Meaning the fraud was happening elsewhere, probably on the properties Rex was most likely to choose as his sisters’ dower portions.

Splendid. “The same person would have to be overseeing many accounts for this rounding business to be lucrative.”

“A bank manager can supervise five hundred minor commercial accounts, if he’s conscientious and has good clerks. If compound rounding nets him a penny a week per account, that’s more than two pounds per week total, or a hundred pounds a year. Run the rig over a thousand accounts, and you can begin to live on the proceeds of your rig while investing your wages. Over ten thousand accounts—”

“And the customers would never notice.”

“Nor would most supervisors, managers, or directors. How many times have you seen a minor discrepancy, then shrugged and attributed it to rounding?”

Many times. Too many times. “You are giving me dyspepsia.”

“Perhaps it’s the movement of the coach, though I have never traveled this comfortably before.”

The coach was well-sprung and luxuriously upholstered, true enough. “You’re no longer cold?”

Nor was she making any pretense of keeping a distance between them. As Town gave way to winter-bleak fields, shaggy cattle, and wooly sheep, Mrs. Hatfield gradually listed against Rex’s left side.

She prattled on about some mercer’s counting house, where the clerks had all been told to round down by the manager overseeing the accounts, until the manager had absconded with hundreds of pounds.

When Mrs. Hatfield concluded that cheering recitation she fell silent, her breathing slowed, and she became a warm, comfortable weight against Rex’s side.

“I begin to fear that my finances are not suffering as a result of haphazard practices or the occasional blunder,” Rex said, “but rather, as a town suffers under siege. The stores gradually diminish, morale erodes, betrayal from within becomes more and more likely.”

For once, Rex got no argument from his auditor. She was snoring softly, her head on his shoulder, her hand casually resting on his thigh.

“Mrs. Hatfield?”

Nothing.

“Eleanora?”

A soft sigh.

Rex curled an arm around her lest she be bounced off the seat by some disobliging rut. She knew every clever device for stealing coin from a legitimate enterprise, but he would not have predicted that she also had the knack of sleeping in a moving vehicle.

“I’ve worn you out,” he murmured.

The miles rolled by, Eleanora slept, and Rex contemplated why it should be that the farther they trotted from London, the more peaceful and content he became, and the more pleased to be traveling to Ambledown with her.

*  *  *