When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,31
leaned forward to free the shawl hanging on the chair, took a sniff of the bunched-up wool, and then wrapped it about himself.
“Damned window gives off a chill.”
“You could sit closer to the fire.” Matilda loved to sit by the fire, candles gathered near, while reading Mr. Wentworth’s discourse on some exotic city. He had a knack for noticing details—how the ducks in Austria quacked versus the ducks in Hyde Park—that charmed her more than Lord Stephen’s smiles and wordplay ever would.
“If I sat closer to the fire, I would be in your way, and if there’s one aspect of domestic life that I cannot abide, it’s a fussing female.”
Matilda paged through the treatise that covered the scenic and tedious journey from Venice to Vienna. Mr. Wentworth had a tendency to leave correspondence between the pages of his treatises, as well as receipts, scrawled notes, and other mementos of his travels.
“I quite agree,” she said. “A fussing female is far more irksome than a fussing male. The fussing male usually only fusses—noise, grumbling, harrumphing, and the like. The fussing female is often engaged in a task while she fusses. The compounded annoyance, of fussing and activity, can drive one to Bedlam.”
Matilda had yet to find a love letter stashed between the leaves of Mr. Wentworth’s journals. His would be short and to the point: Please be advised that the author of this epistle holds the receiver thereof in high regard. W.
“What have you there?” he asked, rising.
“The journey from Venice to Vienna, where Lord Stephen learned from the wagon master how to curse in German.”
“It’s more accurate to say Lord Stephen taught the wagon master to curse in English. I took some editorial license for the benefit of my English audience.”
He truly did see these journals as one day being published, but apparently hadn’t done anything to achieve that objective, which was a loss for the reading public.
“When I’m through with the south of France, I’ll start your Italian essays.” If I’m still here.
Mr. Wentworth peered over Matilda’s shoulder. He was tall enough to do that, which should have made her nervous, though it did exactly the opposite. Matilda was less nervous when he was on hand and accomplished more on the days when he didn’t ride out. Her food settled more easily when she took her meals with him, and she’d learned to distinguish his footfalls on the carpets and stairs from everybody else’s.
“I’ll put Vienna up here,” he said, taking the treatise and reaching above her head. “The German capitals being of less interest than the Italian. Italy is cheaper, and to most traveling abroad, that matters.”
“How goes the war with the ledger books?” she asked.
Matilda could sidle along the bookshelves and put distance between herself and Mr. Wentworth, and a week ago she might have. Now, she wanted to re-tie his cravat, for either he or his manservant had left the knot off center.
“Stephen has a head for figures,” Mr. Wentworth said, gathering his shawl. “I am competent with numbers, but I don’t enjoy them. More to the point, I know exactly what the finances will reveal. In the usual fashion, my steward has over-procured everything from fence posts to harness leather. Mr. Trostle sells the excess for cash to the smallholders, who know they’re getting a better price than the sawmill or tanner will give them.
“The steward then claims the inventory has been used on the Brightwell estate,” he went on, “which assertion is impossible to contradict. My dairyman sells a dozen weanlings and records only eighty percent of the revenue realized, and so on and so forth.”
Schemes such as these were so prevalent as to be regarded by some as a perquisite of senior employment in a large English household. The lines of integrity were blurred by custom: Housekeepers were often entitled to the unburnt ends of wax candles, butlers to the empty wine bottles. Housekeepers were thus tempted to change candles more frequently than necessary, while butlers opened more bottles of wine than were needed to accommodate a meal. The excess was consumed belowstairs rather than allowed to go to waste, and life went on.
If the land steward was that obvious about his graft, though, then Mr. Wentworth needed to put a petty king in check.
“Make an example,” Matilda said. “Drop by the lumberyard where the fence posts were purchased, ask the merchant for his version of the transaction. Do the same with the tanner, and then confront your steward before witnesses—Lord Stephen and