Chapter 14 #3
Richard set the ledger aside. “Touché, and no. I fixate on the ledgers because I nearly lost my last groat taking a more casual approach. A junior clerk made a mistake, entering an expense as revenue, and for a sizable amount. The bank extended me credit, but I was months sorting the repercussions.”
“Did you sack him?”
“The clerk? Of course not. The senior clerk who should have reviewed the entries earned a dressing down, but the welfare of the business is ultimately my responsibility. I eventually came to enjoy the ciphering aspect of commerce more than almost any other.”
“I enjoy keeping the household accounts.” Mabel also enjoyed this somewhat aimless talk in the midafternoon sunshine. “Vicar Whidman allowed as how you are a fine young man. You did not mention at supper that you’d come across him. He was pleased to render judgment upon you in the sweet shop.”
“I was too busy at supper debating with a certain oratorically gifted party. Whidman sang Blackstock’s praises when I queried him about the past. Told me to sit down and be quiet, essentially.”
Mabel had never enjoyed Whidman’s sermons. Too much of thou-shalt-not and if-thy-right-eye-offend-thee. Precious little about love-thy-neighbor. “Will you, my lord? Sit down and be quiet?”
“What do you think I should do? I think I should kiss you.” He sounded marvelously disgruntled to not be kissing her.
“I should kiss you, too, but not where every footman, maid, Orla, and Wealtha will gawk at us. Orla seems to resent you simply for being on hand. Now that you’ve sacked Wopley the Weasel, she is hoping you will take yourself off.”
“While I hope she develops a sudden notion to visit friends in central Peru, meaning no insult to the Peruvians. Auntie was positively glum at supper last night.”
Glum and showing off her jewelry again, though, to be fair, Orla had a lovely collection.
“Step-mama wanted us to think she was tired rather than tiresome.” A younger Mabel would have been appalled at her own honesty. Years of enduring Step-mama’s guidance and her company were finally chafing past all bearing.
Thank you very much, Richard, Viscount Swidhelm.
“What exactly is the nature of her ailment?”
“Her physicians have been discreet. I heard references to a wasting disease, an excess of black bile, a wandering womb, and the imbalance of the humors typical of the older female.”
“That certainly narrows it down. Might she be malingering?”
The question put into focus a realization Mabel hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.
“Probably. She can stand in the churchyard and collect gossip by the hour and then claim two days later that she lacks the energy to have Vicar over for tea. She will plead a megrim when Mrs. Johnson calls alone. Orla nonetheless orders a full tea tray and plays the gracious hostess, with Wealtha at her side, if Mrs. Johnson is escorted by her son Magnus.”
“Young Mr. Johnson has prospects?”
“His paternal uncle is a baronet, and Magnus is his heir. Magnus is a patient, good-hearted soul, a hard worker, and sensible. He is our magistrate, in addition to owning substantial acreage. He and Wealtha might suit.”
Might being the operative word.
“I’ve met him. I will make it a point to cultivate his acquaintance.” Richard crossed his legs and turned his face up to the sun. “When did your step-mother fall ill?”
He was too handsome, with the sunlight gilding his eyelashes and his breeches pulled taut across muscular thighs.
None of that. “Orla has always been prone to megrims, some of them blatantly convenient, but then, anybody can have a headache. I suppose she fell ill shortly after we moved to the Glen.”
“She had her own house before that?”
“She still does, thanks to Papa Joseph, but she did not want Wealtha to have to leave familiar surroundings after Blackstock’s death. We moved here and rented out the Fielding house.”
Richard regarded the tools in Mabel’s basket, dark earth still clinging to the trowel, the gloves dirty.
“Orla uprooted you rather than bring Wealtha to the Fielding house, where Wealtha had doubtless run tame for years. If funds were limited, then renting out the Glen would have generated far more revenue.”
“I made that point, to no avail.” For that matter, selling Papa Joseph’s house would have brought in some investable revenue and freed Orla of the cost of maintaining an aging dwelling.
“Orla insisted that tenants at the Glen would wreck the place, and Wealtha would be devastated to leave the only home she’d known.
Tenants at the Fielding house were apparently to be trusted. ”
Richard rubbed a hand across his brow. “I confess, Orla’s choices puzzle me, but then, I’ve never had an auntie before, much less one widowed and left responsible for two very young ladies. I wonder if Orla is what Wealtha will become.”
“You wonder a lot, but I suspect they get on in part because they do understand each other intuitively.”
Richard patted Mabel’s arm. “I ought not to bother you with my ruminations. My mother said I was prone to brooding, and she was right. I learned not to pester her with my curiosity and questions, but my mind chases March hares all the same. Witness: I’m determined to make sense of ten-year-old ledgers. ”
Large sums repeatedly disbursed without explanation was more of an unexplained rampaging bullock than a leaping hare.
“Did Blackstock’s mysterious entries follow any pattern?”
“I don’t know. Are you free to investigate the ledgers with me?”
Mabel admonished herself to stand, shake out her skirts, collect her basket, and cite a pressing need to count linen… but no. Richard liked linen closets, and their doors invariably locked.
No counting linen.
“As it happens, I am free for the next hour. You take one ledger, give me the one for the previous year, and we’ll see what we can unearth.”
Mabel discovered that the boring business of analyzing an old ledger was enjoyable when she sat across the reading table from Richard. Whenever she looked up, he’d catch her eye, smile, nudge her boot with his, and then go back to scribbling notes on a sheet of foolscap.
And for some reason, that shared smile and the ridiculous nudge of boots was the most special thing Mabel had ever experienced in a library by the broad light of day.
Or possibly anywhere, ever, barring a recent picnic at the fishing cottage.