Page 26 of The Secret Word (Twist Upon a Regency Tale #10)

T hey returned reluctantly from Harry’s hunting lodge at the end of the week. Chris had never known such a week. He had never spent so much time with another human being, let alone with a lover.

They had talked, they had read together, they had walked in the country lanes, they had played card games and chess, they had tried to identify plants and wildlife—the country offered varieties of both that were never seen in London.

And they had spent hours in bed, Chris teaching Clem the ways of passion, and discovering new pleasures himself as he did so.

For Chris, swiving had always been recreational. He had always thought it important to consider the pleasure of his bed partner, and he did, but the goal—the reward, as it were—was his own release.

Bedding his wife—his love, his partner for a lifetime—was very different. The goal was no longer pleasure, though pleasure there was, more than he had ever known for him, and he could not doubt hers, either.

Pleasure was important. Chris had fended off advances from several married women in his former neighborhood, all of whom justified their straying with disparaging remarks about their marital experiences.

He was certain that the very least he owed his wife was his full attention to her needs in passion.

But physical intimacy with her was more than mutual pleasuring.

It was respect. It was love. It was union.

As the minister had said in the church, they had become one. A married couple. For as long as they lived, she would be his only lover, and he hers. What happened between them in bed was both a celebration and a reflection of what they were becoming together.

After the idyll of the last week, it was down to earth with a bump, when they walked in the door of their townhouse and were presented with the mail that had arrived for them while they were away.

Chris glanced at his three, ascertaining that they were from his mother’s brother Lord Crosby, Wright, and his grandfather.

He opened his grandfather’s letter first. It was a demand for compensation, since by marrying Clem, Chris had apparently lost his grandfather an extortionate amount of money.

Chris wouldn’t even bother replying. With any luck, the other party in the marriage agreement Chris hadn’t signed would run Grandfather out of town.

Lord Crosby’s letter was simply a reminder to Chris to make an appointment so that they could arrange the transfer of authority for Chris’s holdings from Lord Crosby, as trustee, to Chris. Holdings? That sounded as if there was more than the estate.

He expected the letter from Wright to be another irritation—annoying if not as infuriating as the one from his grandfather. But it was simple and matter-of-fact.

“Christopher.

You may have tomorrow to settle into your new townhouse.

I will expect you at ten o’clock on the following day, ready to start work.

Wright.”

“Here,” he said to Clem, handing her all three letters. “Grandfather is up to his usual tricks and can be ignored, Lord Crosby wants me to make an appointment to talk about giving me my inheritance, and your father expects me at work the day after tomorrow.”

“Mine are mostly invitations,” said Clem. “Lady Halton and Lady Crosby have both arranged gatherings of the ladies of their families, and Aunt Fern wants to take me visiting.”

She did not sound as if she thought that was a good thing. “You do not have to go if you don’t want to,” Chris pointed out.

Clem, though, thought she should put in the effort. “They are family, Chris. And they are trying to be kind.”

“But you will have time to come with me to meet Lord Crosby?” Chris asked, and so it was with Clem at his side that he entered the Thurgood London townhouse the following day.

“How charming to see you, Mrs. Satterthwaite,” said Lord Crosby. “I am sure my wife is at home, and some of my daughters. Shall I ask a footman to conduct you to see them?”

“I’d like Clem to stay for our meeting, my lord,” said Chris. “She has an excellent business brain, and I value her input, especially on matters that affect us both.”

Lord Crosby was taken aback, but too polite to say more than, “Oh, capital,” sounding as if it was anything but. “Please take a seat, then, Mrs. Satterthwaite. I shall send for tea.”

“Please,” Clem said, “Call me Clem, or Clementine, if you prefer.”

While they waited for tea, Lord Crosby asked a couple of polite questions. How was their new townhouse? Had she received an invitation from his wife, who had said she would write?

“Good, good,” he said, vaguely, when Clem had replied that the house would be very comfortable once they had it arranged to her liking, and yes, she had replied to the invitation and was looking forward to the gathering.

Since neither of them seemed to be able to maintain a conversation, Chris decided he had better take a hand. Some paintings of birds on the wall gave him an idea.

