“What is this?”

“Peppermint with a dash of feverfew. You have to hold the cup in your hands while it steeps if the remedy is to be most effective.”

Rex complied rather than earn yet another scold. The warmth comforted, the scent soothed. “I had a meeting at the bank today.”

Mrs. Hatfield closed the account book on the blotter. “Banks and meetings, meetings and banks. I loathe meetings. While everybody is gathered around listening to their superiors bleat about some procedure they’ve concocted without consulting the underlings, nobody is doing the work that keeps the bank in business. Better to send around a decree—the managers and partners do as they jolly well please most of the time anyway—and leave the clerks to their labors.”

Well, yes. Rex had made the same point more than once. “An account was closed last week amid some irregularity.”

She took the seat beside him rather than resume her place at the helm of the HMS Accurate Ledgers. “I was afraid of that.”

Not good, when Mrs. Eleanora Hatfield predicted trouble. “Tell me the rest of it, madam.”

“If your personal books are vulnerable, then it stands to reason that your commercial establishments will also be victimized. In all likelihood, schemes set up several dukes ago are still bearing fruit, and as each generation of factors and stewards sees what the one before got away with, they add a new layer of inventiveness to the means by which your dukedom is robbed.”

She emptied the pen tray of its contents and used it as a saucer for the strainer. “Have a taste.”

“It’s too hot.”

“It’s meant to be hot.”

Rex liked arguing with her. That realization dropped into his mind amid the miseries of the day with the unexpected beauty of a late-blooming rose dusted with the first snow of the season. He tried a sip of the drink, which was both calming and refreshing.

“Dorset and Becker does business with many old and respected families,” he said. “That’s another way of admitting that some of our customers are a bit eccentric.”

“Go on.”

“Mr. Purcell Butterfield is elderly, reclusive, and very particular about his accounts. His transactions are usually handled by mail. He used to send us banknotes torn in half. One half delivered one week, the other the following week, the better to reduce the chances of a mishap with the mails.”

“Many a poor family does likewise when resorting to the post. Drink your tisane.”

Rex also liked when Mrs. Hatfield fussed at him in the usual female manner. “Mr. Butterfield came into the bank last week and closed one of his accounts in person.” Rex would have set the mug on the desk, but Mrs. Hatfield passed it back to him.