Yes, she told herself, the consequences of such a liaison would be dire indeed. That much she understood. What she could not understand was why, despite knowing how much she stood to lose in the bargain, she felt such an ache for Sebastian, such a terrible temptation to return to Pershing Hall and live with him however he would have her for however long as he would have her.
You are as reckless as Papa, she thought with disgust. To even consider throwing your life away for the sake of a few moments of excitement, a few moments of pleasure.
It had taken years to mend her heart when Sebastian had broken it the first time. Years to build a new life for herself. She could not put herself through it again. She would not. Because if she did, it would be worse. So much worse. Three years ago he had only courted her and chastely kissed her lips. Last night, he had crushed her to his chest in a fiercely possessive embrace. He had ravished her mouth with his. He had told her that he wanted her.
Heat flooded her face at the memory of it. She bent her head, shielding her blushes from view behind the protective brim of her bonnet.
A moment later, she was jolted from her self-recriminations by the roar of the approaching locomotive. She watched it chug into the station, a sense of numb resignation settling into her heart. It came to a stop alongside the platform with a screech of grinding metal. A handful of passengers disembarked. Sylvia waited with the other ticketholders while the porters unloaded their luggage. It did not take long. Apsley Heath was not a popular destination, especially at this time of day.
“All aboard!” the conductor cried.
She tightened her hold on her carpetbag and began to make her way to the second-class railway carriage. There was nothing else to be done, she thought miserably. Any future with Sebastian was impossible. And the revelations about their long ago letters to each other had not changed a thing. They were two different people now. From two different worlds. It was best if she returned to hers and resumed her life as a governess. It was the right thing to do. The safe thing to do.
When it was her turn to board, a porter stepped forward to take her elbow. She thanked him for his assistance and then, after one last, anguished look at the Hertfordshire landscape, she stepped onto the train that would take her back to London and out of Sebastian’s life forever.
As a result of staying up the better part of the night, Sebastian slept until midmorning. When he awoke, Milsom was already gone.
So was Sylvia Stafford.
“A maid went to her bedchamber at half past ten with a breakfast tray,” said Julia, “but her room was empty and all of her things were gone. I sent Craddock to enquire if anyone had seen her and—can you believe it!—she discovered that one of the grooms drove Miss Stafford to the train station in a dog-cart. At dawn!”
Sebastian had been sitting in front of his mahogany dressing table, attempting to knot his cravat when his sister burst into his room. It now hung loose round his neck, forgotten, as he listened to her in stunned silence.
“She will be hours and hours away by now. And all I have in explanation is this note she left for me on her pillow, which says—” Julia let out a short yelp as Sebastian swept it from her hand.
He unfolded it, reading Sylvia’s words with something akin to desperation.
My Dear Lady Harker,
I am returning to London. Forgive me for not taking proper leave of you and your brother. I realized last night that it was a mistake to have come and wished to depart at first light. My life is in London now. As a governess. Indeed, I am very happy there. One cannot revisit the past, no matter how much one might wish to do so. It can bring nothing but pain. I hope you will understand and accept my apologies for any inconvenience my departure may have caused you.
Yours Sincerely,
Sylvia Stafford
Sebastian read it again, deeply shaken. One cannot revisit the past. She had said that last night in the library. Had she known, even then, that she was going to leave him? Had she ever had the smallest intention of staying? Of discussing their future together? He had not formally proposed yet, it was true. She had been far too upset. But surely she must have known his intentions.
Was being a governess so much more desirable than being his countess? And was he such a monster that she must flee his home in secret at the first light of dawn?
Good God, he felt like a prize fool.
Julia fluttered around his dressing room wringing her hands. Her hair was still in its nighttime plait and she wore an elaborately printed dressing gown buttoned up to her throat. “If you will only finish dressing, you might ready a horse and go after her. You could still catch her if—”
“I am not going after her.”
Julia watched, eyes widened in dismay, as he turned back to the mirror and yanked off his cravat. “What? I thought that you wished her to stay! And why aren’t you getting dressed? Oh, where is Milsom? Milsom!”
“Milsom is away on an errand.”
“Then I shall help you! Where is your coat? And a fresh cravat? You must hurry, Sebastian. I insist upon it.”
“I am not going to London,” he said roughly. “I have not left the estate since I returned from India. You, of all people, know why.”
She reddened. “Yes, but surely you would be willing to go now. If it means you might win Miss Stafford.”
Sebastian looked at his reflection in the central mirror of his dressing table. In the bright light of day, it was difficult to believe Sylvia had covered the heavily scarred face he saw with kisses. Indeed, the more he thought of it, last night seemed to him nothing but a wishful, desperate dream. “I am not going to London,” he said again.
She spun toward the door of his dressing room. “Then I shall go—”
His hand shot out to catch her wrist. “You will do nothing of the sort,” he said in a voice of dangerous calm.
