She placed her candle on an inlaid table near one of the bookcases. It cast a small halo of light, barely enough for her to see the titles engraved on the spines of the books. She peered up from shelf to shelf, skimming scholarly and political tomes, volumes on classical Greece, and the odd book on agriculture. She was beginning to think she would have to content herself with the story of Hector and Achilles or some such thing when, on the top shelf, far out of reach, she spied a beautifully bound copy of one of Mr. Dickens’ novels.
It was David Copperfield. Sylvia remembered having read the novel years ago when it was first released in serial form. It had been excessively diverting. She cast about the room for a library ladder and found one leaning alongside the shelves several rows over. Having retrieved it, she set it carefully against the shelves in front of her, tested the first rung with one slippered foot, and began to climb.
The rickety ladder creaked beneath her, but she paid it no mind. She did not weigh very much and she would only be standing on the rungs for the briefest moment. She continued up, bracing one hand on a bookshelf as she went.
The ceilings at Pershing Hall were ungodly high. She had not realized just how high until she had begun to climb. She reached out with her free hand, stretching her arm full length toward the desired book. It was still not quite within her grasp. More determined than ever, she climbed up the final step to the very top of the ladder. She reached out again toward the book, straining to touch the edge of its spine with her fingertips.
The ladder wobbled precariously.
Sylvia gasped in alarm. She nimbly set one foot on a lower bookshelf to steady herself. It was not one second too soon. The library ladder gave way beneath her, clattering to the floor.
She was left clinging to the bookshelves like a monkey.
Her heart raced, her palms suddenly sweaty as they gripped the shelf. She took a deep breath to calm herself. Whatever else her failings, she was not impractical. She could see immediately that there was nothing for it. She would have to climb down, feeling her way from shelf to shelf.
She chanced a glance downward. The library floor seemed a very long way away. She was not unduly afraid of heights, but she had a great respect for the frailty of the human body. Only four years ago she had sprained her ankle jumping down from a stile. It had taken weeks to heal. If she were to hurt herself here, at Pershing Hall, there would be no more chance of leaving early.
She peered down again, spying the shelf immediately below the one that she was standing on. It was not so far. She would simply proceed slowly and carefully….
A sudden draft caused her candle to flicker.
“Don’t you dare go out,” she warned it. It was going to be difficult enough as it was to climb down these dratted shelves. To do so in the pitch dark would be almost impossible.
Just then a light shone into the room. She turned her head, hoping against hope that it was a footman or one of the housemaids. “Is someone there?” she called out.
“Miss Stafford?” Sebastian’s deep voice echoed from the library door.
At the sound of it, Sylvia closed her eyes in horror. “Oh God,” she groaned. “It needed only that.”
Sebastian was accustomed to making swift decisions in times of crisis, but at the sight of Sylvia Stafford perched precariously on the library bookshelves, he experienced a split second of absolute dismay. She was wearing nothing but a thin dressing gown over an equally thin nightgown, the hems of which were both lifted to expose her shapely bare ankles and dainty, slippered feet. As if that were not enough to knock his world off its axis, her dark, chestnut hair was unbound. It fell all about her in magnificent disarray, reaching almost to her waist. Her incredibly slender, uncorseted waist. Good God, he could probably span it with two hands.
And it looked like he just might have to.
“Don’t move,” he commanded, striding toward her.
Miss Stafford glanced down at him. She was blushing mightily. “I was attempting to reach a book on the top shelf when the ladder collapsed.”
“Never mind it,” he said gruffly. He set the branch of candles he was carrying on a nearby table and, without breaking stride, swept up a heavy wooden chair in his hand. He placed it firmly on the carpeted floor below her. It easily bore his weight as he sprang onto the seat and reached up to catch her round the waist. He felt her inhale a tremulous breath as his fingers pressed into her flesh. She was very high up. Tall as he was, he could scarcely get a secure grip on her. “If you will put a hand on my shoulder, I will swing you down.”
She slowly released her grip on the bookshelf, stretching one hand down toward his shoulder. “I cannot reach you.”
“It’s all right, just…let me—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Miss Stafford’s foot slipped on the lower shelf. She fell with a startled cry. He caught her directly. She was in no real danger. Even so, she flung her arms around his neck, clinging to him for dear life.
“I have you,” he said. He stepped down from the chair and slowly lowered her to the ground, painfully aware of every inch of her body sliding down the front of his until her feet touched safely on the library floor.
He might have released her then, but her limbs were a trifle unsteady. At least, that is what he told himself. It may or may not have been the case. In any event, he did not have the will to let her go.
And, for whatever reason, she did not let him go either.
Instead, she looked up at him, a little dazed. “How mortifying,” she whispered.
It had been years since Sebastian had laughed. There had, in truth, been very little to laugh about. But at Miss Stafford’s words, he felt his lips quiver with reluctant amusement. “Indeed,” he said.
