But that had not been the case.
She had been writing to him. She had even been checking the papers, worried that he had been hurt or killed. And all the while, she had believed that he had been the one who was faithless. That he had ignored her letters. Or worse, been so offended by them that he had turned away from her in disgust.
Though what she might have written to offend him, he had no idea. There was nothing she could have said or done to drive him away. He had been half-mad for her. Yet, when they spoke in the picture gallery, Sylvia had seemed to be convinced that their relationship had ended because of something she said in her first letter. What in blazes could it have been? And why in hell would she think it would have been enough to put him off? Unless…
Unless she had written of some indiscretion with another man.
A sickening jolt of unease shot through him. Good God. Is that what it had been? Some confession about Goddard or another admirer? Had one of them stolen a kiss? Or more?
The thought was devastating.
And yet it made a great deal of sense.
She had told him that she had been very green and very stupid. She had apologized for her over exuberance. And she had said that she was deathly ashamed even to think of what she had written to him then.
Sebastian clenched his fist until his hand ached. It did not make a difference now, he told himself. She did not want him. Not even if it meant she might become a countess. She would prefer to remain a servant rather than spend one more moment in his company.
It was because of his scars, he had no doubt. Because she could not get over the horror of what had happened to his face. Because she found him ugly. Repulsive.
“How dear you were to me,” she had whispered as she touched his cheek.
The single sentence had been playing over and over in his head for the past two days. He had been deeply affected when she murmured it to him in the library, spurred on to take her in his arms and passionately kiss her. It was only now, in the painful aftermath of her flight back to London, that he understood the true significance of her words.
“How dear you were to me.”
She had spoken in the past tense. A fact he would have registered instantly if he had not been so undone by the sweetness of her caresses and the heady perfume of her warm, violet scented skin.
The past tense, Sebastian thought bitterly, because her feelings for him were in the past.
Nevertheless, if Milsom found some sort of proof about Sir Roderick’s role in subverting her letters, Sylvia would have to be informed. She needed to know the truth about what had happened every bit as much as Sebastian needed to know himself.
He would not see her again, of course. He would not force his attentions where they were not wanted. And a journey to London was out of the question. Just imagining the reaction those in society would have to the sight of his face was enough to sap his courage.
No. He would not go to London. When he learned what Milsom had discovered, he would relay it to Sylvia in a letter. One final letter explaining all he knew of what had happened three years ago.
It would be a suitable ending to this whole painful affair.
Sebastian woke in the morning to the sound of Milsom moving about the room. He was making an ungodly racket. Clanging the water can against the washbasin, clattering the shaving implements, and unnecessarily flapping Sebastian’s shirts about.
“Quiet, damn you!” Sebastian growled at him. “And shut those blasted curtains! Are you trying to blind me in both eyes?”
Unperturbed, Milsom brought him a tray on which sat a single glass filled with a brownish liquid. Sebastian recognized it at once as one of his valet’s noxious tonics, guaranteed to alleviate the aftereffects of a night of heavy drinking. With a scorching oath, he drank it down and thrust the empty glass back into Milsom’s hand.
An hour later, Sebastian was up, washed, dressed, and for the first time in three days, clean-shaven. Milsom had accomplished the whole with an infuriatingly smug expression. “Out with it,” Sebastian ordered as he knotted his cravat.
“My lord?”
“You’ve been three days in London, Milsom. Unless you’ve expended the whole of it jug bitten in a tavern or unconscious in a brothel, I expect you have spent your time attempting to question Harriet Button.”
“Quite so, but I was not entirely sure you would wish to know, my lord. Lady Harker has informed me that Miss Stafford left three days ago. And that you have since been confined to your apartments” —he cleared his throat— “drinking the cellar dry, I believe my lady said.”
“I intend to write Miss Stafford,” Sebastian replied coldly. He met Milsom’s eyes in the mirror of his dressing table. “And when I do, I should like to have the full story. If you know it, Milsom, pray spit it out before I must assist you in doing so.”
Milsom was impervious to threats. “As you say, my lord.” He busied himself clearing away the shaving implements. “I did speak with Miss Button. It was not an easy interview to arrange.”
“Hence the three days.”
“Precisely so, my lord. Miss Button is almost always in company with Lady Ponsonby. I observed them for the first two days, awaiting an opportunity to approach, but it was not until yesterday that Miss Button set out on her own. She went to a chemist in Bond Street. I ventured to speak to her—a course of action which was not, initially, well received.”
“I trust that the purse I gave you was of some help.”
“It was an immense help, my lord.”
“Well?” Sebastian prompted. “What did the confounded woman say?”
“Miss Button told me that Miss Stafford did, indeed, write to you. Twice a week for over half a year, she said. Once a week to follow. There were, according to Miss Button, nearly one hundred letters in total.”
Sebastian’s hands stilled on his cravat. He inhaled deeply. “Go on.”
“Miss Button was under strict instructions from Sir Roderick Stafford to burn any letters that Miss Stafford wrote to you.”
