Page 38 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
“Good man,” Uncle James replied. “My niece is an independent young woman, and I am pleased you realise that.”
“You should know that I am not in need of her dowry, sir. My inheritance from my mother’s father was invested during my minority, and I have added to it the prize money I received over the years. I have an independent income that will keep her and Elias, and any further children we have, in comfort until I inherit my father’s estate, which is substantial.”
Uncle James raised his eyebrows. “Indeed? I understood from your father that you were dependent on an allowance. He told me that he would reinstate it even though you went against his wishes, since your rebellion has resulted in a grandson.”
Nate grinned. “My father’s threats to remove my allowance would be more effective if he had ever actually paid me one. He has not, and I do not need it.”
“I see.” The duke sat back to sip his coffee, and Nate continued reading the settlement papers, which seemed very fair.
He was interrupted when a knock on the door heralded Sarah. She wore a bonnet and pelisse over a walking dress, and was drawing gloves onto her hands.
“Darling,” he said, “you are in time to help me argue marriage settlements with your uncle.”
Sarah smiled, but replied, “I would like to look at them later, but may I leave you to it, Nate? Uncle James? Charlotte has had a message from one of the businesses that gives employment to her school pupils. There is a question of theft, apparently. The proprietor is insisting on seeing Charlotte immediately, or she will be calling the constables.”
Uncle James nodded. “Charlotte has asked you to go in her place?”
“No. She was trying to get dressed to go herself. She is certain it must be a mistake. I told her to behave, and I would do the errand for her.”
“May I escort you?” Nate asked, taking her hand.
“You finish what you are doing,” Sarah insisted. “I have a coachman, a footman and my guard, and I should not be above an hour.” She reached up and kissed his cheek. “Send that message to your father, Nate. I will be back in plenty of time to take Elias to meet him this afternoon.”
16
Maggie Wilton ran a stable of seamstresses and embroiderers out of an attic five floors up in a rickety building on an obscure little alley in Clerkenwell. The coachman had to stop in the broader street beyond the alley, and he stayed nervously with the horses, his musket over his knees.
Yahzak argued that he should run the errand on his own; that the lady should not be going into such a narrow space. “I will fetch the girl, and this Wilton woman will not stop me,” he assured her. John, the footman, nodded. “Or I could go, my lady.”
Sarah was very tempted to take them up on the offer. She wanted the errand over and done so she could return to Nate. But she had promised Charlotte to see to it. “If the constables are already there, they will listen to a duke’s niece, but not to either of you. And you will keep me safe.” It was a poor street, but not an impossible one. The houses were rundown and ramshackle, but the front steps and windows were clean, and no more rubbish littered the corners than might collect in a day or two.
“It is one woman and a dozen girls, Yahzak Bey,” Sarah pointed out.
“I go first,” he decreed. “If I see anything suspicious, we return to the carriage.”
He led the way, one hand inside his coat where his pistol hid, and the other on the knife in his pocket.
Sarah followed, and John brought up the rear.
The building was typical for the area—a shop on the ground floor, a street door to the side of it onto a stairway that led up to flats above. Sarah glanced back, but the carriage was out of sight. The stairwell smelt of cabbage, but not of the worse things Sarah sometimes encountered on her rescue visits.
The stairs turned tightly, with two flights for each storey and a door opening into a flat on every second landing. They climbed past the sounds of children crying, then of a woman singing in a foreign language, and then of a man and woman arguing.
On the next floor, with only two flights to go to the top, the door was partly open but all was silent within. Yahzak paused and gave the door a suspicious glare, then continued up the stairs, peering ahead. “I hear talking,” he reported.
Sarah could, too: the hum of female voices coming from the attic above. She turned the corner to the final flight of stairs, speeding her climb so close to her goal.
She was on Yahzak’s heels when he knocked on the open door and stepped into the room beyond. When he dropped like a stone, the man who had hit him was able to reach through and drag her, struggling and shouting, into the attic. She tried to get her hand into her reticule, but dropped it in the struggle. A dozen young girls sat on low chairs, fabric over their laps, their needles poised in the air, their eyes wide, and their mouths open.
Sarah screamed her fear and anger. The man who held her jerked the arm around her throat. “Shut up, bitch, or I’ll break your neck.”
Yahzak lay just inside the door, the club his assailant had used to fell him beside him. She could not tell whether he still lived. Beyond him, a thin-faced woman with narrow eyes and a sour expression watched the scene as if it were a play, and not an entertaining one.
“You are making a mistake,” Sarah said. The man jerked her head back, a brutal warning. Behind him, the clump of boots heralded the arrival of more men. At least two, perhaps three. Not John, who was wearing shoes. John must have been assaulted, too.
“Gag her and bind her,” her captor ordered, and another bulky brute moved into view to shove a cloth into the mouth her captor forced open. It tasted foul, and she tried to spit it out, but he was tying it in place with another cloth around her head. Her fear receded at the indication she was not immediately to be killed, or perhaps it was just swamped by her rising anger.
While all eyes were on her head, she kicked the reticule, and the pistol it contained, so it slid across the room to the row of seamstresses. One of them quickly covered it with her skirt. Perhaps they would be able to use it to save John and Yahzak.
