Sylvia shuddered, nauseated at the recurring image of Sir Matthew coming straight from his mourning cousin’s estate in Cornwall to court naive, impressionable, wealthy Lady Sylvia Sutherland in Sussex. Straight from the arms of the countess so shortly after her death. Straight from adultery into betrayal.
Had the earl read Matthew’s letter? she wondered. Sylvia regretted not demanding that he return it to her when the two gentlemen had delivered her to Whitecliffs yesterday. In her dazed state, she remembered him grim-faced but oddly gentle as he carried her into the Italian Saloon and laid her on the green brocade settee.
The memory of his arms around her stirred impossible yearnings, which Sylvia ruthlessly suppressed. Or at least she tried to suppress them, but the memory was too sweet, too enticing to relinquish entirely, and she slipped into a pleasant daydream. A deep voice from close behind her broke into her reverie.
“Lady Marguerite told me I would find you here,” Sylvia heard the earl say. She jumped to her feet in confusion. How mortifying that he should catch her thinking of him. Sylvia felt herself blush, and quickly snatched up her floppy gray hat that she had abandoned beside her on the bench.
“Oh, my lord!” she blurted out. “What a surprise! I did not expect you until this afternoon. The portrait is so close to being completed that I—”
“1 did not come about the portrait, Sylvia,” he interrupted gently. “At least, not primarily. Ransome and I have been called to Falmouth rather urgently to inspect a frigate I hope to purchase, so I came to ask you to postpone our sittings for a week. It should not take more than a week to come to a decision.”
Sylvia regarded the earl warily. He might easily have sent a note about the sittings. His presence disturbed her.
“What did you come for, then, my lord?”
“My cousin’s letter.”
Sylvia felt her heart jump into her throat. He had read it, then, she thought, searching about in her mind for something appropriate to say. She found nothing adequate enough to soothe the pain of betrayal, so she said nothing.
“I have read it,” he said bluntly, confirming her fears. “Since the clandestine message concerned both my cousin and my wife, I felt I had the right, perhaps the duty, to do so. It was dated in late September, a week before my wife’s death. A full month before my cousin went into Sussex and met you.”
He paused, and Sylvia said nothing. Indeed, she could not have done so had she tried, her throat was so constricted.
“I am deeply sorry to distress you, my dear,” she heard him murmur, and then somehow he was holding both her hands in his, pressed against the rough material of his hunting jacket. Even as she watched, the earl raised her fingers and kissed them lightly, lingeringly.
Sylvia felt as though she floated in the dream world of her girlhood, but the warmth of his hands was real, as was the compassion in the dark eyes fixed intently on her face.
“It is far worse that either of us expected.”
Sylvia wondered what could possibly be worse than discovering your wife of three months had taken a lover. What could be worse than learning that the man you loved—and who swore loved you—had come to you still warm from the bed of another woman?
“What could be worse?” she heard herself say in a strangled voice.
She was so close to him that she caught the brief quirk of pain that twisted his lips. Evidently her own anguish was mirrored on her face, for without warning the earl bent his head and rested his bps on hers in the tenderest of kisses Sylvia had imagined possible.
“I forbid you to waste another moment of your life repining over that libertine,” he whispered fiercely, inches from her tingling mouth. “He is not worth a single thought of yours, my dear, a single tear.”
He looked into her eyes then, and Sylvia felt her world tilt crazily. Was she about to embarrass herself yet again by swooning? she wondered, clinging to the steadying warmth of his fingers.
“I brought the letter back to you,” he said. “I should not have kept it, of course, since you were the one to discover it, but I had to know ..
His voice died, and Sylvia knew exactly what he meant. She, too, had been reluctant to read Matthew’s letter, dreading to find out the extent of her betrothed’s villainy. Yet simultaneously needing to know the whole so that she could banish him from her deepest memories forever.
“What did you find out from the letter that you did not know already, my lord?” Sylvia asked, wishing they might stay thus forever, hands clasped, lips inches apart, his warm breath brushing her cheek.
