Page 40 of The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance

“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,