To Claim the Long-Lost Lover

by Jude Knight

  “Please, do join us,” Nate invited, and he gestured to one of the shop servants to bring over another table and some more chairs.

  They shuffled around, so that the children had their own table, all except Phillida, who stayed on her brother’s knee. Ruth was clearly bursting with questions, and Sarah was sure Val had noticed the resemblance, though he, too, did not remark on it.

  Still, that was three people who had noticed how much alike Elias and Norie were. If Sarah had learned anything from the gossip that had swirled around the Winderfields in the past few years, it was that the only way to come out on top was to give Society a story of which they approved, and preferably to make that story public before someone else made the narrative scandalous.

  They were running out of time.

  This was confirmed before they left the pastry shop, when Madame Fournier, wife of the chef and a distant cousin of the Duchess of Haverford, came over to greet them.

  Sarah introduced Nate. The twins and Cecilia Fournier had become friends over the last two years as they worked together on various charities, and she had already met the Winderfield cousins. Like Ruth, her eyes tracked from Elias to Norie and back again.

  Cecilia was the soul of discretion and would say nothing. They could not count on the next person being so discreet. She and Nate needed to talk to Elias before somebody else did.

  * * *

  The two parties separated after Fournier’s, the Winderfields going in one direction, the Ashburys in another and Nate and his party in a third. Norie and Lavie chatted about Elias and the pretty ladies. Too full of his own thoughts, Nate heard little of what they said. He’d missed seven years of marriage; six years of his son’s life. Sarah and Elias, too, had been robbed of the years together they should have had.

  He had engaged to take Sarah driving tomorrow during the fashionable afternoon strut in Hyde Park—another public move in a courting that fretted at his nerves. He wanted to be with them now, to tell the world that Sarah was his wife, Elias his son.

  He had promised her time, but they’d already lost so much. He knew his own heart; and he believed Sarah now knew hers. But he had agreed to let her set the pace, and would keep his promise.

  He saw the girls to the nursery, gave Libby a brief and insubstantial report of the outing, and escaped to an appointment with Wakefield, the private enquiry agent who was related to the Marquis of Aldridge.

  “I know you are busy investigating the arson at the clinic,” he apologised, once he had explained why he needed to find his father’s cousin, and answered all of Wakefield’s questions. “Next to that, this probably does not seem urgent. A few days delay after all these years...” He shrugged, while the urge to demand instant results beat within him.

  “I do have a few interviews to carry out regarding the various attacks—you know that the fire was only one of many incidents?” Wakefield raised his brows in question, then continued at Nate’s nod. “The agents and informers on my payroll are carrying out most of the work, and we’re also co-operating with several magistrate’s offices across London and Westminster. It does not require most of my attention. I can look into your little problem immediately.”

  Nate smiled his relief.

  Wakefield steepled his forefingers and touched them to his lower lip, for a moment resembling his more prestigious brother. “I will send someone to Oxfordshire to look at the records,” he decided. “I imagine we’ll find a missing page in the parish register at Lesser Lechford, but I wonder if he thought to check the one at Sutton-Under-Swinwood? It is worth looking. Also, since you were living with your cousin, some of the local people may remember the wedding, or at least the reading of the banns. It would have been an event in their lives, the marriage of the curate’s much younger cousin.”

  Nate nodded. That all made sense, and he’d thought of doing it himself; would do it, if he didn’t feel the urgent need to be here in London, where Sarah was.

  “As to finding your cousin, I have several ideas about that. Leave it with me, Lord Bentham. I will be in touch as soon as I have anything to report.”

  Nate had to be satisfied with that, and left for the temporary clinic that the Ashburys had set up in an empty building owned by the Duke of Winshire. Perhaps work would help to subdue, or at least redirect, the urge to action. But deep down, he was sure that time was running out.

