Page 43 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
“I could murder for a cup of tea,” Sarah agreed. She sat beside Charlotte, who was looking pale, but better than this morning. She removed her bonnet and her hair tumbled down. “Oh dear. Perhaps I should go up and make myself tidy.”
Nate interrupted his conversation to turn to her. “Darling, what am I thinking! Gentlemen, can we continue this another time? I need to see to my wife. Charlotte, could we put my cousin up in a guest room? Sweetheart, how is your head?
“Your father,” she reminded him. “We were going to take Elias to see your father.”
“I’ll let my father know that we have to postpone, and I’ll talk to Elias. You are going up to bed, my love.”
Bed sounded wonderful. Gratefully, Sarah let her husband coddle her.
* * *
Nate fussed over the scrapes and cuts on Sarah’s wrists, the bruises she’d accumulated when she was being manhandled. Wilson had ordered up a hot bath, and he insisted on staying while she undressed so that he could inspect all of her wounds.
Since she was a small girl, Sarah had only ever been unclothed in front of two other people—and that rarely—her maid, when in her bath, and her husband, in the dark and under the sheets on the three nights—four now—she had spent in bed with him. Stripping in front of him in full daylight had her blushing like a young maiden, which she had not been for seven years.
He set her at ease with his manner: crisp and matter-of-fact, focused on checking that her injuries were no worse than she said. He finished by taking her gently in his arms and pressing a tender kiss to her forehead. “Now have a long soak, my love.” He stepped back and held out his hand to help her into the water. The scrapes stung as she lowered herself, but once she was immersed, the heat felt wonderful.
Nate knelt beside the tub, so his head was close to hers. “Wilson is bringing you a soothing herbal tea. If you will permit, dearest heart, I shall go up to see Elias. I daresay some of today’s doings might have reached the nursery, though I hope his nursemaid will have had enough sense to keep it from him. If not, I will be able to reassure him that you are home and well.”
A swift knock at the door was followed by Wilson’s entrance, with a tea tray. She could smell some of Cook’s delicious drop scones, and suddenly realised that she was hungry.
“Go, of course,” she told him. “Tell him I shall be up to see him later.”
“After you have had a sleep,” Nate told her, firmly. “I shall be back by the time the water cools, and shall dress those cuts, then tuck you into bed. Drink the willow bark tea first, my love, and then the other. Wilson, stay with your mistress and make sure she doesn’t go to sleep in her bath.”
It had always annoyed Sarah when other people made decisions for her, but she had seen the shadow of Nate’s fear still lurking in his eyes. He needed to take care of her. He needed to nag her gently, because he loved her to distraction and had suffered when she was taken. Her hero.
Sarah obediently downed the willow bark concoction, which had mercifully been sweetened with honey. Then she sat back in the bath, her tea in one hand and a scone in the other, sipping and nibbling by turns, while her mind drifted from Cousin Arthur’s arrival, to the coming meeting with Lord Lechton, to musing about their future. They had not discussed where they might live. Would Nate come home to the dower house in Oxfordshire with her and Elias?
She could not see him choosing to live with his father, whom he did not like above half, and Sarah was very much afraid that if she lived with Lady Lechton, she would soon find herself managing the entire household and Lady Lechton, too. Which would not be at all fair to the poor little mouse.
They would work something out. She and Nate. Something that suited their family.
19
Nate was also thinking about heroism. His need for Sarah had always been fierce, since their first tentative kiss all those years ago. The embers had flared when he set eyes on her again after seven years. The need to court her had driven the flames higher, and last night had done nothing to quench them.
If he’d thought about it, he would have expected his fear and anger during the chase to rescue her to be followed by intense craving. The need to affirm life was a common response to close brushes with death.
It was only right to keep a lid on the raging inferno of his yearning for her sweet body. She was hurt. She was tired and pale and determined to maintain her dignity.
But when she stripped before him, blushing so endearingly, it had been almost more than he could bear. Rather than turn into a ravishing brute, he had invented the errand to the nursery, though he’d realised as he spoke that Elias might well have heard something of the abduction, so it had been a necessary errand, as well as politic.
And he had better think about his son and the necessary explanations rather than his wife in her bath, or he would be in no fit case for the visit to come.
A boy’s voice reached him as a footman let him into the children’s realm on the third floor. Not his son’s, but an older child’s, with the occasional slip in vowels that identified him as Charlotte’s rescued orphan, Tony.
“See, Master Elias? I told you Uncle Aldridge would rescue her.”
“And my papa.” That was Elias. “But Millie said he took Mama up to her chamber, and then sent down for medicine. She must be hurt, Tony.”
“Now, then, Master Elias.” An adult voice, female. The nurse? “If there is anything you need to know, you will be told. And that Millie will be feeling the rough edge of my tongue before she is very much older, you can be sure of that. Upsetting you with her stories.”
“Can you not ask William to find out if my mother is hurt, Nanny?” Elias begged.
Nate entered the room and drew the eyes of the three occupants as he said, “A few bruises, Elias, and she is very tired after her adventure, but nothing more.”
Elias leapt to his feet, pushing his chair over in his hurry to hurl himself at Nate. “Papa! Did you rescue her, Papa? Tony says his uncle did, but I told him his uncle has not been in the navy, as you have, Papa.”