Julia’s eyes filled with frustrated tears. “Someone must fetch her back! I want you to marry her. And why can’t you? Surely anything is preferable to being a governess in Cheapside!”
He visibly flinched.
“What did you say to her?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” No, he thought bitterly, he had just kissed her. Held her in his arms. Told her that he cared for her so, so much. Bloody hell. He had panted and groaned over her like an uncivilized brute. How in blazes had he thought she would react? She had left the library in tears, for God’s sake. He had probably repulsed her.
“You must have done else she would not have left! And I know that she was not frightened of your injuries. To be sure, she did seem a little sad, but she—” Julia’s mouth fell open. “Oh no! Was it my fault? Was it something I said? But what could I have said?
“Aside from telling her that at any moment I might blow my brains out just as her father did?”
Julia jerked her hand away, making a dramatic show of rubbing her wrist. “Do you think it was because I said that I wished her to be my sister? To marry you and make you well?”
Sebastian groaned. “Good God.”
“I admit, it did seem to alarm her. Though I told her right away that it was nothing but a foolish fancy.” Julia’s brow creased. “Do you suppose she has another sweetheart? She said that she was not married, but she never said anything about a beau. And she is ever so pretty, Sebastian. Which is even more reason you must go at once to Cheapside and fetch her. If she knew she might be a countess, I daresay she would throw over whoever it is that is courting her now.”
He dropped his face into his hands. Again, the specter of those other men! Her suitors had cut her acquaintance after her father’s suicide. He had been reminding himself of that fact ever since they parted last night in the library. But just because the gentlemen of polite society had shunned a connection with Sylvia Stafford did not mean that she had been sentenced to a life of lonely spinsterhood. She was a governess now, true. But a beautifu
l, well-bred governess. No doubt there was a line of suitors stretching from Cheapside to Mayfair. Solicitors. Doctors. Merchants. Gentlemen schoolmasters. Sebastian conjured them all in his mind, each one handsome and elegant, soft spoken and kind.
“Out,” he said to his sister.
“But Miss Stafford—”
“Out!” he thundered. And as his sister scurried from the dressing room and out of his apartments, closing the door loudly behind her, he felt the mortifying sting of tears in his eyes. He swallowed raggedly against the bitter swell of three years of pent up grief and misery. The loss of Sylvia Stafford. The death of his father and brother. The loss of his friends and his comrades in India. The damage to his face. The physical pain and mental anguish.
He felt in his pocket for the lock of hair, closing his fingers tightly around it, as if it were a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. It had always had the power to bring him back from the abyss. But now, as he held it against his cheek, he felt nothing. Nothing at all.
It was merely a symbol, he realized. A lifeless, soulless apology for the real Sylvia Stafford.
And the real Sylvia Stafford was gone.
Sebastian sat alone in his sitting room, sprawled in the upholstered mahogany armchair in front of the fireplace. A half-filled glass of brandy dangled perilously from his fingers as he stared into the grate. Somewhere amongst the black ashes were the remnants of the note Sylvia had left behind when she returned to London. He could no longer remember exactly what it had said. Since reading it, he had been somewhat the worse for drink.
And that was putting it mildly.
He had not left his apartments for three days. During that time, he had drunk more than he had in his entire career as a military officer. More even than in those first months after his face had been cut to ribbons and he had learned that his father and his brother were both dead. He had continued drinking until his head felt as if it had been cleaved in two with an axe handle. Until the painful memory of Sylvia Stafford had been numbed and the taste and smell of her obliterated by the fumes of strong spirits.
What his sister did during that time, he neither knew nor cared. She had been raised at Pershing and had friends in the area. Perhaps she was out making calls? Gossiping with their neighbors? Or perhaps she had gone off to find some other lady from his past to persuade back to Hertfordshire?
But there were no other ladies in his past.
He had lost his heart but once.
Not that he had spent the bulk of his two and thirty years living like a monk, though for the last years it certainly seemed so. He had never kept a mistress. He was a career cavalry officer, rarely in England and only then for brief periods of time. There had been the predictable dalliance with an opera dancer when he came of age. A buxom, red-haired tart who made it no secret that her favors were wholly contingent on the gifts that he gave her. After that, he had done what the other officers did. The occasional night with a willing widow. The occasional visit to a brothel—though he had disdained the rather shabby band of camp followers that serviced a great many of the enlisted men.
And then, three years ago, he had returned to England at the height of the London season. He had arrived in town in the company of another officer, the youngest son of the renowned society hostess, Marianne Fellowes, Countess of Denholm. An invitation was extended to him for the following night. A musical evening, Lady Denholm had said.
“Nothing too formal, Colonel Conrad, but I do like to encourage the officers to come when they are in town.”
