Page 19 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
“Nate, he was then. Nathaniel Beauclair, the vicar’s son. I knew he had an earl somewhere on the family tree, but his father was not in line for the title. He was—is, I suppose—a year older than me.”
“So, you came to convalesce and you and Charlotte renewed your acquaintance with the vicar’s son,” he prompted.
“Me, mostly. Charlotte had been very sick, as I said, and she spent a lot of time sleeping. I met Nate in the woods, and we liked each other. We were both lonely. Nate was expected to act as his father’s secretary and messenger boy, carrying out many of the obligations of the parish. I visited the sick with him, and helped set up the church for services. At first, it was something to do, and then... We fell in love, Uncle James. At least, I fell in love, and Nate said he did.”
She sat looking into the fire, remembering the heady feeling, the long afternoons discussing a golden future, stolen kisses—no—kisses freely given and received. The duke said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
“He took French leave of his father to go to Brighton, where my father was, to ask for permission to court me.”
“Bold,” the duke commented.
Sarah nodded her agreement. “He had a small inheritance from his maternal grandfather, and he thought he could find work as a secretary.”
She had warned him that the duke her grandfather had more grandiose plans for her. He had kissed her and assured her of success. “Lord Sutton is your father, my Sarah. He and the duke will want your happiness, surely? God meant us for one another, I am certain of it.”
Sarah had been right. “My father would not listen. A commoner. The son of a cadet branch of a noble family with nothing to recommend him as a suitor. That’s what Father said when he had him ejected from the house. By the time the mail coach delivered Nate back to the vicarage, Father’s messenger had already been there, and Nate was exiled to a relative in Oxfordshire, forbidden ever to come near me again.”
He had climbed out the window and escaped up to the manor to tell her the whole. In whispers. “My father told him that he was negotiating with three men as potential husbands for me and Charlotte: the Duke of Richport, the Earl of Selby, and Viscount Rutledge. And if none of them were interested, my father had several friends who might want a young wife.” She shuddered.
Even Sarah, then a sheltered schoolgirl, had been warned about those three men, and Nate knew more. He was frightened for her, he said. They had agreed that he must obey his father for the moment, but that they would write to one another and discuss what they must do. That night, afraid she would never see him again, Sarah had enticed him to stay the night in her bed and they had made love for the first time.
The next day, Nate was escorted to Brighton and put on the mail coach to Cheltenham and then to Lechford in Oxfordshire. The day after, the twins’ older brother, Viscount Elfingham, arrived at Applemorn. “Father sent Elfingham to guard me, and to make sure that Mr Beauclair—he is the Earl of Lechton now, Uncle James, but then he was well down the line of succession—to make sure that Mr Beauclair had sent Nate away as commanded.”
“I take it that Elfingham did not prove an effective chaperone,” Uncle James commented.
“Elfingham spent several days telling me that Father was arranging a splendid match for me and I was not to ruin it by throwing myself away on a penniless vicar’s son. For the rest of week, he grumbled about being stuck in the country with nothing to do but watch two little girls read books and make daisy chains.” She managed a watery chuckle. “And you may be sure, Uncle, that we were careful to be as childish and as boring as we could. Until he started an affair with our governess and forgot all about us.”
Poor Bella. Sarah and Charlotte tried to tell her not to believe Elfingham’s promises, but Bella was starry-eyed at captivating a duke’s heir and wouldn’t listen.
“I take it your swain came up with a plan.”
Sarah frowned. Nate had been so certain, so convincing. “He and his cousin. He said if we married, our fathers would have to accept it. He arranged it all. All I had to do was be ready to travel to Oxfordshire when he came for me.”
She had wanted to believe him. “He said he’d had the banns read. He said as long as no one objected, our marriage would be legal.”
“And he came to fetch you. Surely Elfingham noticed?”
“Charlotte feigned illness, and was seen around the house wearing a blonde wig. Elfingham never bothered to talk to us, or do more than poke his head around the door to check that I was still there. It worked well enough. We only needed a few days start.”
They were three days on the road in the hired carriage, hurrying from post to post by day, sleeping in one another’s arms by night. Just sleeping, because it was the time of her monthly indisposition. How gentle, how loving, how controlled Nate had been. Even the last night before their wedding, when she was well again.
Then they arrived, and within a few hours, they were married, or so she thought. Nate’s cousin had been an unworldly man convinced he was helping in a righteous cause. He was curate in the tiny village of Lesser Lechford. He performed the ceremony and put a cottage at the newlyweds’ disposal. She and Nate discovered the joys of marital intimacy, and they did not stir out of doors for three days.
“We were married, and spent several days together, but then one morning, Nate said we needed fresh milk and bread, and he left me to walk into the village. He never came back. My father arrived, instead, and told me that I had never been married, and that Nate had taken ten thousand pounds to leave England.”
Uncle James knew the rest. The pressure to marry, which ended when she discovered she was with child. Hiding the pregnancy and birth from Society. And all the long years between when she had barely avoided her father’s and grandfather’s matrimonial plans for her.
“Between your father and Bentham, which would you have trusted to tell the truth?” the duke asked.
He knew the answer, of course. Her father would say anything that suited his purposes, with no regard for the truth. She had held on for years to the hope that they had driven Nate away, and he would return when she was twenty-one and free to make her own choices. All the time, she feared he must be dead.
“Nate left, Uncle James. He didn’t write. He didn’t come back. Not even two years ago, when I turned twenty-one and no-one could have stopped me from marrying him again.”
“Three things give me pause, dear niece. One is that, even seven years ago, my brother would have had trouble laying hands on such a sum. The duchy was living on borrowed money and getting further and further into debt for fifteen years before I came back to England. The second is that your father and grandfather made no real attempt to force you into marriage. Not you, and not Charlotte, either. Many men would accept a duke’s granddaughter without a dowry; some would pay for the privilege, and not mind a past scandal, either.”
Sarah shook her head, slowly, not sure what to make of it all. Certainly, Father had talked about arranging a match for them both. Grandfather, too, after Father died. But they never mentioned specifics; never actually came up with candidates. She knew why they treated Charlotte so carefully, but why did they let her get away with refusing them?
Uncle James added, “My third reason to be open to believing your young man is that my father and brother did something similar to me. I planned a marriage that the duke forbade, so they had me beaten and thrown on a ship for the Levant, where I was left with a letter telling me that my beloved had married someone else, and I was forbidden to step foot in these united kingdoms until further notice.”
