“Isn’t it in the nature of an eccentric,” he said, “to believe themselves the pattern card of normality? One of my aunts collects shoes. She goes on and on about them, and no matter how often the subject is changed, she brings the conversation back to shoes as if no other topic merits discussion.”

“You dare not refer to our Mrs. Hatfield as eccentric,” Penrose said, looking about as if checking for eavesdroppers. “She will reciprocate with her own opinion regarding you, the king, the Corn Laws, and half the bills pending in Parliament.”

“You are protective of your auditor,” Rex said. “You needn’t be. I respect ability wherever I find it.” Then too, beggars could not be choosers, especially not ducal beggars.

They came to another intersection and Rex flipped the crossing sweeper a coin. “How’s business, Leonidas?”

The boy caught the vale in a grimy paw. “Right stinky, Your Grace, thank you very much.”

“Glad to hear it. Try calling your enterprise odoriferous instead. You’ll sound like a duke.”

“Odor-ripper-us,” Leonidas replied, grinning.

“Almost. Odor-if-or-us.”

“Odoriferous. My enterprise is odoriferous and that means my job stinks. Thankee, Your Grace.”

Penrose made a sound that might have been distress and cut across the street the instant a coach and four had rattled past.

“Enterprise and enterprising were last week’s words,” Rex said. “He likes big words, and I like to cross the street without stepping in horse droppings. A fair exchange.”

That observation spiked Penrose’s guns for about six paces, then, like the stalwart financier he was, he regained his verbal footing, more’s the pity.

“Regarding Mrs. Hatfield,” he said. “What she has, Your Grace, goes beyond ability. She was one of our first customers, because she had known His Grace of Walden previously. His reputation for fair dealing preceded him, which is why, when her statement arrived with a mistake amounting to tuppence, she demanded to see the bank partners. She looked about at the clerks, pointed a finger at one of our most promising lads, and accused him of failing to focus on his duties.”

“Imagine that, a bank ledger failing to hold a fellow’s attention.” Rex knew of no stronger soporific than column after column of figures. He’d inherited the Dorset and Becker Savings and Trust at the age of twenty-one, a singular irony when a man had little aptitude for bookkeeping and inadequate time to tend to his own finances.

“Mrs. Hatfield looked at a dozen young fellows,” Penrose went on, “all dressed about the same, and picked out the one who’d made a minor error. When we went back through his work—at her insistence—he’d made two other mistakes, one for eight pounds. His calculations were usually so accurate that the man assigned to verify them hadn’t paid adequate attention either.”