Captain Fellowes had been sheepish, but encouraging, assuring his superior officer privately that the evening would not be a complete waste of time. “My mother always manages to find one or two distinguished performers amongst all the young chits strumming at the harp and shrieking Italian love songs,” he had said.
Sebastian had arrived midway through the evening in his dress uniform, aware that it made him appear that much bigger, that much more intimidating. He had not been in the mood to exchange polite civilities about India. His attendance was a courtesy to Captain Fellowes’ mother, nothing more. He sat in the back, grim faced, as he listened to a small selection of singers and musicians, most of which were—as expected—young ladies anxious to exhibit their meager talents.
But when the final young lady had finished on the piano and made her curtsy to the small crowd, a gentleman up ahead had risen to his feet. “I say, Lady Denholm,” he had called out to the hostess. “Why have you not compelled Miss Stafford to sing?”
A short, laughing exchange had ensued between Lady Denholm and several of the gentlemen in the audience. Admirers of Miss Stafford, Sebastian had assumed.
He had not been wrong.
Only then had he seen her. She was seated in the far right front corner, hidden amongst the enormous, full-skirted evening dresses of the ladies that surrounded her. She had stood, clearly embarrassed by all the attention, but not at all missish or falsely modest. She had an abundance of chestnut hair, artfully arranged with jewel-encrusted pins, and the bluest eyes Sebastian had ever seen. She had turned and smiled at the crowd. A genuine smile, despite her blushes, and one that revealed the presence of two bewitching dimples.
And he had been bewitched. Not because she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, though she was quite lovely, but because she fairly sparkled with warmth and light. She had given her admirers a look of good-natured reproof and then, after a word with the hostess, she had approached the piano.
“Who will accompany me?” she had asked
Not bothering to wait for other volunteers, a girl with ebony hair had emerged from the crowd and glided to the seat at the piano. Penelope Mainwaring, he would learn later. A diamond of the first water and Sylvia’s bosom friend. “What will you have, Sylvia?” she had asked in a voice fairly dripping with fashionable ennui. “A ballad? A folk song? A sea shanty?”
Everyone had laughed at that.
“An Irish Air,” Sylvia had replied. “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms. Because it is short and we are all longing for our supper.”
The gentlemen had protested, the most vocal of them demanding a lengthy love song. It had been the Viscount Goddard. A slight, somewhat pale aristocrat whose elegant form made Sebastian look a veritable oversized brute by comparison.
But he had not been jealous then. He had not known her well enough to be jealous. He had been merely bewitched. Merely enchanted.
And then she had begun to sing:
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away.
Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart,
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
She had a low, velvety voice. As merry as it was seductive. It had set a hook deep in his chest and commenced a slow, inexorable tugging. He had leaned forward in his seat, his eyes fixed on her. Her own blue gaze had drifted round the room, focusing on no one, as she sang:
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear.
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets,
The same look which she turn’d when he rose.
At the close of the song, he had approached Lady Denholm and asked for an introduction. And then, for the next two months, he had contrived to be everywhere that Sylvia Stafford was. Balls and supper parties, Cremorne Gardens and the theatre, picnics in the park, and even the damned ci
rculating library.
Not that it had taken two months for him to realize his own intentions.
He had known that he loved her within the first two weeks. The remainder of his time in London was spent trying, by various measures, to determine exactly how she felt about him.
It had only been that last night in the Mainwaring’s garden that he had dared press her. First by asking for a lock of her hair. Then by kissing her. Afterward, she had brought her small hands up to frame his face, rendering him almost speechless when she kissed him in return.
“How many young ladies have you kissed in moonlit gardens, I wonder?” she had asked.
“None but you, Miss Stafford,” he had answered her truthfully. “None but you.”
He had reentered the ballroom with her shortly after in a state of euphoria only to be instantly overtaken by the Viscount Goddard with whom Sylvia had, apparently, promised to dance the next waltz. Sebastian had leaned against the wall in the corner of the ballroom and watched them, resisting an almost overpowering urge to grab Goddard by his scruff and shake him like the impudent puppy that he was.
The next morning, he had left England for Marseilles, embarking on the overland route that would take him to India.
Once there, his duties had kept him busy from dawn until dusk—and frequently beyond. Skirmishes, both major and minor, had left him fatigued and often injured. The horrors of the rebellion had depressed his spirits. But Sylvia Stafford was never far from his mind. Of an evening, when they were bivouacked outside of a town or cramped together in some vermin infested cantonment, he had written to her. At first respectfully. And then, with increasing desperation.
It had been Goddard who had won her—or so he had thought when her letters never arrived. Sebastian had tormented himself with images of the two of them together, reflecting on the times he had observed them dancing or driving in the park. Realizing that she had never had any interest in a hulking cavalry officer at all. That, very likely, he had forced his company on her and she had been too polite to give him his marching orders.
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