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not mind climbing a few more stairs. My father’s apartments are on the top floor of the house. He will not come down to you.”
    “Oh, no, ma’am, it is no trouble,” he said, moving swiftly to follow her out the door, leaving Robert to stare after them. “How very odd,” Beak panted a few moments later, for the stairs to the top floor were steeper than those leading from the ground floor and Sybilla moved up them at her customary, rapid pace. “I should have expected to find only servants’ rooms at the top of these houses.”
    “Oh, no, the servants’ rooms are mostly in the basement near the kitchen. Father had this floor rearranged to suit his own requirements.” Sybilla’s heart was beating quickly now, and she told herself it was because she had mounted the stairs too rapidly, but she knew it had more to do with the forthcoming confrontation. She rarely saw her father, and when she did, the meetings were not pleasant. She approached the door to his study now with grim determination. “I hope you are prepared to be offended, Mr. Beak.”
    He smiled at her. “I daresay he will not be displeased to see me, my lady. I do not bring bad news, you know.”
    “That will not signify.” She tapped on the door and opened it before the occupant had time to deny her, saying hastily, “Father, I have brought Mr. Beak from Haviland’s Bank to see you on a matter of importance.”
    Sir Mortimer, a stoop-shouldered gray-haired man with steel-rimmed spectacles perched upon his large, bony nose, looked up from the papers on his huge desk the moment the door opened, the expression on his pale, craggy face one of pop-eyed outrage. His eyes, startling blue, blazed with fury, and when he saw who it was, he flung down his quill and cried out in thundering tones, “What are you doing here, girl? It is expressly forbidden. Get out or I’ll have Borland throw you out!”
    “Borland has gone out,” Sybilla reminded him gently.
    “Well, he’s no business to be going out! Now, go away!”
    Mr. Beak stepped past her and said ingratiatingly, “If it please you, Sir Mortimer, I require instructions from you in a matter of great importance.”
    “Wench said Haviland’s Bank, so where’s Haviland?” demanded Sir Mortimer in great agitation. “What do you want here, man? What can you want with me?”
    “Sir,” said Mr. Beak, moving even closer to the desk, “I thought it proper to wait upon you, as we now have a very large balance of yours in hand—eighty thousand pounds, in fact—and we wish to have your orders respecting it.”
    “If it is any trouble to you,” Sir Mortimer snarled, “I will take it out of your hands. Did not Haviland tell you never to come here to plague me? Who the devil are you, anyway?”
    “I am Stanford Beak, at your service, sir, and I tell you at once, your money is not the least trouble to us, not the least. But we thought perhaps you would like some of the more recent unexpended income to be invested.”
    “Well, well, what do you want to do with it?”
    “Perhaps you would like forty thousand pounds invested,” Mr. Beak said, standing his ground. “Keeping forty thousand in available funds ought to suffice for the moment, I should think. I must tell you I have looked over your records of expenditure for the past several years, and I cannot find any cause for keeping a greater amount on hand than that. Even that, by most people, would be considered—”
    “I do not care a jot about most people,” Sir Mortimer snapped, “nor do I wish to hear your bleating. Is that all?”
    “Well, p-perhaps—”
    “No more perhapses, man. You are not welcome here. Tell that idiot Haviland—”
    “Mr. Haviland has b-been ill—”
    “More fool, he. You remind him that I don’t see people, and you take yourself off now and do whatever you like about the forty thousand. But if you come here again to trouble me about it, I shall remove it. At once! Do you understand me, you insignificant little