  * * *

  He went out the next morning to buy a curricle and pair. If he was going to take the Diamond of the ton driving, he was not going to embarrass her with a hired carriage and a pair of slugs from a livery stable. Then he had to find stabling and a carriage house. By the time all was organised, he had an hour until their outing, during which he needed to return to his rooms to change his clothing.

  His usual casual approach to attire had been shaken by contrast with the always impeccable Marquis of Aldridge. He would swear that it was Charlotte who had attracted the marquis’s eye, and certainly Sarah was no more than friendly to the man, but still. Nate was courting, after all. He should look the part. It was his man’s half-day, which made it more complicated.

  He hurried up the stairs to his rooms, stopping a maid on the way to ask for a jug of hot water. As he opened his door, he was running through the cravat knots he’d learned, and wondering if the gentleman in the rooms next door, who had taught him most of them, might be home to assist.

  He pulled up short when he saw his visitor. His father sat in one of the chairs by the fire, looking up as Nate entered. “Is it true?”

  No point in wasting time berating Lechton for bulldozing his way into his rooms, or the landlord for allowing it. Nate put his hat and gloves down on the side table just inside the door, and shrugged out of his coat. “You will excuse me if I wash and change while we talk, my lord. I have an afternoon engagement.”

  Lechton waved a hand in dismissal or agreement; Nate hardly cared which. “Libby told me you went to meet Lady Sarah today—”

  Nate turned from the drawer that held his best shirts and glared at the old man. “If you have come to berate me, I do not wish to hear it.”

  “No, no...” The old man trailed off at the knock on the door.

  Nate opened it and took the jug of hot water and the landlord’s stammered explanation that the gentleman insisted on waiting for him in his rooms. “And he is an earl, my lord, and your father, so I thought—”

  “No harm done,” Nate told him, “as long as you do not make a habit of it.”

  He crossed to the washstand and poured some of the water into the bowl.

  Lechton started again. “Libby told me... No, don’t poker up, Bentham. You need to listen to me.”

  Nate pulled his shirt off over his head and soaped his washcloth. “Say what you came to say, my lord.”

  “Is it true that Lady Sarah’s ward is your son? Yours and hers?”

  The cold burn that had been simmering since he discovered Elias’s existence flared into anger as he spun to fix his father with furious eyes. “My son! Born to my wife, in grief and shame because you and Sutton tore us apart. Given to others to raise and only rescued because my wife did not give up looking for him. I have struggled these seven years to forgive you, Father, as Jesus teaches, but what you did to Sarah, to Elias... I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.”

  Lechton shrunk in his chair, the colour bleaching out of his face. “But Nathaniel, I did not know.”

  Nate focused on his breathing, struggling to overcome the urge to hit something, preferably his father. He didn’t know? What kind of an excuse was that? Under control again, he turned back to the washbasin.

  “I have an engagement, my lord, so if that is all...?”

  Lechton sounded unaccountably meek, even a little frightened. “Sutton told me you would not be harmed. He said you had to go, and an annulment would be easier if I agreed to sign the papers for you to be enlisted in the navy. He said if I did not sign, he would make his daughter a widow. What was I to do, Bentham? Winshire held
my living. I feared I would be thrown out in the street and you would be dead.”

  You could have stood up to them. You could have warned me and Sarah so we could run. You could have refused to tell them how to find us. All of these thoughts surged through Nate’s mind, but what was the point in saying any of them? For better or for worse, his father’s decisions had been made. They couldn’t change the past. “I nearly was dead. I spent the first week of the voyage unconscious, and the next month recovering from broken ribs and bruised organs.”

  “They said you would not be harmed,” Lechton repeated. “I… I am sorry I never answered your letters, Bentham. When I was told you had died in a naval action—I have always regretted that I never replied to your letters.”

  Nate turned to lean against the washstand as he dried his face, throat, torso and arms. Father thought me dead? Another thing to blame Sarah’s grandfather for, he supposed.

  Lechton hadn’t finished. “I do not wish to offend, but are you sure the boy is your son, Bentham?”

