Sebastian was not proud of himself for spying on Miss Stafford. It was a weakness. And he despised weakness, especially in himself. Even so, he could not resist the chance to look at her. Especially while remaining unseen himself. So, every morning on the way to his desk in his private sitting room, he stopped at the window overlooking the path where she had first ridden Ares so many days before. He leaned against the window frame, half-obscured by the heavy curtains, and he watched her.
Would that he could have left it at that.
Instead, he had been so monumentally stupid as to leave his apartments two nights before. It was then that he had seen Miss Stafford coming up the stairs. He had stepped back into the shadows, intending only to look at her, but she had stopped in the center of the hall, visibly upset. He had gone to her then, damned fool that he was, only to have his every suspicion about her confirmed.
“If it were my home,” she had said, “I would never wish to leave it.”
From anyone else, he would have taken it as a compliment of sorts, but from Miss Stafford it was something else entirely. It was, he believed, an invitation for him to make Pershing Hall her home. To make her the next Countess of Radcliffe.
Did she think he would so easily forget how cruelly she had discarded him when he was a mere second son? That he would simply succumb to her wiles? That he had no pride left at all?
And perhaps she was right, Sebastian thought grimly. For if he had any pride to speak of, he would not be gazing out the sitting room window now, waiting for Miss Stafford to appear on her morning ride.
It was stupid really. Nothing ever changed from day to day. She was always in the same blue riding habit, her figure set off to magnificent effect. She was always grave and quiet. As if she knew he watched her and was purposely denying him the pleasure of seeing her smile.
He dropped his gaze briefly to the lock of hair in his hand. The ribbon was faded and frayed along the edges, but the bound chestnut tresses still gleamed. He ran his thumb over them, almost meditatively, as he resumed his brooding vigil at the window.
Right on schedule, his sister’s gray mare appeared in the distance. Beside her was Ares, the morning sun turning his bay coat to a shining copper.
But that was not all.
There was another horse with them this morning.
Sebastian stiffened. He had not been at Pershing Hall much over the last fifteen years, but one did not have to be a permanent resident of Hertfordshire to recognize Thomas Rotherham. He was the son of the Viscount Rotherham, the second largest landowner in the district. He was also reckoned a veritable Adonis around these parts. Tall, bronzed, and golden-haired. The village girls in Apsley Heath had been swooning over him for as long as Sebastian could remember.
How the devil had he known that Julia and Miss Stafford would be riding this morning?
Clenching his fist, Sebastian watched the three riders come into view. His eyes went straight to Miss Stafford. She was dressed exactly the same as every other morning, her beautiful face just as solemn and grave. But as he stared down at her, she turned her head to address Rotherham. The net veil on her little riding hat fluttered back from her wide blue eyes. And then she smiled.
Sebastian’s heart stopped.
He had seen her smile at men like that three years ago in London. He had been jealous, of course, but he had known then that she was kind and civil to everyone, quick to laugh and always ready with a friendly word. It was why so many gentlemen had fallen in love with her. She had had a way about her that drew out the reticent fellows and put even the most nervous gentleman at his ease. She was, in short, pleasant company. “A d-dashed good sort,” he had heard one grateful young lord with a stammer declare after Miss Stafford partnered him in a dance.
He had never suspected that she had encouraged any of those men. He had never thought, not even for a moment, that she was a flirt.
He knew better now.
Later that morning, Sylvia strolled alone through the long picture gallery. Situated along the back of the house, it was lit by ten large windows that ran the length of the wall opposite. The midday sun filtered in, illuminating a collection of portraits that appeared to date as far back in time as the reign of the Tudors. Despite the hazy sunlight, it was a cold room—colder still in the shadowy expanses between the windows—and as she walked from one painting to the next, she tightened her old cashmere shawl more firmly about her shoulders.
There was no discernable order to the portraits. At least, not in terms of date. She observed a seventeenth century Van Dyck hanging next to an eighteenth century portrait of an angelic, fair-haired lady which looked to be the work of Thomas Gainsborough. Flanking that, was a relatively modern portrait of a handsome young gentleman who, upon closer inspection, could only be Sebastian’s elder brother.
