The Traitor (19 page)

She would write those sentiments down, too, somehow. A boy needed them, and a mother ought to know that.

Sebastian’s arm fell across her shoulders. “My baroness is fierce.”

“Your wife is fierce.” So was his friend, though Milly would not force that sentiment on him. “Did you always grow hops in this field?”

For a man who’d been away from England for more than a decade, he was well-informed regarding his acres. This field was suited to pasture, being good soil, but too rocky to plow easily. That one had always been the tenant’s common potato field, being thin-soiled even after repeated marling.

He vaulted the stiles one-handed, a display of casual athleticism common to any boy raised in the country, then turned and offered Milly his hand with gallantry country boys never learned.

With each field, each stile and stream, Milly became more and more convinced that all the trials and losses visited upon her earlier in life had been wiped away by the great gift of the person of her husband.

Though the loss of him… She snipped that thought off, because today was her wedding day, and anything or anybody seeking to take Sebastian from her would have to overcome her defense of him first.

Sebastian led her down a grassy lane running between parallel avenues of oaks, until they reached an old overshot grist mill, with lavender, lilacs, and honeysuckle growing in a riot around its whitewashed walls.

Along the stream, blankets and a basket sat in the shade of the oaks.

“This is where you came to dream.”

“I called it planning my life. I intended to be the best Baron St. Clair ever seen. I would write famous speeches, I would advise the king himself, and impress the entire world with my swordsmanship.”

He spoke with affection for that boy. Reluctant affection, but affection.

“I would have been happy to write my lessons,” Milly said, leading him toward the blankets. “Now I am happy to share some victuals with my husband.”

She was happy to share the day with him, to share his land with him, to share his memories with him. As Milly let the peace of the surrounding glade seep into her soul, she would be happy to share herself with him as well.

***

The occasional duel was apparently not enough to keep a man’s instincts sharpened when it came to ambushes. Such were the deadening results of a few years on the fringe of London Society.

“We’re to picnic here?” Sebastian asked. “Wouldn’t you rather take your meal where the sun can reach us?”

Because the footmen had laid out the blankets—a thickness of three old quilts—in the dappled shade near the stream. The meal—assuming his wife allowed him to eat between her questions—would thus take place right beneath one of the best climbing oaks a boy had ever discovered.

Milly snapped off a sprig of honeysuckle, sniffed it, then passed it to Sebastian. “For this meal, my first private meal with my husband, seclusion suits me better. Does the mill still function?”

Sebastian breathed in the scent that symbolized the bonds of love. Honeysuckle was like his wife: a quietly lovely exterior hid a more beguiling and intangible beauty than one suspected.

“The mill ought to work. Local lore is that it dates back to Good King Hal’s day. We had a succession of dry years, though, and my father and a few of the other landowners thought it prudent to build a mill powered by livestock rather than water. The mill closer to the village is larger, but this one could serve when that one’s at capacity.”

Milly went after a cluster of lilacs next, the buds not entirely open.

“Will you make love with me here, Husband? Somewhere you were happy, somewhere a happy memory would be within our reach as the years go by?”

Deliver
me
from
village
girls
when
spring
is
at
its
height.
He took the lilacs from her and led her to the blankets.

“Baroness, you are very bold on your wedding day.”

“I am very happy on my wedding day. Did you know lilacs stand for first emotions of love?”

Yes, he had known that. He paused to strip a few inches of lavender leaves from a bush and held them out to her. “Lavender is for distrust.”

“Lavender”—she upended his hand, so the leaves fluttered to earth—“is for making soaps, sachets, and money. What do you suppose is packed in that hamper?”

He did not care what was in the hamper. He cared very much that Milly should not trust this happiness she mentioned so casually. Sooner or later—perhaps within the week—she would have to deal with being the Traitor Baron’s wife, or—more likely—his widow.

Milly knelt on the blankets, reminding him of another picnic they’d shared. “You are brooding, Sebastian. Do you regret marrying me?” She passed him a bottle of wine along with her question.

