The Traitor (28 page)

“How fortunate. Why didn’t you go after him, too?”

She wanted to analyze an altercation that now meant nothing.

“When they challenge me, I make no resistance. It’s what they want, to have me as helpless as they were.”

She swiveled her gaze to regard him, and he wished she hadn’t. “You are an idiot.” Her eyes held a spark of emotion. Not indignation, but maybe—God spare him—pity.

“I am an idiot who has survived five challenges in less than a year.” Though somebody was determined that there be five more, which also, at the moment, did not matter.

“When you choose not to fight back, you are not helpless, Sebastian. You are controlling matters every bit as much as you did at that awful fortress in France, maybe more. What they want is a chance to meet you on fair terms, and to assure themselves that unbound, on the field of honor, in a fair fight, they could acquit themselves honorably, win or lose. You’re right that they don’t want merely to kill you, they want to kill you honorably, and you deny them that.”

She would confound him with her philosophy, and the coach had already left the park.

“Milly, none of that matters now. What matters is that I owe you an apology, and that I love you.”

Cold, wet, and coming off the excitement of battle, his body wanted to shiver. He prevented this by an act of will and forbade himself the comfort of a woolen lap robe around his shoulders.

“What are you apologizing for?”

Women.
Any answer he gave would be inadequate.

“I apologize for not telling you that I was to meet MacHugh, though I’ll not ask your permission before defending my honor.”

Her calm went from cool to glacial, suggesting Sebastian had given an answer that wasn’t merely wrong, but rather, disastrous. He shifted to sit beside her and wrapped his arms around her. She permitted it, but when Sebastian kissed her cheek, her skin was as chilled as his own.

“How would it have changed anything if you’d known I had this meeting with MacHugh?”

“One confides one’s burdens in one’s friends.”

Because he held her, Sebastian could feel more tears in her clamoring for expression, and could feel her resolve building by the moment.

He struck at her verbally, even as he held her more closely. “You would not have tried to stop me? Would not have locked your bedroom door to me until I agreed to surrender my honor to you? Would not have sulked, brooded, and given me one more thing to worry about?”

She relaxed, implying his words were an egregious blunder, which he’d known even as they were leaving his fool mouth. He lied when he implied that Milly’s concern for him was an inconvenience. He treasured her protectiveness like the last flint and tinder in his possession when a long, cold winter had already gripped the land.

A shudder passed through her, maybe cold, maybe despair.

“I have no bedroom door to lock against you, Sebastian. Had I known your life was imperiled, I would have made love with you
more
.”

“I’ve ordered you a bath,” Sebastian said. “I’ll not have you taking a chill in addition to risking your neck on the field of honor.”

Milly could not watch as Sebastian peeled out of his wet breeches. He was all over gooseflesh, badly bruised, and worried about
her
taking a chill.

“Doesn’t it strike you as the least bit hypocritical that you should fear for my well-being, Husband, but deny me the privilege of fearing for yours?”

Stark-naked, Sebastian hunkered before the fire, added coal, used the bellows with a vengeance, and then rose to face her. His hair was a mess, bruises decorated his belly and chest, and his jaw was slightly swollen on one side.

He was also half-aroused, which shouldn’t have been possible. “Let me get you out of that dress.”

Milly turned her back, because in her haste to leave St. Clair Manor, she’d let one of the maids help her with her clothes, and the dress Milly had yanked out of the wardrobe buttoned in the back.

“You should use the bath first, Sebastian.”

“Hold still.” Perhaps his fingers were clumsy with cold, perhaps he was in no particular hurry. When he’d assisted her out of her clothing on previous occasions, it had never taken him this long.

Milly moved away as soon as she felt her dress gaping in the back. “Thank you.”

“You’ll wear your stays into the bathtub?”

“Possibly. I am that upset, you see.” She hadn’t meant to say that. She’d meant to be civil.

“Then yell at me, curse, break things, and let the entire house hear of it, but don’t shut me out. You have every right to be upset.”

