To Claim the Long-Lost Lover

by Jude Knight

  “After sunset. Perhaps between four thirty and five.” On a deck at sea, clear of the smoke of London, he could be more precise. “Go back to sleep, my love.”

  But she pushed up to sitting. “I want to see Elias before I dress for dinner.” She swung her feet over the side of the bed and, in the gloom, he could see her shadow between him and the embers of the fire. She turned around with a taper, which she lit to the two candles that stood in holders on the mantlepiece.

  Nate sat up in the bed, the better to enjoy the sight of her walking naked across the room to collect her robe from the back of a chair.

  She hesitated when she saw him watching. “Am I disturbing you, Nate?”

  “Only in the best of all possible ways.” No one served for long in the navy without becoming used to stripping off in front of other people. He pushed back the blankets and got out of bed, and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen. With interest?

  He hoped so, but she was right. They should see their son and then prepare for dinner, and if they were joining the family for dinner, he needed to go back to his rooms to change into suitable clothing. He said so.

  “If you wish. But the clothes you wore to dinner last night have been cleaned and are hanging up in my dressing room. I’ll just call for hot water, shall I?”

  To save Wilson’s sensibilities, Nate found and pulled on his pantaloons and his shirt from earlier in the day. “Yes, good. I will need to go back tomorrow, though. I can’t expect your servants to keep one set of day wear and one of evening wear recycling day after day. I’ll get Jackson to pack a bag for me.”

  Sarah had opened the door into the passage and given her message to the footman stationed there. She came back into the room looking pensive. “Do you think… It is over to you, Nate, but would it make sense for your manservant to pack all your things and bring them here? You could move in until we are ready to leave London.

  “I know we have not discussed where we will live, and perhaps you would rather I came to stay with you, but I don’t like to leave Elias, and I am assuming you do not wish to move in with your father. Though if you do, I would not object. Or if you think we should continue in our separate residences until our connection is public—”

  He stopped her by placing a finger on her lips. “Moving in is an excellent idea, my love, if you have no objection, and if your uncle does not mind. I shall send a message to Jackson now, and tell him to give my notice to my landlady and present himself to me here tomorrow morning.”

  Sarah rewarded him with her glorious smile. “I shall tell Wilson to make space in my dressing room.”

  “Good, because Libby has insisted I need more clothes than I have ever had in my life. I have at least two dozen shirts, Sarah, would you believe? I have not had above a half dozen at a time since I was an infant in skirts!”

  She kissed him at that, and then broke away to call Wilson into the room with hot water for their wash.

  20

  Sarah’s cousin Ruth and her husband Val joined them for dinner, as did Arthur Beauclair and Uncle James’s right-hand man, the guard commander Yousef. They kept the conversation light in front of the servants, but when they gathered in the drawing room afterwards, Sarah understood why Ruth and Val had been invited.

  The warning about the abduction had come from Val’s sister-in-law, sister to the felon known as the Beast, and herself wanted by the law for her part in an attack last year on Ruth and on Val’s daughter. She had handed herself into the custody of Lord Aldridge, and was in the process of betraying her brother in return for a reward.

  Val and Drew had joined Uncle James and Wakefield at Aldridge’s house while Nate and Sarah caught up with their sleep.

  “Elspeth wants immunity from prosecution and sufficient funds to travel to the Americas and set herself up there in some style,” Val explained. “In return, she is willing to give us all the information she has about Stanley Wharton, including the plans he has set in motion.”

  Drew grimaced. “She says he has run mad. He is so obsessed with revenge on us and on Lord Aldridge that he cannot be reasoned with. He is throwing money at stupid plot after stupid plot, bribing and rewarding anyone who is prepared to attack us and any charity or business in the poorer parts of town that are associated with us. His sister says he is certain to bring himself down, and anyone allied with him.”

  “I do not like negotiating with vicious harridans who have injured me and my family,” Uncle James commented, “but Wakefield points out that her information will help us mobilise the magistrates. At the moment, they are resisting the idea of invading the slums. Several of them are convinced that the multiple attacks are mere coincidence, and one informed me that ladies of consequence had no business in the kinds of charitable work that involved actually working with the poor.”

