She knew it immediately.
“Your Grace.”
Julian looked up.
“This is not my signature.”
“I believe you have mentioned that.”
“No. Look carefully.”
She took out one of her genuine letters.
“Here.”
He leaned closer.
At first, he saw nothing.
Then she pointed toward the capital L in Langley.
“In my ordinary correspondence, I begin the downstroke from the upper right. In this document, the stroke begins from the left.”
“Is that significant?”
“It is how I was taught to write as a child. But when my mother was teaching me to sign documents, she instructed me to begin from the right. She said it would be a small habit difficult for another person to imitate.”
Julian examined the two signatures again.
“She was correct.”
“Yes.”
Clara turned toward Mrs. Calder.
“May we keep this?”
“Of course, miss.”
Julian studied the date.
“The eleventh of August.”
Something about it troubled him.
He drew the document closer to the window.
The paper was thick and expensive, with a faint watermark visible when held against the light.
But it was not the signature that caught his attention.
It was the notation beneath it.
Approved by His Grace, the Duke of Alderwick.
He read the words twice.
Then looked at Clara.
“On the eleventh of August, I was in Portsmouth.”
She blinked.
“And?”
“And I was aboard a ship until the thirteenth. I was inspecting a damaged vessel belonging to a friend who had returned from the Peninsula.”
“Could you not have approved the transfer beforehand?”
“Certainly. But the entry records my approval on that particular date.”
She glanced at the page.
The wording was explicit.
Julian's gaze hardened.
“Someone has been writing my name upon financial documents without consulting me.”
Clara set down her own letter.
“And someone has been doing the same with mine.”
Outside, the wind moved through the chestnut trees.
A loose shutter tapped softly against the schoolhouse wall.
Mrs. Calder looked from one to the other.
“Miss Langley,” she whispered, “does this mean the school may reopen?”
Clara's expression softened.
“It means we have found reason to hope.”
Julian looked toward the cold hearth.
Then at the empty shelves.
“Mrs. Calder,” he said, “how much money is required to reopen immediately?”
The schoolmistress hesitated.
“Forty pounds would provide coal, supplies, and temporary repairs until the accounts are properly examined.”
Julian reached into his coat.
He removed a small leather purse and placed it upon the table.
“Then begin tomorrow.”
Mrs. Calder stared at the money.
Clara turned.
“Your Grace, you need not—”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I rather think I do.”
It was a simple act.
No grand speech accompanied it.
No servants applauded.
No one declared the duke transformed.
Yet Clara watched him with a different expression as Mrs. Calder hurried away to summon the carpenter.
For the first time, she began to suspect that the letters describing Julian Vale as a cold, arrogant, and heartless aristocrat had been as dishonest as those describing her.
But suspicion was not trust.
And she was not yet prepared to offer him that.
By the time they returned to Alderwick House, the afternoon rain had become a steady gray curtain over the gardens.
Lady Honoria Vale was waiting in the entrance hall.
She was a commanding woman of sixty, dressed in plum-colored silk, with silver hair arranged beneath an elaborate cap and an expression suggesting that the household had been badly managed in her absence.
“Julian,” she announced, “I have been informed that Miss Langley has arrived, dressed herself as a servant, and gone driving through the village without a proper introduction.”
Julian removed his gloves.
“Good afternoon, Aunt.”
“Do not 'good afternoon' me.”
Clara stepped forward.