The Traitor (27 page)

Michael’s features lost their typical veneer of irritability, becoming downright bleak. “For?”

“I am sorry I did not tell her…” The words felt foolish and impotent. At that moment, Sebastian’s whole life felt foolish.

“You did not warn her she might go to bed a widow tonight?” Michael took Fable’s reins and tied them to the same sapling.

“I did not tell her I love her.” Had not told her she deserved much better than a traitor baron, and had not told her so many other things that now seemed far more important than allowing MacHugh to indulge a Scotsman’s injured pride.

“If you love her,” Michael said, “then knock MacHugh’s arse in the mud, and go on a tour of the Continent with your lady wife. At least give her a few babies before she’s widowed, so she isn’t left on the charity of the Crown.”

Milly would be well provided for from Sebastian’s private wealth, though that gave him little comfort.

“Acknowledge MacHugh’s seconds. The ground will only become muddier the longer we wait to deal with this unpleasantness.”

Something an intelligent man might keep in mind when he deceived his new wife.

MacHugh was draining the contents of a silver flask, his seconds keeping their backs to Sebastian. As Sebastian shed cravat and coat, Mercia’s words came back to him: MacHugh was good with his fists, but overconfident. Didn’t mind his defenses, and overused his right.

Or words to that effect. Milly would have been able to quote His Grace word for word. Sebastian’s shirt came off next, and then his boots and stockings. The ground was cold and slippery beneath his feet, and the occasional rock or root would no doubt make the footing even more interesting at precisely the wrong moment.

As Michael conferred with the kilted bear holding MacHugh’s horse, Sebastian focused on the gnawing ache that had plagued him since he’d ridden away from St. Clair Manor the previous evening.

Ridden away from Milly.

What he felt did have some frustration in it—would Wellington’s minions never stop bothering him?—but also despair, and a quality of homesickness. He’d endured this feeling for years at the Château, until he had nigh choked on it with each thick, bitter cup of coffee he’d downed.

The feeling was worse now though, when, as Michael had said, Sebastian could dream about a real peace, one that included a wife and children.

“MacHugh’s ready,” Michael said, shifting Sebastian’s boots so low-hanging branches gave them some protection from the rain.

“Did you offer an apology?”

“Tried that. No luck.”

Sebastian passed his signet ring over. “Any words of advice?”

“Stay the hell alive. You’re the last excuse I can use to put off going North.”

Sebastian willed his body to relax, despite the damp and the chill. “I will make every effort to oblige you. Do I assume one of those skirted mastodons is a surgeon?”

“The shorter one. MacHugh thinks he owes it to your widow to clean up your corpse before he sends you home to her.”

“Most considerate of him. Let’s get this over with.” They walked forward into the clearing as MacHugh tossed his flask to his second. “You’ll tell Milly?”

“Bloody hell. Yes.”

A damp, drippy silence went by while Sebastian studied the terrain. The left side of the clearing rose slightly, suggesting the ground might be less boggy. Rocks jutted toward the right, rocks a man would not want to fall against but ought to maneuver his opponent into.

“Your lordship, good morning,” MacHugh said, swaggering into the clearing. “Brodie says we’re not to kick each other in the balls, which suggests—contrary to all rumor and inference—you have a pair.”

MacHugh’s version of civilities.

“You’re not to bite me, either, MacHugh, lest the taste of my treasonous flesh fatally poison even so stout a constitution as yours. Shall we chat away the morning, or be about our business?”

Any conflict had a psychological aspect that a combatant ignored at his peril, so Sebastian had allowed a hint of a French accent to slip into his words, the better to goad MacHugh.

“My thanks for the reminder,” MacHugh said. “Gentlemen?”

The seconds paced off a circle of sorts while Sebastian mentally reached for the detachment he’d worn like a shroud for five years. MacHugh did not want to kill him—though somebody did—and when this morning’s inconvenience was dealt with, Sebastian intended to find out who.

***

“If milady would slow down,” Milly’s groom panted, “it’s barely light.”

“This is as light as the day will likely get,” Milly said, tossing her ruined bonnet off into the bushes. “Why does this wood have to be so perishing large?”

