“That scenario would have been a romp, compared to what Grandfather endured. Bear in mind that the Corsican made travel on the Continent perilous, especially for an Englishman with a family. The earl blackened Jacob Naylor’s name, making it obvious that no scoundrel ever deserved hanging more than Naylor had, and only exceptional honor—and concern for Naylor’s children—stayed the earl’s hand. He told all and sundry that as a well-educated gentleman, he should have known the paintings Naylor found for him were forgeries, and his lordship’s humility—his admission of fault—made that Banbury tale convincing.”

“Did you ever meet this earl?”

“I saw him, but a painter’s young granddaughter is not introduced to a peer.”

“How did your family survive?”

“You know the answer to that: We survived any way we could. Grandfather did penny sketches in the pubs. His sons and daughters did anything to bring in a little coin. One aunt became a courtesan of some renown, and that wasn’t the worst heartbreak my grandparents had to endure.”

“Do you believe I would not marry you just because your aunt became a courtesan before I was even sent off to public school?”

The cat leapt into Ellie’s lap and began circling. “You would not marry a courtesan’s niece and a disgraced painter’s granddaughter. You cannot. You have too much regard for your sisters, for your family, and your bank. Had I only a single wayward aunt, that would be one thing, but a wayward aunt, a forger for a grandfather…I am the last person you can marry.”

To say nothing of Mr. Butterfield, and, and, and…

The cat settled in just as a knock on the door had the dog looking up.

“Food,” Elsmore said, going to the door. “I am famished. I worked through lunch and did not do justice to my supper. Half the bank came by to gawk at me this afternoon, my sleeves rolled up, ledgers all around me. I don’t know whether they were amused or horrified to see a duke wielding an abacus.”

Ellie was enchanted with the image his words conjured. She’d seen both the Duke of Walden and Mr. Joshua Penrose immersed in such tasks often, and to her, their attention to detail, their conscientious accounting, was the epitome of masculine appeal.

The dog rose, perhaps inspired by the scent of food.

“I told Wentworth to procure a bone for your wolf,” Elsmore said. “Scraps of fish for the tiger. Shall we eat in the other room?”

Not the bedroom, please merciful angels, not the bedroom. “At the desk,” Ellie said, “and then you must be going.”

“So you can move to France, covered in the shame of a scandal that had nothing to do with you and was forgotten before you were born?”