To Claim the Long-Lost Lover

by Jude Knight

  The orderly squinted at Lady Charlotte, then stammered, “I don’t know nuthin’ about that, sir. Dr Blythe is asleep, sir. I’ll just get the doctor on duty, shall I?”

  He sidled off and returned a few minutes later with a doctor Nate had met on the day of his interview, and was therefore able to present to Lady Charlotte. Soon, they were being shown upstairs to the ward.

  “I gave the boy some laudanum,” the man explained. “Pain, you know.”

  Probably as well for, as gentle as Lady Charlotte’s men were, being moved while conscious would have been hard on the lad. Still, another dose so soon after the last would not have been Nate’s choice. He kept his opinions to himself and followed the stretcher out to the barouche.

  It was a well-sprung carriage, and young Tony was deeply unconscious. The driver avoided deeply rutted streets and went slowly. Even so, the unavoidable bumps wrenched groans from the boy, and Nate was relieved when they finally turned into the courtyard of the Winshire mansion.

  The front door opened while one of the men was handing Lady Charlotte from the barouche and Nate was untying the straps that secured the stretcher to the seats.

  “Charlotte!” It was her. Sarah. She didn’t notice him standing there, gaping. He bent to his task again while she flew to her sister and demanded to know what was happening. “Grosvenor said there was a kidnapping!”

  Perhaps I can slip away without being noticed, as she did from the dinner party at Lord and Lady Hamner’s. He was exhausted, ready to drop in his tracks. He needed to be alert and refreshed before he explained himself to her.

  But he heard Lady Charlotte say his name, and turned to find Lady Sarah at the carriage’s steps, looking up at him. All the words he wanted to say to her melted away as she stood within reach at last, and only the steely glint in her eye and the certainty that the Winshire warriors would gut him prevented him from reaching out and filling his empty arms with the love he had never forgotten.

  * * *

  “A kidnapping, yes,” Charlotte answered Sarah. “Tony was taken from the garden, but he managed to escape. He was injured, though. We don’t know how. Lord Bentham found him and treated him at Ruth’s clinic.” She nodded towards the barouche, and Sarah turned to see Nate.

  “He’s a doctor,” Charlotte muttered. “Trained in Edinburgh.”

  Nate quirked one eyebrow. “Not quite. I was sent for before I graduated. Lady Sarah, good morning. I’m skilled enough to keep this boy safe while we move him to the room you have prepared for him.” He gestured to the waiting footmen. “One on each pole, and when you’re ready to lift, wait for my word. We must be as smooth and steady as we can, so we don’t jolt him.”

  Good morning? That is it? He waltzed back into her life after seven years and managed to fit a ‘good morning’ in between his remarks to her sister and his instructions for the care of his patient?

  For a moment, Sarah had thought he was going to embrace her. Not that she would have welcomed it. Of course not. She couldn’t possibly forgive what he had done to her—to her and to Elias. Even if her body yearned for his.

  Ridiculous. Of course, it does not. He was not the boy Sarah remembered in any way. Taller, broader, more confident and powerful, the easy charm modulated into a stern, commanding air. What has happened to him? Where has he been?

  She would find out. He owed her the explanation he had promised her through Charlotte. And once she knew, she could put him behind her for once and for all, and resume her search for a husband.

  But not today. Today, she was tired—from the travel, the disappointing house party, her anxiety over the way Elias was being treated. She had made up her mind to refuse Nate any request for an interview today when she realised that he was following the stretcher into the house without another word to her.

  “Is something wrong?” Charlotte asked, coming to put an arm around her.

  Sarah didn’t answer, because Nate had stopped in the doorway and was looking back at her. The imperturbable mask was down, and he gazed at her with naked yearning. “He looks tired,” she commented.

  She hadn’t really been talking to Charlotte, but her sister answered, “He worked a full night at the clinic, and has not yet been to bed. Are you going to let him tell you his story, Sarah?”

