6
James
James sat back, not for the first time that day, and tried to think for a moment about what he could possibly do next. He had thought that he'd reached the end of his rope several times before. Each time, with a little bit of thought, he'd found a new avenue to pursue. Each time had been a dead-end.
He had expected things to be a challenge. If the finances of Lord Geis had been easily deciphered, and his problems solved trivially, then there would have been no reason to hire James in the first place. What worried him more than that, though, was that there didn't seem to be any issue at all.
He had checked carefully, several times. The numbers didn't add up whatsoever. It seemed that the house's daily expenses were fairly carefully tracked; each week, hidden somewhere in the tomes that Lord Geis had kept, he had taken down the food costs and wages paid. He'd marked taxes each month.
And all of that money was more than compensated for by his real estate trading. In theory, the house should not only have been solvent, but should have been fairly well-off.
The answer, he had decided long ago, was in the scraps.
He had a few guesses as to what they could have meant, of course. The first letter more than likely signified a fellow's name; the numbers more than likely referred to debts incurred by the named party.
He had acted on that assumption and tallied the total on a separate sheet. They seemed to add up fairly closely. The problem was the sheer amounts. To one of the men, he paid out very frequently, and never was paid back. The sums were too small to be overly concerned with, but given that there were no dates on any of the scraps it was as likely to have been near-constant as it was to have been an occasional couple of pounds.
To another, he paid out vast sums that seemed to be paid back…at some point, if he guessed at the time line correctly. To a third, he paid out regularly, the same few pounds each time. There was never a second number on the note; he must have either been collecting money from the man, or been paying him "off the books," so to speak.
There was a clear picture being painted by the notes, and the picture was of a household that was being crushed not by their expenses, but rather by the charitable nature of its head. The answer was nearly obvious, but it was there that the trail stopped.
All he would need to do to get things back into order would be to collect on the debts that Geis had lent out, and the bank should be more than satisfied with the account statements.
Therein lied the rub.
None of the names were ever more than a single letter, written in the midst of a cryptic string of letters and numbers that he could only guess at the meaning of. That they got him to within a few dozen pounds when he summed them, meant he was almost certainly on the right track. But that meant nothing if he couldn't identify the men in the notes.
James tried to steel himself for what he knew would have to come next. There was only one person in the entire world who would know the meaning of these notes; he was lying in a beautiful plot in the churchyard. James had made a point of going to see it before he sent the servants away.
After he had examined the expenses, he had found that there were virtually none that were perfectly unnecessary. His only concern had been that with only one person living in the house, the personal staff was fairly massive. With her father alive, the Geis family had entertained fairly regularly, and the staff paid for itself in those evenings.
With her father gone, Mary Geis received no guests, and rarely left her library. When she did, it was for food or to sleep. Or, it seemed, to snoop on his work.
So he had done what he had to do in order to keep the household accounts in the black: he notified the help that, effective immediately, they would not be paid until a new head of household had arrived. Since he was taking no wage, there was no reason for him to leave. Indeed, it would only help to show his commitment if he were to stay for no pay.
It had been an overstep, he knew, but he hadn't counted on her reaction. Mary seemed, for all the world, to be nearly as combative as anyone he had ever known.
He massaged his knee; it still ached, sometimes, even though he had learned to hide the limp he'd walked with for months after his return to university. He hadn't even brought the cane from his flat in London, and he hadn't needed it once. Now he was beginning to regret it.
All the sitting made it hurt when he did have need to walk, and there was no hostler to prepare a horse for him. The family, it seemed, hadn't felt it worthwhile to purchase a horseless carriage, so on the occasions that he had needed to go into town he had to walk for the better part of an hour.
He rubbed it for a moment, and then ignored the pain and pushed himself up from the chair. He picked up a few of the scraps of paper from the stacks he had carefully separated them into and slipped them into his pocket. Then he steeled himself for a battle that he knew he couldn't win, and set off in search of Mary Geis.
She was sitting in the library. He wasn't sure why, but it surprised him to see that she was keeping to her routine even once the servants were gone. He opened the door and, seeing her inside, waited for her to invite him in.
She didn't. He waited a little longer, and she ignored him. He let out a cough; nothing. He let out a long, deep sigh and stepped through the threshold into the room that she had claimed as her territory. He had already done quite a bit of encroaching on her, and now he would have to do it again.
His only defense was that his work was absolutely vital to the continued prosperity she seemed to so enjoy.
Having stepped inside, he steeled himself against the onslaught that was sure to come, but none did. Instead, she continued to stare intently at the book in her lap. He could smell the perfume she wore, even several meters away, and it was nearly as intoxicating as her beauty. If only, he thought, before he caught himself.
He took another step towards her, and then another, and then he stood at the desk where she sat and loomed over her. He could see that she hadn't turned the page since he had walked through the door, nearly five minutes. As if she were reading his mind, she turned the page slowly.
For a long time, he waited for a response that did not come. He could see a stiffness developing in her shoulders, and he knew that whether she acknowledged him or not, she was nearly as acutely aware of his presence as he was of hers.
"Miss Geis?" His voice was soft, almost tender. It surprised him; he had hoped to maintain his professional tone as long as he could, in spite of her preternatural beauty.
She ignored him, and he repeated her name once more, harder. More like he had hoped to sound initially. Like someone who could not be ignored.
"What do you need, Mr. Poole? Can you not see that I'm busy? Or do you need to dismiss my books, as well?"
Having grown silent, she looked up at him.
"I'm sorry if I've offended you, Ma'am, but—"
"Oh, sorry, are you?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "So you're going to set my house back in order, then?"
"If this is about your help—"
"You had no right, Mr. Poole. You may have been hired by my father; I'll allow that, but you're not in charge of this house, and you're not in charge of me."
"If you want me to re-hire your servants, Miss Geis, I'm afraid I can't do that."
"And if I told you to leave, and allow me to do it for you?"
James inhaled sharply. He couldn't afford to lose this opportunity, he reminded himself.
"I—" He stopped himself and started over. "I have been going over your father's books, Miss, and needed some assistance in deciphering some rather… arcane text. You would have known your father best, and if anyone could make heads or tails of what he's written, then it would be you. I would only need an hour or two of your time—"
"Why on earth would I help you, Mr. Poole? You've done nothing but throw the house into disorder, and you're not even capable of balancing an accounts book?" Mary closed her book and stood up. She had a defiant expression, and James thought that he would like very much to kiss her until it came off. "Don't be absurd, sir. Get out of my way."