Page 15 of The Secret Word (Twist Upon a Regency Tale #10)

C hris had always had the ability to quickly comprehend new information and to remember it accurately. It was what made him so useful in Billy’s enterprises, and it was what saved him now.

He had spent three hours with the coal mining expert Billy had found—an investor who believed he needed to understand the ins and outs of any industry to which he gave his money.

That information was helping Chris this morning, as Wright snapped questions at him, and the three men with Wright trotted out facts and figures, each from their own area of expertise.

Apparently, this meeting with key employees was a weekly event, and the chief way in which Wright kept up with his empire. Today, however, Chris was the entire focus of the meeting.

The clerk in charge of the books was easiest. He used the same double entry bookkeeping system that Chris had been taught.

It had been invented in Venice at the dawn of their merchant empire, and had spread across the Western world because, in the hands of someone who understood it, it saved time and supported good decision-making.

The mining engineer was much harder to match, and Chris would have been lost in a welter of terms that might as well have been foreign for all the meaning they’d had for him before yesterday’s tutoring session.

Gins, baulks, rolley ways, Davy lamps, and so much more.

Picking his way through the thicket of industry-specific words, Chris was able to make intelligent remarks and ask pertinent questions.

Or, at least, he hoped they were intelligent and pertinent.

The third man was the manager—the man who made it possible for Wright to ignore his empire, confident that it was running smoothly in his absence. “Josh Flint watches all the people who work for me,” Wright had said, during the introductions, “And I watch Josh Flint.”

Flint spoke less often than the other two, but his questions were the hardest, for he was interested in Chris as a manager of people, and Chris had never managed servants or employees—for himself, or for other people.

Except that perhaps he had, for something Clem had said yesterday afternoon came to his rescue. They had been riding home after the visit to Aunt Fern, and he had been wondering whether his relatives would co-operate with a masqueraded estrangement.

“You will talk them round,” she had said. “You have a gift for understanding what people need and talking them into believing you can give it to them.”

He repeated some of that to Flint. “I am not in charge in my current position,” he said.

“I cannot give orders to those who are not under my authority, and no one is under my authority. But I can persuade, and I do. It is a matter of understanding what motivates a person—what will make them want to oblige me. Perhaps I show people how they will benefit from doing what I ask or giving me the information I need. Or perhaps they are motivated by praise, or by interest in what they are doing.” He shrugged. “It works for me.”

“Arrant nonsense,” grumbled Wright. “I give orders and they are obeyed.”

“Because you are the man with the power, sir,” Chris pointed out. “They know it is in their interests to do as you tell them.”

“That is true,” the manager said. “They obey because otherwise they fear they will not have a job.”

Wright nodded. “And quite right, too.”

The manager nodded. “I have Mr. Wright’s full authority in my daily activities, Mr. Satterthwaite, but I have often found it more effective to explain why a particular action should be taken. Cheerful co-operation can be more pleasant and more productive than grudging compliance.”

Wright made a grunting sound, but whether it indicated agreement, disagreement, or merely distaste at the line of conversation, Chris could not have said.

What would Clem say?

Chris usually had no trouble focusing on the task at hand, but today his mind kept drifting to Clem, or if not her, his relatives. He had an estate! Or, at least, he probably had an estate. If the trustee refused to accept that he was who he said he was, how would he prove it?

Billy knew who he was, of course. Billy remembered him tagging along behind his father from time to time. But would they accept Billy’s word? Would Billy even give it? And what would he want in return? Chris’s debt to Billy was growing to alarming proportions, all the worse for being undefined.

Grandfather would be able to identify him, too, if the old scoundrel cared to do so.

But Chris had no idea where his grandfather was, and in any case, Chris was even less inclined to owe a favor to his grandfather than to Billy.

Even before he was abandoned, the child Chris had known Grandfather was not a man to rely on.

And once again, he was letting himself get distracted. Fortunately, the one part of his mind that was still attending to Wright could replay what had just happened. Wright had asked his three employees to rate Chris’s chances of being useful in the business.

“The best yet, sir,” the bookkeeper had said.

The manager had agreed. “Not that the others would have done at all. Mr. Satterthwaite is at least not afraid of hard work.”

“He has a lot to learn,” the engineer was saying when Chris forced his attention back to the conversation, “but I am cautiously pleased, sir.”

His pursed lips said Wright was not entirely pleased with their responses. “If I let him marry my Clementine, will he do?”

Do for what, precisely? Was Wright planning to retire?

The bookkeeper expressed it in blunt terms. “You mean, if—heaven forbid—something happens to you before your grandson is old enough to take over, will Mr. Satterthwaite keep your enterprises thriving?”

“Aye,” Wright replied, though the twist to his mouth suggested that he was not pleased to contemplate his own demise.

“You appear hale and hearty, sir,” Chris commented, wondering if the man had had some bad news from the doctor.

“I am as yet, but I’m a realist, Satterthwaite. As you need to be. I was thirty-five when Clementine was born. Perhaps I should have wed again after her mother died, and if I had, perhaps I’d have a boy growing up who could take over in a few years.”

He looked into the middle distance, perhaps contemplating that desirable possibility. “Clementine’s Ma was my second wife, you know. My first died and so did both her children. I didn’t have the heart to try a third time.”

Chris felt a surge of pity Wright, a quite unexpected sentiment towards a man who had, up until now, had provoked only irritation or even anger.

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 have no 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.