Luck Is No Lady(21)
She was not one to back down from a challenge.
Desire flared in an acute response, taking Roderick by surprise.
It had been the same the night of Hawksworth’s ball. He hadn’t intended on stealing the chaste little kiss. Then as now, desire had come upon him unexpectedly in an impulsive reaction to the unusual intimacy of their encounter. But once he felt the texture of her lips beneath his, it had not been an easy thing to release her.
He cleared his throat. Perhaps he had gone too long without a female companion.
What had it been? Four months?
No, seven since he ended the arrangement with his last mistress.
That had to be the cause of his restless libido.
Forcing his attention in another direction, he drew the sheet of her calculations from the neat pile of paperwork. His desire, appropriate or not, was not the important issue at the moment.
Roderick took a moment to note the perfectly ordered rows and columns written in tight handwriting, which allowed all the figures to fit on one sheet while still keeping the information readable. He ran his gaze down to the final total in the corner and felt a slide of raw disappointment through his gut, but to be sure, he turned his ledger to the appropriate page and found that her amount matched Goodwin’s to the penny.
Was it possible he had chosen a selection with no discrepancies?
No. He didn’t think so. This was the last selection of documents Freddie had worked on before vanishing. Roderick felt certain there was some evidence to be found there.
But it had not been revealed in her work.
Resistance reared its head over what he had to say. “Thank you, Mrs. Adams,” he said stiffly. “I appreciate your time, but I do not believe you will suit.”
The words of dismissal came uneasily to his tongue. His gut twisted in rebellion. He wrote off the insistent urging as a residue of his physical attraction.
He would never risk the livelihood of Bentley’s based on a wayward attraction. He needed more than a competent bookkeeper. He needed a mathematical investigator who could resolve the mystery Goodwin had left behind.
“It is not the figure you were looking for?”
Her tone was even more rigid than his had been. He looked up to see her still standing stern and unmoving on the other side of his desk. Her irritation was palpable.
“No, it is not,” he replied.
Her intensity did not waver as she held his gaze. The impact of her steady gray eyes angled straight to his center.
“May I ask one thing before I take my leave, Mr. Bentley?”
He should refuse.
He gave a short nod.
“Did you set me up to fail your audition because I am a woman?” Her voice was clipped and sharp in the manner reserved for offended females.
Stiffening at the accusation, he narrowed his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“Did you intentionally withhold the information necessary for me to provide an accurate total?”
A keen spark of hope flared to life. He had provided her with every document pertaining to the accounts for one entire month. “What makes you believe anything is missing?” he queried.
She paused for a long moment, and Roderick got the impression she was trying to decide if his inquiry was genuine. Then she stepped up to the desk and gently separated some of the receipts and invoices from the rest of the stack. She turned them and spread them out for him to view.
“As you can see on these statements, there is a small notation marked either in the lower corner, or here near the middle to the right side. It is a significant variation from the symbol typically used, but I am quite certain it references a refund due on the accounts.”
Roderick lifted one of the receipts and studied the strange marking—what could possibly be a small and barely discernible R beside the rows of figures. He hadn’t thought anything of it.
“A refund? Why would you suspect that?”
“In this instance,” she said as she pointed to an invoice from the candle maker, “the amount charged in advance for a month’s supply of candles is highly overstated. Considering there is gas lighting in your hallway, and I suspect in much of the public areas as well”—she lifted a brow in question, and he nodded confirmation of her assumption—“then a place this size would not use nearly the amount of candles estimated here. Unless the invoice is false and the order in fact covers more than one month, or a credit was carried over to the next order, there would have been a significant refund due. That, or your closets are currently overflowing with a ridiculous supply of candles.”
Roderick turned the page in the ledger. The same inflated amount was indicated as paid to the candle maker the following month. It carried through to the next month and the next.
“I do not see any indication of a refund,” he said, mostly to himself.