Page 11 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
Libby accepted his explanation of a regular commitment without comment. His father assumed he had set up a mistress, and expressed himself pleased that the boy had normal appetites. Nate avoided looking at Libby, who was present for his father's remarks, and managed, he hoped, not to show his disgust.
The thought of being the profligate that his father apparently expected made Nate feel ill. His faithfulness to his first love, at first almost inadvertent, had become an established habit. Despite his conviction that he had lost her, some hope must have remained, for the guilt he felt when he was tempted to stray had been enough to reinforce his virtue. Now, the knowledge that Sarah was alive and unattached—the sight of her, even though she fled from him—these were enough to drown the least morsel of desire for any other woman. His father would not be pleased, but Nate could not consider another wife.
The clinic work was interesting—they saw it all—knife wounds, broken bones, illnesses that swept through the slum. On his first evening on duty, he and the resident doctor, James Blythe, were called out to a woman labouring with child in a small tidy flat on the outskirts of the worst of the slum. "By the time we are called," warned Blythe, "it is usually too late."
This time, though, the father had run for them early when the midwife had turned up too far gone with gin to be of any use. It was not the woman’s first child, and it was a relatively straightforward breech presentation. Nate managed to turn the child, leaving the three children she already had with a living mother, provided childbirth fever didn't take her. He stopped the husband in the hallway of the tenement block, as he showed them to the door, and suggested continence, but he didn't need his colleague's muttered remark that it would be of no use.
"You'll do," said Blythe, as they walked back to the clinic. "Don't go into the slums without taking a porter, but you can deal with any other calls tonight on your own. Wake me if you have any problems, but otherwise, I'm for bed when we get back."
Nate nodded, pleased that he'd passed whatever standard Blythe had in mind. "I will." He continued to scan the darkness beyond range of Blythe's lantern. His travels had taken him many places where a moment's inattention in the darkness would get a man killed.
Was that a moan? He hesitated for a moment, and the sound came again—a brief whimper, choked off, as if the sufferer was afraid to make a noise.
On the steps of the building they were passing, in the shadows, a bundle of rags suddenly shifted away from the light, groaning at the effort. Nate took a step closer, one hand on the dagger he carried in his pocket. It must be a person. A small woman or perhaps a child.
Blythe laid a hand on his arm. "Have a care."
"Don't be afraid." Nate addressed the person on the steps. "We are doctors. We want to help you." He took a step closer as Blythe raised the lantern.
The rag bundle lowered the arm behind which it was hiding, and wary hazel eyes glinted in the flickering light.
Nate crouched, just out of arm's reach, his hand still on his dagger. "What's wrong?"
"It's me leg, in't it." The voice was young, and—even though strained with pain—laced with belligerence and bravado. "Me ribs, too. I fell."
Blythe drew nearer, the lantern light showing a thin dirty face covered in scrapes and bruises.
"We need to get him to the clinic," Blythe said. "I'll fetch help. He shouldn't be moved without a stretcher."
He handed Nate the lantern and hurried away.
"We are doctors from the Ashbury clinic," Nate explained. "We'll take you there and have a look at your injuries." Definitely male, from the clothing. It was good quality clothing, too, from what he could see through the dirt. Quality, and little worn.
"Tell my lady?" the boy begged, though speaking clearly pained him. "Tell her Tony din't run. They took me from 'er garden. Tell her?"
A servant of some kind? "Who is your lady, Tony?" Nate asked. "I'll send a message."
"Saint Charlotte. Her wot teaches here."
Surely, he didn’t mean Sarah’s sister? She was a benefactor of the ragged school on whose steps they stood, but did she actually teach? Before Nate could question the boy, Blythe hurried back with one of the clinic's porters and a collapsible stretcher. They shifted the patient as gently as possible, but he passed out before the transfer was complete. "He told me his name is Tony," Nate reported as they carried the stretcher the hundred yards to the clinic. "He gave me a message for a Saint Charlotte who apparently teaches in that building."
"Lady Charlotte Winderfield," Blythe told him. "She established and supports the school. I expect he's one of her students."
Nate put aside his curiosity, and his elation at another opportunity to see his beloved's sister. He had a patient to treat, but in the morning, he'd convey the boy's message to Lady Charlotte.
* * *
The road conditions delayed the Duke of Winshire’s arrival at his destination, forcing an overnight stop a mere two-thirds of the way through the journey. He and his men travelled with two extra mounts each, which would have meant a seven-hour journey without the rain, the thick mud, and the cold.
Even to be on time for his appointment, Winshire wasn’t prepared to risk the horses, but nor did he want to leave a trail of reports about his travels. They stopped in whatever shelter they could find when the horses needed rest, and camped for the night before the sun set.
They rose early the next day and broke their fast as they rode, but still, it was nearing noon when the church spire that had been described to him first came into sight. Winshire gave the signal to halt, and called for the English-bred horse he’d brought for the last part of his errand. He did not expect to be seen at his destination, but he had been asked for discretion. The Turkmen horses he preferred were distinctive, and would mark him as part of the Winshire household even if no possible observer could identify him as the duke.
“I should be no more than two or three hours,” he told those who had accompanied him. Their commander frowned, but did not reiterate his arguments for accompanying Winshire. Undoubtedly, he or one of his men would follow at a distance, but they all knew how to stay out of sight, so Winshire didn’t care about that.
The farm track to which he’d been directed skirted the village and brought him to the meeting place fewer than ten minutes after he left his guard. As he dismounted, a man came out of the small outbuilding. Did he have the wrong place? Had her plan been discovered?
The man’s words put him at ease. “I’ll look to your horse, sir. You are to go straight inside.” So. She had not come unaccompanied.Of course not, and quite right, too.Though this little lodge was on the fringes of the main estate, it was still isolated, and a likely target for those poor displaced souls, often former soldiers, who roamed the countryside looking for food, shelter, money or people from whom they could wrest such necessities.
