She’d reduced herself to lurking.
Worse still, as she slowly walked along the shelves, she realized her library project was neither as useful nor as necessary as she’d thought the day before. Then, she’d focused her efforts on the end of the library closest to the entry hall, assuming the whole library was equally disorganized.
On this end—she ran her gaze over the gilded print on the leather spines as she moved—the organization made sense. Atlases preceded travelogues; travelogues, History; History, Biography. Biography, philosophy. So why had the opposite end been so haphazard?
Plays, poetry, drama, agricultural instruction, etiquette guides, and dictionaries had all been jumbled together. She placed her hands on her hips and frowned.
Nothing made sense in this house, especially the house’s master.
Yesterday, she’d believed they had made some sort of progress.Now, she wondered if the “progress” she’d perceived had been nothing more than a reversal. When they’d been “courting,” he’d been polite, even gentlemanly, too.
Last night, he’d called them allies. This morning, he excluded her from his meeting with “their” steward. But perhaps, as before, he’d never truly meant to include her in his life.
Well.
She would insist on being included. Her first impulse had been the right impulse.
Whether or not she ruffled feathers, she was finished trying to figure out how everyone else expected her to act. Indecision and uncertainty were getting her nowhere. She had to confront the chaos at the source and on her own terms.
She headed back toward her husband’s study.
She’d be disturbing the duke, whether the disturbance pleased him or not.
*
“…So, you see,Your Grace, crop yields are up.”
Harbury frowned, squinting down at the ledger’s columns of numbers…some neat, some in a hand he hardly recognized as Anderson’s. Though he struggled to discern several more recent entries, everything appeared to be in order.
He’d no reason to question his steward’s assertion.
So why did Anderson’s ‘Your Grace’ grate on his nerves?
Was he annoyed because the man had always called his father Harbury? Or had the anonymous letter planted insidious seeds of suspicion?
He placed his finger on the column, following a line, first horizontally, then vertically. “Prices, however, are down.”
“Yes,” Anderson replied, his voice flat. “Only to be expected. Yearsof war falsely inflated them. With the resumption of trade with France—”
“I understand,” he interrupted testily, “the implications of trade. I may not be as well-versed in the minutiae of agricultural economics as my father was, but I assure you, I understand the relationship between supply and price.”
“Just so.”
Harbury glanced up.Bad form. Now he’d let the suspicion goad him into showing the old retainer hostility. He softened his voice. “The tenants who bring in the greatest income are Grayson, Bottlesworth, and Townsend. Correct?”
Anderson blinked. “The rents, you see, are fully documented by tract.”
Not an answer.
And not the first time this morning, Anderson had hedged.
Harbury leaned back in his chair, pressing his forefinger to his bottom lip. He hadn’t realized just how much trust he’d placed in Anderson before.
He’d dutifully reviewed and replied to every letter and statement his steward had sent him, but he’d left most decisions to the man’s discretion.
Perhaps he ought to pay a little closer attention.
He’d like some time to go over these numbers. And he wanted to take that time without the steward hovering over his shoulder.
