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 5

William watched her rather than the note.

“You are not surprised.”

“I am surprised someone waited this long.”

His expression sharpened. Emily crossed to the table and opened the nearest ledger.

“The false invoice yesterday carried my authorization. If someone has been moving money for eighteen months — attaching my name to older payments gives them a useful explanation when the accounts are finally examined.”

“You mean the note is true.”

She looked at him. The fire gave a low crack.

“Yes.”

His jaw tightened, as though her willingness to say it had irritated him more than a denial would have.

“You expect me to accuse you?”

“I expect you to verify me.”

Silence stretched. Then he pulled out the chair beside his.

“Sit.”

They worked until the candles shortened. Her name appeared seven times. Schoolroom books. Linens. Coal. A piano sent for repair that had never occurred. Each entry carried handwriting similar enough to hers to deceive someone who had never watched Emily write.

After the fifth entry, William pushed a blank sheet toward her.

“Sign your name.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How romantic.”

His eyes flicked up. “I shall endeavor to make the next forgery investigation more flattering.”

She signed. He placed the page beside the ledger and compared them for a long moment.

“The capital C.”

“What about it?”

“Yours begins with a narrow loop. These do not.” He set both pages down. “You notice my C?”

“You correct Lucy’s lessons in red ink. I have seen enough of them.”

The answer was ordinary. The warmth it caused was not. Emily bent over the ledger before he could see it.

Near midnight, they found the first altered payment — dated eighteen months earlier, months before Emily had ever been allowed near household purchasing records.

“There,” William said quietly. “Whoever forged these chose you afterward. They changed the earlier books because no one would question a governess taking small amounts.” He paused. “Because they thought no one would defend one.”

Emily looked at him. He was close enough that she could see the fatigue beneath his eyes.

“Do not make me noble merely because someone else behaved badly,” he said. “I failed to notice you too.”

The honesty landed harder than praise. Emily’s fingers rested on the edge of the page.

“Most people do.”

“Does that hurt?”

She almost gave him the practiced answer — the one she gave Lady Arbuthnot and the vicar and every kind stranger who asked after her brother. Instead she watched an ember collapse behind the grate.

“Only when they suddenly notice me because they need something.”

William did not move. “Is that what you think I am doing?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He accepted it without defense.

The next several days changed the rhythm of Blackwood Hall. Emily still taught Lucy each morning, but the afternoons belonged to ledgers, tenant rolls, and supplier receipts. William began asking what she thought before explaining what he thought. She learned he rubbed the bridge of his nose when worried, and became unnervingly polite when furious. He learned she forgot meals when concentrating, and disliked being thanked for things she considered obvious.

One evening, after she caught him attempting to calculate three columns at once, she took the pencil from his hand.

“Your Grace. You are murdering arithmetic.”

“William.”

“William. You are murdering arithmetic.”

“Better.” Their fingers brushed around the pencil. Neither withdrew immediately.

“You should sleep.”

“So should you.”

“I am not responsible for a financially wounded dukedom.”

“No. You merely seem determined to rescue one.”

“I am determined to find the truth.” His gaze held hers. “There is a difference.”

“Yes.”

He leaned back — creating space between them before either could misuse the moment. “Tell me about the school.”

She blinked. “You have spent four days discussing my problems. I would like to hear something that belongs to you.”

No one had ever phrased it that way.

So she told him. Not grandly. A small school near the village. Children of tenants and tradesmen. Girls taught figures and history alongside sewing — rather than instead of them. Boys taught that books did not damage masculinity.

William laughed softly. “Revolutionary.”

“I intend to proceed cautiously.”

When she finished, he was still watching her. Not the ledgers. Her. She looked away first.

The following morning, an envelope waited beside her breakfast. Inside: a formal offer — the schoolhouse at the edge of the estate lands, an endowment, her choice of any position she wished to hold at Blackwood. The handwriting was his.

“You expect me to answer?”

William did not answer immediately. Somewhere beyond the windows, a carriage rolled over wet gravel and faded toward the gates.

“I deserve that.”

Emily had prepared herself for argument. His agreement unsettled her more.

“I did not say it to wound you.”

“That does not make it less accurate.” He lifted the document, folded it once, and set it aside — rather than pushing it back toward her. “The offer remains available. But I will not use money to answer a question money cannot answer.”

Emily’s breath caught. William walked to the window.

