friendly games of billiards in country homes much like his. He needed to win support for the Poor Employment Act, and if he could get Manchester and especially Northumb behind it, the bill would certainly pass.