It was well past one in the morning. Sylvia did not need a clock to tell her so. She had been tossing and turning for hours, too restless to fall back asleep. Earlier, after a brief episode of tears, she had dozed fitfully, only to wake feeling as forlorn and miserable as she had when she first retired to her bedroom for the evening. It had seemed stupid to cry. Everything was sorted out now, was it not? Sebastian had said that he did not hate her. That he had never hated her. He had even said that he hoped they might be friends again.
Yet, he had not joined them on their walk. Nor had he joined them for dinner. And as for coming to the music room to listen to her sing…
She had been a fool to have believed that he would. If she had been thinking with her head instead of her heart, she would have recognized at once that his kind words in the picture gallery were nothing more than empty civility. He clearly did not want to see her any more than was necessary. No doubt she had made him uncomfortable with all her talk of those letters.
Sylvia rolled onto her back and stared at the canopy over her bed. She contemplated returning to Cheapside in the morning. It would not be running away, surely. And no one could ever accuse her of cowardice. She had, after all, managed an entire week at Pershing Hall. One wonderful, terrible week in which she had been confronted by all the memories of her former life. But there was a limit to what one could endure and, unless she was very much mistaken, she had reached that limit last night. She feared that if she stayed any longer, she would become truly, and irrevocably, unhappy.
She tossed and turned for another quarter of an hour. Then, abruptly, she flung off her blankets and sat up. She was done with lying awake and worrying. If she could not sleep, she may as well go down and find something to read. She rose from bed and put on her dressing gown, cinching it tightly round her waist. Her hair had worked itself loose from its nighttime plait and now fell loose about her shoulders. She did not regard it. No one else would be up. The house had been deathly quiet for hours.
Lighting a candle, she quietly exited her bedchamber and made her way downstairs.
The Pershing Hall library was a singularly masculine room, dark and cluttered and smelling faintly of pipe tobacco and lemon oil and beeswax furniture polish. She had not been back to it since the day of her arrival. Lady Harker preferred to serve refreshments in the much brighter, and far more feminine, drawing room. Nevertheless, during the short time she had spent having tea with Sebastian and Lady Harker that first afternoon, she had not failed to notice that the library contained a dazzling array of books. She was certain to find something interesting to read.
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.”