“Unlace my stays, please.” She hated asking, hated standing still while Sebastian struggled with knots made impossible by the wet.

“To hell with this.” He produced a knife from somewhere and sliced at her laces. Even as they fell open, Milly’s breathing still felt constrained.

She bunched her damp clothes in her fists and kept her back to him. “You shut me out, Sebastian. You shut me out in several regards.”

“I tried to keep you safe, to keep you apart from all the…to keep you safe.” He spoke from immediately behind her but did not touch her.

Milly moved away, rummaged in the wardrobe for her only dressing gown—she’d used one of Sebastian’s at St. Clair Manor—and took it behind the privacy screen. She remained hidden away, removing her sodden attire, untangling the rat’s nest her braids had become, and trying to find solid ground in a marriage gone pitch dark and boggy.

When she emerged, Sebastian was also wearing a dressing gown, and a full tub steamed before the fire.

“You first,” Milly said, unwilling and unable to disrobe before him.

He looked prepared to pick a fight so they’d have something to wrestle with besides his lying to her, and letting some fool Scot beat him to flinders.

“My feet are filthy. After you.”

His conscience ought to be what troubled him, not his dirty feet.

“Sit on the hearth,” Milly said, picking up a flannel from the stack piled near the tub. To her surprise, he obeyed her. She poured hot water into a washbasin, dipped the cloth and wrung it out, then knelt before her husband.

His feet were cold, of course. Milly started on the right, wrapping the hot, wet flannel around toes she’d been missing just the evening before. “You’ve a sizable scratch, here,” she said, drawing her finger along the side of his arch.

“I can’t feel it. You don’t have to do this.”

She unwrapped his foot and wiped at the muddy spaces between his toes. “Why did you tell me you would engage in no more duels, when you knew of at least one?”

Sebastian closed his eyes, as if she were whipping his soles, not bathing his feet. “I said there would be no more pistols at dawn, and I spoke the truth. As the party challenged, I can select the weapons, and I will eschew pistols henceforth.”

Milly rinsed and wrung out the cloth in the basin, muddying the water.

“You lied by omission then. I can assure you my sense of betrayal does not abate because you were lawyerly in your untruths. Why lie at all?”

This time, she wrapped the hot cloth around his arch.

“Most gentlemen would not burden their lady wives with such information.”

His heels were callused, something Milly had noted during evenings in the library. “You are not most gentlemen, Sebastian. The real reason, if you please. Did you think I would leave you?”

Would he have missed her, or been relieved at her absence? He was a reluctant husband, for all that his efforts to assure the succession had been enthusiastic.

As had hers.

“I wanted to spare you, wanted to preserve you from tossing and turning all night, offering desperate, useless prayers by the hour, choking down your morning tea while you waited for news. Ask Lady Freddy how agreeable such a course is, for she’s had to suffer it too many times in the past year.”

Under the guise of wrapping his clean foot in a dry cloth, Milly hugged her husband’s foot against her middle.

“You would have me believe your lying was a form of consideration, Sebastian, but earlier, you reminded me that I’ve lied too.” She used the basin again, needing to finish before the water cooled. “Give me the left one.”

“You were desperate,” Sebastian said. “You needed employment if you were to avoid your cousin’s schemes. I understand that.”

Milly started on the second foot, which, thankfully, was free of abrasions.

“Do you also understand that lying about mortal combat and lying about an ability to read well are not the same thing at all? You gave me a false promise that you would not duel, then deceived me again as to the nature of your business in Town. Had Alcorn not written that note, had I not been able to wrest a location from Their Graces, had the moon not been full…”

She scrubbed at his foot even when she’d removed all the mud.

“I’ve apologized, Milly, but I do not control who challenges me. How can I make you see that these men will not cease trying to redeem their honor by the only means available to them? This one I had beaten, that one deprived of water, MacHugh I drugged, another who was so fastidious was made to lie chained in his own—”

Milly stopped this recitation by virtue of wrapping her arms around her husband’s waist.

