Page 28 of The Secret Word
Jim nodded. “I’m sorry, mister,” he repeated.
“You weren’t to know, Jim,” Chris told him. “If it happens again, though, tell the person who calls that they must wait. That study is where I write things down about Mr. O’Hara’s business. You wouldn’t want Mr. O’Hara’s enemies finding out things they are not meant to know, would you?”
Jim shook his head so fast that his cheeks wobbled. “No, sir, mister,” he said fervently.
Chris nodded and went to face his grandfather. He wasn’t truly worried about the records he kept for Billy. Everything was locked away whenever he left the room. Tiny knew that, and so did Billy, or Grandfather’s time in the room would have beenshort indeed. But let Jim worry a little. It would help the lesson to stick.
It was lucky that Chris had no expectation that Grandfather might have changed. The way the man bullied his way into a room he should not have entered without Chris’s invitation showed he was the same man who cheerfully abandoned Chris to his own devices in one of the world’s wickedest cities.
“Grandfather,” Chris said, as he opened the door. The man hadn’t changed. Perhaps he was a little greyer, a little older. But he turned from the window as the door opened, caught sight of Chris, and went straight to the point without a smile or even a glint of recognition in his eyes.
“Wright. He’s worse than a commoner. He’s a coal miner. You cannot marry his daughter.”
“I intend to marry his daughter,” Chris told him.
“I forbid it,” Grandfather declared. “You are a Satterthwaite of Blethering. Marry an heiress who doesn’t belong in the gutter. And what are you doing here? Working for a debt collector? It won’t do, Christopher. You must resign.”
“You cannot tell me what I can and cannot do, Grandfather. You gave up that right when you abandoned me in the street.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Grandfather said. “I left you safely at my brother’s house.”
Chris had been over this painful ancient history often enough in recent days to speak calmly. “You left me in the street outside your brother’s house, from which we had already been turned away once. I was turned away again, and had nowhere to go. I could have died in the streets that first winter. I very nearly did.”
“Fool boy. You should have tried your mother’s people.”
“I did not know my mother’s people,” Chris pointed out. “I was a child.”
“That is hardly my fault,” said Grandfather, and then he waved a dismissive hand. “I did not come here to discuss ancienthistory, Christopher. Your father was a disappointment to me, falling in love with your mother and running off with her when all he was meant to do was be paid off by her father.”
That was good to know. Chris felt slightly better about his father, knowing he had loved his mother when he ruined her.
Grandfather had not finished his rant. “I expect better from you, boy. I have plans for you, and they do not include being married to a coal miner’s daughter. But if we play our cards correctly, she could be worth something, for all of that.”
Chris opened the door which he had closed behind him when he entered. “I want no part of your plans, Grandfather. Please leave.”
“Shut the door, boy, and I’ll tell you about the bride I have chosen for you. I think you shall be pleased.”
“I’ll have no part of any of your plans, Grandfather,” Chris insisted.
“Her father is Morton Vaughan,” Grandfather said, ignoring him. “Born a gentleman, mark you, Christopher, though he does work in trade. Tea, and as rich as Croesus. The girl is pretty, too. I’d have married her myself, but he won’t have me for her. Says she deserves a handsome young husband.”
“I am marrying Clementine Wright, Grandfather,” Chris said, wishing the man was twenty years younger, for he would be happy to hurl him down the stairs and out the door into the stable yard.
“You’ve no choice, Christopher. I’ve signed the marriage agreements. You are marrying the Vaughan filly.”
Obnoxious turnip!Chris struggled to maintain the appearance of calm while his temper seethed and bubbled. “Your signature is not valid. I am an adult, and have not agreed, and will not agree.”
“You will do as you are told, Christopher,” his grandfather growled.
“I will not,” said Chris, firmly.
His grandfather complained, harangued, and eventually left, muttering about serpents’ teeth and thankless children.
Chapter Eleven
“Yer young fella’sgaffer came by to threaten me today. Me! At my work! Happen I’ll lurn him that Bertram Wright ain’t to be pushed round by a useless blot of an upper crust snot rag. Says that scoundrel of a grandson is already betrothed!” Father was furious. His careful speech, much like that of the class he aspired for his grandson to join, had been slowly and thoroughly learned. Slipping back into the words and accent of his youth showed how angry he was.
Another sign of his wrath was the way he was pacing, to and fro. across the parlor rug.
