Page 30 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
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 thetondriving, 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.”
