“How is your duke’s wealth different from what you see every day at the bank?” The duchess poured another cup of chocolate, and as good as the first cup was, Ellie always preferred the second. The chocolate was so rich as to approach bitterness, and nothing complemented that richness as well as warm, buttery shortbread.

“He’s not my duke.”

The duchess made an elegant picture with her delicate china, engraved silver, and expensive attire, but the look she gave Ellie over the tray was plain enough to decipher.

“You have speculated, Eleanora. We all start off by speculating. It’s harmless, though I don’t advise anything more than speculation where handsome, hot-headed, half-pay officers are concerned.”

Her Grace’s first husband had fit that description.

“The duke in question is simply a variety of ledger book I haven’t come across before. He’s more complicated, more complex. His Grace of Walden belongs with you. If he sold off his shares in the bank, donated all of his properties to charity, and set up shop as a blacksmith, he would still be every bit as much yours as he is now. With this other duke…”

The duchess sat back, stroking a hand over the head of the dog sitting by her chair. “A duke is not a favorite reticule, Eleanora, or a new bonnet. He’s a flesh and blood man with hopes and fears and needs the same as any cobbler or yeoman.”

Eleanora could speak the language of numbers at a great rate, but expressing unfamiliar sentiments took significant thought.

“I meant he belonged with you, like the rich chocolate goes with the marvelous shortbread. Like a good claret and perfectly cooked beef. Why are my analogies all about food? I meant that you and Walden belong with each other—forever, not simply for as long as he’s the duke of this or that. I did not mean that you own each other.”

The duchess studied Ellie over the rim of a fine porcelain teacup, looking at her the same way Ellie regarded a ledger kept in a crabbed hand. The numbers might be accurate, or they might be all widdershins. Only careful study and determination would reveal which.

Ellie tried again. “I cannot see this other, complicated duke ever belonging with anybody the way he belongs with all those estates, accounts, ventures, and cousins. He is titled, but it feels to me as if his estates and relatives and siblings have title to him, not the other way ’round. You and Walden belong with each other, come what may, forever and ever, amen. The rest is mere trappings to you both.”

“What a burden it must be,” the duchess said, “to have such an observant mind. You cannot help yourself, you take note of everything and everybody around you. You describe my relationship with His Grace better than I could myself.”