Page 25 of The Secret Word
Wright waved a hand, as if to dismiss his unusual retrospection. “I didn’t, and now I’m fifty-three. Hale and hearty, aye. That’s true. But who’s to say that I’ll make another ten years?”
“Let us hope,” Chris said. “Quite apart from the business, Miss Wright would be distressed to lose you.”Probably. In some ways.
“Humph,” said Wright. “I was a coal miner, lad. For fifteen years, from the time I was a boy of eight, I went down the mines every day. Coal miners don’t make old bones. Even if you and my girl marry tomorrow, and my grandson comes along in nine months, it’ll be seventeen years until he can start learning the business and twenty-six years, I reckon, before he’d be able to run it without someone to check up on him, like. You, if you’re the one to marry Clementine. My boy’s father.”
Sympathetic moment over, and straight back to irritation. The child, if child there was, would be Chris’s boy. His and Clem’s. “I see,” Chris said. “It sounds like a sensible plan.”
“It is the only plan,” Wright said. “I built this business, Satterthwaite. Hour by hour, day by day, year by year. My determination. My sweat. My blood.” He thumped his fist on the table. “My blood, Satterthwaite. My blood will carry on when I am gone. It is the only plan.”
Perhaps he regretted his emotional outburst, for he stood up, then, and announced that Chris could go. “We have other business to discuss. Run along and take my daughter somewhere the ton can see her.”
Irritation. Definitely irritation. The man was fundamentally unlikeable.
*
“So I haveno idea whether I passed his tests today or not,” Chris reported to Clem. She and Chris were once again driving around Hyde Park, this time without Mr. Bagshaw.
Clem was hopeful. “He told you to take me out. Only two other men even made it as far as talking to his inner circle of employees. Quite what happened I do not know, but they did not call on me again, or approach me if we were at the same entertainment.” It was a good sign that Father had sent Chris to her, but even so, Clem was not certain Chris would, in the end, be allowed to marry her. Father was, as he called it, “playing his cards close to his chest.” He enjoyed keeping people uncertain.
She had news for Chris. “I have an invitation to Lady Fernvale’s ball tomorrow evening, Chris, and one for you, too.” It would be the most prestigious event she had ever attended. If Chris agreed that they should go.
“Should we attend?” he asked her. “Will people wonder why we have been invited?”
“I think we can assume at least some of them have figured it out,” Clem told him. “After all, Lady Fernvale walked into the box where we were sitting, and in full view of the audience, held your hands and talked to you with great affection and animation. If I know anything about the way Society works, one of the older generation will remember that your mother and Lady Fernvale were close, and that your mother chose Lady Fernvale as your godmother.”
“Perhaps we should stage that argument with Aunt Fern at her ball.”
Clem shook her head. “I don’t think word will have reached Father yet, and even when it does, he won’t see Lady Fernvale as a threat. She is a woman and a widow. He will assume that she is powerless. It will be the Satterthwaite and Thurgood men that he will want to guard himself against.”
“I will need to talk to the Thurgoods about this estate,” Chris commented. “It makes your father’s approval less important, Clem. If it has been cared for, and if it is big enough, we might have sufficient income even without your dowry.”
It warmed Clem’s heart that Chris wanted her even without the money that would come from her father, but she saw no reason why they shouldn’t have both.
“It is wonderful that you will have something of your own, so you do not feel beholden to me. But if our roles were reversed, and I had nothing while you were rich, I wouldn’t like it at all, Chris. If we can, we should keep Father happy. Just think how many orphans we will be able to educate with my money and your estate!”
“I wonder how far away from London the estate is, and how big it is,” Chris mused. “I’ll need to be in London at least some of the time, and up in Yorkshire, too, if I’m to learn your father’s business and then run it.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Clem asked. “I thought that we would, once we had my dowry, cut ties with Father.”
“Do you want to cut ties with your father?” Chris sounded surprised. “He made a good point today. He said his grandson would inherit everything, probably before the boy was old enough to manage it. He would need a trustee who could teach him his duties and guide him until he was ready. I should be that trustee, do you not think? As the boy’s father?”
“You make a good point,” Clem had to agree. Which was annoying, for she had been looking forward to telling her father she was no longer his to command.
“Mind you, Clem,” Chris said. “We are not going to let him push us around or bully us, and if he does not like it, then we will cut those ties. Even if he disinherits his grandson. I don’t think he will, because he has no one else. But I’d rather that than allow him to give you one moment of distress.”
When Chris said it so firmly, Clem believed him, at least at that moment. And even if Father proved to be too much even for the pair of them working together, Clem loved how protective Chris was. It really was very sweet.
Chapter Ten
Chris waited anxiouslyin the private room at Miss Clemens’ Book Emporium and Tea Rooms. He was about to meet cousins from both sides of the family, and he was far from certain about the reception he was about to get.
Clem squeezed his hands and he smiled at her. He wasn’t at all certain he would be facing this if not for her. She gave him strength.
She had done so at Aunt Fern’s ball. Both his mother’s brother, the Earl of Crosby, and his father’s cousin, the Earl of Halton, were there. Later, he found that the public repudiation had been organized by Aunt Fern. But whether they meant it or not was the question.
Both reacted with the same disdain when Chris was presented to them.
Lord Halton said, “Reginald Satterthwaite’s son? I have no wish to meet anyone associated with that scoundrel.”