Like Sebastian, the man in the portrait was tall, lean, and broad-shouldered, with strongly hewn features and hair as black as a raven’s wing. But there the similarity ended. Sebastian was stern and forbidding, while this painting showed a cheerful, devil-may-care sort of gentleman. A fellow who knew he was the heir to a title and a great fortune and had nothing at all to worry about in the world.
“My brother Edmund.”
Sylvia gasped in alarm, spinning round to find Sebastian standing in the shadows at the opposite end of the gallery. “Lord Radcliffe!” She pressed a hand to her pounding heart. “You frightened me.”
“The picture gallery is a frightening place, Miss Stafford. Did no one tell you? Generations of Conrad ghosts are said to walk here.” He advanced upon her, stopping near enough for her to see the rigid set of his shoulders and the hard, unyielding line of his jaw. “Where is my sister?”
She took an instinctive step back from him. “Lady Harker is resting in her room.”
“And you are wandering through my house alone.”
“I am wandering through your picture gallery. I was not aware it was off limits.”
He came closer still, finally stopping beside her to look up at the painting she had been studying. “My brother was but three and twenty when he sat for that portrait.”
She turned her attention back to the painting, trying to ignore the growing sense of unease that made her pulse race. Sebastian was angry. Very angry. It fairly vibrated in the air around him. She affected not to notice. “You resemble each other,” she said. “But I can see nothing of Lady Harker in either of you.”
“Julia takes after my mother. There.” He motioned to the portrait which she had thought to be a Gainsborough.
She stepped forward to examine it more closely. Sebastian’s mother had a decidedly gentle air about her. Her mouth was curved into a beatific smile and, on her lap, she held a small, brown and white spaniel. “How beautiful she was,” Sylvia murmured. Her eyes drifted over the lines and angles of the late Lady Radcliffe’s face. “You’re right. Lady Harker does favor her.” She flicked a glance at him. “As do you, my lord.”
Sebastian gave a derisive snort.
Sylvia frowned. “I’m quite serious.” She gestured to the firm set of Lady Radcliffe’s jaw. “There, you see.”
“You have a fanciful imagination, Miss Stafford.”
“I have no imagination,” she said frankly. “I am sensible. It is my besetting sin.”
“Are you sensible?” He turned to look at her, his lips pressed into a thin, furious line. “Judging by your behavior, I would say you are quite the opposite.”
She looked up at him, startled. “I beg your pardon?”
“Do not misunderstand me. If you choose to play the flirt with every gentleman you meet in Cheapside, it is certainly no concern of mine. But when you are a guest in my home, madam, you are under my protection. And I’ll not have it said that I stood idly by and allowed a lady—a governess—to be taken advantage of by my neighbor.”
Sylvia’s stomach dropped. For several seconds, she could do nothing but stare at him. There was so much in his speech to offend her that she scarcely knew where to begin. “Your neighbor?” she heard herself repeat faintly.
“Thomas Rotherham.”
She clenched her fingers in the soft fabric of her shawl to stop their trembling. “What is it exactly that you are accusing me of?”
“I am not accusing you of anything, Miss Stafford. I am warning you. If you smile and bat your eyes at Rotherham, he will not respond with a proposal of marriage.”
A scalding blush flooded her cheeks. “You are insulting, sir.”
“I am doing you the courtesy of speaking plainly. Rotherham must know you are a governess. If you expect him to play the gentleman, you are very much mistaken.”
“I have no expectations of Mr. Rotherham. Nor why should I have? I do not even know the man. We were introduced but briefly. I daresay we shall never meet again.”
“He’ll make a point of coming round now,” Sebastian predicted darkly.
“I doubt that very much. And if he does, it will not be on my account. He is Lady Harker’s friend, not mine. Indeed, I do not believe I exchanged more than five words with the man.”
“It is not your words that concern me.”
“What then?” she demanded. “What is this all about? I know I have done nothing improper.”
“Do not try and deny it, Miss Stafford. I saw you with him this morning when you were riding along the edge of the park.” He paused. “You were smiling at him.”
If it were not so outrageous, she might have laughed. “Is that my great crime? Smiling at a gentleman?”