Sebastian had expected something in that vein. The letters would have had to have been destroyed, either by the maid or by Sir Roderick himself. Even so, he was shaken by the enormity of the offense. All those precious letters. Perfumed. Sealed with a thousand kisses. Letters he had waited for so desperately. “And so she burned them,” he said quietly. “Nearly one hundred bloody letters.”
“Miss Button was very loyal to Sir Roderick,” Milsom replied. “To a point.”
Sebastian heard a glimmer of self-satisfaction in his former batman’s voice. He looked up sharply, meeting Milsom’s eyes again in the mirror. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
“Miss Button is getting on in years, my lord,” Milsom said. “She is consumed with worries over her impending retirement. A lady’s maid does not make enough to put by, you understand. Miss Button has often been forced to secure the funds for her retirement cottage in Hampshire through other methods.”
“Other methods?”
“Blackmail, my lord. It seems that Miss Button has long been in the habit of collecting various love letters and other incriminating notes from her employers and putting them away until they might be of use to her.”
Sebastian turned slowly in his seat to face his valet, an arrested expression in his dark eye. “She would not have kept Miss Stafford’s letters,” he said. “Sir Roderick is dead and Miss Stafford hasn’t the means to silence a blackmailer. There was nothing to be gained. This Button creature would know that.”
“Exactly so, my lord,” Milsom agreed. “Which is why she was willing to give this to me for a mere fifty pounds.” At that, he reached into the inner pocket of his coat and extracted a small, faded rectangle of paper.
Sebastian’s mouth went dry. “Is that…?”
“This, my lord, is the only letter of Miss Stafford’s that Mi
ss Button had kept. It is, I understand, the first letter that Miss Stafford wrote to you and the one that Miss Button deemed the most valuable. That she had not destroyed it in the last two years is the merest chance.”
“The first letter?” Sebastian asked hoarsely. He reached out and took it with a hand that was suddenly damnably unsteady.
“The first letter, my lord. According to Miss Button.”
Sebastian stared down at the gently swirling script that made up the direction. Sylvia Stafford’s handwriting. “Did you read it?”
“No, my lord.”
Sebastian raised the letter to his nose and inhaled. He could smell it, very faintly. Violets. He tightened his fingers around it. “You have outdone yourself, Milsom.”
“Thank you, sir. Will you be needing anything else this morning?”
“No. That will be all.”
Still beaming at his triumph, Milsom bowed and swiftly left the room.
Sebastian looked at the letter for a long time, his heart pounding in his chest and his pulse racing. It had been closed with a blob of melted red sealing wax that had long since been broken—no doubt by the blackmail-minded lady’s maid. He was almost afraid to open it, but he was no coward. And whatever Sylvia Stafford had written him three years ago could have no real effect on the present, could it? They were only words now. Harmless, meaningless words.
He unfolded the letter and began to read.
My Dearest Sebastian,
I hope this letter finds you safe and well and pray that the overland journey to India was not too difficult for you and your men. Did your new horse settle? Or has he proved as temperamental as you feared? Captain Fellowes told me the sad tale of how your last horse perished in battle. I was grieved to hear it and know you must have been doubly grieved to lose such a fine partner. I wish with all my heart that your new horse will be as valiant and steadfast as the last.
As you see, I have asked after you, even humbling myself before the captain, who I know thinks me no better than a silly chit who has lost her head over a dashing cavalry colonel. I have tried to remain mysterious, but it is becoming very difficult. Lord Goddard is pressing his suit and I wish I might tell him why I must reject him.
My darling, I have been thinking of you often since last we met. There is so much more I wish I had told you that night in the garden. At the moment it seemed as if I had already said too much. You mustn’t declare yourself! Penelope warned me. He will run far and fast to escape you! Foolishly, I listened to her. I believed that I did not dare tell you all that was in my heart. Now you are gone and despite all my prayers for your safety, I realize that there is every chance I may never see you again. What if something should happen to you without your ever knowing the full extent of my affections?
I love you. There, I have said it. I do not mind to be the first to do so. I love you. There is no one else in my heart. There has never been anyone else. And I hope when you return we might be married. It needn’t take a week of your leave. We do not even have to call the banns. We can be married by special license and then I will return with you to India where I will happily follow the drum. I do not know why you did not ask me in the garden. I thought you would. Every moment I thought it and when you did not, I feared I had done something wrong. Was I shameless? Should I not have kissed you? You must write and tell me, Sebastian. I know you will say exactly the right thing to put my mind at ease.
I can think of nothing but seeing you again. What shall I do with myself now you are gone? There is no happiness to be had anywhere. How can I delight in wearing pretty gowns if you will not see them? How can I take pleasure in dancing when you are not my partner? What joy is there in singing when you are not there to listen?
My love, you must endeavor to stay out of danger. Do not attempt anything heroic. I would far rather you come home in one piece than earn some silly medal or promotion. Not that I would not be terribly proud of you on either account, but I cannot bear to contemplate losing you. I have come to think of you as the only solid, reliable thing in my world.
