The Traitor (5 page)

So he’d gone from being an English schoolboy, albeit a wellborn schoolboy, to a Frenchman’s grandson with inconvenient paternal antecedents, all in the course of a few bewildering months.

He steered the phaeton past Apsley House, that imposing edifice inhabited by no less personage than the Duke of Wellington.

“Tell me more about these aunts,” St. Clair said. He did not so much as glance at the duke’s handsome residence. “Did they tipple? Did they flirt with the curate? The baroness would lose all heart had she no flirts.”

What to say? That Milly did indeed feel like an orphan—more of an orphan than ever? That she was frightened to be so alone, more frightened than she’d been since her own parents died? He’d listen to those sentiments, and he would not judge her for them.

St. Clair viewed the world with a surprising sense of compassion, and yet, despite her own need for silence, despite the lump in her throat, Milly launched into a spate of chattering about Aunt Hy’s flowers and Aunt Mil’s shortbread.

To spare St. Clair from his own thoughts of an orphaned, angry, bewildered past, she talked.

As Sebastian listened to Miss Danforth prattle on about quilting parties and old women who held “knitting meets” with their familiars, he wondered if Wellington himself might not be behind the recent series of duels.

Sebastian’s first year of repatriation had been calm enough. The worst he’d suffered had been scornful looks, the cut direct here and there, a smattering of snide asides—the very same fare served him during his initial months with the French Army. A few months ago, the tenor of the abuse had become more lethal, as if somebody important had gone down a list of post-war grudges and come to Sebastian’s name.

“I have not seen you knitting, Miss Danforth, for all that you claim to have won these knitting races.” Inane talk, this, but she was trying not to cry, and Sebastian would aid her as best he could.

“I knit at night now, when I can’t sleep. I do the piecework during the day, when the light is better.”

“I have seen the old sailors, sitting with their tankards, knitting away as if their hands belonged to somebody else. I have seen the old women, too, knitting while cannonballs flew over their heads. Knitting must be powerful medicine for the mind.”

“Why on earth would old women be knitting in the midst of cannon fire? Why would old women even be within hearing of cannon fire?”

Her indignation was a tonic. Every soul on earth ought to regard the combination of old women and cannon fire with outrage. The human race should go to bed each night praying to
le
bon
Dieu
such a tragedy never befell any of their members again.

Though it would, human nature being incorrigibly foolish.

“I commanded a small garrison in the mountains of southwestern France. For much of the war, we had little to do but serve as a place for troops going into Spain to eat and rest.” He told this lie smoothly, because he’d rehearsed it often in his mind, which made it no less mendacious. “Some officers brought their wives to the post, and we had our share of laundresses and cooks, the same as any army.”

Whores, most of them, and God bless them for it.

“I cannot fathom women in the midst of warfare.”

Miss Danforth looked less grim and peaked to contemplate this topic than to contemplate the loss of her aunts. Sebastian brought the phaeton to a halt in deference to a donkey disinclined to proceed into an intersection. The ragman at the beast’s head was cursing fluently, but in such a thick Cockney accent, Sebastian doubted Miss Danforth could comprehend it.

“Look around you, Miss Danforth. You see the strolling gentlemen, the shop boys, the tigers and grooms, the fellows milling about outside that tavern? Pretend they’re all gone—not a fellow left in sight. Now pretend your job is to kill the enemy, or be killed by her, day in and day out. How long do you think it would take for that combination, of warfare all around and not a single member of the opposite sex among you, to become untenable?”

The ragman lifted a whip from the cart’s seat and came around to brandish it at the donkey.

“War is untenable,” she said. “I cannot see how anybody stands to raise a weapon at somebody who has done them no wrong, much less pull the trigger.”

The whip came down on the beast’s shoulder, viciously hard, and Miss Danforth turned her head away. Had she not been beside him, Sebastian would have already been out of his vehicle. He passed her the reins, leaped down, and approached the donkey. The beast was tiny, its hide scarred and its tail matted with burrs. Outside the tavern on the corner—the Wild Hare—bets were being placed, probably over how many lashes it would take to get the animal moving or kill it.

The whip came up again.

“How much?”

At Sebastian’s question, the ragman lowered the whip and turned a puzzled frown over his shoulder. “Beg pardon, guv. I’ll have the beast moving directly, see if I don’t.”

He raised the whip again, but Sebastian forestalled the next blow by the simple expedient of snatching the whip from the man’s hand. “How much for the beast?”