A snippet of schoolboy Latin assailed him:
in
vino
veritas
. “I will never regret marrying you, though you…”

She sat back, a knife in one hand, a small loaf of bread in the other.

“Yes, yes, I know. I will regret marrying you. You are a bad, wicked man, treason personified, the shame of three peerages and probably many a colonial society as well. Open the wine, and we’ll toast the depths of your disgrace.”

The bottle in his hand was one of a few shipped back from France years ago, before Napoleon had barged his way onto Britain’s list of crosses to bear.

“Milly, I’m sorry.” So inadequate; so sincere.

She fished another crock out of the hamper and lifted the lid.

“Strawberries. Just for today, Sebastian, might we please not dwell under the cloud of your sorrows and misgivings? Might we pretend you’re any other handsome fellow about to make love with his wife for the first time? You do intend to consummate the vows, don’t you?”

The strawberries went back into the hamper, the lid of the crock clattering against the container. She passed him the knife, though what he was supposed to do with it was a mystery.

Sebastian had upset his wife. She hid it well, probably between a wedge of cheddar and some sliced ham yet to make an appearance on the blanket, but Sebastian was ruining her wedding day.

Their
wedding day.

Between one lovely, scented spring breeze and the next, Sebastian’s emotions shifted from a need to protect his wife against the sentimentality of the day, to a need to cherish her for her tender emotions. Regardless of the outcome of the next duel, and the next—of all of the duels—Sebastian would never have another wedding day. Of that, he was certain.

He set the wine aside unopened, tossed the knife into the hamper, and crawled across the blanket.

“Kiss me, Milly St. Clair.”

He should have asked for her kisses. Of all the questions he knew how to find answers to, that question—“Will you kiss me?”—he could not ask. The best he could do was to nuzzle her jaw, the way her cat might have importuned her for attention—both playfulness and determination in his flirting.

“We’re to eat first,” she said, angling her chin away. “My husband has turned up moody, and I would not impose on him.”

“You should make me beg,” he said, running his tongue over the rim of her ear. “Your husband is an idiot who hasn’t sense enough to be grateful for the blessings that fall into his very lap. I am given to unhappy moods, and I do apologize. I would not burden our wedding day with them further. I shall make love with you, Wife. I will probably do little else for the next week, at least. You may consider that another one of my famous priorities.”

The allusion had the desired effect of tipping up the corners of her mouth. “Some of your priorities are laudable, Sebastian. Will you open the wine?”

She was being coy, for which he adored her. The breeze stirred a lock of her hair across her mouth just as he leaned in to kiss her, so he ended up kissing silky strands as well as her lips.

“Hang the wine.”

He muttered the words against her mouth. She drew back enough to extricate her hair from between their lips. “You might need the fortification.”

Yes, he might. Later.

“Kiss me, Baroness. Today is your wedding day, and you’re fretting over the menu.”

He made a menu of her, kissing her to her back, where she clearly had wanted to be, then feasting on her shoulders, her collarbone, her jaw, the few inches of skin revealed above her neckline. Everywhere, she was warm and fragrant and
his
.

And yet, a man—a husband—ought not to presume. He crouched over her on all fours, as winded as if they’d been wrestling, not kissing.

“Shall we consummate our vows here, Milly? Is this the memory you want of your wedding day?” Because whatever memory she sought, he’d try his utmost to give it to her.

She cupped his jaw then stroked a hand down over his chest. “Yes. Here. Now. Right now.”

Sebastian felt those words, felt the shape of them as Milly’s mouth moved, and something inside him broke free. His life was a shambles, but this moment, these sentiments of tenderness and desire between him and his wife, they were real, pure, and good.

His hand had gone to the falls of his breeches when the first cold, wet drop slapped the back of his neck. Several more raindrops pelted him before reality penetrated his incredulity: the elements were not in agreement with Milly’s wishes—or his own.

