Free Belle (The Daughters of Allamont Hall Book 2) by Mary Kingswood Page B

that he could take the seat he liked best — opposite Hope, so that he could look at her, could fix that lovely countenance in his mind to sustain him through the week. The arrangement also left him without any obligation to make conversation and embarrass himself by stammering like a fool. There had been a boy at school who had had a dreadful stammer, and had been laughed at mercilessly on account of it. After a term or two, his parents had taken him away. Burford knew just how that boy must have felt, jeered at and ridiculed for something he could not help in the least. Here he was, a sensible, educated man with a profession, who could stand in the pulpit on Sundays and be perfectly articulate. Yet a girl of eighteen summers could reduce him to gibbering incoherence.
    He turned with relief to Belle, who sat beside him. “I have been considering the problem of keys, Miss Belle,” he said.
    “You are very good, sir, to devote so much thought to the matter. I do hope it has not distracted you from your mutton.”
    “No, indeed, for mutton is quite my favourite dish.”
    She laughed. “I rather imagined it might be. And in the matter of the keys, what are your conclusions?”
    “I believe that your father may have had a method underlying the placement of the keys. He was a man of the utmost regularity in all things, so he would have been quite systematic. I am convinced that if we were to locate all the strong boxes, we would find that the key from the small box in the desk opens the first box, which contains the key for the second box, and so on. The very last box would, of course, contain no key.”
    “That is most ingenious, Mr Burford,” she said. “I feel sure you are right, although we will not be able to determine that until we have found all the boxes.”
    “True. But at least we may be confident that there are more boxes to be found.”
    “Yes, since Mr Thomas senior made several. But we cannot know the full number, since the poor man has inconveniently died and presumably left no record.”
    “But you may have a record yourself, Miss Belle,” he said. “Your father kept meticulous accounts, I make no doubt. If his own records go back far enough, you will find the details written in his own account books.”
    “What an excellent notion! I have not yet examined the account books, but there are a great many of them and I feel certain that they date back to Papa’s first inheriting the Hall. That will give me the exact number, and all that remains is to find them. And there I depend upon you, Mr Burford.”
    He flushed with pleasure at the compliment. “I shall do my very best, I assure you. But at least you may be certain that there are boxes, and therefore money, to be found. I have heard this week from an old school friend whose father died suddenly a month ago, leaving the estate much encumbered, debts everywhere and no hidden cache of gold. My friend’s oldest brother, who has inherited, must sell off a great deal of land to stay afloat, and my friend is determined to find employment, so that he may not be a burden.”
    “How dreadful!” she said. “I am very sorry for your friend. Is he trained for any profession? If the estate is in financial difficulties, he will not be able to afford to buy a commission in the army, or a good living in the church, I assume.”
    “No, nothing of the sort. He feels a teaching post might suit him, but so close to the start of the term all the likely positions are already filled.”
    “Would a village school be too demeaning for him? For we shall soon need a schoolmaster for Lower Brinford.”
    “I had not thought… I assumed he was trying for a larger establishment.”
    “There is not a large salary, but there may be boarders to bring in a little extra income, and there is a house provided. It might suit him for a while, until he has time to look about him for something better fitted to his abilities.”
    “It is a splendid idea. Should I mention it to