The dog rose from the hearthrug and pressed against the side of Rex’s leg. The weight was comforting, an anchor against a reeling sense of betrayal.

“The fancy gent is my heir apparent,” Rex said. “The fancy gent trolling for the next Mr. Butterfield is my cousin James. My friend, the closest thing I have to a brother.”

“Enterprising fellow,” Jack said, spoon scraping the last of the soup from the crock. “Give him that, but stupid.”

“Greedy,” Eleanora said. “The greedy ones eventually get caught. Now that you know where the problem is, nobody need break into any banks.” Her smile was overly bright and false.

“Now that I know at least one of the cheaters,” Rex replied, “I have more need than ever for a look around the premises after hours before anybody has reason to get nervous.”

Eleanora’s smile disappeared. “You are not putting my cousin at risk, Your Grace. Once the authorities get hold of someone, no amount of consequence can overcome the corruption of the thief-takers, magistrates, and beadles. There is no justice for one such as Jack, and even you can’t change that.”

Eleanora’s gaze promised slow death to any duke who’d gainsay her. She’d find a way to destroy him if any harm came to Jack, and make charges of embezzlement a mere nuisance by comparison. With the backing of the Duke of Walden, Lord Stephen, and Wentworth and Penrose as an institution—to say nothing of Walden’s duchess—she could do it.

“I’ll be careful,” Jack said, picking up his bowl and slurping the soup directly from it. “I’m always careful, Ellie. You know that.”

“Careful isn’t good enough,” Eleanora snapped. “Careful never earned a man a pardon or a commutation. Jack Naylor, I will disown you and tell the rest of the family to do likewise if you attempt this foolish errand.”

Rex shoved aside his fury at dear cousin James—who dressed to the nines, worked when he pleased to, and stole from widows—to focus on the argument between Eleanora and her cousin.

“I’ve been disowned before,” Jack said, setting aside the empty bowl. “Don’t much care for it, but I’m surviving. If His Grace pays me to sneak about the bank after hours, then he’ll have to give me an honest job, won’t he? I’ll know his secrets, and he’ll want me to keep them to myself.”

“You cannot blackmail your way into an honest job,” Eleanora retorted. “And you aren’t breaking into any bank if I can help it.”

This argument was not about an evening of peering in dark corners at Dorset and Becker, though Rex wasn’t sure what the true issue was.

“Eleanora is correct, Naylor. You cannot blackmail your way into an honest job, but neither will you know any dirty little secrets if the evening goes as planned.”