Papa says I must continue to attend the parties here in town and let the Viscount Goddard drive me in the park on occasion. He says I must, on no account, look as if I am pining. But I am pining, Sebastian. Desperately.
I close this letter with a thousand sweet kisses. When I write again, I shall send you one thousand more. I have an endless supply of them for you, my love. Pray keep safe and come back to me.
I remain your own,
Sylvia Stafford
Sebastian did not know how long he sat there, reading and re-reading Sylvia Stafford’s letter. At some point, he must have retrieved her lock of hair from his pocket, for when he began to return to his senses, it was clutched in his hand, his thumb stroking it in the old, familiar way.
I love you, she had written. And I hope when you return we might be married.
This then was what she believed had driven him away. A letter wherein she had exposed the innermost secrets of her heart. A letter full of endearments and affection. My love, she had called him. And my darling. A letter sealed with a thousand sweet kisses only for him.
He had been a humorless, stern-faced cavalry officer. A second son of little fortune and even less finer feeling. Yet she had loved him. And she believed he had read this letter and been unmoved. No, not unmoved. Repelled! That cursed Penelope Mainwaring had warned her of the very thing. You mustn’t declare yourself! He will run far and fast to escape you!
Sebastian swore low and foul. And then he summoned Milsom.
“Fetch my sister,” he said brusquely. “And then you may start packing.”
Milsom lifted his brows. “Will we be departing for London immediately, my lord?” he asked. “Or do you require additional time to write to Miss Stafford?”
Sebastian cast his valet an ominous glance. “You are impertinent, Milsom,” he said as he carefully placed Sylvia’s letter and lock of hair into his pocket. “But the answer is yes, damn you. We will leave for London as soon as Lady Harker can make herself ready. The time for letter writing is over.”
London, England
Spring, 1860
“And then what did you do, Miss Stafford?” Cora Dinwiddy asked in an awe-filled whisper.
Sylvia looked across the schoolroom at her two flaxen-haired charges. The girls had been relieved to have her back so soon. Their mother was a kind lady, but easily overwhelmed by the high spirits of her two exuberant offspring. By the end of the first day, she had retired to bed, leaving the girls in the care of the already harried housekeeper.
“Not a moment too soon, Miss Stafford!” Mrs. Poole had exclaimed upon Sylvia’s arrival at the door three days earlier. “‘A month!’ I says to the mistress. ‘You let the governess go a month without a by your leave? And what’s to become of the house while I’m chasing after those two little devils?’ But you know the mistress. She spends a half hour trying to herd those children together for a bit of sewing and then off she goes to her rooms with a megrim! And who do you think is left to tend things? It’s myself, isn’t it. But they don’t want sewing. Oh no. They must have stories. And I’m to read them just as Miss Stafford does. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
Sylvia had found the girls in the schoolroom playing with their dolls amidst a great deal of disorder. The old piano was open, the music books scattered about. Crumpled drawing paper littered the floor. And someone—Cora, she suspected—had spilled their watercolors on the threadbare Kidderminster carpet, leaving an immense, bright purple stain that would have put the latest in aniline dyes to shame.
After a few stern words about their reported behavior and a polite request that they tidy the schoolroom in preparation for their morning lessons, Sylvia had left them and gone upstairs to her own small room to wash and change her clothes.
Had the house not been in utter chaos, someone might have asked why she had retu
rned to London so soon or why she had arrived at the door in a hired hansom cab of all things. But no one had broached the subject until later that week. And the questions, when they came, were not from Mrs. Dinwiddy—though she had expressed regret that Sylvia’s short holiday had not been a success—but from Clara and Cora themselves.
“Yes, Miss Stafford,” Clara encouraged. “What did you do then?”
Sylvia used a piece of chalk to write a single word on the slate she held in her lap.
Earl.
She lifted it up for their perusal. “What do you suppose I did?” she countered. “Clara? Cora? How does one greet a gentleman of this rank?”
Cora frowned, staring at the word in consternation.
Clara, the elder, immediately brightened. “You curtsied!”
Sylvia affected to give this some consideration. “I certainly may have done if we had been in a ballroom and were about to dance,” she replied, “but we were in a parlor just like the one you have downstairs. Would you curtsy to an earl there, do you think?”
“I would shake his hand,” Cora said boldly. “I would say, ‘How do you do!’”
Sylvia smiled. “That would be quite acceptable, dear, if he were an acquaintance of equal or lesser rank. An earl, however, is a person of superior position. It is his privilege to extend his hand to us.”
Clara made a face. “I do not want to shake his hand.”
“Indeed,” Sylvia said. “He is not likely to offer it. Instead, he will bow to you and in return, you may incline your head, thusly, in a polite bow of your own. This will suffice for any person of superior rank, unless,” she added with a solemn tone, “you should one day meet the queen.”
Clara and Cora immediately went into rhapsodies. Sylvia, as always, endeavored to channel their high spirits into practical education. She lay down her slate and rose from her chair.
The Lost Letter Page 13
