Page 16 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
She would find out. He owed her the explanation he had promised her through Charlotte. And once she knew, she could put him behind her for once and for all, and resume her search for a husband.
But not today.Today, she was tired—from the travel, the disappointing house party, her anxiety over the way Elias was being treated. She had made up her mind to refuse Nate any request for an interview today when she realised that he was following the stretcher into the house without another word to her.
“Is something wrong?” Charlotte asked, coming to put an arm around her.
Sarah didn’t answer, because Nate had stopped in the doorway and was looking back at her. The imperturbable mask was down, and he gazed at her with naked yearning. “He looks tired,” she commented.
She hadn’t really been talking to Charlotte, but her sister answered, “He worked a full night at the clinic, and has not yet been to bed. Are you going to let him tell you his story, Sarah?”
Nate had entered the house after the stretcher. Sarah and Charlotte mounted the steps, still arm in arm as Sarah thought about her answer and saw an opportunity to escape.
The stretcher party was partway up the main staircase. Sarah gave her sister a squeeze. “I’ll leave you to see Tony settled, and then you should get some sleep yourself, and so should Lord Bentham. Tell him to wait upon me tomorrow at eleven. I am going up the family stairs to see if all is well in the nursery.”
Charlotte yawned. “When you are free, you might ask Mrs Arbuckle where she has put my other guests. Two women from the Beast’s pleasure house who helped Tony escape. Sarah, Uncle James’s investigators have found out the Beast is Wharton. He has been building a new empire in the slums under his new name.”
Stanley Wharton, who was then calling himself the Duke of Devil’s Kitchen, had been behind many of the attacks on the Winderfields since Uncle James arrived back in England. Last year, he had kidnapped their cousin Ruth and the daughter of the Earl of Ashbury, who was now Ruth’s husband. He’d broken out of prison and was believed to be in the West Indies with his sister, Ashbury’s sister-in-law.
Charlotte said, “I’ve promised the women shelter until we can make a plan.” She broke off for another huge yawn. “Perhaps you might tell them about Oxfordshire? And see what skills they have?”
Sarah smiled. “You are exhausted, darling. Leave your fallen women to me and the housekeeper, get your young man settled, and go to sleep.”
After all, wild schoolboys were Charlotte’s field of interest. Sarah was the one who had followed their aunt and mother into looking after women who had been seduced, abused, neglected and abandoned. Not that the village in Oxfordshire would be welcoming to women who had actually worked in a brothel.But I know who will.
After visiting the nursery to find Elias happily at work on his letters—he was rapidly making up the education he’d missed—she instructed the frowning housekeeper to take her to her sister’s two guests.
The housekeeper, Mrs Arbuckle, made her disapproval of Charlotte’s guests clear without openly criticising Charlotte. “I have put them on the third floor, in the guest wing, my lady.”
“One of the rooms for visiting upper servants,” Sarah noted.
“Not appropriate, I know, my lady, but I could not put them near my girls, could I? And we have no visitors to be offended at the moment.” She continued to bustle through the house, her swift no-nonsense steps very different to the glide that ladies were taught from the moment they graduated from toddling.
“I will stay with you, of course,” Mrs Arbuckle added.
“Not necessary, Mrs Arbuckle. You may send a maid with tea and cakes, but I will interview the two women on my own.” The aristocratic tone, Sarah had found, worked with servants who had not known one from birth. Those who had seen her toddle in leading strings tended to ignore it.
Mrs Arbuckle, a new hire since Uncle James inherited the title, accepted her dismissal with no more reaction than tightly crimped lips, pointing to the door of the chamber allocated to the visitors, and retreated down the hall.
When Sarah knocked on the door, a cheerful voice called, “Come in, love. It’s not locked!”
She stopped, just inside the room. Clothes were strewn across the bed, a sofa, one of the three chairs and the two chests against the wall. A large hip bath stood to one side of the fireplace, and a screen stood to the other side. Two pair of bare feet were visible under the screen.
“‘Elp yerself to the barf water, love. We’ve finished,” said the same person who had invited her to enter.
“I am not here for the bathwater,” Sarah explained.
A head popped out one side of the screen.
“Eee, Bets, it’s never a maid.”
“I am Lady Sarah, Lady Charlotte’s sister. I’ve come to talk to you about what you would like to do next.”
Both women emerged. They wore skimpy chemises and nothing else. Furthermore, Sarah could see their figures and the dark shapes of their nipples and their nether hair through the thin material. Damp hair hung around their shoulders—in the case of the petite blonde, all the way to her derrière. Where hair had touched fabric, it was fully transparent.
The dark-haired one explained, “We was drying our hair, my lady. We thought we’d better hide when you knocked in case you was a footman come for the bathwater. That Mrs Arbuckle said we wasn’t to make up to the servants, ’cause if we did, she’d put us out into the street whatever Lady Charlotte said.”
“She won’t,” Sarah assured them, “but your courtesy in not placing temptation in the way of the footmen is appreciated. My sister asked me to see if I could help you to safety and a new life, if you want one.” She waved to the piles of clothes. “Perhaps you could put on a robe, and we could sit and talk?”
The two women exchanged a glance and then obeyed, sitting together on a sofa opposite the chair Sarah had taken. The robes were gaudy garments in sateen—one with purple dragons and blue flowers printed on a scarlet background, the other a vivid pink with multicoloured flowers that never grew in nature. At least they covered the essentials, though they were short in length and open almost to the waist.