“Grab the blankets, Wife. If we’re quick, we can move our feast before we’re soaked to the skin.”

He snatched up the hamper, and they dashed for the mill as the shower intensified. While they weren’t soaked to the skin, the moment, at least for Sebastian, had lost its bloom with damnable predictability.

***

Milly laid out two thick blankets on the threshing floor. Ancient oak was not the softest bed upon which to consummate a marriage, but neither was it any more solid than her determination.

“A passing shower,” she said, taking a place on the blankets. “Get down here, Sebastian, and make yourself useful.”

Her husband apparently recognized a tone of command and left off scouting the mill’s interior. “Useful?”

“I did not bring a shawl, this place is drafty, and you give off warmth.” He gave off sadness, too, and an exasperating sense of resignation. “You never did open the wine.”

Hang
the
wine
, he’d said. Milly had no doubt it was a fine vintage, which would be handy if she could ever retrieve her husband from the memories, doubts, and guilts that had also apparently found their way into the mill’s gloomy interior.

“You are cold?” he asked, prowling away from the enormous grinding stone at the center of the building.

“I will soon take a chill. Sebastian, how is it you were called upon to torture English officers?”

From his arrested expression, Milly surmised that she could not have captured his attention any more effectively had she torn off her clothes.

“An interrogation is my penance for not making love to you in the pouring rain?”

She patted the blanket, and he came down beside her as she lied through her teeth. “We were merely kissing. Has no one asked you this question?”

She gathered from the set of his jaw that no one had been presuming enough—or stupid enough—to ask him, and yet, of all people to entrust with tormenting British officers, a former English schoolboy was not a logical choice.

“I was good at it.” He fitted himself around Milly’s back, so his knees were hiked on either side of her. Of course, she could not see his face as she curled against his chest.

She did not need to. The bleakness in his words filled the entire grist mill.

“Yes, but why
you
? Was it a test of your French patriotism?”

His lips brushed her hair. Milly encircled his waist with one arm, closed her eyes, and felt Sebastian arranging the third blanket over them.

“At first, maybe it was a test, but not entirely. I’d gone into Toulouse to meet with my superior, a nasty little man by the name of Henri Anduvoir. He’d had an English prisoner beaten nearly beyond recognition, and still, the fellow had told them nothing except his name and rank.”

A hint of an accent had crept into Sebastian’s words—the vowels broadened, initial consonants softened:
’ee’d told hem nawthing…

Milly kissed her husband’s throat, where these words had to be choking him.

“But you did recognize him?” Thunder rumbled at a benign distance while the rain drummed on the roof and Milly waited for Sebastian to answer.

“I did not immediately recognize the captive. Anduvoir had the man’s name, and I realized I’d spent a couple of years at school with an older brother. They shared a family resemblance, same blond hair, same build…”

Something in his voice implied not much of the man’s face had remained untouched as a result of the beating he’d sustained. Milly clutched her husband more tightly. “Tell me.”

Sebastian’s chest heaved up with a slow sigh, and Milly thought he’d keep his memories locked inside him, like the poison they were.

“The fellow I’d known, Daniel Pixler, Viscount Aubrey, was the oldest of four boys, one hell of a batsman, and a decent chap. This was the youngest boy, Damien. I knew they had a sister, one sister. She was the youngest, and a bit slow. Daniel had written to her each week, printing the words for her.”

“A good brother, then.” A very good brother who did not require a woman to read well in order to hold her dear.

“I gambled that Damien was cut from the same cloth as Daniel, and told Anduvoir to stop criticizing England’s mad king, and fat, nancy prince, whom any boot boy was free to criticize and regularly did. I told him to stop beating a man who could no longer feel the pain, a man for whom each blow only fortified his resolve to remain silent.”

Beatings could do that. Milly knew this from experience, and Sebastian had reminded her of it when they’d walked in the park.

“What did you do, Sebastian?”

The next kiss landed on Milly’s brow. “In a sense, I was the one who broke.” Then more softly, “I was always the one who broke.”