Chapter Twelve
Samuel almost started out of his chair when Rose carefully but heavily laid a hand on his knee. “What?”
“Stop,” his wife said sternly in an undertone that contained resonances that thrummed deep within his soul.
He blinked. “What do you—”
“If you continue tapping your foot like that,” Rose said sweetly, “I will tear it off.”
Oh. Right.
Samuel looked down at his knee. He had been tapping, he suddenly realized, though he had not consciously been doing so. Was that not what a person did when they were waiting in an office for hours on end for a solicitor to meet them?
He glanced at his pocket watch and cursed under his breath. Fine. Twenty minutes. But it felt like hours.
“You should have brought a book,” Rose said serenely as she turned a page of the book she had been prescient enough to bring with her. “Then you would have something to occupy your time.”
“I don’t need something to occupy my time. I need Mr. Todd to hurry up,” muttered Samuel ungraciously.
It was maddening. The letter had arrived only that morning, and the pair of them had rushed to the London officers of Todd, Todd, and Todd—ridiculous name for a solicitors—and yet despite the letter saying that their attendance was urgent, they had been left waiting here for…twenty-two minutes!
“I told you,” Rose said calmly, turning another page and not looking up from her book. “I will tear it off.”
Samuel looked down at his foot. It was tapping.
With as much control as he could muster, he forced his knee to remain motionless. “It’s just irritating.”
“Yes, I quite agree,” said Rose with a laugh.
Somehow, Samuel did not believe they were speaking of the same thing. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” said his wife with a heavy sigh that wives seemed to gain at the altar, even when they were temporary ones. “But we do not know that the missive you received is a precursor to bad news.”
How could it be anything else? Samuel had known, from the moment he had seen the seal on the letter brought to him on a silver platter by Arden, that it was bad news.
Mr. Todd had no need to see him, no reason to do so. Samuel had presented their marriage certificate to the man in Brighton and the solicitor had accepted it. He had agreed to release Great-Aunt Tessie’s funds. It was all finished with.
Why they had been summoned to the solicitor’s office, why the Brighton Mr. Todd has made his way to the offices of the London Misters Todd, he did not know. And it was maddening. Maddening!
Samuel rose to his feet. “I’m going in there.”
“Bad idea, dear,” Rose said vaguely as she turned another page of her infernal book.
There was an itching underneath his skin that he would not be able to scratch until he knew what was going on with this damned solicitor, and so Samuel was going to march in there and demand an explanation.
He was a marquess! He was a Chance! He was—
About to be run down by a horde of solicitors who came pouring out of the door he had just been about to open.
“Oh, my lord.” Mr. Todd blinked, as though surprised to see him. “What an unexpected honor.”
Samuel did not intend to whip out the letter and wave it in the man’s face, but it had been a trying day. For example, Lady Romeril had sent her compliments. That never boded well. “You asked me to come here!”
“I did indeed,” said a rapidly blinking Mr. Todd, attempting to focus on the rapidly waving piece of paper. “In three days’ time.”
Samuel opened his mouth to retort, hesitated, then heard the snuffle of laughter from behind him.
Oh, hell.
Steadying the paper in his hand, he glanced down once again at the letter he had read at least six times, attempting to find the mysterious ‘three days’ that the solicitor had just mentioned.
My lord,
There has been an interesting development in the legacy of your great-aunt, and I would be obliged if you would visit the London offices of Todd, Todd, and Todd in three days, the 18th of January.
I remain your most humble servant,
Allen Todd, Esq.
Oh. Right.
Samuel stuffed the letter into his pocket and hoped he would never have to see it again. “Be that as it may…”
“Ah, Mr. Todd, how pleasant to see you again.”
It was all Samuel could do not to gawp as Rose stood, beamed at the now-flushing solicitor, and strode forward with her hands outstretched.
Quite how it happened, Samuel was not sure, how in an instant the blushing Mr. Todd had both Rose’s hands in his own as she was saying, “Wonderful to see you again—and the children, they are well?”
How does she do it?
Oh, Samuel’s own mother had a certain way about her, but she had always been of a more nervous disposition. Her stutter made her shy and her shyness made her stutter, and so the Dowager Marchioness of Aylesbury had never spent much time in polite Society if she could help it.
But the new Marchioness of Aylesbury?
