Fenwick's gaze flickered toward Eleanor. “Miss Finch has made a practice of questioning matters she cannot possibly understand. I warned you her family had reasons to resent this house.”
“My father has nothing to do with what Lady Margaret wrote,” Eleanor replied.
“Your father was dismissed for dishonesty.”
“My father was accused of it. There is a difference.”
Adrian lifted one hand before Fenwick could answer. He told the steward to leave the original records where they stood and to bring every account relating to the eastern meadow to the library by noon. Fenwick protested that the documents were scattered and that urgent business awaited him in York. Adrian did not argue. He simply repeated the instruction and said that no sale, removal, or transfer of estate property would be authorized until the records were checked.
As soon as the steward left, Adrian turned to Eleanor. “I owe you an apology, Miss Finch. I accused you because it was easier than asking why you were looking.”
“An apology is a beginning, my lord. Mrs. Marsh may lose her home before another begins.”
“I will stop the removals.”
“Then do it in writing. The notices have your signature.”
The faintest expression crossed his face, something between offense and admiration. He sat at the desk, wrote a suspension of every notice concerning the eastern cottages, and signed it before she could say another word. Then he called Mrs. Tully to have copies carried to the tenants. Thomas stood beside him, touching the edge of the paper as if he wanted to be certain it was real.
The relief that followed was brief. Margaret's ledger supported Eleanor's suspicions, but Adrian knew that a hidden packet could be challenged as incomplete, altered, or misunderstood. His sister's signature proved she had suspected fraud, not that a magistrate would necessarily agree with her conclusions. Worse, Fenwick had controlled the estate's finances for nearly fifteen years and knew which records could be hidden or destroyed before anyone reached them.
That afternoon Adrian asked Eleanor to walk with him to the bridge cottages. He dismissed his carriage at the edge of the lane because he wanted to see the land the way the tenants saw it: the muddy path, the narrow stone crossing, the cold houses crowded close to the stream. Mrs. Marsh stared at the Earl on her doorstep as though she expected another notice. When he asked to examine her receipts, she looked first at Eleanor, who nodded to reassure her.
Agnes brought out the biscuit tin. Between receipts for coal and purchases at the mill shop were three papers bearing the relief fund's embossed stamp. The amounts recorded were modest, but Margaret's ledger showed disbursements for the same dates that were ten and sometimes twenty times larger. Adrian copied the figures with his own hand. When he asked whether Agnes had signed for the larger quantities, she lifted her cracked fingers and shook her head.
“I could not write my name well enough then, my lord,” she said. “Your father's clerk used to make me put a mark. Mr. Finch read everything aloud first.”
“Would you tell a magistrate the same thing?”