Page 4 of Benefactor to the Baroness (The Seductive Sleuths #3)

F ontaine stared at the sour-faced Mrs. Eris, sitting in her usual place at the front desk of the headquarters of the Foundation for the Betterment of Destitute Orphans. The woman’s curly, white hair was pinned tightly to her scalp and her thin lips were pursed in what seemed of late to be her permanent expression of disapproval.

“None at all?” Fontaine asked.

The older woman shook her head. “I’m terribly sorry, Lady Kerry, but Mr. Blake took the last carriage an hour ago.” She gestured to a row of empty hooks on the wall behind her desk, which usually held the hats and coats of their drivers.

Fontaine clenched her back teeth. It had to have been Mr. Blake who had stymied her. Now she would have to reach out to her other contacts and hope someone would be sympathetic to her cause. But as she turned to leave, Mrs. Eris cleared her throat.

She reluctantly faced the foundation’s treasurer. “Yes?”

The woman tapped her desk with her forefinger. “Have you received any communication from the Halifax branch this week?”

The careful way she’d phrased the question made Fontaine frown. “I have not.”

Mrs. Eris crossed her arms. “That is… unfortunate.”

It felt as if Mrs. Eris were dancing around a subject, and Fontaine had an unsettling suspicion what it might have been. “When did the last report arrive?”

Mrs. Eris pursed her lips and plucked at the cream lace adorning the front of her blouse. “Was it last week? No, that’s not right.” She pushed her chair back from her small desk and used her cane to rise to her feet. Fontaine knew better than to assist her. Mrs. Eris was fiercely independent, even in her late seventies. Fontaine had watched with glee in their last meeting as Mr. Blake had earned himself a cane thwack to the shin for asking Mrs. Eris if she wanted a blanket to guard her against the chill in the boardroom.

“I keep all the letters from the Halifax branch here,” Mrs. Eris said as she toddled toward a varnished oak cabinet. She removed a key from her pocket and unlocked a drawer, then pulled it open and withdrew a thick stack of envelopes.

Fontaine shifted her weight from foot to foot as Mrs. Eris’s hand trembled, but she waited until the very last moment to reach out as the stack slipped out of the older woman’s grip.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. Eris said. “Thank you, Lady Kerry. You have remarkable reflexes.”

Fontaine gathered the fallen envelopes—now hopelessly out of order—shuffled them into a pile, and placed them in the center of Mrs. Eris’s desk.

“Now, where were we?” Mrs. Eris removed a pair of spectacles from her pocket and perched them on the bridge of her thin nose. “Ah, yes, the correspondence. Let’s see.” She picked up the first envelope and drew it close to her face before putting it aside. “Not that one.”

Fontaine tangled her hands in her skirts to keep from fidgeting. Mrs. Eris was one of the senior-most members of the foundation and therefore had significant influence over the board. Fontaine could not afford to let her impatience cause her to lose such a powerful ally.

“Here it is,” Mrs. Eris said. She tucked her spectacles back into the breast pocket of her blouse and raised the envelope into the air. “Two weeks ago. I have received no letters since this one.”

Two weeks. Mrs. Eris had kept critically important information about the state of the relocation scheme to herself for a fortnight. She resisted the urge to snatch the envelope and held out her hand, palm up. “May I see it?”

When Mrs. Eris obliged, Fontaine carefully pried open the cut end of the envelope and withdrew the folded sheet of vellum from inside with two fingers. Then she placed the letter on Mrs. Eris’s desk and smoothed it out.

“That’s all?” Fontaine asked as she reviewed the scant three lines of writing. In relatively terse words, the operator of the Halifax branch, Mr. Sellinger, assured Mrs. Eris as to the wellbeing of the latest batch of young boys and girls whom he had received and confirmed that there were more than enough applications locally to accept children into positions to justify the foundation sending more orphans.

Fontaine had visited Halifax herself a few times since the foundation had started the relocation scheme, crossing the ocean by steamships. Mr. Sellinger had always been quite moderate when it came to estimations, which made the letter she was reading even more unusual.

“What are these?” Fontaine asked, tapping a line of numbers and letters that took up the bottom half of the page.

“A summary of where the children have been placed,” Mrs. Eris said. She pointed to the first column. “‘F’ is for farms, where they place most of the boys. ‘H’ is for households, where most of the girls work. There are several others, but those two make up the majority, as you can see.”

“How many groups have we sent?” Fontaine asked. There was something about the numbers that bothered her.

“Four,” Mrs. Eris responded promptly. “One hundred and seventy boys, and thirty-three girls.” When Fontaine met Mrs. Eris’s gaze, the woman huffed. “My body might be slow, but my mind is as sharp as yours.”

Fontaine quickly dropped her gaze back to the desk and drew her index finger along the column of numbers, adding the sums in her head. When she reached the bottom, her suspicions were confirmed.

“There are twice that number listed in this table,” Fontaine said.

Mrs. Eris grabbed the paper. “That cannot be right.” She fumbled her spectacles back onto her nose and brought the letter close to her face. “Oh, my.” She touched her fingers to her temple. “How did I miss it? Lady Kerry, I am terribly sorry. I-I must tell Mr. Hill at once.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine what he would say. The old man would insist that the entire scheme be investigated. He might even create a committee to inspect Fontaine’s work. A committee that would undoubtedly include Mr. Blake, who would find any excuse to put her in Mr. Hill’s bad books. She assumed he hadn’t mentioned what had happened in the alley out of sheer embarrassment at being bested by a woman.

“Wait,” Fontaine said, her mind buzzing with options. “I know Mr. Sellinger. There must be an explanation for the discrepancy. Mr. Hill is terribly busy with the upcoming election. We don’t need to bother him with such a simple matter.”

Mrs. Eris thumped her cane on the ground. “ Simple , you say?”

“Certainly,” Fontaine said. She gathered up the envelopes and returned them to the drawer where Mrs. Eris had stored them, then turned and held out her hand. “Lock these back away and let me sort out the problem. I am certain it is a minor matter. A miscommunication. It is nearly time for a visit to Halifax, anyway. I’ll sort out whatever this is when I arrive.”

It wasn’t entirely untrue. She did have a first-class cabin booked on a ship leaving for Halifax. It just didn’t depart for several weeks. She hadn’t intended to go so long between trips, but she couldn’t risk missing the board election at the end of the month.

Mrs. Eris removed her key from her pocket and stared at it, frowning. “I suppose…I could overlook this.” She curled her fingers around the key. “I like this position, Lady Kerry. It keeps my mind active and gives me something to do. But my eyes are not as sharp as they once were. Perhaps it would be wise if I stepped down and let a younger member take over.”

“A single mistake shouldn’t be the end of a prosperous career. The writing was faint, the numbers hardly legible. What you need is a visit to an optician.”

Mrs. Eris touched the pocket that held her spectacles. “I believe you are right. Although I’m not keen on letting you go about this yourself.” She brightened. “Perhaps you could bring your companion.”

“What compa—a clever idea that is,” Fontaine said, barely catching herself from asking a question that would have landed her in a difficult situation with the board. She had almost forgotten that the funds Mr. Hill had been providing for the past six months were meant to be a salary for a companion. What would Mr. Hill—or Mrs. Eris—think if they learned she had spent that money while visiting workhouses? She would be kicked off the board, if not expelled from the foundation entirely.

A bead of sweat dripped down her back. “My companion, of course,” Fontaine said. Then, to forestall any further questions, she added, “You can count on me. I will discover the source of the discrepancies.”