  “I think we should take Elspeth’s offer,” Ruth told them. “We want to get rid of her, do we not?”

  “The female should not be rewarded for her evil,” Yousef proclaimed.

  Ruth shrugged. “Wherever she goes, she will make her own unhappiness, Yousef.” She raised a hand and began counting off fingers. “I do not wish to see my husband’s family name dragged through the gutters by the newssheets. Last year, when she escaped after her arrest, we managed to keep the story of her perfidy out of the printers’ windows. If she goes to trial, she and our family will be pilloried in every ribald song and every caricature in every major city in the kingdom.”

  She put up the next finger. “Nor do I wish the gossipmongers of Society to grasp some of the salient details of her latest descent into the dregs of slums. What will it do to our daughters’ reputations if people discover their aunt has been operating a brothel?”

  She straightened a third. “Her information saved Sarah today. That is worth a great deal, whatever her motivations.”

  The fourth finger rose. “The information she promises us will cost as much or more to gain from other sources, and other people might be injured or even die as a result of the delay.”

  She straightened her thumb. “She, and Wharton, are simply not worth troubling ourselves over any more than it takes to stop them. I would like for us to be able to retire to the country for Christmas without concerns about returning to London to further such attacks.”

  Val was nodding, and so was Charlotte.

  Drew complained, “She is a liar. How can we trust what she tells us?”

  “Her demands are met only if her information proves true,” Yousef suggested. “Her own life depends on her truth-telling.” He shrugged and addressed Uncle James. “If you are willing, Yakub.”

  Uncle James frowned. “I dislike it, but it may be the best way to find and get rid of the vermin who are destroying all we are trying to do for those in need.”

  Sarah nodded to Ruth. “Our main goal must be to protect the schools and clinics and refuges, those who work in them, and those who turn to them for help. I agree with Ruth.”

  “What does Aldridge think?” Charlotte wondered, but apparently Aldridge had departed for Haverford Castle, leaving his mother in charge of his unwanted guest.

  “The duchess will abide by our decision,” Uncle James said.

  Nate had a question of his own. “What of the Duke of Richport?”

  “Gone,” Uncle James replied. “His household here in London is closed up. His man of business says he left days ago for an extended world tour, but at the docks they told me that his ship sailed this afternoon.”

  “So, he escapes unpunished?” Nate growled.

  The duke shrugged. “The bawd would not name him, and the men claim not to have met ‘the gentleman’ or to have been told who he is. He has gone, Nate. We will have to leave it at that. At least for the moment.”

  “The next point to discuss is how to present Nate’s and Sarah’s marriage to the Beau Monde,” Ruth said.

  “I plan to leave that to you ladies,” Uncle James, “but I should tell you that the Duchess of Haverford is planning to visi
t tomorrow afternoon, once your mother and aunt arrive. She has some ideas on that matter.”

  “The duchess is an expert in the politics of the women’s court,” Ruth agreed. “She will be useful, Sarah. Father, we ladies shall manage the story of my cousin’s marriage, and leave you gentlemen to get rid of the vermin.”

  * * *

  The next day, two rooms in the Winshire townhouse took on the aspect of war rooms. The duke’s study became the venue for the campaign to find and stop Wharton and his allies. Nate was included in the discussions, but soon discovered that only Arthur Beauclair had less experience in such planning than he, and even Cousin Arthur, with his experience at the Middlesex end of the Theodora Foundation, had more practical knowledge of slum life in London than did Nate.

  Val Ashbury was a battle-hardened commander of men, and so were the duke and his sons, though they had learned in a different school, far away in Central Asia.

  Nate made himself as useful as he could, conveying messages to and from other great houses, in between carrying out his duties at the temporary clinic that Ruth had established in a warehouse belonging to Lord Aldridge, and stealing moments with his wife and his son.

