Chapter Five
Rhys stifled a yawn, planted his boot a step higher on the rolling ladder, and stretched to tug at the books on the top bookcase shelf. Every muscle ached and he deserved it for getting the only hours of sleep he’d achieved while draped across an overstuffed settee in the corner of his father’s study.
After meeting with Bella, there’d been no possibility of returning to his chamber and falling into anything like restful slumber. Guilt and regret still chased him, hours after their encounter.
He could no longer pinpoint what had possessed him to go to Hillcrest and ask for her help.
What didn’t surprise him at all was her refusal. Of course she’d refused. Bella owed him nothing and he had nothing to give her in return even if she’d agreed to assist him. It wasn’t hard to see the irony. He’d gone seeking to make his responsibilities feel like less of a burden and yet facing Bella made him more determined than ever to embrace duty and be a better duke.
He’d decided to search his father’s study for any clue to why the Claremont finances had taken such a downturn in the previous year. He dreamed of finding a journal the old man left behind, preferably one explaining that the steward was a thief or that he’d been cheated in some investment by a scoundrel.
But instead of answers, he’d only discovered that his father liked subterfuge. He’d squirreled away documents in the oddest of places. Random drawers, hidden compartments in his desk, and tucked behind the rows of books on the tall shelves that lined one wall of the study.
Rhys gripped the edge of one finely tooled leather-bound copy of Herodotus with his fingertips and pulled. The volume came easily but he nearly dropped it when a feminine voice called up from below.
“Shall I bring your morning repast here, Your Grace?” Edgecombe’s ruthlessly efficient housekeeper, Mrs. Chalmers, had taken to delivering his breakfast personally each morning. He suspected it had something to do with how foul tempered he’d been since arriving in Essex and her desire to spare the younger staff from his churlishness.
She also had a unique talent for overruling his directives. Though she showed him all the necessary deference when other staff were about, she fussed over him like he was still the boy she’d once known when no one was about as a witness.
“Strong coffee is all I require, Chalmers.”
“Excellent. We’ve just pulled out fresh crumpets and there’s a bit of ham from last evening’s meal.”
Rhys shot her a raised-brow look which didn’t seem to intimidate her in the least.
“Will you be working from the study now, Your Grace? Shall we move all of your writing implements from the conservatory?” Chalmers had always had a way of phrasing her suggestions as questions. She was grayer now and the sharp angles of her face had softened with age, but she still knew how to spark his guilty conscience just as she had when he was a child.
“I already have.” Rhys descended two steps on the rolling ladder attached to the wall of bookcases and was rather proud to point to the ink pot, pen, and various crumpled pages littering his father’s desk. He’d managed a short note to his bank directing the transfer of additional funds and inquiring about a clerk to be sent out to Edgecombe to review the estate’s accounts. “I still need to retrieve the ledgers.”
“I’ll have one of the footmen see to it. Have you been able to review the invoices, Your Grace?” She gestured to the corner of the desk.
Rhys hadn’t even noticed the neat little pile of documents there.
“They’ve been waiting for some time.” He understood the older woman’s impatience. She’d probably accomplished more in the few hours since daylight than he would all day. Though he’d been up early, the search of his father’s study had proven futile.
After replacing Herodotus, he descended the ladder attached to the bookcase, jumped off the last step, and reached his hands over his head to stretch the muscles of his back. Aside from his hours in the Duke’s Den, he hadn’t spent so much time sitting on his arse in years. He longed for movement. Activity. Anything that didn’t involve perusing documents and deciphering tightly scribbled handwriting.
Rhys stared down at the mess of a letter he’d been working on for the better part of an hour. A few words to his banker had been easy enough, but the note he’d begun to the Duchess of Tremayne had proved a challenge. He planned to ask her to shepherd Meg through her first Season, but he’d crossed out and rewritten so many lines the letter was no longer worthy of anything but the rubbish pile.
Reaching out to crumple the latest attempt, his hand stilled as he looked at the doodle he’d sketched at the edge. Bella’s profile. Her round chin, elegant nose, and waves of auburn hair. He hadn’t sketched her in color, but he would always see her that way.
He balled up the unfinished letter, aimed for the bin near the door behind Chalmers, and tossed the crumpled paper in a perfect arc that landed with a soft thud on top of the others he’d already tossed there.
She made a little harrumphing sound of chastisement but said nothing.
“Tell me about the invoices.”
“They are nothing more than routine monthly expenses, Your Grace, but Lady Margaret has asked the staff to prepare a special luncheon for three of her lady friends next week, and we should see to the deliveries soon.” Rather than wait for him to retrieve the documents, she lifted the pile and held them out.
He couldn’t take the time to decipher every word, but he skimmed a few and decided they all related to food or supplies for the ducal larder.
“You see to some of the estate’s invoices, and I take it Mr. Brooks sees to the others?” Between Chalmers and Edgecombe’s long-serving butler, Rhys couldn’t imagine that any of the estate’s financial woes could be ascribed to their mismanagement. But if co-ownership of Lyon’s had taught him one thing, it was that people will always surprise you.
“Quite so.” Mrs. Chalmers’s face puckered in a frown. She was a clever woman. Rhys suspected she could see through his ham-fisted interrogation and sensed there was something more afoot. “Mr. Brooks and I were allowed to purchase as we saw fit.”
“What was left to Radley?” Rhys was due to meet with the estate’s steward in the afternoon and longed to know if his previous impressions of the man were shared by others.
“Only when an expense was out of the ordinary would we consult Mr. Radley, and he spoke to His Grace on our behalf when necessary.” Her dark eyes narrowed behind her spectacles. “Is anything amiss?”
Rhys liked her suspicious mind. It made him certain the staff were not aware of whatever shenanigans had gone on with the dukedom’s finances.
“Mr. Radley is relatively new to the role of steward, is he not?”
“Your father hired him nearly two years ago.”
Two years during which Rhys hadn’t spoken to his father and exchanged only a handful of letters with his sister. If the dukedom was struggling, he’d never been informed.
He scooped up the paperweights off the edge of his father’s desk. Polished rounds of jade he suspected his father liked more for their beauty than their usefulness. He began juggling the three disks. Concentrating on the task allowed him to focus his thoughts.