Page 63 of The Secret Word
“He is giving me a holiday,” Chris commented, “and enough time to find out what secrets he is hiding. I think I should send someone to Sheffield to dig around in your father’s past, Clem. If he has been up to anything illegal in London, Billy should be able to uncover it, but I will go into town with Mr. Samuels and hire an investigator. Also, I expect him to keep trying the legal route, so I need to set a lawyer of our own up to knocking down every reason he gives a magistrate for stealing our child.”
“I want to go with you,” Clem said, “But I don’t want Will anywhere near my father. Chris, I’m afraid.”
Chris took her into his arms. “I promise you, Clem. I won’t let the old fraud take our son. We have the earls on our side, and Aunt Fern, and Billy—who has an army at his back. A ragtagarmy, but an effective one. And if all else fails, we’ll take ship for France or even Canada.”
For the moment at least, the determination and conviction in his voice soothed her troubled soul.
*
Chris left forLondon in the morning, and for the next few weeks, he came home for only one night a week. Between his visits, Clem lived for his daily letters, though in them, he reported mostly frustrations. Father was continuing to push for custody of Will, and Chris’s lawyer—Richard Anderson—kept knocking down all the arguments he put up. Both Lord Crosby and Lord Halton had made it known that they supported Chris and Clem as Will’s parents and so had Billy, so London’s magistrates and constabulary were being very careful to toe the line of the law, whatever Father offered them.
As for evidence of wrongdoing, Chris’s investigators had discovered plenty of shady dealings and outright meanness, but nothing illegal. Father didn’t even have a mistress. He gambled within his means. He didn’t use brothels, or at least not the ones that Billy owned. He did spend nights away from home, as Clem already knew, but he must spend them in his offices, for no one could be found who had seen him out whoring or drinking.
The word from Yorkshire was more of the same. Whispers that Father had cheated his first partner out of his share of their coal mine. Grumbles about short-changed wage packets and stand-over tactics in contract negotiations. Mutterings about corrupt practices. But no evidence that would stand up in court.
The people Chris hired to provide guards for the estate, the house, and the school prevented three attempts to breach the defenses, two covert and one a full-on assault, but the menwho were captured would not say who was behind the attacks. Perhaps they did not know.
Then Wright had a break-through. He found himself a magistrate with a mighty chip on his shoulder about aristocrats and a black-and-white approach to morality. Chris was at home when his lawyer arrived from London to show him the papers that had just been delivered.
Chris read them, with Clem hovering to take each page as he finished.
“This says that Will is to be handed into the care of an independent person while charges against us are being investigated,” Chris said. “What person, and what charges?”
Richard Anderson gave him two more sheets of paper. “The charges,” he said.
Chris scanned them. “These are nonsense.”
“Then we’ll fight them,” Clem said, relieved.
“Yes,” Chris agreed, but Richard was shaking his head.
“But meanwhile, Mr. Wright’s appointee will have your son,” he said.
“No,” said Clem. “That cannot be allowed to happen. I will run away with him first.”
“That would be taken by the courts as an admission of guilt,” Richard warned them.
“What do we have on Wright?” Chris asked. “Perhaps altogether it is enough.”
The lawyer shook his head, and began to list everything they had found:morally suspect, legally dubious, humanly appalling. None of it able to be proved illegal.
Clem told Martha and Mrs. Westbridge what was going on, and Chris mentioned it to Partridge. All three insisted that they had told no-one, but by the following morning, word had spread through the house and the school, as Clem discovered that when her housekeeper stopped her on her way to the nursery to say,“The whole house is with you, Mrs. Satterthwaite. If you need us to hide you and the little ones, not a single person here will give you away. And nor will the school.”
She was cheered by their support, but she still pushed her food around her plate, and Chris had no appetite, either. Richard had already eaten and set out for town to see what else he might do.
“I’m frightened,” Clem said to Chris.
“We’ll find a way,” Chris promised. “And if we have no success in the next few days, we’ll defy the court order and run.”
At that moment, a footman came back into the room. “Mrs. Satterthwaite, ma’am. There are two boys here from the school. Mr. Fuller and Master Arthur Stone. They say they need to talk to you, ma’am. About Mr. Wright.”
“Bring them in,” Clem said, although what Tom Fuller and Arthur might know about her father was a mystery. They arrived, and stood just inside the door. Fuller was determined and Arthur was white and trembling.
“Is it true, ma’am, that your father has found a way to take your baby?” Fuller demanded.
Clem nodded, and Chris said, “We will stop him, Mr. Fuller. We shall find a way.”
“See?” Fuller said to Arthur.