Her own mouth quivered in return. For a moment she valiantly attempted to suppress her mirth. And then, overcome, she bent her head against his chest and gave way to an outpouring of laughter.
It was a low, merry sound that warmed him all the way to his soul. Unthinking, he removed his hands from her waist and put his arms around her, drawing her into an embrace. He rested his face lightly against her hair. It felt like heaven against his cheek, as silky and thick as the lock he always carried with him.
“What a spectacle I’m making of myself,” she gasped between laughs. “I fear I am hysterical.”
Sebastian’s heart was thundering, his blood pulsing hot in his veins. His body, at least, had not forgotten how to respond to her nearness. His mind, on the other hand, was all chaos and confusion. He had questions. Concerns. Not the least of which was that he was presently taking advantage of an unmarried female guest under his own roof.
“Nonsense,” he said. “It was a humorous predicament.”
She drew back from him, sliding her arms from around his neck to rest her hands lightly on his chest. “You’re not laughing.”
“I’m laughing on the inside,” he said. At that, she gave him a dimpled smile. But he did not smile in return. He could not. His heart ached too much. And he was suddenly, horribly conscious of how monstrous he must look to her now that their faces were only inches apart.
Miss Stafford’s own smile faded slowly. She moved to extricate herself from his grasp and he immediately let her go. She stepped away from him, directing her attention to straightening her rumpled dressing gown. “I should not have ventured from my room.”
“Why not? You are a guest here, not a prisoner.”
“I’ll wager none of your other guests ever found themselves in the ridiculous predicament I was just in.”
“No,” Sebastian admitted. “Not that I am aware.” He watched as she re-tied the fabric belt of her dressing gown, her slim hands knotting it snugly at her waist.
“I did not think so,” Miss Stafford said. She smoothed her hand once more over the skirts of her dressing gown before wandering toward the old Vaugondy library globe that stood
in a recess between two of the bookcases. “I suppose that this incident will tally nicely with that foolish letter I wrote you.”
He went still, taken off guard by her words.
“Indeed,” she said as she touched her finger to the globe and gave it a slow, deliberate half-spin in its stout wooden frame. “I seem to have a rare talent for making an idiot of myself where you are concerned.”
Sebastian clenched one hand at his side. Is that what she believed? That he held her in contempt? That he thought her a fool?
More than ever he wished that he knew what was in that blasted first letter. In the picture gallery, he had been sorely tempted to tell her that he had never received it. That he had never received any of her letters. But something had stopped him. It was not disbelief. He was almost certain now that she had written to him. However, if she had known—if she had even suspected—that he had never received a single solitary letter, would she have confessed to him as much as she already had about the contents of those long lost missives?
He doubted it.
And then he would never have known. The knowledge was painful, true. Indeed, reflecting on the year of heartsick torment he had spent in India, wondering why she had never written, wondering what he had said or done to lose her affections—or worse, whether he had ever had her affections in the first place—was what had kept him up most of the night. If only he had realized then that somewhere out there were letters written to him by Sylvia Stafford! Perfumed letters sealed with a thousand kisses! But where? What in blazes had happened to them?
He raked a hand through his already disheveled black hair. “So much for putting the unfortunate past behind us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I should not have mentioned it, but I.…” Her voice quavered. “I cannot forget.”
“Nor can I,” he said.
She looked up from the globe and met his eyes. “Then I suppose there is nothing left to be said, is there?”
Sebastian’s expression hardened with resolve. There was something more to be said, by God, and he knew that he must be the one to say it. He took a decisive step toward her and stopped. His heart was thudding heavily in his chest. He had the sense that he was standing on the edge of a great precipice. What was at the bottom, he could not see. It would be a leap of faith. There was no choice but to take it. “Miss Stafford,” he said, “I never received any of your letters.”
Sylvia’s hand fell from the globe. She turned sharply to look at him. “I beg your pardon?”
Sebastian’s face was grim. “The letters you wrote to me. I never received a single one. Indeed, until this morning, when you mentioned your letters in the picture gallery, I believed that you had not written at all. It is why I was…uncivil…to you when you first arrived at Pershing.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “That cannot be true,” she said. “You knew about my letters. We discussed them.”
“You discussed them. I merely encouraged you. Selfish of me, I know. I should have told you the truth the moment I understood it for myself, but I—” He broke off with a low sound of frustration. “I wanted to know what you had written. I did not think you would admit to anything if you realized your letters had never come.”
She frantically thought back to the conversation they had had as they sat together in the window embrasure. What in heaven had she told him?
“None of them came?” she asked faintly. “Not a single one?”
“None,” he said. “And all of my own letters were returned unopened.”
“Your letters?” Sylvia’s knees weakened.