She took stock of her surroundings, comparing it to the Duchess of Mercia’s description. The clearing could not be far, but had Her Grace said it lay to the left of the rise or to the right?

“I should at least have tried to write down the directions,” Milly muttered. Or asked Her Grace to write them down, to print them, even, because Milly’s humiliation at making such a request could not possibly compare with her fear for her husband’s life.

Or her despair at his betrayal.

A horse whinnied from among the trees to the left of the rise.

“This way,” Milly said, hurrying off. Her boots slipped and nearly went out from under her in the mud, while the groom, exercising a damnable quotient of prudence, trailed her at an increasing distance.

Thank goodness Fable was snow white, because without the beacon of his coat among the wet greenery, Milly might have missed the clearing. As it was, she half slipped, half clambered down a bank, stopping short at the sight before her.

Michael Brodie stood off to the side, looking positively martyred, and two other fellows in kilts bore similarly pained expressions. In the center of the clearing, Sebastian and another fellow were stripped to the waist and pounding away at each other.

No, not at each other. The fellow in the kilt was pounding on Sebastian, who ducked, feinted, and dodged as many blows as the Scot landed.

“Fight, damn ye, St. Clair!”

“I drugged your drinks. I didn’t give you a fair chance,” Sebastian panted back, just as another blow landed on his jaw. He’d jerked back, but the sound of a fist on flesh was enough to make Milly’s gorge rise.

“I mean to kill ye, and I’ll not—bluidy blue blazes!”

Milly saw when the Scot caught sight of her, because he trotted backward, away from Sebastian, and let his fists drop.

“Get away from my husband, you, you
meat
wagon
.” Milly tromped up to the Scot and planted her hands on her hips. “What would your wife say about this stupidity? Does she know you’re out prancing around in the rain in nothing but a kilt, intent on killing a man who was not to blame for your capture?”

“Milly—”

She rounded on her husband, who’d spoken her name in quiet, patient tones.

“Quiet, please, your lordship. This fellow owes me an answer.” She turned back to the Scot rather than behold the sight of Sebastian’s red and puffy jaw.

“Be she daft?” The Scot spoke over Milly’s head, the consternation in his voice real.

“I am not
daft
, I am
married
to the most impossible man in the realm. A man who did not capture you, did he?”

Sebastian’s opponent eyed Milly as if she might be something worse than daft—as if she might be
right
.

“Nay, he did not, but I was turned over to him the next day.”

“And this is his fault? If you’d come across a French officer out of uniform, would you have wished him good day and gone whistling on your way?”

He widened his stance. “That’s not the point. The point is St. Clair brought it all up again, before another officer, and I willna, I
canna
allow—”

“Another officer,” Milly spat. “Some other officer caught with his breeches around his ankles while he made the acquaintance of a French maid. Some other fellow St. Clair did not capture, did not relieve of his uniform, and did not ask to have thrust into his keeping.”

“Milly, please.”

If she looked at Sebastian, she’d cry. She’d cry and throw herself against his wet, naked chest, where, if she weren’t mistaken, other bruises were soon to manifest.

“Go home, sir,” Milly said to the meat wagon. “Unless I miss my guess, the same arrogance that had you running around behind enemy lines without your uniform is responsible for causing this folly today.”

She ruined the effect of this pithy observation by swiping a lock of wet hair from her eyes.

“St. Clair, I dinna mean to make her cry. We said no blows below the belt, but this—”

The wretch was pleading with Sebastian. While Milly stood blinking furiously in the rain, Sebastian’s hand landed on her shoulder.

“Perhaps, MacHugh, you will see the futility of further attempts to settle our differences through pugilism. I am sorry that you’ve been upset, and I did not breathe a word to anybody of what passed between us in the officer’s mess at the Château. I was not proud of my tactics, but your disclosures spared both sides a final useless skirmish—or worse—before the winter camps were set up.”

MacHugh rubbed his jaw, an angle of bone that looked like it could hold up to a solid kick from a plow horse without sustaining damage. “That’s all?”

“Nothing more. I will not insult your temper by swearing it, but you have my word.”