  Nate had entered the house after the stretcher. Sarah and Charlotte mounted the steps, still arm in arm as Sarah thought about her answer and saw an opportunity to escape.

  The stretcher party was partway up the main staircase. Sarah gave her sister a squeeze. “I’ll leave you to see Tony settled, and then you should get some sleep yourself, and so should Lord Bentham. Tell him to wait upon me tomorrow at eleven. I am going up the family stairs to see if all is well in the nursery.”

  Charlotte yawned. “When you are free, you might ask Mrs Arbuckle where she has put my other guests. Two women from the Beast’s pleasure house who helped Tony escape. Sarah, Uncle James’s investigators have found out the Beast is Wharton. He has been building a new empire in the slums under his new name.”

  Stanley Wharton, who was then calling himself the Duke of Devil’s Kitchen, had been behind many of the attacks on the Winderfields since Uncle James arrived back in England. Last year, he had kidnapped their cousin Ruth and the daughter of the Earl of Ashbury, who was now Ruth’s husband. He’d broken out of prison and was believed to be in the West Indies with his sister, Ashbury’s sister-in-law.

  Charlotte said, “I’ve promised the women shelter until we can make a plan.” She broke off for another huge yawn. “Perhaps you might tell them about Oxfordshire? And see what skills they have?”

  Sarah smiled. “You are exhausted, darling. Leave your fallen women to me and the housekeeper, get your young man settled, and go to sleep.”

  After all, wild schoolboys were Charlotte’s field of interest. Sarah was the one who had followed their aunt and mother into looking after women who had been seduced, abused, neglected and abandoned. Not that the village in Oxfordshire would be welcoming to women who had actually worked in a brothel. But I know who will.

  After visiting the nursery to find Elias happily at work on his letters—he was rapidly making up the education he’d missed—she instructed the frowning housekeeper to take her to her sister’s two guests.

  The housekeeper, Mrs Arbuckle, made her disapproval of Charlotte’s guests clear without openly criticising Charlotte. “I have put them on the third floor, in the guest wing, my lady.”

  “One of the rooms for visiting upper servants,” Sarah noted.

  “Not appropriate, I know, my lady, but I could not put them near my girls, could I? And we have no visitors to be offended at the moment.” She continued to bustle through the house, her swift no-nonsense steps very different to the glide that ladies were taught from the moment they graduated from toddling.

  “I will stay with you, of course,” Mrs Arbuckle added.

  “Not necessary, Mrs Arbuckle. You may send a maid with tea and cakes, but I will interview the two women on my own.” The aristocratic tone, Sarah had found, worked with servants who had not known one from birth. Those who had seen her toddle in leading strings tended to ignore it.

  Mrs Arbuckle, a new hire since Uncle James inherited the title, accepted her dismissal with no more reaction than tightly crimped lips, pointing to the door of the chamber allocated to the visitors, and retreated down the hall.

  When Sarah knocked on the door, a cheerful voice called, “Come in, love. It’s not locked!”

  She stopped, just inside the room. Clothes were strewn across the bed, a sofa, one of the three chairs and the two chests against the wall. A large hip bath stood to one side of the fireplace, and a screen stood to the other side. Two pair of bare feet were visible under the screen.

  “‘Elp yerself to the barf water, love. We’ve finished,” said the same person who had invited her to enter.

  “I am not here for the bathwater,” Sarah explained.

  A head popped out one side of the screen.


  “Eee, Bets, it’s never a maid.”

  “I am Lady Sarah, Lady Charlotte’s sister. I’ve come to talk to you about what you would like to do next.”

  Both women emerged. They wore skimpy chemises and nothing else. Furthermore, Sarah could see their figures and the dark shapes of their nipples and their nether hair through the thin material. Damp hair hung around their shoulders—in the case of the petite blonde, all the way to her derrière. Where hair had touched fabric, it was fully transparent.

  The dark-haired one explained, “We was drying our hair, my lady. We thought we’d better hide when you knocked in case you was a footman come for the bathwater. That Mrs Arbuckle said we wasn’t to make up to the servants, ’cause if we did, she’d put us out into the street whatever Lady Charlotte said.”