“We spent the week at my cousin Harry’s hunting lodge, my lord, as you may know.

Neither Clem nor I have spent much time in the country—indeed, London has been home to both of us for much of our lives.

Can you tell me, what is the bird that makes this sound?

” He whistled one of the bird calls that had intrigued and mystified him and Clem during their walks.

It was the right question. Lord Crosby talked about birds until the tea tray arrived, while Clem poured the tea, and for at least ten minutes after that, with only the occasional question from Chris or Clem to keep him going.

He explained the habitats, the eating habits, and the differences between the great tit, the Eurasian blue tit, the coal tit, the long-tailed tit, and the yellow-breasted tit. He imitated each of their calls, and then did the same for a great array of finches.

He had begun on the thrushes when, at last, he pulled himself up. “My dear Lady Crosby would say I have forgotten myself, young people. I do love my birds, but I fear I have blathered on and on.”

“I was fascinated,” said Clem. “Chris and I argued for days about which bird produced the sound we heard so often during our stay, but we could never catch one singing where we could see it to identify it. I would not have guessed it was a thrush. They seem such modest birds.”

“They are… But there. I must not allow myself to continue, Clementine. If you are truly interested, my dear, you and Christopher must visit us at Barthornton in the summer, and I shall take you out and show you as many birds as I can.”

Clem’s face lit up. Chris guessed that a visit to Barthornton—was it a village or the name of a house?—was now part of their summer plans.

“I would like that,” she said.

“But I invited you here, Christopher, to tell you about your inheritance from my aunt, your mother’s mother.

Michael mentioned the estate, I know. She was the last of her family, and the lands were not entailed, so though the title reverted to the crown, your grandmother inherited the estate just a few weeks after your mother died.

It has been doing very well, and I have been investing the surplus income in your name for sixteen years. You are a wealthy young man.”

Chris tried not to let his jaw hit the floor. An inheritance, maybe. But wealth? He hadn’t expected it.

Had Billy? Is this why he’d assisted Chris all these years, and especially now?

Lord Crosby picked up some papers from the table beside him, shuffled them, and handed the top sheet to Clem. “There, my dear. Show that to your husband,” he said, sounding a little pleased and perhaps even amused.

“That” was a list of investments and their current value, with a total that made Clem blink and Chris’s heart skip a beat.

“Maidenstone Court,” the earl said next, handing over another sheet. It gave a description of the property—the house, the park, the woods, the home farm, the tenant farms, the acreage of each, the cottages, and shops in the village that the owner of the Court—that is to say, Chris—also owned.

“My goodness,” said Clem. She turned to Chris, her eyes wide as if asking if he’d been aware.

“I had no idea,” he said on an exhale. And then, “Where is Maidenstone Court?” The name of the village—Maidencraig Frampton—meant nothing to him.

“Three hours north-west of London,” said Lord Crosby.

“The home farm is currently rented out. The Court and its dower house have been rented, but the tenants did not renew their lease this year. I’d heard your grandfather had returned, and I hoped you were with him, so I did not look for new tenants. ”

They talked some more, since Chris and Clem both had further questions, and then Lord Crosby insisted on sending for Lady Crosby so she could welcome the newlyweds back to London.

It was quite two hours after they arrived before they found themselves back out on the street again, Clem carrying a book of beautifully rendered bird paintings by an artist and ornithologist named Bewick that Lord Crosby had insisted on loaning to her.

“Clem,” said Chris, “we are rich.” He wanted to hear the words said out loud. He was not at all certain he believed them, but if Clem agreed, perhaps they would be true.

“We are,” Clem said. “If Father becomes a nuisance, we can tell him we do not need him. And even better, Chris. Just think. We were hoping to spend the house money Father promised on a house for our orphan school, and now we have a house. Only three hours away from London. And it is all ours!”

*

The trip to see Maidenstone Court had to wait until Chris had put in the three days that he had promised to Father. Three days a week. “Do you have to go?” Clem asked. “We do not need the salary any more, and if Father cuts us off, we can manage without him.”

“I gave my word,” Chris said, and that was that. Clem valued Chris’s integrity. Truly she did. But she could not help but feel that Father did not deserve it.