Quinn mashed melted butter into his potato, then took a sip of his wine. “If that’s what makes the lady happy, then we wish her the best and hire a replacement.”

“You won’t find her like again, Quinn. She takes apart ledgers like I take apart clocks. And you said Elsmore is cleaning up his accounts in anticipation of offering for a duchess. Where will Eleanora be when Elsmore ruins her good name, interferes with her livelihood, and then goes prancing on his way with a new duchess? Does that sound to you like a recipe for happiness? No other bank will hire a disgraced female as an auditor, and we owe that woman much more than her wages reflect.”

“Have some more wine.”

“I don’t care for port. I don’t care for the Duke of Elsmore, and right now, I don’t care very much for the Duke of Walden, either.” Wentworths were honest with each other, though the intensity of Stephen’s sentiments came as something of a surprise even to himself.

“Are you in love with our auditor, Stephen?”

Oh, perhaps. Stephen did still fall in love, but he’d learned to watch his own periodic descents into infatuation with a sort of fatalistic amusement. His passions eventually passed, nobody the wiser, and he went back to designing cannon and dismantling watches.

“I am in love with anybody who defends the integrity of your bank, Quinn. You and Penrose opened for business with nothing more than audacity and ambition to your names. Eleanora Hatfield spared you from even a hint of scandal, sorted the honest clerks from the dishonest, and is the reason you have the cleanest books in London. She was instrumental in setting your dukedom to rights, but she’s only human. If Elsmore waltzes into her bedroom and anybody gets wind of that, the blot on her escutcheon can’t be repaired with a monthly reconciliation.”

“Stephen, she is an adult. She is free to conduct her private life as she sees fit.”

Was that Jane talking, or Quinn? Something about the way Quinn studied his wineglass wasn’t characteristic of his usual forthright manner.

“You are unwilling to remind Elsmore of his manners,” Stephen said, “because you don’t want to offend a bloody duke. You have become a moral invertebrate like the rest of the bedamned peerage.”

“That is quite enough, Stephen. Perhaps I don’t want to offend Eleanora. She toils away at the bank year after year. If she takes leave, it’s only to attend a sister in childbed. Should she decide to sample Elsmore’s charms, that is her affair.”

“And when the gossips and tattlers spread word that His Grace of E has been seen with a new fancy piece on his arm? What then?”

“Stephen, you grow tiresome. Will you have some trifle, or must I finish my meal alone?”