After Being Falsely Accused of Stealing From the Estate, She Handed the Duke Her Resignation — But He Tore It Up Before the Entire Household, Then Risked His Family’s Name to Prove the Governess He Couldn’t Let Go Had Been Framed

PART 3

Charles’s gaze remained on the ledger.

“I might say the same.” He stepped inside and removed his gloves, one finger at a time. “I was told Miss Carter had resigned.”

“She has not.”

Emily considered correcting the Duke — the remains of her resignation were still scattered near the hearth — but correcting a duke in front of his cousin seemed an unnecessary adventure. Charles noticed the glance between them anyway.

“Then Blackwood’s servants are becoming unreliable.”

“Someone certainly is,” William said.

The fire snapped between them. Charles smiled again. He was perhaps a few years younger than William, with the same dark hair but none of his cousin’s severity. Where William made a room feel smaller by entering it, Charles seemed practiced at making everyone believe there was more air.

“What are you doing here?”

“Passing through. I thought I would spare you the insult of staying at an inn.”

“How considerate.”

Charles’s eyes dropped to the figures beneath Emily’s hand. “Estate accounts seem unusual reading for a governess.”

Emily closed the ledger. “Less exciting than French poetry. Considerably more honest.”

William looked down, hiding something that might have been amusement. Charles did not.

“Careful, Miss Carter. Cleverness is charming only when people expect it.”

“Then I have the advantage of surprising them.”

For the first time, irritation showed beneath his smile. William crossed to the bell pull.

“Mrs. Grant will have the blue room prepared.”

“And tomorrow?” Charles asked.

“Tomorrow I have business.”

“Anything I can assist with?”

William’s hand rested beside the bell cord. “If there is, I will ask.”

Charles bowed and left. Only when his footsteps faded along the corridor did Emily look at William.

“C.H. Charles.”

“Charles Harrington. My cousin — my father’s sister’s son. He spent much of his childhood here.” William returned to the table but did not reopen the ledger. “After my father died, Charles helped me settle several complicated obligations. Including legal expenses.”

“Possibly.” Emily tilted her head. “You do not sound convinced.”

“You are remarkably comfortable questioning a duke.”

“Not particularly. I simply hide discomfort well.”

A log collapsed in the grate, sending sparks behind the screen. William stared at the initials in the candlelight.

“Charles has no authority to draw money from Blackwood now.”

Emily felt the room sharpen around that sentence.

“Then someone gave him access. Or used his initials.”

She nodded. He was not defending Charles — he was refusing to condemn him without proof. She found that more reassuring than a dozen declarations of trust.

The next morning, William sent for her before Lucy’s lessons. The library table had disappeared beneath ledgers, receipts, tenant rolls, and correspondence. Two cups of coffee steamed near the fire. Mrs. Grant regarded him from the doorway with profound suspicion.

“Emily, alone, took coffee in the library at dawn. Should I be concerned that you have discovered bribery?”

“Mrs. Grant,” William said, “I am beginning to suspect you should manage the estate.”

“Clearly someone should.”

Emily sat for three hours. They followed numbers through Blackwood’s accounts. William knew acreage, leases, mortgages, and yields. Emily knew which roofs still leaked despite being listed as repaired, which stable boy had spent September nursing a broken wrist despite wages recorded for extra labor, and which supposedly purchased curtains had never appeared in any room.

Separately, each discrepancy was forgettable.

Together, they formed a pattern.

“They depend upon no one comparing the household with the books,” William said.

“The men reading the books do not wash the curtains or mend the roofs.”

“And the women who know the truth are not invited to read the books.” His eyes met hers. “Generally, no.”

He leaned back slowly. “That seems an expensive tradition.”

By afternoon, William did something stranger than tearing up her resignation. He listened. When she suggested checking supplier names against delivery dates, he did it. When she questioned a payment, he did not ask how a governess could know — he asked what she knew. It should not have mattered. Yet each time he made space for her answer, some old defensive knot inside her loosened.

Near dusk, she rubbed her tired eyes. William pushed the untouched plate of sandwiches toward her.

“Eat.”

“That sounds suspiciously like an order.”

“A recommendation delivered with ducal efficiency.”

She took one. “Much improved.”

His quiet laugh surprised them both. For a moment there were no titles, no ledgers, no invisible governess and cold duke — only two tired people in candlelight over a mystery neither had expected to share.

Then Emily turned her receipt over.

Something had been written faintly on the back.

“William — ” the Christian name escaped before she could stop it. He went still. Emily’s cheeks warmed. “Your Grace. I — ”

“What did you find?”

No reprimand. Only attention. She slid the receipt toward him. A list of tenant properties appeared in cramped handwriting, beside amounts far larger than any repair expense.

William read the final line twice.

“These are not payments.” His face changed. “These are valuations.”

“Why would someone secretly value occupied cottages?”

He reached for another document, then another. His movements became faster. “Because these cottages sit along the eastern boundary — ” he spread an old estate map across the table, a dark line crossing the same properties. Emily followed it with one finger until it reached the proposed route marked at the bottom.

A road. A private turnpike.

“If this agreement is executed, the land can be transferred for development.”

Emily stared at the tenant names — families still living in those houses.

William’s jaw tightened. Before he could answer, the library door opened.

Mr. Finch entered carrying a leather document case. Behind him stood Charles. Finch set the case on the table.

“Your Grace, the solicitors have arrived.”

Charles’s gaze settled on Emily — then slid to the map between them like a blade testing a seam.

“Excellent,” he said. “Then perhaps we can finally get your signature on the Eastern Land Agreement.”