“None of Them Will Be My Mother!” the Duke’s Son Declared — Until the Cook Brought an Apple Pie
Chapter 8
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He sat on the very edge of the window seat with his arms crossed. He asked her seven questions in a row, each more pointed than the last, ending with: "Why do you not try to make me like you?""Because I should be very bad at it," said Rosamund, buttering toast. "I have never been able to lie convincingly. I once told a butcher his beef was excellent, and he asked me whether I was unwell."The boy stared at her. "That is a very odd answer.""It is a very honest one. You may find them similar with practice."He unbent by degrees over the weeks: by the third tea, he had let her see the hatbox beneath the window seat, in which a small, bad-tempered, enormously dignified hedgehog named Wellington lay curled in a nest of stockings; by the fifth, he had admitted that he had stolen the hedgehog from the gardener's boy, who had in turn stolen it from a ditch; by the seventh, they had conspired together to hide Wellington from Mrs. Hollis, who was known to hold strong views on prickles in the linen."He is a gentleman," Master Edmund said severely. "And he will not be put in a stable.""Then he shall have the finest hatbox in Hertfordshire," said Rosamund. "And I shall say nothing."She kept her word, and the boy noticed, and said nothing about noticing.By the middle of the month, she had found the ledgers. It began with Mrs. Hollis, who confided one evening, in the cautious voice of a woman who feared being wrong, that the household bills had risen again and she could not understand why. Rosamund, who had kept her father's accounts at 11 and her own at every post since, sat down with the books and the candle, and found it in three nights: the chandler in Hertford had been billing for 32 pounds of wax candles a month while the household burned 24; the grocer had billed for white sugar loaves when the pantry received the cheaper brown. Neither sum was large; together over a year, they came to £41.She laid the matter before the Duke and Mr. Danby, the steward, in the library on a Tuesday, with her figures on a single sheet and her hands folded to hide their tremor.The silence went on for some time."Forty-one pounds," said the Duke at last. "Mr. Danby, have I been robbed for six years?""In very small increments, Your Grace," said Mr. Danby faintly."Miss Vale," said Theodore, turning slowly. "Where did you learn to do that?""In a cooper's house in Porlock, Your Grace, where there was never any margin for error."He looked at her for a long moment, and she had the odd, flustering sensation of having been seen."I should like you to look at the home farm accounts after Christmas," he said. "I should like you to tell me what else I have been blind to."