“You don’t summon me.”

The rain intensified, from a persistent drenching into one of London’s signature downpours.

“Fine then,” Ellie said. “I’ll conjure answers from my imagination when I don’t know what a pair of initials means. I’ll make a jolly guess at any questionable entries, and two weeks from now, you can assure yourself your estate has been thoroughly audited, when in fact, I’ve simply joined the endless procession of retainers—but not relations, for they would never pilfer from an itinerant family head with acumen as astute as yours—who take your money and provide less than you deserve for it.”

He had driven her to forgetting herself. Again. “Forgive me,” Ellie added. “I am weary and famished.”

Was he also hungry and tired?

“What I meant, madam, is that you cannot summon me and maintain the privacy necessary to your task. All of my correspondence is handled by the butler, who collects it at the door from whoever retrieved it from the posting inn. From the butler’s keeping, a footman takes it to my office, where either my personal secretary, my real estate secretary, or my commercial secretary will open it. If one secretary is out on an errand, the other two will open anything that seems urgent or worth gossiping about.”

Three secretaries handled his correspondence? That was not good at all.

“I can see you drawing more arrows, Mrs. Hatfield. Entire flights going skyward from my pockets.”

She wanted Elsmore out of the coach, but the horses had apparently forgotten how to trot. She wanted her bowl of soup—even plain porridge would do—and she wanted for Elsmore’s money to remain in his pockets until he chose to send it elsewhere.

“Do you have any idea where the practice of mapping money began?” she asked, even knowing her mouth was about to outstrip her better judgment.

“In your fertile imagination?”

“In the larcenous imaginations of successful embezzlers, Your Grace. The smart ones won’t begin the complicated, dangerous, and time-consuming crime of stealing from an enterprise until the entire financial vista is sketched in, complete with rivers of coin, mountains of cash, fields of neglect, and clouds of inattention. They start with the simple map, and they embellish with relevant details over time. They ease their scheme across the landscape like a changing season, subtle at first, but destructive of the previous order. Your canvas is an embezzler’s delight.”

Ellie was clutching at the ledgers in her lap too tightly, the better to deal with fatigue and exasperation. Her head had begun to ache, and finding something to eat had become imperative.

Now the horses lifted into a trot, which added jouncing and swaying to her discomfort.