Page 28 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
He exchanged a smile with Sarah. No one would remain in doubt of Elias’s parentage when they saw the two children together.
Elias tugged on Sarah’s hand. “I need more bread, Mama.”
“We have lots of bread,” Norie offered. “I can give the boy some bread, can I not, Bentham?”
Elias stared at her for a moment, his eyes wide, then remembered his manners. “Thank you, miss. But Uncle Drew has more bread.” He seemed to think this an adequate introduction, because he added, “You should throw some to that one at the back. The others are being greedy.”
Norie threw a piece of bread over the heads of the other ducks. It fell short, and before the target duck could read it, it was mobbed in a flurry of beaks and wings.
“They stole it,” Norie noted, then stamped a foot. “Bad ducks! You have no manners.”
“Ducks have duck manners,” observed Elias, from all the superiority of a year’s age and masculinity. “Here, let me help you.”
He took position beside the little girl, and showed her how to make pellets of the bread so they flew more accurately, and they were soon making a game of picking a duck to favour with their largesse and then throwing to that duck, groaning when another web-toed bandit reached the morsel first and cheering when they succeeded.
“He is a kind boy,” Nate observed to Sarah, blinking a little to clear the moisture from his eyes. “Me too, Benth,” Lavie demanded, wriggling to be put down. “Me throw bread with Boy.”
He set her on the ground and she rushed to squeeze between her sister and Elias—her nephew, Nate thought with bemusement—all the better to be protected from the ducks. Elias smiled down at her. “Is this your sister?” he asked Norie.
“She’s Lavie. And I’m Norie. And there’s Baby, too, but she’s asleep.” Norie waved in the direction of the carriage without looking away from the ducks.
“Bwead, Norie,” Lavie demanded.
Elias gave her a pelleted morsel. “Throw it over the ducks,” he advised. “I’m Elias,” he told Norie. “Pleased to meet you.”
Lavie’s effort flew all of two feet. Elias squatted on his heels to give Lavie another piece of bread, and showed her how to swing her arm so it flew at least four feet, right into the clamouring flock.
Nate’s eyes were watering again. What a fine little lad he was!
“Will you tell me about him?” he asked Sarah, who had slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, and was having a similar problem with her tear ducts as she watched the children.
Lord Andrew and Lady Charlotte had moved to the other side of the children, the servants had fallen back to cluster around the baby carriage, and the guard maintained their watchfulness in a semicircle around their charges. They were as private as they could be in such a public place.
“He is a kind boy, as you have said. Quiet, but he is coming out of his shell as he gains confidence. Very clever, too. In the eight months since I found him, he has almost caught up with his age group in most of his subjects, and is reading beyond what his nursemaid expects.”
“Only eight months? Rumour has it you found him in a workhouse.”
“His foster parents died, and their family didn’t want him. He was there only four months, Nate, but you should have seen him. He was skin and bones, and so nervous.”
Nate didn’t know what to say. The thought of his son being abused set his every protective instinct into full emergency action, and it was all too late. A year ago, he had been in Edinburgh, still under naval discipline, but he could have asked for leave in between terms. He could have come looking for his wife, and if he had, he might have been able to rescue his son before the poor little man was hurt.
“I lost them, Nate. Mama hand-picked them, and I think they were good to Elias, for he remembers them fondly. But my grandfather paid them to move away, and to break their agreement to send Mama reports on Elias’s health. We didn’t know where they had gone, and my grandfather was not telling.” She wiped away a tear.
“I tried, Nate. I saved as much as I could from my pin money, and I spent it all on hiring a man to search for Elias. But he found nothing. He kept asking for more money, but there was none. No more pin money and my dowry was gone—not that my father would have given it to me, even if my grandfather and father had not spent it all.”
“But you persisted, and in the end, you found him.”
“Uncle James came, and all of a sudden I had a bigger allowance than I had ever had in my life. I decided to try a new agent. I don’t think the first one ever left London. He just took my money and lied to me about what he was doing. But Prue—Mrs Wakefield—wouldn’t give up. And in the end, she found Elias and brought him to me.”
Nate put his hand over the one tucked into his elbow and stroked. “You have him now. You missed those years when he was little, years in which you could have known him and loved him, but he is here now. You have the future.”
She smiled up at him. “We have the future. I’ll not keep him from you, Nate.” She focused her eyes on his cravat pin, veiling them with her lashes. “I’ll not keep either us from you.”
He bent his head closer. “Unfair to tell me that now, in public, where I am constrained from kissing you.”
“I didn’t mean to, yet,” Sarah admitted. “But the loving way you treat your sisters, and then you said that about my future, not assuming that we would be together...and I can see how much Elias moves you. We are married, Nate, in intention, whatever the law says. I do not know you well any more. But I know you can be trusted with my son. I know you are a decent, honourable man.”
She coloured. “I know I desire you, as I have not desired any man since the last time we were together. Perhaps that would not be quite enough if we were not already married. But we are, and I do not want to waste any more time when we have already lost seven years. Unless you are not ready?”
