Her handwriting was painfully neat, her attire painfully plain, and yet simple manners flustered her.

Rex remained by the chair to her left. “As a boy, I slurped up proper deportment with my morning porridge, and as a peer, I hold myself out as an example of British manhood at its most refined, at least when a lady is present. With you, I must tend to the silly rituals or I will lose my good standing in the Decorous Dukes club.”

That salvo earned him not even a hint of a smile. “You may sit.” She set her knife aside. “Sir.”

“Don’t pout,” he said, patting her wrist. “A man who insists on showing you common courtesies is not the worst fate that could befall you. Once you’ve concluded your little inquisition, our paths will hardly cross.” A pity, that. Eleanora Hatfield did not want to dance with him or learn his opinion regarding the weather. That alone made her a rarity among his female acquaintances.

She held the pencil, now dagger-sharp, poised over the paper. “I am loath to contradict my betters, but your path and mine will cross frequently,” she said. “Until I have solved the problems besetting your accounts, our paths will be one and the same.”

*  *  *

Ellie liked sitting at the head of the conference table. In the usual course, this allowed her to have a partner on either side of her, so they could all three peruse the same ledgers or documents.

With Elsmore, she wished he’d taken the head—most men would have—so she could sit at the foot.

He smelled not merely clean, but expensively clean and masculine. His shaving soap bore the scents of sandalwood and God knew what. Some exotic orchid that doubtless only bloomed under a blue moon in the deepest jungles of darkest South America. On a woman, the scent would be too heavy. On a man it faded to a reminder of morning ablutions and a promise of evening waltzes.

“Then there’s my little Ambledown,” Elsmore said. “I love that place. Anybody would.”

He’d been listing properties for the past thirty minutes, and the odd thing was, he knew them all as if he’d spent most of his life at each one. The sheep farms in Cumbria, the castle in Peebleshire, the hunting box on the edge of the New Forest, the modest estates he managed for his aunts and cousins.

“Who does the accounting for Ambledown?” Ellie asked.

“The housekeeper, and she sends me monthly reports. You’d get on well with her.”

Elsmore did this, tossed out casual lures that sparkled before Ellie like golden apples: Why would I get on well with her? He seemed to admire this housekeeper—he certainly trusted her—and he smiled when he spoke of her.