There was a long pause, and just when Sylvia thought the earl would not acknowledge her impertinent question, he answered it.
“I found out what my cousin apparently knew already,” he said tersely, letting her hands fall and stepping back. “My wife was carrying a child when she died.”
Arion was in fine fettle the following morning when the friends rose out of the Castle towards Falmouth, but Nicholas’s mind was not on the glorious sunrise, the birdsong in the hedgerows, or the performance of his favorite mount.
“If you intend to spend the entire journey daydreaming, old man,” Jason complained as they cantered past the iron gates to Whitecliffs, still closed for the night, “you might have let me sleep for another hour or two.”
Nicholas had not failed to note the closed gates and found it oddly disturbing that Lady Sylvia had remained equally closed to him in spite of the kiss they had shared yesterday. He was exaggerating, of course; they had not shared that kiss. He had been the aggressor, and abruptly Nicholas wished he had taken advantage of the lady’s vulnerability and kissed her the way he had longed to for days. But every time he had relived that intimate moment in the folly, no thought of taking more than she offered crossed his mind. In fact, he had not intended to kiss her at all. Neither could he honestly say the lady had offered anything. It had been the anguish in her eyes when she heard the contents of that bloody letter that had made it impossible for Nicholas not to kiss her.
He glanced at his friend and attempted a smile. “Actually, I thought you still were asleep,” he replied. “If there was any scin- dilating conversation from you over the breakfast table, I must have missed it.”
“You were too busy mooning over a certain lady, no doubt,” Jason shot back. “Why, even last night after dinner, while we were speculating on how much the Voyageur might be knocked down to, your mind was not on it. I tell you, Nicky, you had best let me and Ned Barker do the bargaining on this one, or you will be fleeced before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“I was certainly counting on your help in dealing with the Horton brothers, Jason,” the earl said, sensing his friend’s true concern. “Barker tells me they are honest enough but tight as a cork in a rum bottle when it comes to trading. If you can find something unseaworthy about the Voyageur—and if anyone can find it, you can—then we might stand a chance of knocking them down a couple of thousand pounds.”
“From what I heard around Falmouth, the ship is in prime twig,” Jason warned. “But if I find so much as a rivet loose, or a stitch in the sails unraveled, I shall certainly mention it.”
“I hope you do,” Nicholas replied. “And by the way, I was not mooning over Lady Sylvia, if that is what you meant with your snide remark.”
“How did she take the news of Matt’s infamy?”
“Are you referring to his secret affair with my wife,” Nicholas remarked dryly, “or the possibility that he might well have fathered her child?”
“Or the equally unpalatable truth that he might have killed her?” Jason added slowly, after a lengthy pause.
Nicholas shook his head emphatically. He had been wrestling with this very question since reading the contents of his cousin’s letter to Angelica, but the answers that had presented themselves—particularly the one the captain mentioned—had unnerved him.
“I would prefer not to think so, Jason,” he confessed. “Surely there is a limit to his viciousness?”
The ca
ptain’s laugh was full of cynicism. “If you believe that, my dear Nicholas, then you have been living in the Land of Cockaigne, where
the fences are sausage, the houses are cake,
and the fowl fly 'round roasted, all ready to take!
“Believe me, lad, there is no such pleasantness in Matt’s world, although I would wager my last shilling he wishes there were. He has always been insanely jealous of you, Nick. Do you not recall the time Stephen fell off his pony and broke his arm? Had Matt not dared your brother to jump that hedge, Stevie would never have thought of it. And what about Luke’s death that summer? I was certainly here then, and have always wondered why your precious cousin was the first one to find Luke at the bottom of the cliff.” Nicholas stared at his friend in dismay. “You cannot believe that Matt was responsible for his own brother’s death,” he demanded, appalled at hearing some of his own repressed fears stated so bluntly.
“Any why not? 1 can believe any villainy of that slimy little bastard. With Luke out of the way, the title fell to Matt, and you must remember those sanctimonious little remarks of his about the responsibilities he would be expected to assume when your uncle passed on.”