  Sarah had commitments in the second of the war rooms: the ladies’ drawing room. As predicted, Her Grace the Duchess of Haverford arrived shortly after Sarah’s mother, the Dowager Lady Sutton, and her aunt, Lady Georgiana Winderfield.

  Within the hour, Sarah came looking for Nate. “My mother and my aunts wish to meet you, Nate.” He took her hand, feeling unaccountably nervous. Lady Sutton had every reason to despise the man who had run off with her daughter and then abandoned her, even if he had reasons, good reasons, for both actions.

  He felt no better when he arrived in the drawing room, where three great ladies of Society sat side by side like justices in a courtroom, though they were seated on a long sofa behind a low table. Around them a number of other richly dressed ladies occupied chairs and couches. In his fancy, they would be the jury in the coming trial.

  Sarah bobbed a curtsy. “Aunt Eleanor? Mama? Aunt Georgie? May I make known to you my husband, Lord Bentham?”

  Nate bowed to each of them. He had seen the duchess at various entertainments this season; Lady Sutton, he recognised from years ago, when she’d attended church from Applemorn, which made the third Lady Georgiana, the duke’s sister.

  Sarah continued around the room. Charlotte, he knew, and Ruth. He also recognised the duchess’s ward, Miss Grenford, with whom he had danced on the night he first waltzed with Sarah, who sat side by side with her sister, Lady Hamner.

  The lady with the infant on her knee was the younger Lady Sutton. She was married to the duke’s eldest son, who had arrived this afternoon with his wife and daughter, and immediately taken command of a large segment of the battle planning that continued in the study.

  Nate was also presented to Lady Georgiana’s friend, Miss Chalmers, and Lady Rosemary, another daughter of the duke.

  Once he had been conducted around the room, he was instructed to sit. “There, Lord Bentham, if you please,” said the dowager Lady Sutton. She pointed to a chair that had been placed a few feet away from and facing the long sofa. Again, he was uncomfortably reminded of a trial, an impression that was reinforced when Lady Sutton and Lady Georgiana nodded at the duchess, and she spoke.

  “We are Sarah’s godmother, mother, and aunt, Lord Bentham. We have stood beside her and suffered with her since you persuaded her to cast propriety to the wind and abscond with you and then disappeared.”

  She put up a hand when Nate opened his mouth, and he closed it again. She waited for a moment, as if to see whether he intended to continue his interruption, then nodded to Lady Sutton, who continued, “We understand that you were not responsible for your own abduction, but we wish to hear your explanation for the rest. Why did you elope with Sarah? Why did you not write to her? Why did you not return as soon as you were able?”

  Lady Georgiana spoke next. “Sarah is satisfied. We understand that. But we saw what she went through, and Elias suffered too. If we are to promote the cause of your marriage to the ton, Lord Bentham, we must have some assurance that their happiness is important to you. And your past record is not reassuring.”

  Sarah put her hand on Nate’s shoulder and protested, “Aunt Georgie!”

  But Lady Sutton said, “We failed you seven years ago, Sarah, when we should have been your defence against your father and grandfather. We could not bear to fail you again.”

  Nate covered Sarah’s hand with his own. “Ask your questions, my ladies, Your Grace. I will answer them to the best of my ability.”

  He had believed her uncle’s cross-examination thorough. The ladies left the duke in their wake. They picked at every answer, taking him back over his actions and his motivations for his actions until he remembered things long forgotten.

  He felt again the crushing fear that Sarah would be married off, all unwilling, to a care-for-nothing rakehell who would abuse and neglect her. Sutton had mentioned the Duke of Richport, famed in Applemorn for the orgies he held at his estate near there, and Viscount Rutledge, who was believed to have killed his first two wives and who certainly made them miserable.

  At least those two men were relatively young, though both more than a decade older than Sarah. But Sarah’s father also spoke of his own friends, and Sutton was a debauched old man—old, at least, in Nate’s seventeen-year-old eyes—and one of Prinny’s cronies, which made Nate think the man’s friends would be even worse for Sarah than Richport or Rutledge.

