Chapter 12
ALEX
Basil pushes his glasses higher on his nose. “The current decade is a much bigger mess than the previous one.”
“Understatement,” I say.
My accountant is back at Fort Vauclairt this morning, and we’ve resumed our audit of Geoffroy’s books.
We’re working from the old study overlooking the west terrace.
A faint smell of wax and old paper clings to the air.
The dusty ledgers sprawled before us look too old for their actual age, as if being botched and abandoned wears them down prematurely.
I flip another page and frown. “Were these done by a human or a ferret?”
“The estate manager himself, I am told,” Basil replies.
My frown deepens. “Does he have a drinking problem?”
“Not that I know of.”
Eric Latour has a sleazy, shifty quality about him that made my antennas twitch the moment we were introduced. I knew I didn’t like him, despite all his brownnosing, and I’m pleased my instincts were spot-on.
The numbers are inconsistent. Line items half labeled. Not even a whisper of reconciliation between expenses and income. If a first-year student in the economics class I used to teach handed in something like this, I’d give them a big fat F.
Basil gestures toward a margin. “That one says ‘miscellaneous stable expenses’ but the amount is—”
“—twenty-five thousand in one quarter,” I finish. “Did the horses develop a cocaine habit?”
Basil snorts. “We’re not in that part of Europe.”
“I’m not laughing.”
I flip through the ledger in my hands. Heating, repairs, taxes, Millie’s 500K-a-year treatment, other line items you’d expect.
An overpriced feasibility study and an equally inflated business plan for a luxury resort with a casino and spa on the estate.
Was that how Geoffroy hoped to fix his finances?
No surprise there.
What puzzles me is that I don’t see the extravagant spending I expected for Eva.
A designer purse here, a gala gown there, bespoke shoes every now and then, and an expensive diamond necklace.
But that’s it. I don’t see absurd last-minute trips to the Maldives or shopping splurges at Cartier rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
For a gold digger who married a man old enough to be her father, Eva wasn’t doing a very good job.
Geoffroy’s flights are there, but Eva doesn’t appear to be on any of them. Sometimes Julian goes. Most of the time, it’s just Geoffroy, alone, jetting off on yet another pointless business trip.
The fuel line items are absurd. The hotels and meals expenses—worthy of royalty.
Sure, he was a duke, and high standards were almost mandatory. But Rohinn’s economy wasn’t doing nearly as well as the rest of the country overall. Geoffroy lived beyond his means.
Basil clears his throat. “There’s something you should see.”
I lean back as he sets a ledger in front of me. Hand-bound with tidy, color-coded labels and a lilac ribbon bookmark, it looks unlike the other ledgers. I recognize the writing inside at once.
“Eva.”
“I found it in Geoffroy’s office,” Basil says. “Looks like the duchess kept her own books.”
I blink. “Why?”
“Maybe she didn’t trust the estate manager and wanted to show Geoffroy why.”
I run my fingers down the edge of the column, noting that the entries are organized by week and clearly annotated.
Basil and I scan Eva’s ledger together. Rent income. Staff wages. Utility bills. Veterinary services. Even ink for the estate printer. All accounted for. Dates match up with Eric’s—mostly—but the totals don’t.
Because hers are correct.
I grab Eric’s mess again and compare.
“Look at this,” I say. “He lists the wine cellar expense here as seventy-five hundred Evorian francs.”
“Eva has four thousand eight hundred twenty,” Basil chimes in. “With a note: Negotiated discount. Chateau d’Emosson overcharged.”
I whistle. “She cross-checked invoices?”
“Looks like it,” Basil confirms.
“So, it wasn’t the duchess but the duke who was bleeding the estate dry,” I recap. “And his estate manager is a waste of space.”
Basil nods. “Actually, Her Grace might’ve been the only one trying to stop the bleeding.”
I open her ledger again and flip back to the beginning. Page one. Rent payments from five years ago. Balanced to the cent.
No, she definitely wasn’t the duchy’s problem. Basil is right. She might’ve been its last line of defense.
With a miffed sigh, I close the book.
That tightness in my chest—annoyance at my mistaken assumptions? Regret?—settles deeper. She said nothing to me about this. Not when I accused her of benefiting from the estate. Not even when I implied she was part of the reason it failed.
Why didn’t she show me her ledger to defend herself?