  “She won’t,” Sarah assured them, “but your courtesy in not placing temptation in the way of the footmen is appreciated. My sister asked me to see if I could help you to safety and a new life, if you want one.” She waved to the piles of clothes. “Perhaps you could put on a robe, and we could sit and talk?”

  The two women exchanged a glance and then obeyed, sitting together on a sofa opposite the chair Sarah had taken. The robes were gaudy garments in sateen—one with purple dragons and blue flowers printed on a scarlet background, the other a vivid pink with multicoloured flowers that never grew in nature. At least they covered the essentials, though they were short in length and open almost to the waist.

  “As I said, my name is Lady Sarah Winderfield. And you are?”

  “Elizabeth Cotton, my lady,” said the brunette, who appeared to have appointed herself spokesperson. “But I’m mostly called Bets. And this is Sadie Fletcher.” Her accent was almost gone, Sarah noticed. She might almost pass for a gentry woman, by her voice alone, when she made the effort to speak well.

  “Sarah,” the blonde corrected. “I’ve always been called Sadie, but my for real name is Sarah, if you don’t think it impertinent, my lady.”

  “Cor. I never knew that,” Bets told her friend.

  Sadie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter none. I just thought it was maybe a sign.” She turned hopeful eyes on Sarah. “You and me having the same name, like.” She flinched at her own words, as if expecting a blow.

  “Perhaps it is,” Sarah told her.

  They were interrupted by another knock on the door. Sarah called, “Enter,” and a maid backed into the room with a tray of tea things.

  “Thank you, Anne,” Sarah said. “Just put it on the table here, and we’ll serve ourselves.”

  She busied herself preparing a cup for each of them, with an internal smile at what the Earl of Colyton would think of her serving tea and cake to a pair of harlots. Pompous prat.

  If she’d made a wager on which of them would return to the purpose of the meeting, she would have picked Bets, and she would have won.

  “Excuse me for speaking out of turn, my lady, but how can a lady like you help the likes of us to”—she put on an exaggerated ton accent—“‘safety and a new life’?”

  Sarah put her cup on its saucer. “That is a fair question, Miss Cotton.”

  Bets turned a delighted face to her friend and whispered, “Miss Cotton.”

  Sarah ignored the interruption. “I am going to trust you with a secret.” Not as much of a secret as it used to be. Since her uncle had become duke, she, her mother, and her Aunt Georgie had had his full support for their rescue work, and a duke’s support protected them from the worst consequences of their actions. “I am one of a group of ladies who help gentlewomen escape from violent men.”

  “We ain’t gentlewomen, my lady,” Sadie pointed out. “I’m a foundling and Bets was a farmhand’s daughter before she came to London.”

  Sarah nodded her acknowledgement. “Through my work, though, I’ve come into contact with others who help those who are not gentry. Have you heard of the Theodora Foundation?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  “It is a training school for women who have been selling sexual favours and who wish to leave that life. It offers a place to stay while they recover, and teaches new skills where needed. If a woman remains with the school for three months and is of good character during that time, the sponsors of the school will help her to find employment.”

  “Like...a sort of Magdalene Hospital, my lady?” Bets asked, cautiously.

  “Most unlike,” Sarah assured them. “The founders see little reason to punish those who have decided to turn over a new leaf. However, if you are not interested, my sister and I can help you get to a city beyond the Beast’s reach, with enough money for a place to stay until you find another position within your current”—she paused, trying to find the right word—“trade.”

  “If I went to the Fedora, I could leave?” Sadie asked.

  “The Theodora Foundation? Yes. At any time. The doors are never locked, and women come and go all the time. Though I warn you, if you left and went back to your former life, you would not be welcome back.”

