The apartment doors in Lord Stephen’s building were equipped with spy-holes. The opening was covered with a pear-shaped metal flap on the apartment side, so that the occupant could peer into the corridor, but not conversely.

“I recognize your voice,” Ellie said, opening the door. “Come in, my lord.”

Stephen Wentworth made Ellie uneasy, and she suspected he liked it that way. She liked making everybody at the bank uneasy, after all. He wheeled his Bath chair through the door and over to the fireplace.

“Are you religiously opposed to heating your dwelling?” he asked. “I understand Laplanders thrive in caves of ice, but I had taken you for an Englishwoman.”

“I am an Englishwoman, meaning I conserve coal.”

Without rising from his wheeled chair, his lordship pushed the fire screen aside, dumped half a bucket of coal onto the flames, and poked it about so the blaze doubled in size.

“I’m considering installing a furnace,” he said. “The difficulty is controlling the dissipation of the heat. If the fire in the basement is roaring and you take a notion to freeze, then you close your vents, and the fire stops drawing. When I want my rooms as toasty as the tropics, you will have all but put out my fire. The design wants further study. I could maintain the furnace exclusively for my own use or create a separate furnace for each apartment.” He shoved the screen back against the hearth. “Have you been crying?”

Lord Stephen was not a bank employee or a duke to be put in his place with a firm none of your business. He was neither and a little of both.

“Women do,” Ellie said. “Men do as well.”

“If you are crying because your female humors are in an uproar, I know better than to offer any comment, lest even my blighted existence be brought to a period. If you are crying because Elsmore misbehaved, I will hold him accountable.”

Lord Stephen maneuvered his Bath chair like a charioteer in battle. He was nimble and decisive in his navigations, and they took him to the window box.

“He plied you with wine.” His lordship held up the last of the bottle of claret. “Not enough to get you drunk, assuming he drank a portion, but enough to make you tipsy.”

Ellie resumed her seat rather than stand higher than her visitor. “My lord, did you call for a particular purpose?”

“Yes and no.” He opened the bottle of wine, sniffed the cork, and then put it back. “I wanted to let you know that I’ll be making modifications to the lift next week. You might have to use the steps, so best do the big marketing on Monday. At least Elsmore plied you with a decent vintage.”