“When my father died, Blackwood owed more than anyone outside this room knows. I spent three years selling investments, delaying repairs, renegotiating loans, and pretending at dinners that I was merely bored when men discussed fortunes I no longer possessed.” His reflection in the glass looked harder than the man speaking. “Charles helped. That is why I trusted him.”

“Yes.”

A coal shifted in the grate. Emily waited.

“You asked whether I know your worth when you are useful to no one.” His hand tightened once at his back. “I do not yet know how to answer — without saying something I have no right to ask you to believe.”

The air between them seemed suddenly too still.

“Then don’t.” Emily. It was the first time he had used her Christian name. She looked up.

He crossed one step toward her — then stopped. That restraint did more to her pulse than touching her might have.

“Stay until we finish the investigation. After that — if you wish to leave, I will not tear another letter.”

“A remarkably modest improvement.”

“I am progressing under difficult conditions.”

She smiled despite herself. “Until the accounts are settled. Agreed.”

Over the next week, their work moved beyond Blackwood’s ledgers. Emily spoke with tradesmen who had supposedly received payments. William visited tenant farms personally. Several signatures proved false. Two suppliers admitted Finch had ordered them to inflate invoices — and return part of the excess in cash. Yet the largest transfers remained hidden behind legal expenses connected to C.H.

Charles continued behaving as though nothing were wrong. At dinner he entertained Lucy with stories from London. He complimented Mrs. Grant’s table. He even asked Emily whether her lessons were progressing well. His courtesy made her skin crawl.

Late one afternoon, Emily found William in the stable yard examining a tenant’s damaged cart. His coat was draped over a fence despite the cold, and there was mud on one polished boot.

“Your reputation is collapsing,” she said.

He glanced down. “Because of the mud?”

“A duke inspecting wheels personally. Society may never recover.”

“Keep it quiet.” He straightened and produced a receipt from his pocket — a timber merchant, paid for oak supposedly used to repair three eastern cottages. “There is no oak in those cottages,” Emily said.

“Exactly.”

William tapped the bottom corner. A second notation authorized reimbursement to a private London account. Beside it, a name. C. Harrington.

“That is closer,” Emily said.

“Closer is not proof that Charles designed the scheme.”

“You still want him innocent.”

William looked toward the stable doors. “He was more brother than cousin, when we were boys.”

Emily folded the receipt and handed it back. “Wanting someone innocent is not the same as deciding they are.”

His eyes came back to hers. “That sounds learned.”

“Most useful lessons are.”

He did not ask what she meant. She was grateful for it.

That evening, Charles did.

Emily was leaving the schoolroom when he stepped from the shadowed corridor. “You have become ambitious.”

“Have I?”

“Sitting beside William. Examining private accounts. Receiving offers above your station.” His smile was pleasant. “People will misunderstand.”

“People often misunderstand women who know numbers.”

“I mean William.” Charles leaned closer. “A duke may admire a governess in private. He marries money in public.”

She held his gaze. “Then it is fortunate I have not asked him to marry me.”

“Not yet.”

He walked away before she could answer.

The next morning brought a letter from Lady Beatrice Langford, daughter of the Marquis of Harberry. Emily knew the name. Everyone did. Her fortune was enormous, her family impeccable — and rumor had linked her to William before his father died. Mrs. Grant mentioned over breakfast that Lady Beatrice and her parents would arrive at Blackwood within three days.

Emily said nothing.

That afternoon she worked beside William in the library, but the shared silence had changed. He noticed.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You are a poor liar. And you are apparently expecting Lady Beatrice Langford.”

His pencil stopped. “Who told you?”

“Blackwood Hall has servants, William. Secrets come here only to die.”

He leaned back. “Her father has proposed an arrangement.”

Emily’s chest tightened. “A marriage settlement.”

His silence answered before he did. “Blackwood needs capital.”

“And Lady Beatrice’s family wants a dukedom.” Emily closed the ledger carefully. “Then perhaps you have found your other way.”

“Emily — ”

A knock interrupted him. Mrs. Grant entered, pale, carrying a folded London newspaper. She placed it before William without a word.

A society column had been marked in ink. He read it once. Then his thumb crushed the edge of the page.

Emily took the paper. One sentence was enough: Sources at Blackwood Hall report that His Grace’s sudden dependence upon an unmarried governess has become so intimate that Lady Beatrice Langford may reconsider the proposed match.

Emily looked toward the doorway.

Charles stood there, watching her.

“How unfortunate,” he said softly. “It appears society has begun to notice you.”