Page 26 of The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance

He dug his fingers into the folds of his cravat and began to tug it loose. “I have already told her so.”

“You have?” Julia clasped her hands to her bosom. “Oh, Sebastian! I knew you would wish to see her. And I knew that I must convince her to come here, whatever I must say to do so. Even if I must tell the tiniest little lie or two.”

Sebastian stilled, suddenly alert. “What lies?”

“Oh…you know.”

He dropped his hand from his cravat. “No, I do not know,” he said. “Pray enlighten me.”

Julia affected to be wholly occupied with smoothing out an invisible wrinkle in the skirts of her blossom pink muslin gown. “It was nothing of note. Only the veriest commonplace.”

“What lies, Julia?” he asked again.

“Well…” She hesitated. “I told her that I was in an interesting condition.”

He scowled. “Why in blazes would you tell her that?”

“Because if I were indeed expecting, then Harker would fuss over me like an old mother hen.” She raised her eyes to his face, offering a sheepish smile. “I said that he worried about my being upset by the situation here at Pershing. Because of how it would affect the baby.”

“The situation,” Sebastian repeated.

“She understood at once, of course. And that was when she agreed to accompany me back to Hertfordshire.”

“What situation?”

Julia shook her head. “I do not wish to say. You will not like it.”

“What did you tell her?” he thundered.

“You needn’t shout at me, Sebastian! I know I should not have done it. But she would not have come otherwise. So you must see why—”

“I shall count to five and if you have not answered me, then I am going to pitch you out of that window.”

Julia leapt up, scurrying strategically behind her chair as Sebastian began to count. “I told her that I feared you would do something stupid!” she blurted out.

He was on his feet in an instant, looming over her. “What?”

“I said that you kept a pistol beside your bed this whole last year and that—” Julia gave a loud yelp as her brother lunged at her. She sprinted out of his reach, darting toward the door. “I had to!” she cried. “And I am not sorry!” And then she bolted from the sitting room as fast as her legs would carry her.

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.