  Nate swallowed his howl of outrage, and returned a short answer. “Yes.”

  Lechton wouldn’t let it go. “Libby tells me he looks just like Honoria; enough alike to be a brother, the nursemaid told her, apparently.”

  “Well, then.”

  “The duke said the marriage was not valid, but Cousin Arthur insisted... Well. I was just thinking, if you and Lady Sarah are married, and Elias is your son... I was thinking...”

  “The marriage is almost certainly valid. The current duke has consulted his lawyers. They are checking precedent, but it makes no difference what they decide, my lord. Sarah is my wife, and I’ll have no other. If the lawyers are uncertain of the legality of the wedding, and if Sarah agrees to have me, we will marry again.”

  Lechton purpled and half stood. “Agrees to have you? You are an earl’s heir. Of course, she will have you. No, the marriage must stand. We must prove that it was valid.” He smiled. “A grandson. I have a legitimate grandson. An heir to my heir. Fruit of my loins.”

  Nate interrupted. “You will not interfere in any way, Lord Lechton. Sarah has given me permission to court her, and the Duke of Winshire has insisted that it is to be her choice. I have promised I will not speak of it until she gives me leave. I warn you, if you let out word of our marriage before Sarah is ready to accept it, you are likely to send her fleeing back to Winds’ Gate and neither I nor Winshire will let that happen without repercussions.”

  Lechton subsided back into the chair. “Court her? Your own wife! But if the duke chooses to support her...” He shook his head.

  Nate pulled on a clean shirt and tucked it into his pantaloons. “Why the change of tune?” At his father’s blank expression, he elucidated. “You said Lady Sarah was unsuitable; tried to force me into a betrothal with Miss Tremaway.” He sat down to pull on clean stockings.

  Lechton shook his head as if he couldn’t believe Nate didn’t understand. “A bird in the hand, Bentham. She already has your son. A growing boy past the age of infant diseases. The Tremaway chit or any other untried girl might be infertile or—Heaven help us—produce only daughters, like my Libby. No, no. We don’t need Miss Tremaway. Nathaniel, I could not be more pleased. I have a grandson! Are you making an afternoon call? Have you sent flowers? Not the green waistcoat, boy; the blue one with the silver embroidery is more elegant. Here, let me do your cravat.”

  Nate allowed him to take over the folding and arranging of the stupid thing, and had to concede that Lechton did a good job of it, even donating his own cravat pin to the cause.

  “I am taking Lady Sarah for a drive,” he admitted, when Lechton asked again whether he would be visiting the lady, and Lechton nodded, well pleased. He remained as Nate finished dressing, clucking over the choice of boots, admiring Nate’s new jacket.

  “Invite your wife to dinner,” he suggested. “I will go home and tell Lady Lechton. A private family meal, that’s the ticket.”

  “I do not wish to rush her,” Nate pointed out. “Pushing my family on her this early might frighten her away.” Lord Lechton might frighten her away. She had already met the children, and Libby was a sweet timid little thing who would never scare anyone.

  “Invite her,” Lechton insisted. “Let her have the choice. Is that not what you said?”

  They walked out together, and Lechton followed Nate to the mews where his new curricle waited, the horses gleaming in their new harness. “Invite her,” he said again. “Please? I want... I would like to hear about my grandson. Perhaps we could visit. Do you think we could visit?”

  Nate said something noncommittal about it being up to Sarah, and managed to get away. How ironic that, now he no longer cared whether or not he pleased his father, he had finally achieved it, all unknowing.

  14

  Sarah was rather more understanding about Lechton’s about-face than Nate. “He betrayed you, Nate, but surely it makes you feel better to know it was in order to save your life? Indeed, when I think about what might have happened, I am glad they thought to send you into the navy, where you were far, far away when I refused to co-operate with their plans to marry me off.”

  She shuddered. If her father and grandfather had decided to make her a widow, if she had been presented with Nate’s body, would she have been strong enough to stand out against them? In those early days, she had been sure he would return; certain that he loved her and that love would conquer everything.

