Page 45 of To Claim the Long-Lost Lover
“After sunset. Perhaps between four thirty and five.” On a deck at sea, clear of the smoke of London, he could be more precise. “Go back to sleep, my love.”
But she pushed up to sitting. “I want to see Elias before I dress for dinner.” She swung her feet over the side of the bed and, in the gloom, he could see her shadow between him and the embers of the fire. She turned around with a taper, which she lit to the two candles that stood in holders on the mantlepiece.
Nate sat up in the bed, the better to enjoy the sight of her walking naked across the room to collect her robe from the back of a chair.
She hesitated when she saw him watching. “Am I disturbing you, Nate?”
“Only in the best of all possible ways.” No one served for long in the navy without becoming used to stripping off in front of other people. He pushed back the blankets and got out of bed, and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen. With interest?
He hoped so, but she was right. They should see their son and then prepare for dinner, and if they were joining the family for dinner, he needed to go back to his rooms to change into suitable clothing. He said so.
“If you wish. But the clothes you wore to dinner last night have been cleaned and are hanging up in my dressing room. I’ll just call for hot water, shall I?”
To save Wilson’s sensibilities, Nate found and pulled on his pantaloons and his shirt from earlier in the day. “Yes, good. I will need to go back tomorrow, though. I can’t expect your servants to keep one set of day wear and one of evening wear recycling day after day. I’ll get Jackson to pack a bag for me.”
Sarah had opened the door into the passage and given her message to the footman stationed there. She came back into the room looking pensive. “Do you think… It is over to you, Nate, but would it make sense for your manservant to pack all your things and bring them here? You could move in until we are ready to leave London.
“I know we have not discussed where we will live, and perhaps you would rather I came to stay with you, but I don’t like to leave Elias, and I am assuming you do not wish to move in with your father. Though if you do, I would not object. Or if you think we should continue in our separate residences until our connection is public—”
He stopped her by placing a finger on her lips. “Moving in is an excellent idea, my love, if you have no objection, and if your uncle does not mind. I shall send a message to Jackson now, and tell him to give my notice to my landlady and present himself to me here tomorrow morning.”
Sarah rewarded him with her glorious smile. “I shall tell Wilson to make space in my dressing room.”
“Good, because Libby has insisted I need more clothes than I have ever had in my life. I have at least two dozen shirts, Sarah, would you believe? I have not had above a half dozen at a time since I was an infant in skirts!”
She kissed him at that, and then broke away to call Wilson into the room with hot water for their wash.
20
Sarah’s cousin Ruth and her husband Val joined them for dinner, as did Arthur Beauclair and Uncle James’s right-hand man, the guard commander Yousef. They kept the conversation light in front of the servants, but when they gathered in the drawing room afterwards, Sarah understood why Ruth and Val had been invited.
The warning about the abduction had come from Val’s sister-in-law, sister to the felon known as the Beast, and herself wanted by the law for her part in an attack last year on Ruth and on Val’s daughter. She had handed herself into the custody of Lord Aldridge, and was in the process of betraying her brother in return for a reward.
Val and Drew had joined Uncle James and Wakefield at Aldridge’s house while Nate and Sarah caught up with their sleep.
“Elspeth wants immunity from prosecution and sufficient funds to travel to the Americas and set herself up there in some style,” Val explained. “In return, she is willing to give us all the information she has about Stanley Wharton, including the plans he has set in motion.”
Drew grimaced. “She says he has run mad. He is so obsessed with revenge on us and on Lord Aldridge that he cannot be reasoned with. He is throwing money at stupid plot after stupid plot, bribing and rewarding anyone who is prepared to attack us and any charity or business in the poorer parts of town that are associated with us. His sister says he is certain to bring himself down, and anyone allied with him.”
“I do not like negotiating with vicious harridans who have injured me and my family,” Uncle James commented, “but Wakefield points out that her information will help us mobilise the magistrates. At the moment, they are resisting the idea of invading the slums. Several of them are convinced that the multiple attacks are mere coincidence, and one informed me that ladies of consequence had no business in the kinds of charitable work that involved actually working with the poor.”
“I think we should take Elspeth’s offer,” Ruth told them. “We want to get rid of her, do we not?”
“The female should not be rewarded for her evil,” Yousef proclaimed.
Ruth shrugged. “Wherever she goes, she will make her own unhappiness, Yousef.” She raised a hand and began counting off fingers. “I do not wish to see my husband’s family name dragged through the gutters by the newssheets. Last year, when she escaped after her arrest, we managed to keep the story of her perfidy out of the printers’ windows. If she goes to trial, she and our family will be pilloried in every ribald song and every caricature in every major city in the kingdom.”
She put up the next finger. “Nor do I wish the gossipmongers of Society to grasp some of the salient details of her latest descent into the dregs of slums. What will it do to our daughters’ reputations if people discover their aunt has been operating a brothel?”
She straightened a third. “Her information saved Sarah today. That is worth a great deal, whatever her motivations.”
The fourth finger rose. “The information she promises us will cost as much or more to gain from other sources, and other people might be injured or even die as a result of the delay.”
She straightened her thumb. “She, and Wharton, are simply not worth troubling ourselves over any more than it takes to stop them. I would like for us to be able to retire to the country for Christmas without concerns about returning to London to further such attacks.”
Val was nodding, and so was Charlotte.
Drew complained, “She is a liar. How can we trust what she tells us?”