Simon gestured for his tiger, and the boy came to heel quickly, no stranger to these encounters. Simon passed the lad the whip, because sometimes a man needed two fists on short notice.

“Yer want t’buy ’er?”

“
How
much?
”

The ragman dressed to advertise his trade in an assemblage of fabrics that, had they been clean, would have been colorful enough for any tinker. Rheumy blue eyes turned crafty. “I’ve met your kind. You like to beat ’em, like to beat the wenches too.”

The donkey stood quietly, head hanging, while the gallery at the pub had gone silent.

“I do appreciate the necessity for the occasional display of violence,” Sebastian said, stroking a hand over the animal’s shaggy gray fur. “But I like my opponent to be able to fight back, not trussed up in harness, a bit in her mouth, and a whip in my hand.”

On the seat of the phaeton, Miss Danforth was perfectly composed. The team stood placidly in the traces, suggesting not even her hands conveyed nervousness.

“Two quid.”

Exorbitant for a beast broken in spirit, foundered, and underfed. Sebastian flicked a glance at the tiger, who produced the requisite funds. “You have two minutes to unhitch your cart.”

He climbed back into the phaeton, and before he could retrieve the reins, Miss Danforth signaled the team to walk on. His geldings—a young pair given to occasional fits and starts—moved off smoothly.

“You were discussing your aunts, Miss Danforth.” He came off sounding like a headmaster trying to restore decorum to a classroom overtaken by chaos.

“
We
were discussing the civilizing influence of women on men compelled to make war. If I hadn’t been here, you would have trounced that fellow, wouldn’t you? I would have liked to have seen that.”

He
liked the sight of her, her posture the perfect, relaxed, graceful pose of a lady comfortable with the reins. Had her knitting aunts taught her how to drive? “You like seeing men behave like animals?”

“Of course not. I like seeing justice done. I like that very much. The donkey was afraid of the dogs hanging about the tavern.”

He thought of her cousins, who hadn’t had the decency to notify her of her aunt’s death. Oppressed and bloodthirsty were not the same thing. “Justice is a fine objective, bloody knuckles are not. Will you give me back the reins?”

She looked down at her hands in surprise, then over at him. “Must I?”

The smile she turned on him was complicated. Winsome, chagrined, a bit sad, and entirely feminine. Were she French, she’d learn to use that smile, because it made her not beautiful—her coloring was too vivid to be beautiful—but alluring.

“No, you need not. My horses have decided they like you. This is a great compliment.”

He
liked her. He liked that she hadn’t turned up sniffy because he’d threatened a ragman, discussed money in the street, and taken up for a homely jenny who was—to all appearances—merely exhausted and in want of courage.

Sebastian propped his foot on the fender and decided to make a clean breast of matters. “It is a failing of mine to interest myself in the fate of fractious animals. I will find the little beast work at the Chelsea farm if she can be made sound in body and spirit.”

Miss Danforth cooed to the horses, and they lifted to a spanking trot. “You get it from your aunt, then. I’m a fractious animal, and she’s found work for me.”

“You are not wearing driving gloves.” Miss Danforth was poor enough not to have a good second pair, and yet, Sebastian didn’t take the reins from her.

“Your geldings have velvet mouths. I was dreading this trip, but I’m enjoying it now. Aunt Hy would like that.”

Her smile was muted, but because he’d achieved a distraction from the near occasion of tears, Sebastian let her keep the reins and remained silent until they’d reached their objective less than an hour later.

Chelsea was little more than a village enjoying a spate of growth owing to its proximity to London, and yet, it was still a pretty village. Miss Danforth drove them down one of the quieter streets, to a tidy Tudor house set amid a riot of daffodils.

Sebastian saw many an Englishman’s dream in the snug, tidy cottage—many an Englishwoman’s too. “I am not cheered to think you left this for the stink and pretense of Mayfair.”

She gave him a look, suggesting his observation was unexpected. “I am not cheered to think of you watching over old women while cannonballs whizzed overhead. The key is around back.”

The cottage was more substantial that it appeared from the lane. Miss Danforth maneuvered the phaeton around back, where orderly gardens backed up to pastureland. When he’d set her down and tied up the geldings, she extracted a key from between two loose bricks and opened a back door.

She gestured him inside, which was a surprise. A man and an unmarried woman ought not to be in an empty house together, not according to the strangling list of proprieties adhered to by Polite Society.

