She Fed the Workhouse Children in Secret for Three Winters, Then an Earl Chose Her Over Every Lad...
Chapter 3
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"I had an apprentice. He was fourteen and knew the mechanism better than I did by the end, but I knew the accounts, so between us we managed.""And before that, your father's office."She folded her hands on the figures before her. "Is there a purpose to this recitation, my lord, or are you simply testing your research?"He almost smiled. "Almost. Do you know," he said, "that you are the third person I have spoken to in this town who told me to go to Mrs. Trent when I needed something done correctly?"She had not known that. Something moved in her chest—small and cautious—that she did not let onto her face. "I hope they were satisfied with the outcome in each case.""Entirely, which is why I am here. I have been trying to untangle the estate accounts for Dunross Park since I inherited the title four years ago. My father had three different stewards in the last decade of his life—none of them honest, two of them creative with figures in ways that I am only now fully understanding. I need someone who is not afraid of a large mess, and who will tell me the truth about what she finds."Cecilia looked at him."I am not making you a social call," he added, as though he had read something in her face. "I am offering you an engagement—paid, obviously, and at a rate I suspect is better than Mather offers, because Mather is a careful man with his pennies and you are worth more than he is paying.""You cannot know that. You have not seen my work.""I have seen Mather's last three years of accounts," the Earl said. "I recognize the hand. The same hand that doesn't make errors, which is rarer than you might think." He paused. "Will you consider it?"She should have said she would think about it and sent a note in a day or two, which was the correct, formal response.She said instead, "When would you like to start?"His mouth did curve then, just slightly. "I had hoped you would say that."She had reasons for saying yes that she did not tell him. The estate accounts at Dunross Park, if they were as disordered as he suggested, would take the better part of the winter to sort. The work would pay enough, if she was careful, to cover the February shortfall at Stonemill with something left over for the March one. She was always thinking three months ahead when it came to the children; it was the habit of a woman who had learned that need does not wait for convenient timing.She went to Dunross Park three mornings a week. It was a tall stone house four miles outside of town, less grand than its reputation, more lived-in than she had expected—the kind of house that had been handed down through a family for long enough that it bore the marks of many lives instead of the curated emptiness of new money.