Page 46 of The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance

“I take it you remember the scandal.”

“Naturally. It was a shameful state of affairs. Stafford was accused of all manner of things after the fact. Don’t know much about his daughter personally, but can’t say I’m surprised she was blackballed. People were angry at Stafford.” Harker shrugged and took a swallow of port. “With him gone, his daughter made a convenient scapegoat.”

Sebastian clenched and unclenched one hand, focusing his slowly building fury into the small, harmless action, when what he really felt like doing was putting his fist through the wood-paneled wall. She had been all alone. And if he had only known, he might have helped her. “She had friends,” he said. “Good friends. Lord and Lady Mainwaring—”

“Mainwaring, did you say?” Harker looked up from his port. “Sir Roderick was in debt to Mainwaring to the tune of twenty thousand pounds. Some investment scheme, I believe. Don’t know the particulars, but you may rest assured that Mainwaring wanted nothing more to do with the situation. Can’t imagine him assisting Stafford’s daughter.”

Sebastian looked down at his clenched fist. He had never liked Mainwaring. He was a baron who put on the airs of a duke and conducted his business affairs like a merchant. And that daughter of his! Sebastian had never yet met a female with such an exalted opinion of herself.

“Besides that,” Harker continued, “he had a daughter of his own to worry about at the time.”

“That should not have mattered. Miss Stafford and Penelope Mainwaring were friends.”

“Lady Goddard now.”

“What?”

“Mainwaring’s daughter, Penelope. She’s Lady Goddard now. Married Viscount Goddard two years ago. Not too long after Stafford’s suicide, if I recall.”

“Did she, by God,” Sebastian murmured. So that was it, was it? A word from Penelope Mainwaring might have kept Sylvia in London; allowed her to remain with Lord and Lady Mainwaring. But instead Miss Mainwaring had taken advantage of the opportunity to rid herself of a rival.

“What’s that?” Harker asked.

“Three years ago, Goddard was devoted to Miss Stafford.”

“Ah.” Harker gave a knowing nod. “More to Miss Stafford’s exile than the actions of her father, then. Jealousy, perhaps? You never can tell with the ladies. Vicious as vipers, some of them. Would as soon sink their teeth into a friend as a foe. And Lady Goddard is a particularly formidable female. Daresay she’ll be part of the contingent that calls upon you tomorrow morning.”

Sebastian had wondered why Lord Goddard had not come to Sylvia’s aid. Was this the answer? Had Penelope Mainwaring been hissing poison into Goddard’s ear? Convincing him to give up Sylvia and take her instead? They had been her friends. And now, here they were in town—a viscount and his particularly formidable lady—while Sylvia Stafford was working as a governess in Cheapside! For two pins, Sebastian would have happily throttled the pair of them.

“Lady Goddard may await my pleasure,” he said coldly. “Tomorrow morning, my sister and I will be otherwise engaged.”

At half past one the following day, Sebastian was sitting in the front parlor of a small, but respectable house in Cheapside. Julia sat beside him on the overstuffed sofa and, across from them both, fidgeting nervously in an armless, button-back chair, sat Mrs. Dinwiddy. She was a short, plump woman clad in a dark silk dress with skirts that nearly rivalled Julia’s in size. Her eyes drifted repeatedly to the scarred side of Sebastian’s face. He was tempted to turn his head at an angle so his injuries were not so visible, but pride prevented him from making even the smallest concession. Instead, he looked his hostess directly in the eye.

He had arrived with his sister ten minutes earlier in a carriage bearing the Radcliffe coat of arms. The front door had been opened by another portly woman—the housekeeper, he had assumed. She had stared at Sebastian’s face, slack jawed, before nearly falling into a swoon after looking at his card. After a series of curtsies that were painful to behold, and a few babbled mutterings of “your grace,” she had guided them into the parlor and summoned her mistress.

“I do not know what is keeping them,” Mrs. Dinwiddy tittered for what must be the third time. “They were only walking to the park. Shall I—” Her eyes strayed again to Sebastian’s scars. “Shall I send someone to fetch them back?”

“Do not distress yourself, ma’am,” Julia said. “We are quite content to wait.”

“As you wish, my lady.” Mrs. Dinwiddy clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Though I never would have imagined when we hired Miss Stafford—” She gave another nervous laugh. “To think that I should be receiving both a viscountess and an earl in my own parlor!” She gestured about her as if to indicate the inadequacy of the stuffed sofa and chairs, the needlepoint pillows, and the profusion of blue and white china. “I am all at sixes and sevens.”

Sebastian had been called upon to talk with people of all classes while in the army. He had not been especially good at it. He was far too gruff. But this woman, as silly and gauche as she was, had been kind to Sylvia. She had taken her in and given her a position. What might have happened to her otherwise, he shuddered to think. “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said, “did you not know that Miss Stafford is herself the daughter of a baronet?”

Mrs. Dinwiddy pursed her lips. “As to that, my lord…She did say when we hired her how she had once moved in society, but that her father had” —her voice dropped to a whisper— “taken his own life.” She looked from Sebastian to Julia. “Such a shocking business. I did not like to press her for the details.”

“Naturally not,” said Julia.

“Even if I had done, Miss Stafford was in no state to answer questions about her people. If you had only heard her voice when she recited her qualifications. So small and soft! Telling me about her experience with globes and painting and how she could speak tolerable French. Poor dear. She fairly shook. It was grief, you must understand. And no chance to mourn! Not but that I didn’t allow her to wear black the first year. Though Mr. Dinwiddy did not approve of it.”

Julia leaned forward in her seat, giving the older woman a look of sympathy. “Was she very grieved, ma’am?”

“Oh my, yes. And so thin and pale! ‘We must fatten her up,’ I told cook.” Mrs. Dinwiddy smiled fondly at the memory. “She is the dearest girl, my lady. And such a way with the children. I have often been sorry that she has no family to go to at Christmas and no one to call upon her here, but she assures me that she is content.”

Sebastian listened to Mrs. Dinwiddy describing the state Sylvia was in when she had come to them and felt the same sense of helpless fury he had felt when Milsom told him that Miss Button had burned nearly one hundred letters. Sylvia had not told him everything, he realized. Nor why should she have? As far as she knew, he was an unreliable gentleman who had callously ignored her. Why would she burden him with the knowledge that she had been pale and thin and crippled with grief?

“She keeps very busy,” Mrs. Dinwiddy went on. “Only yesterday, she attended to the marketing with Millie, our housemaid. And the day before that, why you would not credit it, my lady, but she carried up the mending to her room and in the morning she had completed it all!”

Melancholy was no match for industry, she had told him. Is that what she did now? Kept herself busy at all hours as if she were a bloody maid of all work in order to shield herself from the misery of her reduced circumstances? The very idea made Sebastian want to howl with outrage.