Tears ran hot down Milly’s cheeks, like the anger trickling through her as the men exchanged reminiscences of war. MacHugh’s temper would be nothing compared to hers, though it was some consolation that Sebastian would be alive to suffer her wrath.

A second hand landed on Milly’s opposite shoulder. She wrenched away.

“The woman is protective of ye,” MacHugh observed. “I expect she’ll deliver ye a thrashin’ far more punishin’ than what I might have done.”

“She will,” Sebastian said, and perhaps the man still possessed a shred of common sense, because he’d answered in earnest.

“I wanted ye…” MacHugh regarded Milly as he spoke. “I wanted ye to know the keen despair of having lost, St. Clair. Lost your honor, your wits, your little part of the war. And for nothing. It haunts a man.”

Milly knew that despair. She swiped at her hair again and tried not to think of how good it might feel to lay about with her fists—at the Scot, at Sebastian, at Michael trying not to look worried as the rain dripped from his hat brim.

Sebastian spoke softly. “It does. Haunts his every waking and sleeping moment.”

MacHugh bellowed to his second, “Ewan, my flask.”

A silver flask came sailing through the air. MacHugh caught it in an appallingly large hand. He took a drink and held it out, not to Sebastian, but to Milly.

“My apologies, mum. A slight misunderstanding, ye see. No harm done. A tot will ward off the chill.”

Milly wanted to hurl the flask at him, wanted to bellow and rage and scare the horses, except a sip from the little flask would eliminate one threat to Sebastian’s welfare.

“We all make mistakes,” Milly said, tipping the flask up. “Some of them more serious than others.”

“Aye.” The Scot’s expression might have borne a hint of humor. Milly did not care that he was amused, did not care that he was perhaps impressed, or even that he might have pitied Sebastian his choice of wife.

“St. Clair, I bid ye good day, and”—he gave Milly an appraising look—“I bid ye good luck.”

He bowed slightly to Milly and stomped off, leaving her with the flask and the temptation to pitch it at his retreating backside.

“Don’t,” Sebastian said, easing the flask from her grasp. He’d moved up behind Milly and spoken softly. She could feel the heat of him, could catch a whiff of his sandalwood scent over the smell of damp earth and wet greenery.

He turned her by the shoulders and wrapped his arms around her. “Say something.”

She rested her forehead against his bare, bruised chest, emotions and words tangling up in her throat.

How
could
you?

Why
did
you?

How
am
I
ever
to
trust
you?

“Take me home.”

***

Sebastian walked out of the clearing half-naked, sopping wet, and barefoot, none of which mattered. He climbed into Milly’s coach and took the bench across from her, though she was just as wet as he.

“Who told you?”

She kept her head turned to gaze out the window, but because she wasn’t wearing a bonnet, her profile answered him handily enough. It didn’t matter which helpful, misguided soul had told her about the duel; it hadn’t been Sebastian to give her the news.

“Alcorn. He sought to reveal to me the depths of my folly in marrying a man who apparently duels for recreation. I am to turn to him for guidance. He holds out hope the marriage can be annulled.”

If she’d been seething, bitter, infuriated, or hysterical, Sebastian would have been less alarmed, but Milly was calm, terribly, unreachably calm. Sebastian recognized her achievement because he’d endured years of such calm in the mountains of southern France.

“You’re angry.” And she was no longer crying.

“I am disappointed. I will weather this blow, having managed similar tribulations in the past.”

The idea that Sebastian might have anything in common with the relatives or the fiancé who had treated her so shabbily helped him locate his own temper. “You are capable of mendacity, too, Milly St. Clair.”

His use of her married name elicited the barest, least voluntary flinch, which made his temper flare up like a glowing ember finding a fresh breeze.

“Had your aunt asked me, I would have told her plainly I read very poorly. She did not ask and did not include literacy among the qualifications required of her companion. Does it hurt?”

Her question confused him because her chilly reserve hurt him far worse than MacHugh’s fists had.

“Your jaw, your chest, all those bruises coming up where MacHugh pummeled you. They have to hurt.”

Now that she’d drawn his attention to them, Sebastian mentally inventoried his injuries. “None of it’s serious. MacHugh was still investigating my responses rather than truly attacking.”