Page 31 of The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance

He was heartily ashamed of himself.

“Miss Stafford…I know you have ample reason to think otherwise,” he said, “but I don’t want you to leave Pershing Hall. Not yet. I meant what I said when I told you that I hoped we might be friends again.”

She considered this for a moment. “I suppose, then, that if I stay the rest of the month—”

“If you stay?” He was at once both incredulous and outraged. “What do you mean if?”

“There is no point in remaining the rest of the month if you continue to avoid me. If I stay, you must join us downstairs on occasion.”

“Haven’t I been doing so?”

“Darkened libraries and shadowy portrait galleries are not enough, I’m afraid.”

Sebastian did not need her to spell it out for him. She wanted the daylight. She wanted to see him, laid bare, in all his beastly glory. The prospect sunk his spirits. Is this what it would take to keep her here? To once again win her heart? His voice deepened with bitterness at the unfairness of it all. “The very thing you ask of me is the thing that will drive you away.”

Miss Stafford’s eyes softened with compassion. “You do me an injustice.”

“Do I? When I returned from India, my own sister screamed and fainted.”

“I am not your sister, my lord.”

“Of that, madam, I am well aware.”

Her color heightened. “Yes, well…It seems to me that you worry about your appearance a great deal too much.”

Sebastian stiffened. It was the truth, of course. He had never been a vain man, but he despised the sight of himself now. The scars on the right side of his face were thick, wide, and deep. His sightless eye fixed and white. His ear half gone. His mouth ever so slightly drooping. A monster, he had thought bleakly the first time he had seen himself in the hospital. His sister’s reaction to the sight of him had been the confirmation of all his worst fears.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asked.

She looked at him fully then, her blue gaze drifting over his face, taking in each sign of disfigurement with an unflinching steadiness that left him feeling shaken and exposed. “Perhaps,” she said. “But it is different for a woman.”

“Ah.”

“It is,” she insisted. “A woman’s value is almost always determined by her beauty. While a gentleman…A gentleman is valued for other things. His intelligence. His bravery. His skill at pistols or even at cards. I daresay that most who see your scars would recognize them as a badge of courage. It is how I view them. And I am generally thought to be a sensible person—despite recent evidence to the contrary.”

A badge of courage. He would have scoffed at such drivel were it said by anyone else. But the words, when uttered by Sylvia Stafford, sent a startling frisson of warmth through him. He cleared his throat. “You refer, I take it, to your attempt to climb my bookshelves.”

“Amongst other things.”

He was in his shirtsleeves. She was in her dressing gown. It was scandalous for them to be conversing together this way. Alone. Both in a state of undress at past two in the morning. A gentleman would advise her to retire. He would inform her that their present interaction may well harm her reputation. Alas, he was not feeling very gentlemanly at the moment. “Very well, Miss Stafford,” he said. “If you stay the remainder of the month, it shall be as you wish.”

“You will accompany us out of doors?” she asked. “In the daylight?”

His heart pumped in a sudden rapid, panicked rhythm. What the devil was he promising? “Yes,” he said. “In the daylight.”

“And for dinner, too. Like a proper host.”

“Dinner,” he repeated flatly. Bloody blasted hell. He ran his hand over the side of his face again, cursing the necessity of having this conversation. “Have your meals been so bleak without me?”

“Not at all. I only—”

“Yes. Yes, I know. You think I should make an effort. And I will, but…Regrettably…” He struggled with the painful admission even as he uttered it. “I do not dine in company.”

“That can’t be true. You took tea with us on the day of my arrival.”

“A foolish pantomime,” he said dismissively. “I allowed my sister to pour out a cup for me, but I did not drink it.”

Miss Stafford searched his face. “Why ever not?”