“I trust you do not mean all of this, Jason,” Nicholas said, unwilling to link his cousin’s random sins into a sinister conspiracy as Jason had done. “I cannot believe it of Matt, and even if I did, why would he ... T He paused and shook his head. “No, I will not believe that he had any hand in Angelica’s death. What could she possibly have done to provoke him?”
Jason’s laugh had lost none of its sarcasm. “Are you forgetting, my friend, that with Stephen and Luke out of the way, Matt became the heir apparent to the earldom? Still is unless you do something about it. And remember—as I wager your self-serving cousin did—that regardless of who fathered it, Angelica’s son legally would have been your heir.”
Chapter Nineteen
From the Past
“May I ’ave another bull’s-eye, please?”
Sylvia glanced up from her canvas and smiled warmly at the little girl. She had to admit that Peggy had been one of her best sitters, and had earned another of the hard peppermint sweets Sylvia usually provided as inducement for the village children who sat for her. She had discovered long ago that the modest sums she paid to their parents for permission to include the children in her portraits were not nearly as effective in maintaining a child’s attention as the large, sticky balls of peppermint to which they all seemed permanently addicted.
It had been old Mrs. Maltby who had passed on this gem of information. During her initial forays into the village in search of picturesque subjects, Sylvia had despaired of enticing the painfully shy children to sit still long enough for even preliminary sketches.
“Give ’em sweets, m’dear,” the garrulous old woman had recommended one frustrating afternoon when Sylvia was about to pack up her brushes and return to Whitecliffs with little to show for three hours of work.
Sylvia had taken Mrs. Maltby’s advice, and allowed herself to be guided by the old lady’s superior knowledge of children. The results had been astonishing. Within the week Sylvia had become the most frequent customer of Maltby’s Old-Fashioned Confectioner’s Shoppe. She had also become a favorite with the village children, who discovered in less time than it took to set up her easel that the young lady from Whitecliffs carried a bag of sweets in her satchel.
“We are almost finished for the day, Peg,” she replied to the little girl’s polite reminder that it was high time for another dose of inducement. “Then you may have one. And tomorrow, after the painting is complete, we shall visit Mrs. Maltby together, and you may choose a tuppenny bag of any sweets you like.”
Later that afternoon, eager to show her latest painting to her aunt, Sylvia delivered Puffin into the capable hands of a White- cliffs groom and ran up the steps. After directing a footman to unload the trap and tidying her hair before the hall mirror, she went in search of her aunt and Giovanni.
She found them at the tea-table on the rear terrace amidst tubs of scarlet geraniums, sweet lavender, and tall blue delphiniums. A picture of domestic bliss, Sylvia thought enviously, deciding that such happiness deserved to be preserved on canvas.
“What a delightful picture you do make,” Sylvia greeted them cheerfully. “I trust I am not too late for tea and tarts.” She took a seat at the tea-table and allowed Lady Marguerite to pour her a cup of China tea and pass her the ravaged plate of Cook’s gooseberry tarts. “I see Giovanni has been making inroads into the tarts,” she remarked, glancing affectionately at the Italian sculptor, lounging at his ease in the rattan chair beside his inamorata.
Giovanni grinned at her. “I gather you had a productive afternoon, cara mia, ” he said. “I hope you are going to show us your new masterpiece.”
“A very modest masterpiece, I am afraid,” Sylvia replied with a laugh, “but I am well pleased with it.” She motioned to the footman who had carried her latest painting out of the house to prop it on an empty chair. “There,” she said, indicating the picture, “what do you think?”
Neither her aunt nor Giovanni were accustomed to take a request for their opinion on art lightly, and it was some time later, after every aspect of the work had been examined and weighed and discussed at length, that they pronounced it a thoroughly charming and professional piece.
“You have come a long way from those little flower portraits you did so many of when you first came to Whitecliffs, my love,” her aunt said, her gaze lingering on the small girl throwing handfuls of crumbs to a horde of greedy ducks. “A delightful composition. You have a definite flair with children, Sylvia. One might almost believe those eyes are looking straight at us. What will you call it?”