“Casting out lures, more like.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“You have no notion of the effect of your smiles,” he said. “Or perhaps you do. Perhaps you employ them just as you do all of your other charms.”
Sylvia was temporarily speechless. So this was his opinion of her. He thought her a flirt. A conniving sort of female set on entrapping innocent gentlemen into marriage. It was insulting and ridiculous, but—good lord!—is this what he thought she had done to him three years ago?
A shiver of realization turned her blood cold.
She took a steadying breath, exerting all of her effort to keep herself calm, to not succumb to the paralyzing embarrassment she felt at having to confront her past behavior. “I think you have a very poor opinion of me, my lord,” she said, unable to hide the quaver in her voice. “Perhaps you have cause. But just because I was incautious once, it does not follow that I would behave in the same manner again. Indeed, I have never done so.”
Sebastian’s face darkened like a thundercloud. He took a step toward her. “Incautious,” he repeated. “Is that what you call it?”
“No. I call it foolish. Childish. But I will not make excuses. It is in the past. I cannot undo it no matter how much I might wish to do so.”
“I am not talking about the past. I am talking about today. About your behavior with Rotherham. The past has nothing at all to do with it.”
“So you say, my lord. And yet, you have sketched the whole of my character from our acquaintance three years ago.”
“When we met so briefly in London?” A bitter smile twisted the scarred side of his mouth into a sneer. “I am astonished you remember, Miss Stafford. It is so much ancient history to me.”
She understood then that he meant to hurt her. That hurting her had been the goal of nearly every word uttered from the moment he entered the gallery. “I will not believe that you have forgotten,” she said.
“Believe what you will, madam.”
“At the very least, you must remember that we were friends once. That we—”
“The only thing that I remember about our former acquaintance,” he interrupted coldly, “is that I had a fortunate escape.”
His words cut straight to her heart, laying it open with the clinical skill of a Harley Street surgeon. She felt the humiliating sting of tears in her eyes. “Oh…” Her gaze fell from his. “Yes. I…I suppose that you did.”
She turned away from him. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be back in London, safe and secure in her attic bedroom at the Dinwiddy’s modest house in Cheapside. At least there she knew which end was up. But running away would not solve anything. Especially not with so much unfinished between them. Besides, how was she to leave? Lady Harker would have to order the carriage. Either that or she would have to find a way to the railway station in Apsley Heath. Once there, she could purchase a ticket on the next train to London.
It was not impossible. Indeed, if she put her mind to the matter, she could probably leave as early as tomorrow morning.
In the meanwhile, she would have to settle for putting some distance between them.
“Miss Stafford,” Sebastian said.
She imagined she heard a note of regret in his deep voice, but knew she was mistaken. It was only her treacherous heart hearing what it wanted to hear. Goodness knows it had led her astray with Sebastian before.
Ignoring him, she walked the short distance across the picture gallery to one of the tall, deeply set windows. It was framed with heavy curtains pulled back to reveal an unobstructed view of the stark, north lawn. For all that it was cold outside, the sun was shining brightly. She stepped forward into its warm rays and looked out across the park.
He might have left the picture gallery then. Part of her hoped that he would. But he did not leave. He came to stand beside her, his large presence casting a dark shadow over the sunlit alcove.
She folded her arms across her midsection, feeling cold and utterly bereft beneath the staid propriety of her dark silk gown. Why would he not go? Why could he not leave her in peace? She hated him in that moment. Hated him for remaining at her side, for forcing his presence on her when she was at her most vulnerable.
At the same time, there was something unbearably intimate about the two of them there, so close in the window embrasure. It was an illusion, she knew, but it nevertheless compelled her to speak.
“I have often found myself wondering where it all went wrong between us,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you were merely amusing yourself at my expense. Or perhaps…perhaps it was something I said in one of my letters.”
“What?”
“I always suspected the latter,” she admitted, “but I did not want to believe it. Now it seems that I owe you an apology, my lord. When I wrote to you as I did, I was under the impression that you and I…That we…That we had a mutual regard for each other.” She swallowed, forcing herself to look up at him. He was staring down at her, white faced and still. His scars stood out in stark relief. “I am sorry if I shocked you or gave offense. And I do hope you have destroyed those letters. If not, I…I would ask that you give them back to me.”