  Nate relived the exhilaration of realising the loophole formed by her technical residency of Sutton-Under-Swinwood. He recalled the nail-biting delays: waiting for Sarah to agree to come with him, waiting to see if anyone objected to the banns, waiting for Sarah to at last be his.

  Most of his focus had to be on his three inquisitors, but Sarah’s grip on his shoulder told him she shared the memories with him. Gasps and sighs from the younger ladies hinted that they, at least, favoured his case.

  “Very well,” Lady Sutton said, at last. “We agree that you acted in good faith, Lord Bentham, and with Sarah’s well-being in mind. In hindsight, we might suggest you should have spoken to one of Sarah’s female relatives about your concerns, but you were seventeen and a male. Now tell us what you remember of your abduction.”

  Not a great deal. He told them about being attacked on his way back from the village, about Elfingham’s commands to the brutes who were beating him, and the jeered promise to Nate that Sarah would be wed to a proper gentleman, a peer, within the month. “That is the last thing I truly remember until I woke up far out to sea,” he explained.

  Which, of course, led to questions about what he half remembered—the random impressions of pain, jolting, voices, light and dark. Sarah’s grip on his shoulder tightened to the point of pain.

  They left that topic to ask about what happened once he was conscious again, and he told them about his desperate attempts to convince the doctor, and then the sailing master, that he had been abducted against his will, leaving behind a wife and a position as assistant secretary to the squire of Lesser Lechford. When, at last, he had been permitted to speak to a supercilious lieutenant who was technically in charge of the midshipmen, and who acted as gatekeeper to the captain, the man produced Nate’s enlistment papers, signed by his father and witnessed by the Earl of Sutton.

  The shadow of the despair that had possessed him for months after that revelation touched his soul once more. Only Sarah’s hand, still gripping his shoulder, kept him anchored in the present. He swallowed hard and continued.

  “I was not paid for nine months, and even then, since I was known to be aboard unwillingly, I was not permitted to disembark when we were in harbour. But I begged paper and ink and wrote letters—to Sarah, to my cousin Arthur, to my father, to a friend from the village that might have been able to send me news. The physician, Dr MacIntosh, agreed to post them for me. At every opportunity for a year after, I
sent more. And I waited for replies.”

  A drop fell on the hand that rested over Sarah’s and he looked around to see her crying. “I received none of your letters,” she declared. He forgot the others in the room for a moment, needing only to comfort her, taking her hand and turning so he could look directly into her eyes. “I am here now, my love,” he assured her, and she smiled through her tears and bent to kiss the corner of his lips.

  “So, you gave up?” asked Lady Georgiana, recalling his attention to his inquisitors.

  “I wrote less often,” he replied. “After several years with no reply from anyone, yes, I gave up.”

  Lady Sutton echoed his own thoughts. “I truly do not see what else he could have done, Georgie, under the circumstances. But, Lord Bentham, were you never back in England?”

  “No, my lady, nor anywhere in the United Kingdom until the navy sent me to Edinburgh two years ago to study medicine. I was there until my father decided a few months ago to question the navy about my supposed death. He had only the old duke’s word for it, you see. He needed an heir, and arranged to have me discharged from the navy and returned to him.”

  He turned again to look at Sarah, this time standing and taking both of her hands in his. It was to her that he spoke his heart in front of them all. They had the right to hear because they loved her, but only she had the right to demand his reasons, his apologies, and his repentance.

  “I convinced myself that you were married and out of my reach. I knew there would have been a scandal over the annulment that your father must have procured. I told myself it would be cruel to rake it all up again. But the truth is, I was afraid. Afraid to find you unhappily married and to have no right to do anything about it. Afraid to find you had married a man worthy of you, and forgotten all about the foolish mistake you made when you were still a girl.”

  He kissed her hands. “I have many regrets, my love, but that is the greatest. That I was too much of a coward to even ask about the Winshires for fear I would discover how you were, and that the truth, whatever it was, would break my heart all over again. We could have been together these last two years if I had just asked a few questions.”