“I had thought of Peggy's Friends,” she replied, thinking how pleased the little girl would be to have her name on a real picture, “although perhaps Dinner Time might be more appropriate. What do you think, Aunt?”
Sylvia never heard her aunt’s reply, for at the moment Hobson appeared at her side and presented her with a letter on his silver salver.
‘Thank you, Hobson,” Sylvia murmured, picking up the letter. Her first thought was that perhaps Lord Longueville had been delayed in Falmouth and was unable to attend the Huntington ball as promised. But such an event would hardly require a letter to her, would it?
She glanced at her name scrawled in bold letters on the pristine cream vellum, and her heart stood still.
It was not the earl.
“Oh, no!” she gasped, her mind reeling as it refused to believe what her eyes were telling her.
Dizziness threatened to engulf her. Then her aunt’s arm was about her shoulders and the strong odor of sal volatile in her nostrils.
“My darling child, whatever ails you?” Lady Marguerite’s voice came to her from a great distance, and Sylvia felt her cheek pressed against her aunt’s ample bosom. “It is not like you to swoon, Sylvia. What has upset you so, dearest?”
“It appeared to be the letter,” she heard Giovanni say in his deep voice. The sculptor sounded as rattled as her aunt.
Yes, the letter, Sylvia thought, gathering her scattered wits. How could the rogue possibly dare to approach her? How could he dare?
But there could be no mistaking that bold, careless hand. She had seen a similar letter as recently as last week, addressed to another woman. A hand she had recognized instantly as Sir Matthew Farnaby’s.
Before Sylvia had fully comprehended the audacity of that once beloved rogue from so long ago, another more frightening reality forced itself upon her consciousness. The letter was not franked. The sender must be in the neighborhood. Close to her. Too close for Sylvia’s peace of mind.
That evening Sylvia pleaded a megrim and, after picking at her favorite dish of roast duckling and new potatoes, and declining to taste Cook’s special lemon blancmange, left the dinner table and escaped to her studio upstairs.
Not twenty minutes later, she heard a soft tapping at her door, which opened t
o admit Lady Marguerite. When Sylvia turned from the window, where she had been staring out into the deepening twilight of the Park, she saw that her aunt’s hazel eyes were filled with compassion. The time had come, she decided abruptly, to make a clean breast of everything. Aunt Marguerite would not be denied; furthermore, she deserved to know. Her aunt’s first words confirmed Sylvia’s suspicion:
“Giovanni is convinced that letter comes from that scurvy rogue who betrayed you years ago, darling,” her aunt said, crossing the room with a determined step and clasping both Sylvia’s hands in hers. “Gracious! Your hands are ice-cold, Sylvia,” she exclaimed, rubbing them vigorously. “Come and sit over here and tell your old aunt all about it, dear,” she added, indicating the old settee in front of the hearth, the only seat in the room not covered with paintings in various stages of completion.
Sylvia allowed herself to be led to the settee, but as her aunt fussed with cushions and arranged a rug over her knees, she felt tears gather in her eyes. Although Sylvia missed her own mother, she could not forgive Lady Weston for showing no such compassion ten years ago when her youngest daughter had sorely needed a mother’s support. Lady Marguerite, on the other hand, was everything a mother should be, her niece had discovered soon after her arrival at Whitecliffs. She was warm, compassionate, generous, and endlessly patient with her heartbroken niece. No wonder Giovanni doted on her, Sylvia thought.
“I have asked Hobson to send up a tea-tray and some sandwiches,” she said as soon as they were settled. “You barely ate a mouthful at dinner, love. And remember, no gentleman is worth starving yourself for.”
“Not even Giovanni?” Sylvia asked in a choked voice.
“No, not even my precious Vannie,” her aunt responded emphatically. “A prince among men, of course, and king of my heart now and forever, but definitely not worth red eyes and a runny nose, my dear.”
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