Page 17 of One Waltz with the Viscount

She looked up sharply and saw the sadness in his eyes. He’d looked that way when he had spoken about his late wife, and Sarah got the impression his life had been marred by tragedy.

‘My sister is fourteen years old, but my father has not let me see her since she was nine.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘Yes. It is. He keeps her cloistered away on one of the family estates in Yorkshire. The only news I hear about her is what he deigns to impart. He says she has a governess and everything she needs, but he has lied to me before.’

‘Why will he not let you see her?’

Lord Routledge didn’t answer for a second, and she saw pain flashing across his face. ‘My father is a cruel and complex man, who derives pleasure from other people’s pain, but more than that he loves to be in control of everyone. He likes to have people dangling on a string like a puppet, and then he makes you dance to his tune.’ He shook his head. ‘Once I was old enough to strike out on my own, I rebelled, refused to conform. It culminated in my marriage to my late wife, whom he did not approve of one little bit. When I announced the wedding, he told me to call it off or I would never see Sophia, my sister, again.’

Sarah thought of all of the good times she had shared with Selina—the secret conversations in bed at night, the laughter they’d shared as they jumped over waves on the seashore. She couldn’t imagine someone telling her she could never see or speak to her sister again. Selina had only been gone for a few weeks, and already Sarah felt as though a piece of her heart had been ripped out.

‘I thought he was bluffing, that once he saw I would not be controlled by him he would relent, but I should have known better.’

‘He’s kept you from seeing your sister for all that time?’

‘Yes. So you see, Miss Shepherd, I cannot be there to protect her, from him or from anything else. It is always my hope that other people would show her kindness if she was in need of some.’

‘I am sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I lashed out, and you were closest and easiest to hurt,’ Sarah said, looking up and holding his gaze.

‘I understand why you are so upset. The talk with Agnes Pepper was not at all helpful.’

‘It was the last thing Selina mentioned in the letter. She was really excited about going to see Agnes Pepper. I’ve followed every other lead, chased down every other name she talked about. There’s nothing, no clue of where she would have looked next.’ She wrung her hands together, worrying at the skin at the side of her thumb with her nail. ‘It feels as though she has just disappeared into thin air. I do not know what to do.’

‘I will not force my help upon you, and I cannot promise to uncover anything that you have not, but sometimes a new perspective is all that is needed. If you want my assistance to go over everything, then I would be happy to offer it.’

She considered the man sitting next to her. Sarah normally liked to do things alone, without the help of anyone else, but here she would have to admit defeat. The stakes were too high for her to indulge her pride.

‘That would be very kind, thank you.’

‘Good,’ Lord Routledge said, clapping his hands together. ‘Where do we start?’

Three hours later they were back in Hyde Park, this time seated on a blanket on a patch of grass close to the Serpentine. It was a glorious day, although the clouds had just started to bubble up as they did when it was hot and humid, and there were plenty of families seated in a similar way dotted over the grass. A group of children giggled as they tried, without much luck, to set a paper boat floating on the water. Their nannies sat and gossiped, stretched out and enjoying the sunshine and freedom from the nursery.

Sarah had returned to her lodgings to collect the letters she had received from Selina, arranging to meet Lord Routledge back in the park a few hours later. It was a very public place for them to be discussing Selina’s disappearance, but they could hardly retire to either of their lodgings.

Carefully Sarah set out the letters in date order.

‘Unfortunately, Selina took all of the original letters, the ones sent by our father to our mother when they were courting. I did read them when we first discovered the truth after our mother’s death, but I cannot remember much. I was in shock, unable to take much in.’

‘So we have to rely on what your sister said in her letters, and from them try to work out where she might have looked for clues next.’

Sarah felt a sudden surge of anger towards her sister. It was typical of Selina to disappear without a thought for anyone else. She had always been flighty and carefree, never thinking about the consequences of her actions. Not that anything bad ever seemed to happen to Selina. Her natural charm and positive outlook always meant that, somehow, she landed on her feet, even when doing the most reckless of things.

‘That’s right.’

‘You must have discussed the situation with your sister, either when you found the letters or since. Did you talk about who you thought your father could be?’

Sarah thought back to the moment she had stumbled across the letters. It had been soon after their mother had passed away, and she had been clearing out the few personal effects their mother had kept private. There was a large wooden chest she kept locked, the key around her neck. Sarah had only seen inside a few times. She had always thought it contained her mother’s most valuable items of clothing, and perhaps the few pieces of jewellery she had that she didn’t wear day to day.

Under the layers of material, right at the very bottom of the trunk, she’d found the neatly tied bundle of letters. Immediately her instincts had told her these letters were important. Even without reading them, she had realised this was the reason her mother had kept the chest locked, not out of fear of thieves breaking in and stealing her valuables.

She’d handled the papers carefully, at first thinking they were letters from the father they had been told about, perhaps whilst he was posted away in the army, but once she had started reading the truth dawned quickly.

‘There was nothing specific in any of the letters, they were all very vague. He wrote of the tedious, never-ending round of balls and dinner parties in London, and how he wished he was in the countryside with our mother. That was why we suspected he may have been wealthy. Very few people attend the London balls.’

‘It does narrow it down quite considerably.’