  The two women had more questions, and Sarah answered as best she could. Bets was pleased to discover that the Foundation was in the country, some way from London. Sadie, who had seldom left London’s slums and never the sprawling metropolis itself, was more apprehensive. In the end, they both decided to, as Bets put it, “Give it a go, ’cause we ain’t getting any younger, and the way we’re going we’ll wind up dead.”

  “I’ll send a message to the London agent of the Foundation. You will need to go for an interview. But I will speak for you and so will my sister. I am sure you will be accepted.” A vicar of her acquaintance, Alex Basingstoke, ran the London end of the Foundation from his parish on the outskirts of Clerkenwell. Sarah had known his wife, Lady Freddie, all her life. Alex and Freddie had heard every story possible, but Sarah was sure they’d judge Bets and Sadie as sincere.

  Sarah left the two women in a cheerful discussion about what sort of job they might want to learn skills for, and headed up to the suite she shared with her sister.

  * * *

  The Beast had brooded all day, ever since one of his minions had found a witness who had seen the boy Tony. The brat had been treated for a broken leg at that free clinic the Ashbury bitch had founded. The Winderfield cow, the one who taught at the free school that stole children from their jobs, had picked Tony up and taken him home.

  Toffee-nosed aristocrats, interfering in the slums with their schools and clinics and safe houses for runaway whores and others. He would make them pay. He would make them all pay.

  His sister argued against it. “Punish them by taking their money at the tables, brother. By collecting their secrets in the chambers upstairs and blackmailing them. You will have the army down on us again.”

  Stupid female. Did he think he was foolish enough to show his hand? He called for the lieutenant he trusted most.

  “Scar, we are calling in debts and favours. Come onto my territory and take what is mine, will they? The clinic burns. The school, too. Anything those interfering do-gooders support in the slums. I want it all destroyed.” He held up a finger. “Mind! All to be done through others. I want the slums to rise up against them. Keep my name out of it. We don’t want to fight them head on.”

  Scar nodded, and hurried off to carry out his instructions.

  The Beast sank back on his throne. “Not yet,” he whispered. “We will strike from the shadows until they are weak and we are strong. We will take back what is ours and we will have our revenge.”

  * * *

  Before Sarah reached her rooms, a footman brought her a message to say that the duke had returned home, and would like to see her.

  He was in his study, standing before the fire with his hands behind his back. He turned to greet her with a welcoming smile. “Sarah. How went your holiday in the country?”

  She was comfortable enough in his company to give a grimace as her response and he showed his sympathy in his commiserating smile.

  “That bad, was
it?”

  “Elias was bullied, and my suitors proved themselves...unsuitable. Some of the company was pleasant enough, Uncle, but I am very tired of the pettiness and judgementalism of many who consider themselves the cream of Society.”

  His eyes flared with concern. “Was Elias hurt?”

  “The bullying was verbal rather than physical. I fear that Elias has suffered worse in his short life. But he was pleased to leave, and I rather think Drew was, too.”

  The duke barked a short laugh. “He was. His opinion of Society marches with yours, and he found the company at the house party long on gossip and short on sense.”

  He sobered. “Speaking of your son and gossip, I have heard from someone I trust that people are questioning your relationship with Elias.”

  Sarah waved a dismissive hand. “They will pass on to some other topic soon enough. They can prove nothing.”

  “No one has suggested a candidate for Elias’s father, but I am given to understand... Sarah, is the new Viscount Bentham the man?”

  Sarah could only nod. How did Uncle James know? Most of those who knew the secret were dead. Surely Mama and Aunt Georgie have betrayed me? But her uncle was their brother. Would they have kept the secret if he asked the question? What will he do now that he knows?

  “Drew tells me that Bentham was here when you arrived home this morning,” His Grace commented.

  Meaning what? Did her uncle think she had taken up again with the man who had betrayed her so cruelly? “He is a doctor, or so he says. He was attending the urchin to whom Charlotte is offering shelter.”

  The duke shook his head in bemusement. “So Drew says. Something about a kidnapping, a visit to a brothel, and an escape with two young women as souvenirs. What is Bentham to you now, my dear niece?”