“Madam, we are not shoving you out the door.” His Grace adopted the wheedling, now-be-reasonable tone that made Ellie want to shut herself in the bank’s vault. When Walden spoke to her like that, his blue eyes all earnest innocence, her grandmother’s sage advice might as well have been instructions for the care and feeding of spotted unicorns.

“A few weeks,” the duke continued, “a month at most, and you’ll have His Grace of Elsmore’s situation put to rights. You glance at a set of books and see what’s amiss with them. Your powers of divination are legendary. For you to ferret out the problem with Elsmore’s family accounts—”

“Need I remind you, sir, that I am a bank auditor. I will have no truck with a ducal family’s ledgers.”

Walden sat back, a financial king comfortable in his padded leather throne. “You inspect my household books. You do the monthly reconciliations for Lord Stephen and other members of the Wentworth family.”

“You cannot help that you’ve become a duke,” Ellie shot back. “I’ve overlooked that sad development for the past six years, and I’m willing to continue to extend you my tolerance because you are a decent man, you pay honest wages, and your title was none of your doing.”

Her profession of loyalty had apparently sent her into some sort of verbal trap. A slight shift in His Grace’s expression, a hint of a smile in his eyes, foretold her doom.

“Elsmore cannot help his birthright either. Is our own Mrs. Hatfield, defender of balanced ledgers and retriever of lost pennies, really such a snob?”

Not a snob. Sensible. “When did we lose you?” Ellie retorted. “You were one of us, born to scrape out a living as best you could, fated to dread cold and consumption along with most of the rest of England. Now you ask a favor from me on behalf of one of them.”

The duke’s smile died aborning, replaced by the signature Quinn Wentworth glacial dignity.

“You lost me,” he said, “the moment I held my oldest child in my arms. Elizabeth will make her come-out someday, God willing, as will her sisters. Elsmore was the first peer to acknowledge my title, the first to leave his card. His mother and sisters call on my duchess. When my Bitty makes her bow, she’ll have her pick of the bachelors, in part because several years ago, Elsmore opened doors for the Wentworth family.”

That recitation sealed Ellie’s fate.

If His Grace considered himself indebted to the Duke of Elsmore, then Ellie’s job was forfeit should she refuse this assignment. Quinn Wentworth was loyal to his employees, but he was fanatically devoted to family.