Page 19 of The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance

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.”