The answer is obvious. And damning to me. Eva didn’t think that I—the usurper, as she calls me—deserved her time or the indignity of proving herself.
I stand up. “Keep digging. See how long she kept these. I want everything compared.”
“And Eric Latour?”
“I’ll deal with him.”
Basil hesitates. “If Her Grace comes in while I’m here, should I tell her you’ve seen this?”
“Only if she asks.”
He gives me a feeble smile. “As you wish.”
I find Eva in the castle library. Not at the reading table or the desk in the alcove.
No, she’s curled into the corner of the sofa, one foot tucked underneath her, the other dangling shoeless.
Her jeans are faded. Her gray sweater is oversize.
Her hair’s in a messy bun. She’s holding a novel in one hand, flipping a page with the other.
Before I moved into Fort Vauclairt, I’d only ever seen her in silk and sharp tailoring that gave her a regal, almost untouchable air. Since moving in, I’ve learned casual clothes suit her, too. They don’t diminish her beauty. They just make her less polished, more approachable, and real.
And this is the most off duty I’ve seen her. Fully unarmored. Completely unscripted. And that makes her even harder to look away from.
I clear my throat.
She glances up, startled, then lifts her chin and closes the book over her finger.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” I say.
Her voice is wary. “You never do. You just barge in.”
I let that go. “I’ve been looking at the ledgers again.”
“And?”
I hesitate, looking for a smooth way to broach the delicate topics.
“Let me guess.” She shoots me a guarded look. “You saw Millie’s treatment costs. There’s no way you’d have missed them.”
“I did see them, and I want you to know nothing will change.”
She peers at me. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll pay,” I say bluntly, to avoid any ambiguity. “Whatever the best therapeutic option is for her, you can count on me to foot the bill. She’s my niece.”
Eva takes a moment before replying, “Thank you, I truly appreciate it. But I’d rather she didn’t depend on your generosity. When she inherits, she’ll pay for her treatments herself.”
“When, huh?” I sneer. “Not even if. Do you know something I don’t?”
“I’m going to win this case, Alex,” she says pointedly.
I nearly perform Millie’s signature eye roll, and that mental image makes me smile.
“You find that amusing?” she bites out. “Go on, laugh! Just remember that the one who laughs last laughs best.”
Disgruntled that this didn’t go as I’d hoped, I press on. “I saw your ledgers, Eva.”
Her expression doesn’t shift straightaway, but there’s a flicker of something—worry?—before she masks it with indifference.
“I thought Geoffroy had them thrown out,” she says. “He told me he’d given them to Eric to dispose of.”
“Apparently not. Basil found them in Geoffroy’s office.”
She straightens, pulls her legs down and sets the book aside.
“They’re accurate,” I add. “Meticulous. You kept better records than your estate manager.”
Her brow lifts. “I was just checking the math.”
“You were running a private audit,” I say. “You caught discrepancies and tracked them. You knew exactly how bad things were.”
“I knew enough.”
“Why didn’t you speak up more?” I ask. “Why didn’t you show Geoffroy the gap between Eric’s numbers and yours?”
Her voice is dry. “I did. He said Eric had a degree in agribusiness and that I was being hysterical.”
Of course, he did.
“Well,” I say with a shrug. “I fired Eric.”
Her lips part like she might say something, but she doesn’t. It’s her expressive eyes that betray her. The glint of satisfaction—and vindication—in them is priceless. But they also hold a twinge of disbelief.
“He has twenty-four hours to pack,” I add. “Then he’s out.”
She picks up the book, then sets it down without opening it. “I was going to replace him the day I won the case against you.”
The steel in that sentence nips the joke I was going to make in the bud.
“But since the Royal Court seems intent on dragging this out,” she continues, “you should hire someone now, for the duchy’s sake.”
“You think it’s that urgent?”
She rises to her feet. “I wouldn’t wait. Find someone honest. Someone competent.”
“Thank you.” I take a breath. “That’s unexpectedly sincere.”
“I’m always sincere,” she says, moving past me toward the door.
“Eva.”
She pauses but doesn’t look back.
“You were right about the books,” I say. “You were right about Eric. If Geoffroy had listened to you—”
“But he didn’t.” Her voice is quiet. “And it’s too late to matter.”
Then she walks out the door.