It was the most mortifying speech that Sylvia had ever made. She could only imagine how deeply she was blushing. She turned away from him to look out the window once more, fixing her gaze on a cluster of trees in the distance. After a time, she heard him clear his throat.
“What do you suppose there was in your letters that would have offended me?” he asked.
She gave a choked, humorless laugh. “Oh, where to begin?”
“Tell me.”
“Let me see…Might it have been that I doused them with my perfume? Or perhaps it was that I closed each letter by sending you one thousand kisses?”
Sebastian said nothing for a long while.
A long while during which Sylvia fervently wished she had never come to Pershing Hall. She pressed her cheek to the window embrasure, closing her eyes in mortification.
“It was neither of those things,” he said huskily.
“Oh. I see.” She could say no more. For now she knew, beyond all doubt, what it was that had given him such a disgust of her. She supposed that she had always known. That dashed first letter! Was it any wonder he thought her a conscienceless flirt with an eye toward matrimony? She made herself look at him again. “I should never have written it.”
Sebastian did not say anything. He merely looked down at her, as white faced and immobile as he had been before.
“It was three years ago,” she said. “I was very green. Very stupid. And I daresay I thought…But that does not matter. It was a foolish thing to have written to you. And in my first letter, too. I hope we might agree to never think of it again. Indeed, I am deathly ashamed every time I do.” She exhaled an unsteady breath. It was done. It was over. She had always wanted to know what it was that had ended their romance and now she did.
She could, at last, let him go.
“I believe I shall sit here awhile,” she said, sinking down onto the window ledge. “If you would but give me a moment alone to collect my thoughts.”
But he did not give her a moment alone. Instead, he sat down beside her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was subjecting himself to the full force of the midday sun. It shone a harsh light on his face, revealing every wretched scar.
“Do you still have them?” she asked. “My letters?”
“No.”
She thought of the painstaking hours she had spent writing them. Of all the hope and affection she had poured into every line. “Yes well…” She felt suddenly as if she might cry. “I daresay there was nothing in them worth saving.”
Sebastian made no reply.
Sylvia was beginning to feel that she was having a conversation with herself. Why had he sat down beside her if he did not mean to talk? Was he simply going to stare at her until she burst into tears?
But perhaps he had already said too much? Perhaps it hurt him to speak? The scar from the saber cut that had damaged half his face travelled down to the top of his black cravat. She had never properly seen its full horror until now, had never truly comprehended just how severe it really was. Had it damaged his throat as well? Was that why he always sounded so raspy and hoarse?
“Why could you not have been more careful?” she asked.
Sebastian’s color heightened almost imperceptibly.
“It was one of the last things I said to you, do you remember? Promise me that you will be careful,” she echoed her long ago words. “Of course you don’t remember. It is all nothing more than ancient history to you. Unimportant and long forgotten. But I wish…Oh, I wish you had not been hurt.”
“As does everyone who must look upon me now,” he said. “My face is not a pleasant sight.”
“That is not what I meant. I meant…I wish you had not been hurt. No matter what has passed between us…I cannot bear to think of you in pain.”
Sebastian fell silent again, but she could see a muscle working in his jaw. The subject of his injuries was upsetting to him. Perhaps she should not have mentioned it. Perhaps she should have simply pretended that he looked the same as he always had. That nothing had changed.
“And as for your injuries being unpleasant,” she said before she could stop herself. “When I first saw you this way …When I was standing in the hall outside your rooms…To own the truth, I was more alarmed by your state of undress than anything else.” She turned to look out the window, feeling the weight of his stare on her face as she did so. “Have you really kept that lock of hair I gave you?”
He did not answer.
She watched a servant walking across the lawn far down below. The gardener, she thought absently. Pershing Hall was a large estate. No doubt there were hundreds of servants.
“Your sister misunderstood everything. She thought you had kept it because you cared for me. I tried to explain to her that many soldiers keep a token of that sort, but she would not credit it. ‘If your hair has given him comfort,’ she said, ‘only think how much it will help him if you are there in person.’” She cast another fleeting glance at Sebastian. “She cares for you very much.”
