Chapter Seven
“GOOD HEAVENS, REGINA,” Timothy said from above her. “What are you doing?”
Regina did not look up— a maid had discovered her fifteen minutes earlier, and she’d known Timothy would not be far behind. “The letters.” She turned a page and blinked her eyes to keep the words from blurring. “If I had received his letters, none of this would have happened.”
“What would not have happened?” Timothy asked, standing over her. “What letters?”
“Ross’s letters,” she said, blinking again and raising her eyebrows to help stretch out her eyes.
She had been scanning the journals for hours, reading of parties and business transactions and now and again, news of the family.
Nothing about any letters. Nothing about destroying his daughter’s future.
The longer she’d looked, the more she’d doubted herself, but without proof, could she simply take Ross’s word that he’d written her? “All those years, and not one?”
Timothy’s boots creaked as he squatted in front of her and used his finger to lift her chin. He looked concerned. “Have you been here all night?”
“Last night I met Ross, in a meadow where we used to go.” She looked past Timothy as if to see the memory of Ross walking toward her in the night, so excited to see her even as she steeled herself to keep him away.
She returned her attention back to Timothy’s sympathetic expression and felt her chin begin to tremble.
“Why have I tried so hard to push him away? Why can I not simply trust him?”
He stared back at her, then grasped her elbow and helped her to her feet. She resisted, but without any sleep to fortify her, and with Timothy bigger and stronger, her efforts had little effect.
“But Ross’s letters that never reached me—he said he wrote as often as he could but I never received a single one.
” She stretched her hand toward the jumbled pile of journals as Timothy escorted her from the room.
“Only Papa would have kept them from me, don’t you think?
But he would have written of keeping them from me in his journals, right? He would have written of his reasons.”
“I will search for proof of these letters in the journals.”
She looked up into his face as they walked side by side. “You will?”
He nodded. They reached the stairs, where he kept hold of her elbow as she kept misplacing her feet. When they reached her bedchamber, he opened the door and led her in, startling her maid.
“See that she goes to bed and stays there until... at least three o’ clock.”
The maid nodded.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Regina said, attempting to stay upright even as he pushed her to the bed.
Her thoughts were still a whirlwind, however, and she could not seem to quiet them.
“Ross is so certain— he was so sincere in his surprise that I never heard from him in all those years. Would he have come if he really hadn’t written?
Would he have approached me at the ball?
If Father kept the letters... if he knew... ”
“I told you that I would look for the letters.” Timothy pushed her beneath the covers and pulled them over her. “You will sleep— you’re being absolutely ridiculous right now, and if making sure you stay in bed until you can think clearly means posting a man at the door, I shan’t hesitate.”
Regina allowed herself to relax. “If I’d received his letters, everything would have been different. I’d have waited for him as long as I had to.”
Timothy smiled sadly. “I’ll do my best to find the answers.”