Sebastian was instantly at her side. His strong arm encircled her waist, enfolding her in the scent of spiced bergamot, starched linen, and clean male skin. “Come,” he said. “We had better sit.”
She allowed him to steer her to the large, velvet-cushioned settee near the fireplace. He kept his hand at her back as she sat down, watching with uncommon alertness as she drew the folds of her dressing gown more firmly around her. It was unconsciously done. Modesty was the last thing on her mind. When Sebastian sank down beside her, she hardly registered the impropriety of how close they were to each other. “What do you mean, your letters?” she asked.
“The letters I wrote to you from India,” he said. “They were returned to me unopened. Every last one of them.”
Her heart twisted. “You wrote to me,” she whispered.
“Frequently.” His somber expression briefly reflected a glimmer of the anguish in her own. “And you wrote to me, apparently.”
“Often.”
“And sealed your letters with a thousand kisses.”
Oh God! She looked away from him. “D-did I tell you that?” Her eyes closed briefly against a flood of embarrassment. “I’m sorry. My head is spinning.”
“It is a lot to take in.”
“Yes. I still cannot…” She tried to put her feelings into words, but it was all a jumble. “When you never answered, I thought…I thought…”
“I know what you thought,” he said. “It was what I thought as well. I expect it is what he wanted us to think.”
“That we hated each other.”
“Worse. That we had forgotten each other.”
She pressed a hand to her face, struggling desperately to make sense of it all. “Wait…” Her disordered thoughts caught on one phrase and held. “Who are you talking about? Who is he?”
“Your father, obviously.”
Sylvia’s breath stopped. “No,” she said. It was not true. It couldn’t be. If Sebastian had known her father better, he would never have suggested such a thing. “Papa would not have interfered.”
“You think not?”
“He had no reason,” she said. “It was he who gave me permission to write to you.”
For the barest instant, Sebastian could not hide his astonishment. And then his expression shuttered. “Did he, indeed,” he said. There was an underlying current of anger in his voice.
“Yes.” Her words tumbled out more quickly as she rose to Papa’s defense. “He saw how distressed I was when you returned to India. He told me not to worry. That you would return in no time at all. He even gave me his morning papers each day at breakfast so that I could search for news of you to put my mind at ease.”
Sebastian stilled. “You looked for news of me in the papers?”
A self-conscious blush rose in her cheeks. “Of course, I did. I checked for your name every day. I was terrified that you would be hurt or killed. And then, when I heard nothing from you, I thought you must have been. It did not even occur to me until much later that you simply had no wish to write to me.” She exhaled slowly. “Or so I believed.”
He looked at her for a long time, a bewildering series of emotions crossing his face. “I still cannot believe that your father permitted you to write to me.”
“Why not? He knew that we were friends. And he was not unsympathetic to a soldier’s need for letters from home.” She paused, adding, “Surely you must realize by now that Papa was not a high stickler.”
“In my experience,” Sebastian said dryly, “even the most ramshackle fellow can transform into a high stickler when it comes to his own daughter.”
Sylvia’s brows knit in an apprehensive frown. She looked down at her lap, trying to think of a way to explain to Sebastian that Papa could have had nothing to do with any of it. It must have been an error with the post, she thought, or something to do with the unreliability of mail delivery in India. But the more she puzzled over it, the less certain she became.
Her father made a rather obvious villain. He was in debt. Serious enough debt that he would take his own life a year later. He had a strong motive for her to marry well. Specifically, to marry one of her wealthier admirers—Lord Goddard, perhaps. If he had thought she was in danger of marrying a comparatively poor soldier, he could easily have taken
steps to prevent her from forming what he believed to be an undesirable attachment.
But if he had objected to her burgeoning romance with Sebastian, why on earth had Papa given her permission to correspond with him? Unless…
Unless he had known that to forbid her outright was the surest way to guarantee that she would take the bit between her teeth and do exactly as she pleased.
No. It would have been a much better strategy to make her believe that her gentleman of choice had cruelly abandoned her. That he had, perhaps, merely been amusing himself at her expense during the London season.
She shook her head, refusing to believe it. Papa had been selfish. Reckless. But a deception such as this passed all bounds. “He wouldn’t have done such a thing,” she insisted, as much to herself as to Sebastian. “Not to me.”
Sebastian looked wholly unconvinced. “Did he ever give you any indication that he objected to my suit?”
Sylvia lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. “He did question me, naturally, but he was not unreasonable and, in the end, he said that he trusted me and I may do as I liked.”
“How very obliging of him,” he said. “Did it never occur to you that he might have read your letters?”
“No. Why should it? He had no opportunity to do so.”
Sebastian’s gaze narrowed. “Not even when he posted them?”
Sylvia had the oddest sensation that his question was not what it seemed. She answered it anyway, telling him the truth—for better or for worse. “My father did not post my letters,” she said. “I did.”
The Lost Letter Page 9