“She is an infernal nuisance.”
Silvia’s mouth lifted in a sudden half smile. “She was going to hire a private enquiry agent to find me.”
“Good God.”
“Luckily, there are many who still remember my unhappy fate after the scandal. Lady Harker was able to locate me, at last. In Cheapside. The horror!”
“Where you are a governess to two little girls.”
“Clara and Cora. The dearest children you would ever care to meet.” Her smile broadened, revealing the rare sight of her two dimples. Sebastian’s gaze dropped briefly down to her mouth, an arrested look on his face. “I have taught them to perform for company,” she said. “Clara, the eldest, plays a ballad on the piano and Cora, her little sister, sings. It is more endearing than accomplished, I admit. But they have learned so much and make me very proud of them.”
“You were ever fond of children,” he observed gruffly.
Her smile slowly faded. She had once thought to have children of her own. With him. “A trait that has served me well in my new life,” she said.
“Your father left no provision for you at all?”
“No. Nothing. I found out afterward that he was deeply in debt. He had borrowed from friends and even the moneylenders. He wagered everything in that last game. I daresay he would have wagered me, too, if he had thought of it in time.”
“And your relations?”
“I wrote to them…afterward. Only one of them replied. Papa’s sister, a woman whom I have never met. She has twelve children, if you can credit it. Seven of them still in the nursery. She invited me to come and stay at her home in Northumberland. I believe she hoped to make an unpaid servant of me. A drudge. I decided then and there that if I must be in service, I may as well earn a wage.”
“So now you teach a merchant’s children to play and sing. In Cheapside.” Sebastian’s fist clenched where it lay on his thigh. “Do you never sing yourself anymore?”
“I sometimes sing lullabies to Clara and Cora when they cannot sleep.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.” Sylvia turned her gaze back to the window. “The answer is no, my lord. I do not sing anymore. Not in the way that I did before Papa died. There are no musical evenings at Mr. and Mrs. Dinwiddy’s house and no Penelope Mainwaring to accompany me on the piano. Excepting lullabies, I do not sing at all. Not even for myself.”
“There is a music room here.”
“Oh?”
“If Julia accompanies you, perhaps you might sing as you once did.”
She looked at him again, achingly aware that his own gaze had never wavered. It was then that she saw that the haughty, sneering expression with which he had regarded her for much of their conversation was strangely absent. She wondered when it had gone—and when it would come back again. “Tonight?”
“Any night.”
A troubled frown knit her brow. “Does that mean I am welcome to remain here at Pershing Hall? After everything you said to me, I assumed—”
“I lost my temper,” he said. “I will not pretend it was the first time.”
It was not an apology, though Sylvia suspected it was as close to one as she was likely to receive from him. Even so, it was not enough. “You hurt me with what you said.”
He failed to conceal a wince. “Miss Stafford, I—”
“Did you think that I could not be hurt?” she asked. “Did you think that because I am a servant now that I would not feel it here” —she pressed her hand to her heart— “every time you speak to me as if you hate me?”
Sebastian’s expression darkened with something very like anguish. For several seconds, her words hung heavy in the silence between them.
“I don’t hate you,” he said finally. “I have never hated you.”
Sylvia’s lower lip wobbled. She turned away from him, blinking back the fresh sting of tears. “H-Haven’t you?”
“No,” he said. And then more strongly, “No.” He leaned closer to her, crushing her heavy skirts beneath his leg. She felt his warm breath brush against her hair. “I spoke cruelly, Miss Stafford. It was badly done of me.”
“I did not deserve it.”
“No. You did not. I should never have addressed you as I did. And if you will forgive me…”
A faint spark of hope kindled in Sylvia’s breast. “Are you apologizing to me, sir?”
“I am,” he said. His voice roughened. “I don’t want you to leave.”
His words brought a flush of color to her cheeks. She closed her eyes for a moment. And then she turned to face him. “I thought it was a mistake to come here,” she confessed. “But if there was a way to put the unfortunate past behind us…A way to start again. As friends. We were friends once, were we not? Before that stupid letter?”
He gave her another long, searching look. “We were friends, Miss Stafford,” he said. “And I very much hope we will be so again.”