“What are you smiling so secretively about, my darling?” Vanessa asked as she bustled into his study.
“I was merely thinking about last night. And the night before that. Oh, yes, and the night before that. And the—”
“I know what you’re trying to do, Sheridan Wolfe, and you will not seduce me into telling Bonham you’re indisposed or anything like that. When he comes this afternoon, you’ll need to be prepared.”
“Damn. Unbeknownst to me, I married a nagging woman,” he said in mock alarm. “Ah, well, I suppose I’m stuck with you now.”
“Very amusing.” With a lift of her impervious and very lovely eyebrow, she came around to his side of the desk to look out the window at the courtyard garden. “I can see why you said you liked your study. The garden behind you gives you a nice glimpse of the outdoors.”
“It does, indeed,” he said, turning in his chair to look out at it himself.
“That will be the first thing I tackle as lady of the house. Your little garden there could clearly use a bit of care, and I will enjoy getting it under good management.”
Sheridan pulled her closer. “I can think of other things you could get ‘under good management.’”
She laughed. “You are insatiable, sir. And this is neither the time nor the place for it.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, smoothing one hand over her hip to her thighs.
Rolling her eyes at him, she turned to gaze down at his desk. “So these are the account books?”
That reminder ruined his mood. “They are, indeed.” He dropped his hand from her lovely body. “I realize everyone keeps their accounts differently, but I can’t make heads nor tails of Bonham’s system. Every time I think I’ve figured it out, something else comes up to tell me I have not.”
She picked one of the books up and looked at it. “Well, no wonder. It makes no sense.”
“Don’t tell me the numbers swim before your eyes, too.”
“No.” She eyed him oddly. “What do you mean?”
God rot it, he shouldn’t have said that. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Some people have trouble with numbers. My great-uncle used to have a terrible time. Then my great-aunt would complain of how he drove her mad whenever he had to meet with his estate manager.” She pointed to a figure. “What is this?”
“It’s seven hundred and twenty-six pounds.”
“No, my dear. It’s seven hundred and sixty-two pounds.”
He looked at it again. “You’re right. I can see it now, but I’d swear it was—”
“Here, let’s try another one.” This time she took a ruler and laid it underneath a figure. “What’s this one?”
“That’s five thousand and twenty-five pounds.”
“Look at it again.”
He scowled. “What’s the use? Every time I look at a number, I can’t trust what I see.”
“That’s just a simple matter of having someone look at the numbers for you. Honestly, you shouldn’t even be bothering with this. You have a man of affairs. It’s his job.”
“My father always said any man of property ought to be able to look at the account ledgers and tell whether someone was cheating him or he could be doing some aspect of estate management more efficiently.”
“I suppose your father had a point, but I don’t see why you should have to take it this far.” She raised an eyebrow. “Besides, for how long did your father manage an estate?”
That brought Sheridan up short. “Six months or so. I always assumed my grandfather had passed down his own rules of estate management, but if he had, he would have passed them down to Uncle Armie, not my father.”
“So your father really had very little experience at all.”
“I don’t suppose he had.” He’d never thought of it like that.
“Your Uncle Armie was the other person you and your siblings think was murdered?”
“Yes. He’s the one who ran the estate into the ground.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Sheridan sat back in his chair. “I am. Before I inherited, Father knew it, the tenants knew it, and Bonham knew it. If I could just figure out Bonham’s system, I would know it. He has tried time and again to explain it to me, but apparently my issue with numbers keeps me from being able to make sense of it.”
“Hmm.” She looked skeptical. “If you want, I could read over the ledgers for you, and see if I can figure it out. I’m good with numbers, and I used to do the books for Papa.”
“Forgive me, sweetheart, but that’s not a ringing endorsement, given that your parents struggled under your father’s management.”
She set her hands on her lovely hips. “That was because of Papa’s mistresses and Mama’s overspending.”
“Uncle Armie had plenty of mistresses himself, and overspending was how he operated.”
With fire in her eyes, Vanessa rested one hip on the desk. “Yes, but he had a duke’s income behind him— plenty of tenants and other investments. Whereas Papa, as a second son, only had our country house in Suffolk left to him by his mother. He had no tenants. He couldn’t afford either overspending or mistresses, but that didn’t stop him. Why do you think he tried to steal Grey’s unentailed properties?”
She did have a point there.
“And believe me,” she went on, “I did my best to make the argument that we would have plenty to live on if he would stop spending so much on ‘Mama.’ We both knew he wasn’t spending all of it on Mama and me, but he pretended otherwise, and I let him. No one stood up to Papa, least of all me.”
“Grey did,” Sheridan said softly.
“And he suffered for it, as you know.” She thrust out her chin. “What little we were left to live on was only available because I . . . hid assets to keep us from debtors’ prison. It’s possible Mr. Bonham did something similar to keep the dukedom afloat. He has been with the Armitage dukes for decades, after all.”
“Surely he would
