Office
Pierre had never needed to spend very much time in his study before his father died. Sometimes he did – at the university, when he attempted to get some serious reading or writing done, at some points of serious consideration. But he rarely actually needed to be there. However, after he became Count Bezuhov in his own right, there became a necessity for long hours at his desk signing papers, transactions, petitions, agreements and other various nonsense that he knew very little of. Sometimes, Pierre realized with unease that if it wasn't for Prince Vasili he would be utterly lost altogether.
Sales
Of all the transactions that Pierre had to handle in his new position as a very wealthy man with large and various properties and numerous surfs, the ones that had to do with the sale and acquisition of peasants bothered him the most. He would have left it to his bailiffs and Prince Vasili but something within him felt that he owed the surfs he traded, bought and sold like coats and boots at least the respect of being personally aware of their fate. As normal as these transactions with human property were, they bothered Pierre to a terrible extent.
Accounting
Money was not something that Pierre had ever been very aware of. His youth had gone by in a flurry of university and Petersburg bachelorhood. He was hardly bothered by statuses so his constant lack of money was not something that pervaded his thoughts very often as he always had the very necessary things. Then, just as he was growing into a young man where responsibility would be of the essence, his large inheritance once again relieved him of the need to take his finances very serious and he was always very liberal in his attention to the accounting books.
Management
After Helene's infidelity came out and the scandalous duel, Pierre took a strange sort of pleasure from managing his estates. He seemed to seek comfort in his own reforms and in the sense that he was doing something good for the people he was responsible for. It was almost a self-righteous comfort in which he sought, though subconsciously, to reaffirm his moral superiority over his wife and her lover. Not that he wouldn't have been employing these reforms if Helene had been faithful and Dolokhov more trustworthy, but in the present circumstances, there was a special pleasure in his doings.
Temp
While he had been courting her, Pierre had been constantly consumed by the nagging and discomforting feeling that Helene's pleasant and attentive, if not loving, attitude toward him was a temporary thing, a transitory illusion. He felt as if he was there mostly for her and her father's disposal. He knew that all of society was watching their courtship, guessing at what would happen. His future was to be decided by the outcome of this courtship – a halfhearted and not really intentional one at that – on many levels and they all treated it like a seasonal entertainment. It was disheartening.