Page 69 of Never a Duke
“I’m sorry, Walden, but I—”
“Be noncommittal,” Walden went on, as if Ned hadn’t spoken. “Polite, deferential. Make the usual understanding noises, but hint that for a man of his station to go into debt over fripperies is an insult to him. Remind Cadwallader that his wife and daughters must learn to manage on a budget, though the ladies have likely been managing on pennies and prayers for the past three years.”
“Walden, as it happens—”
“I’ve had word that Lord Woodruff’s eldest might offer for Miss Cadwallader, which should make for an interesting match, provided the happy couple can remain afloat on the River Tick. Keep the meeting short, cite another pressing engagement, promise to schedule a second meeting if he wants to revisit the matter next month, and then—”
“No,” Ned said, loudly enough to be heard in the corridor. “Or rather, I cannot handle this meeting. I have a prior engagement.”
Walden’s impatience coalesced into a scowl. “Driving in the park again, Ned? Going on another picnic?”
“And what if I were?” The question had come out:An’ waa’ if I wur?The Cockney had surfaced, which it did about once every three years, when Ned was losing his temper. He ought to be mortified, but he wasn’t. Far from it.
Walden’s expression became curious. “Are you perhaps venturing into the stews to find the missing women?”
“I am not.” Not that afternoon.
“You lie poorly, which is a credit to you, according to Jane. I commend your nobility of spirit, if looking for needles in haystacks is the work of a noble spirit, but Ned, the bank is your—”
“The bank is myjob, Walden. Lady Rosalind is myfuture. I am meeting with the Earl of Woodruff to ask permission to court his daughter.”
His Grace, the imperious, imposing, fantastically wealthy and endlessly influential Duke of Walden, was rendered speechless, while Ned had more to say.
“I work twice the hours you do and four times the hours Lord Stephen puts in. If he is to be your successor as bank owner and titleholder, then his lordship must be able to do my job. He should know the tellers by name, if not the badgers, and he needs to spend time in the lobby as you used to, greeting the customers because your livelihood depends on them. If I want to go on a damned picnic twice a year, that is the least I am owed, considering all the at-homes and musicales I have endured in addition to running this institution.
“And if I must venture back into the stews,” Ned went on, “to see decent women spared a futureyour sisters narrowly escaped, then into the stews I shall go, and you have nothing to say to it. I was managing on my own in those slums before you set onewealthy, booted foot on London’s cobbles, which is why Jane charged me with looking after you,Your Grace, not the other way ’round.”
In the ensuing silence, Walden prowled to the window for his usual reconnaissance, which meant Ned could not read his expression.
When the duke eventually faced Ned, he wore a glower that had probably intimidated everybody from the sovereign to the boot boy. “Are you quite finished?”
Ned inventoried his list of resentments and frustrations. “Stop having me followed.”
“I am not having you followed, though bank policy requires that you take a badger with you, if you’re on bank business.”
Ned put down his pen in the very center of the pen tray. “I wrote the damned policy,Your Grace, and you violate it more than all the other managers put together. Lord Stephen comes a close second, but then, he’s seldom on the bank’s business because he regards this place as somewhere to go when he’s bored with his clubs and inventions.”
Another silence stretched as tight as a drum head. “Courting does not agree with you, Ned.”
That might have been Walden’s heavy-handed attempt at humor, or it might have been an equally heavy-handed warning.
Ned wasn’t having either. “Perhaps banking does not agree with me.” Not eighteen hours a day of it, six days a week, plus Sunday dinners, at-homes, and the occasional make-up-the-numbers appearance at Her Grace’s insistence, to say nothing of stories on demand in the nursery, and let’s-bury-the-dog.
“You are a very good banker,” Walden said, propping a hip on the corner of Ned’s desk.
“Too good, if you cannot spare me for a few hours here and there, Walden. What did you once tell me? An employee who cannot be replaced cannot be promoted. You would need three men to replace me, and they would be tired men indeed.”
Walden’s boot swung in a slow rhythm. “I’ll hire you another assistant.”
“Hire me a female this time. Somebody interested in more than currying favor with the widows. Tattinger is a good man, but he’s so lonely he’d almost rather be a teller for the small talk involved.”
“Hire yourself a female,” Walden replied, “for clearly, you have the better grasp of what’s needed. I’ll have Stephen do the pretty with Cadwallader.”
“Lord Stephen might not enjoy banking either, Walden. You should ask him. His mind is restless, and banking done responsibly is mostly for plodders.”
“Your small investors don’t consider you a plodder.”
Ned rose, needing for this conversation to be over. He was anxious about his interview with Woodruff, frustrated with the investigation into the missing maids, and too weary in body and spirit to mend fences with Walden as he ought. Time enough to do that at the next Sunday dinner, assuming he was still welcome.
