Page 41 of Counting on a Countess
Kit sat back in his chair, stunned. “Congratulations, Lady Blakemere,” he said, his voice tight. “You are a wealthy woman.”
“Is this true?” Tamsyn asked Mr. Flowers. Her voice was raspy. “Kit signed the papers. The fortune rightfully belongs to him.”
“There is a postscript to the late Lord Somerby’s letter, intended for my eyes.” The solicitor pointed to a few lines at the bottom of the missive. “It declares all other documents relating to the financial holdings to be null and void without Lord Blakemere’s signature here.”
Kit looked at his wife, the woman he barely knew, and yet who was the key to giving him what he most desired. Either he signed and had her managing his fortune, or he didn’t sign and the money went to someone else.
“We didn’t quite take this situation into account, did we?” Kit said wryly to Tamsyn.
Her face was still chalky as she gazed at him. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“I imagine there will be some... negotiations,” he answered carefully.
“Will you sign?” she wondered.
“Better to have my money in your hands than in someone else’s possession.”
He rose and grabbed the quill from its stand. He scrawled his name along the lower edge of the letter, then returned the quill to the stand, his hand feeling a thousand miles away.
“There,” he said and exhaled. “It’s done.”
The solicitor said, “I’m certain the two of you will come to an amicable arrangement.”
Kit sank down in the chair, rubbing at his temple. “You can buy yourself that curricle now,” he said to Tamsyn. “You don’t need me to approve your purchases.I, however, appear to need you.”
“I suppose you do,” she said, looking appalled.
A leaden weight settled in his chest. This marriage was supposed to be convenient for both of them, but now everything had been thrown into chaos.
Would his dreams of the future come to nothing, now that he had to ask his wife for every penny? The cost of the pleasure garden was considerable and would eat up most of their newfound annual income. Very likely, she’d balk at the expense. Most reasonable people would, or at the very least question why he would want to sink such an amount into a folly.
She’d come from poverty and she had said only today that she held on to money tightly. Tamsyn would never agree to throwing money into a pleasure garden.
But she had to agree. Shehadto.
Whether she wanted it or not, his happiness was in her hands.
Chapter 11
Tamsyn felt as though her stays had been laced too tight. She couldn’t catch her breath, and everything squeezed her, harder and harder.
The carriage seemed impossibly small as they rode back to their new home. Kit brooded across from her, staring moodily out the window while a steady rain fell, turning the streets muddy and slick, and darkening the buildings.
“You have to know that I had no foreknowledge of this,” she said to Kit.
“Of course,” he answered distractedly.
Before they had left Mr. Flowers’s chambers, the solicitor had informed her that on the morrow, a Mr. George Bradley would visit her at home to review documents relating to the fortune and all its holdings. She’d learn precisely how rich she was, which, given Mr. Flowers’s solemnity and Kit’s distance, meant she must be mistress of a great deal of money.
After nearly a decade in genteel poverty, economizing and watching every cent, making do without, her circumstances had been completely, radically reversed. She didn’t know how to feel. Happy? Appalled? Managing a fortune was entirely new. She was in charge of the money earned through smuggling, but that was likely a pittance compared to the earnings of the title and its holdings.
But to review and approve Kit’s purchases? Could she do it?
She had no choice. They would need to figure out some way to traverse this unknown territory.
She watched London scroll past, dirty and cold. Clearly, Lord Somerby thought that his actions would yield a positive result. A husband had all the power in a marriage—but that had been inverted. Kit had to be as baffled as she was.
Somehow, they would need to manage this new paradigm.