Samuel stared, transfixed, as Rose thoroughly charmed the solicitor to the point that she was being ushered into the room before himself.
“And tea? I am more than happy to order tea,” Mr. Todd said as he pulled out a chair for Rose. His cheeks were still very red. “And cake. We must have cake.”
“Mr. Todd,” Samuel said in what he hoped was an impressive tone. “We can have cake any time. What I wished to inquire about was the meaning of your letter.”
The solicitor scowled, as though being dragged away from serving Rose was a great sacrifice. As, Samuel supposed, it rather was.
“Please, sit,” the solicitor said curtly. “And I will have the paperwork brought in.”
Samuel sat a tad ungraciously next to his wife as Mr. Todd walked over to the door to mutter instructions to a clerk.
“You could attempt to be pleasant,” Rose murmured, a hint of a grin on her lips.
I am pleasant, Samuel wanted to say. I am actually quite a pleasant person all round. Everyone who knows me would say that I am pleasant and that is because I am…when I am not with you.
Oh, this woman, she… She did something to him.
Samuel had not quite worked it out yet, much to his dismay, but something about Rose made him all prickly.
He did not want her to be smiling at other men.
Men like Mr. Todd. He did not want other men to be pulling out chairs for her, or complimenting her gown, or—or looking at her as they did!
And it was ridiculous. She was an actress. She was only here because he had needed a ready wife!
Samuel swallowed down all the thoughts that had meandered wildly through his mind and managed to say, “‘Pleasant.’”
“Yes, pleasant,” Rose repeated, inclining her head at Mr. Todd as he returned to the table around which they sat. “It’s a lesser known trait of the best people.”
Best people, indeed! What did she know about—
“I have asked the two of you here today,” Mr. Todd intoned, placing a ream of paper on the table, “because it seems that I have been mistaken in your great-aunt’s will and estate.”
Samuel’s jaw tightened.
He should have known. He should have known it had been too good to be true. All that money? One hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and properties, and all that?
No, a windfall that large simply did not fall into a man’s lap, even if he intended to do good with the funds. It was simply impossible…and now he was married to a woman he hadn’t needed to drag into this mess in the first place.
“Please explain, Mr. Todd,” Rose said gently, her voice modulated at a pitch that soothed Samuel’s frayed nerves and somehow loosened his jaw. “There is significantly less money, is that right?”
The solicitor blinked. “Less? Oh, no. No, quite the reverse.”
Somehow, Samuel’s jaw had tightened again. ‘The reverse’?
“I do not understand,” Rose said softly, and without looking away from Mr. Todd, she took Samuel’s hand in hers. “The reverse—there is more than expected?”
Why did the simple gesture mean so much? Why did the sensation of Rose’s hand in his somehow quieten the panic that had been rising in Samuel, her soft skin a balm to his disquieted nerves?
“Yes, quite a bit more,” the solicitor said vaguely, rummaging through the papers before him and picking one up.
“Yes, here it is. Several properties in Paris, two in Milan, one in Berlin, though I do not believe she had ever been there. Stock and bonds in at least fourteen additional companies, mining mostly, though…”
The man kept speaking. Samuel was almost certain he did because his mouth was moving up and down, and moreover, sound was coming out, but there was no knowing what on earth he was saying because the solicitor’s words were coming from a long way away and somehow from under water.
More properties? More stocks and bonds?
How on earth had Great-Aunt Tessie managed to accumulate so much?
“—and that is the problem, you see,” Mr. Todd finished grandly.
Rose was nodding as though she fully understood, which was excellent, because Samuel had no idea. “I see.”
“You do?” Samuel muttered.
She did not reply—at least, not in words. Her fingers tightened, just for a moment, around his own.
Reassurance, the likes of which Samuel had never known, flooded through his body. Every muscle relaxed, warmth cascading down his spine, and for a moment, absolutely everything was right with the world.
Then his expression sharpened. “Mr. Todd, what do you need from us?”
“Well, as you can imagine, a certain amount of questions have arisen after discovering that your relative was so… Well, fantastically rich is the only way I can think to describe her,” the solicitor said in what he evidently believed was a delicate tone. “Questions from those who demand answers.”
The government, Samuel thought with a sigh. Well, perhaps he should have expected that. One could not become an heir to a fortune fifty times over without attracting some sort of attention.
“We had preferred that the truth stay within the family,” Rose said quietly.