“I am worried about Peter,” she said, taking off her bonnet and gloves. “The house might already have been let, and the next tenants are not likely to look kindly on him.”

A soldier learned to appreciate simple things—quiet, order, solitude, and cleanliness. The house offered these gifts in abundance. The kitchen was spotless and full of light from back windows overlooking the gardens. The copper-bottomed pots gleamed, the andirons were freshly blacked, the mullioned windows sparkled.

The curtains sported embroidered borders of pansies and morning glories, jewel-tone colors in riotous patterns. As Sebastian moved with Miss Danforth upward through the house, the same peaceful, pretty aesthetic prevailed.

“This is a happy house.” He could feel it, just as he’d felt the misery, pain, and despair in the cold stone walls of the Château.

“My cousins could not understand how we could be happy here, three spinster ladies with only modest means. My aunt’s bequest is in here.”

He followed her into a bedroom, and knew immediately this was where Miss Danforth had slept.

Except in this house, she’d been Milly. She’d been loved, and confident of that love. Her ease showed in the way she moved through the rooms, sure of her destination and her place. She knelt before a bed covered by an elaborately embroidered counterpane, peacocks and doves, beauty and peace in a pattern of green, blue, white, and gold.

“This was to be my trousseau,” she said, dragging a trunk from under the bed. The bed was raised; nobody would have thought to consider the underspace as storage, and the trunk was not small.

She’d flaunted propriety in the interests of availing herself of Sebastian’s muscle—practical of her. “Is there more you would retrieve before we depart, Miss Danforth?”

“A few small things.”

“Then I will leave you to make your farewells.” He hefted the trunk to his shoulder, happy to depart before grieving sentiments could overtake pragmatism. The trunk smelled slightly of cedar and camphor, and was surprisingly light, suggesting her trousseau did not include much silver.

“I’ll be along soon, my lord.”

He left her sitting on the bed, alone in a pretty house that by rights should have come to her. This thought bothered him, because he was glad her cousins had cheated her out of her inheritance, for it meant his aunt had a cheerful, practical companion who was easy to look upon and competent with the reins.

***

The baron had hefted the trunk holding her trousseau as if it had been no more weighty than a wicker basket full of clean sheets. In his absence, Milly sat on the bed where she’d slept most every night of her adult life until recently, and inventoried her emotions.

The very exercise the baron had no doubt given her solitude to undertake.

She was in the grip of a sense of loss, but the loss had started two years ago when Aunt Mil had begun to fade. The aunts had known they were leaving Milly, and had done what they could to safeguard her future.

The house was just a house, as Aunt Hy had said. When the baron had escorted Milly up from the kitchen, the house had felt small and empty.

In addition to the feeling of loss was a sense of satisfaction, because the aunts’ plan was successfully implemented. Milly was safely ensconced in the employ of a Mayfair baroness, one who understood about dreadful cousins.

And Milly was relieved too, because even if those dreadful cousins should surprise her on the premises, his lordship would deal with them, as Lady St. Clair had no doubt intended.

St. Clair would not come back inside to retrieve her, either. His ease with difficult emotions meant Milly would not have to rush her farewells.

Though neither would she prolong them, because the final emotion Milly could not ignore was loneliness. She had been happy with the aunts, and she had been lonely.

She was lonely still.

“You can come out now.”

Nothing, not even a rustle. Perhaps Peter was downstairs, hiding from Alcorn and Frieda, who’d probably inspected the house before Hyacinth had been measured for her shroud.

Peter did not lack for the self-preservation instinct. “Peter Francis Danforth!”

Still nothing. Milly turned her steps down the hallway, to Hyacinth’s sitting room, and there she found her quarry in his customary spot in the window, as if waiting for the next quilting party when all and sundry would make their obeisance to him before the workbaskets were opened.

“There you are.”

He glowered up at her in feline indignation, flicking his great black tail as if to ask, “Where on earth have you been?”

“I came as soon as I could, and while I appreciate that you’ve maintained the order of the household, it’s time to go now. Aunt Hy wanted you to come with me. It’s the only thing she asked of me.”

Milly spoke not for the cat’s benefit, but for her own. She picked him up, surprised as always at his sheer weight. A cat so fluffy ought not to weigh so much. Predictably, he began a rumbling purr.

“You are a fraud, Peter Francis. You glower at the world, switching your tail and promising doom to all who cross you, and then you start that purr…”