Page 40 of My One and Only Duke
“The baby,” she said, arranging the collar of the dressing gown and stepping back. “When I lie down, he or she wakes up. Shall we have some tea?”
“The tea is for you,” he said. “We’ll continue this discussion later.”
A fine suggestion. Jane did justice to the food, while Mr. Wentworth—what was his title?—sat across the desk, nibbling a ginger biscuit and sending dubious glances in the direction of her belly.
Chapter Eleven
“Whom King George pardons,” Joshua Penrose said, leafing through the open stack of morning correspondence, “society pardons. Your thirty-day rule saved us.”
“Snobbery saved us,” Quinn countered from across the polished mahogany table. “Let me see the list again.”
Within a fortnight of Quinn’s conviction, half the bank’s customers had given notice of intent to close their accounts. Joshua had spared him news of that development until Quinn had been soaking in a bathtub the previous day and unable to do more than curse at length.
Fortunately, the depositor’s agreement required that the bank be given thirty days’ written notice of any intention to make a major withdrawal or close an account, and thus none of the money had yet been removed.
The list of the high and mighty who’d been prepared to flee Wentworth and Penrose’s felonious clutches read like an excerpt from Debrett’s. The same names, save for a few, had changed their minds overnight.
“I have more good news,” Joshua said, passing over the bible.
The bible was the main ledger book, the one that kept a daily tally of the bank’s available assets and outstanding liabilities. Either Joshua or Quinn signed the bible at the close of each week, then it was countersigned by the head teller and the auditor.
The auditor was a little drill sergeant named Mrs. Hatfield, though Quinn suspected she’d had other names at other times. She was passionate about her accounting and knew every possible avenue for embezzlement, fraud, deceit, and sharp practice. How she’d come by that knowledge was a secret between her and Joshua.
She’d greeted Quinn that morning with the first smile he’d ever seen from her, and a wink. “Well done, Mr. Wentworth.” She was pretty when she smiled, in the manner of a buttoned-up librarian preparing to host a reading of the Bard.
Jane was prettier, in a blooming, ungainly, grouchy sort of way.
“Quinn”—Joshua spoke somewhat loudly—“if you need more time with your family, you have only to say so. Nobody would begrudge you a chance to recover from your ordeal.”
“My ordeal,” Quinn said, “is only beginning. Who put my neck in a noose, Joshua?”
He could ask that, because the partners’ conference room was the holiest of holies at the bank, and no sound escaped when the doors were closed. Customer privacy mattered, but not half so much as the privacy of the partners.
“I thought you had convicted me of that folly?”
“Upon reflection, you haven’t a credible motive. The bank was in the process of collapsing until this morning, and you’ve worked as hard as I have to make this place what it is. You might well hate me, but you grasp my usefulness and bear no ill will toward my family.”
Joshua tidied the stack of letters, which was already tidy. “When will you leave it behind, Quinn? When will you realize you are no longer scouring the sewers for a stray lump of coal, burying corpses by day, and guarding them by night? You’ve food in your belly, a roof over your head, and—”
“And somebody is trying to kill me, in the most ignominious, shameful way possible. They would have succeeded but for a twist of fate nobody could have foreseen. They have cunning, influence, and substantial resources.”
Joshua came around the table and set the papers at Quinn’s elbow. “I fit that description; so do many of these depositors and most of our investors.”
As did Stephen, Duncan, and half the peerage who owed Quinn money, in addition to one northern countess who owed Quinn her silence.
Quinn rose, ignoring the papers. “You see the problem.” Though something Joshua had said teased at Quinn’s mind. A stray penny of a thought, about…
“The bank is prospering as a result of your situation,” Joshua said. “Whoever wished you ill would be frustrated to know that for every viscount who sought to withdraw his funds, a butcher, a baker, and a jeweler came in to open an account. The damned flower girls and opera dancers now bank here, and they expect better service than a dowager duchess receives. Look at the bible tallies for the last three weeks.”
Quinn always purchased a bouquet for his desk when there were fresh flowers to be had, and he’d directed Althea to purchase the house flowers from the street vendors rather than from a professional florist. The choice was pragmatic. Flower girls were out and about at all hours, every day. They knew the comings and goings of a neighborhood better than anybody.
Look after the flower girls, and they looked after you. The concept wasn’t complicated, though few in Mayfair seemed to grasp its utility. The small accounts opened in the last fortnight went on for pages, the flower girls prominent among them.
“We’ll need a new bible soon.” The christening of a new volume of the bank’s master account book always merited a toast after hours for the staff.
“I’ve hired two new tellers, one of them female. The milkmaids, flower girls, and opera dancers prefer dealing with a woman.”
One of their own kind, somebody who’d realize that a task as simple as putting on boots could become a challenge when a woman carried a child. Althea had already set up appointments for Jane with dressmakers, milliners, and glovemakers, and had also made arrangements for her to meet with an accoucheur.
