Page 47 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
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.”
Sarah pulled her hands from his grasp and slid them around him, resting her head upon his breast when he used his to hold her closer. “You are here now,” she reminded him.
“Which brings us to the present,” said the Duchess of Haverford. “You met my goddaughter at a dinner here in London and discovered that she was not, in fact, married. How did you feel about that, Lord Bentham?”
Nate moved so he was facing the ladies again, looking at them over his wife’s head. “That is not quite correct, Your Grace. My father suggested I come up to London to look for a wife. I had no interest in doing so. I already had a wife, whether that was legally true or not, and I had no intention of breaking the vows I made to her on our wedding day. But then…”
This memory was a pleasure after the harder ones that had booby-trapped the afternoon. Nate could feel the smile growing until a grin stretched his mouth. “Then he said that I need not consider Lady Sarah Winderfield, and I knew she had not married anyone else. I could not get to London quickly enough. When I arrived, I was told the Winshires were still out of town. I had no idea that my wife and her sister were in residence, or that they would be at dinner that night.”
He placed a gentle kiss on Sarah’s hair. “I saw her, more beautiful than ever, and I knew I had to try to win her back.”
He was focused on Sarah, who had raised her mouth for his kiss heedless of their audience. He didn’t see Lady Sutton rise and round the table that separated them; didn’t know she was beside him till she tapped him on his shoulder and held out her arms for him.
“Allow me to give you a belated welcome to the family, my dear Nate. May I call you Nate? And may I apologise for what my husband and son did to you?”
He returned the hug wholeheartedly. “Yes, to the first, my lady. Mama, if I may be so bold. And no need to the second. I realise you were not consulted, and it is not your fault to apologise for.”
The other ladies were lining up to give their own greetings. Lady Georgiana slapped him on the back and told him he was a good boy, and he should call her Aunt Georgie and her companion, who gave him her hand and a smile, Aunt Letty. The younger Lady Sutton said it would be less confusing for everyone if he just addressed her as Sophia. Miss Grenford declared that she was Jess to her friends. The most terrifying of them all, the Duchess of Haverford, wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye, insisting that he must call her Aunt Eleanor from this day on.
Someone must have notified the servants that the trial was over, for maids and footmen appeared with sumptuous refreshments, and the warm welcome to the family continued as two of the younger ladies poured and another two served everyone with their choice of tea, coffee or chocolate.
