This was a bonfire. Adela was planning to set a torch to everything Philippa had saved. A cold, clear anger settled in her heart. It was not the hot, helpless fury she had felt during the tea party.
This was different. This was the anger of a craftsman seeing her work threatened by a vandal. She gathered the invoices and her ledgers. There was no longer any room for silence or subtlety.
The time for her parallel life was over. It was about to collide with her husband's. The crisis broke not with Adela's party, but with a letter from London delivered by special courier. It was from Alaric's man of business, a Mr. Calhoun, and its tone was urgent.
Alaric read it in his study, the fire crackling in the hearth, a counterpoint to the growing chill in his veins. A shipping investment, one he had made on the advice of a friend of Adela's and which he had considered a guaranteed success, had failed catastrophically. The company was bankrupt. His investment was entirely lost.
Worse, to cover the margin, Calhoun had drawn heavily on the ducal accounts, only to find them perilously low. The letter concluded with a stark, humiliating warning. The Duke of Thornfield was facing a liquidity crisis. He was, to put it plainly, on the verge of being unable to pay his bills.
Alaric felt a wave of hot shame and fury. He, the Duke of Thornfield, whose name was synonymous with wealth and power, was being lectured like a profligate schoolboy. His pride, the very bedrock of his character, was deeply wounded. His first instinct was to blame.
He summoned Mr. Fletcher, his voice like a whipcrack. "Fletcher, what is the meaning of this? Calhoun writes that our accounts are nearly empty. How is this possible?"
"Have you been asleep at your post?" Mr. Fletcher, who had weathered the tempers of three generations of Thornfield Dukes, did not flinch. He stood before the desk, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression one of sober calm. "Your Grace, I have not had control of the main accounts for nearly four months."
"What?" Alaric's voice was dangerously low. "Then who has?" "The Duchess," Fletcher said simply.
"At her own request. All household and estate expenditures are recorded in her ledgers. If you wish to know the state of things, you must ask her." The statement hung in the air between them, irrefutable.