  She smiled at the thought. And now it seemed she had been right.

  Nate did not look convinced. “What you and Elias went through... I should have been here to help you, Sarah. To support and love you.”

  “You are here now. And I want to know all about you, Nate. Where have you been? What have you done? What made you decide to become a doctor?”

  Conversation had been easy for them from the beginning, and today Sarah found that hadn’t changed. He answered those questions and asked his own, which led to more questions from them both, as the minutes flew by.

  Nate drove them into the far reaches of Hyde Park, away from the fashionable carriage way. Two of her uncle’s guard kept pace at a distance, but didn’t disturb them. However, they were not entirely left alone. They were interrupted frequently by acquaintances wanting to greet Sarah and stare at Nate.

  Still, they had each related the major elements of their separate journeys to this place and time when the sun touched the horizon and they woke up to the fact that the day was over and cold night was approaching.

  Nate turned the horses for the gate nearest to Winshire House, and set them trotting, and the guard closed in to follow. “May I see you again tomorrow, my love?” Nate asked.

  Long ago, Sarah had thrown her heart over the moon, and run off to marry Nate. For years, she’d mourned that decision, believing he’d played her false. But it wasn’t true. He had been trustworthy then; he was trustworthy now. It was time to take another leap in faith.

  “If Uncle James is free tonight, do you think Lady Lechton would mind two more for dinner? I think we should discuss our plans to announce our marriage.”

  The horses checked as Nate tightened his hands, turning to her with such joy and heat in his eyes that she nearly threw herself into his arms, and only refrained because she looked behind her at that moment and saw the guardsmen, and other riders, heading home in the gathering dusk. They were in a public place, but soon enough, they would be alone. Her centre melted at the thought.

  “It is time, do you not think?” she asked.

  “I promised to wait until you are ready,” he reminded her, setting the horses back into an easy pace towards the gate. His voice vibrated with delight as he added, “And if you are ready, my love, I can only thank God for it, for I cannot sleep or think for wanting you.”

  * * *

  The dinner went well, Sarah thought. Lord Lechton was beside himself with glee at the sudden expansion of his family, and in the mood to be expansively hospitable. The others at the table had to intervene
several times to keep him from talking about the marriage and Elias in front of the servants.

  When the last course was served, Nate stepped in, suggesting that they dismiss the servants for the time being, and Lechton leapt at the notion. “Yes! Yes indeed, my boy. Barker, that will be all. We shall serve ourselves. I will let you know when you can clear!”

  The butler bowed and ushered the footmen from the room, shutting the door behind them, and the true business of the evening began.

  “When shall we announce the marriage?” Lechton demanded. “Can I meet my grandson tomorrow? You shall move in with us, Lady Bentham. We have the room, do we not, Lady Lechton? My grandson shall like sharing a nursery with his aunts.”

  Uncle James took the conversation in hand, before Nate could speak the hasty words Sarah could see on his tongue. “You will wish Elias to be accepted as your legitimate grandson with as little scandal as possible, Lechton, so we shall proceed with caution this week, sowing the seeds. We shall make the formal announcement at a ball I shall hold at Winshire House at the end of the week. I have already written to my sister and sister-in-law asking them to come to London to give the young couple their support.”

  Lechton took a gulp of his wine as he thought about that. “Yes. Yes, of course, Your Grace. I see your point.”

  Sarah tried the same calm, firm tone to address the other issue. “Nate and I have not yet discussed where we will live, Lord Lechton, but we will, of course, enjoy visiting family.”

  Lechton dismissed her remark with an airy wave. “You are my son’s wife. You will live with me, of course.”

  “No,” Nate said. Just that. Nothing more.

  Lechton purpled. “Now look here, Bentham.”

  Nate put up a hand in a stop gesture. “We will not require your support, if that is your concern. And our living arrangements are not up for discussion, my lord. Sarah and I will make our own decision.”