Ellie shared a smile with Elsmore, which felt both silly and frivolous, also slightly dangerous. She smiled at the bank’s messenger boys, but never at the clerks, tellers, managers, partners, or directors. For Jack, she mostly attempted expressions of indifference, though they often eluded her.

Traffic in the early evening was horrendous, and thus the coach moved at the barest crawl. The rain drummed on the roof while Ellie explained what her first review of the Ambledown books had revealed.

“You make many of the entries yourself,” she said. “You are on the premises frequently enough to note whether what you see in the books matches what you experience when you dwell there.”

“I’m in London more often,” Elsmore countered, his smile nowhere in evidence.

“The London household is much larger, and I daresay you are distracted from its functioning most of the time. At Ambledown, how do you spend your days?”

He took off his top hat and set it atop the pile of ledgers on the seat beside him. “I ride out in the mornings and visit with tenants if the weather’s fine. I call on my neighbors, I work in the library or the conservatory—the conservatory is warm and has excellent light. I frequently walk the home farm and the home wood. I attend services with the neighbors. At Ambledown, I sleep well, probably a result of greater physical activity and cleaner air.”

“You see? You ride your acres personally, you occupy the public rooms, you don’t reserve them for company. You take all of your meals at the manor rather than breakfast, lunch, and dinner at your clubs or among your social acquaintances. You live at Ambledown while you’re there, you don’t squat.”

Elsmore lowered the lamps on either side of the coach. “I come to life at Ambledown. I can think there, I can go for three consecutive days without dressing for damned dinner. I know the domestics by name, and the menus are the plain fare I prefer, not six removes of French ridiculousness drowning in overly rich sauces.”

And yet, he’d offered to transfer the estate to her? “We all need a safe place, a place where we can be ourselves. I’m glad you have Ambledown.” She was even gladder that of the entire tangle of ledgers, wage books, and tallies, Ambledown’s accounts had been honestly kept.

“How long have you lived in London?” Elsmore asked.

Well, yes. Small talk was safer than unintended confidences, and Ellie had long since settled on an answer to this question. A quarter hour of chit-chat and she’d be in her slippers before the fire, no dukes in sight.