“You did not capture them. You did not wrest their uniforms from them. The war is over, and has been for some while. Those officers are all walking about as free men, and yet you are trapped in that miserable garrison. Do you know that a properly timed blow to the chest can stop the heart from beating?”

He held her, while Milly waited for him to say something, to say anything honest and true. She waited for him to tell her that he’d never wanted to marry her; he was weary of living; he had more duels scheduled for the very next week.

She felt his lips graze her forehead. “The water’s getting cold, Wife.”

Yes, it was. Milly rose and wrung the soiled cloth out with particular force.

“Did you even have an appointment planned with the solicitors?”

He bent to unwrap his right foot. “Of course, I did.”

He’d scheduled such an appointment, because the best lies were packaged in mundane truths, and he folded up the damp, clean flannel so very carefully lest Milly see that truth in his eyes.

“I’ll be meeting with the solicitors myself,” Milly said, moving toward the door. “And your presence will not be needed.”

He rose, looking pale, angry, hurt, and…damn him,
dear
.

“Take the professor with you, or Michael. Don’t attempt to puzzle through legal documents alone, and don’t sign anything you aren’t absolutely comfortable with or sure of.”

“I’ll take Aunt Freddy. You’d best tend to your bath. The water won’t be warm much longer.”

***

Milly had known exhaustion of the spirit often, when she could not face another day in the schoolroom, when Frieda’s temper was particularly short, when word of Martin’s stupid death had come and nobody had told her until after supper.

Exhaustion of the spirit could ease with time, good company, a few kind words, and rest. As she succumbed to slumber in the bed she’d yet to share with her husband, she said a prayer that exhaustion of the heart could heal as well.

The next impression to grace her awareness was of Sebastian climbing in beside her—an answer to her prayers? He wrapped himself around her, the scent and feel of him already a bodily comfort after only a week of marriage.

“Are you awake?”

How she hated the hesitance in his voice, and how she nearly hated him, for risking death without even telling her. She tucked herself against him.

“Do not attempt to reason with me, Sebastian.”

“I do love you.”

What manner of love had no trust in it? What manner of love insisted on remaining alone with every fear and burden?

“We are in need of wisdom, Sebastian, not flowery sentiments.”

They also needed patience, compassion, and a host of other strengths, but Milly wanted desperately to give him the flowery words back, to explain to him that her anger was a well-dressed, articulate version of innumerable screaming terrors.

Terror that she might have lost him to a Scottish lout with too much pride and even more muscle.

That she might not trust her husband, not now, not ever.

That tomorrow he might face death again, and all because circumstances had conspired to put him in a situation where every possible choice had cost him dearly.

Milly kissed his brow, as he’d kissed hers before departing for London. “I am very, very angry with you, Sebastian. Enraged and disappointed.”

He kissed her mouth, humbly, if a man could kiss humbly.

“You terrify me,” she whispered, kissing him back. “I have married into a war where everybody is held prisoner and the fighting never ceases.”

Sebastian shifted over her, exactly where the most unhappy, desolate part of her wanted him, exactly where he was
not
entitled to be.

“Please, Milly.”

He might have held her to him by force, by reason, by legal arguments and promises of wealth, and yet, they were barely touching. Sebastian poised above her, willing to be banished from the bed and from the marriage.

She knew then the dubious honor of having broken a strong man, and knew as well that Sebastian’s plea—for understanding, for forgiveness, for time—left her broken as well.

She could not allow him to imprison himself in his endless war without even a single ally.

“You belong to me, Sebastian.” Yes, she was hurt and angry, also confused and in need of solitude, but on this point, she would have his concession.

“I belong to you. Wholly to you,” he said, some of the tension draining from him. “I always will.”

Milly pushed at him, and he collapsed onto his back as if winded. She climbed over him, needing to follow up his concession with stern kisses that turned tender, and then passionate.

“Sebastian, this doesn’t—”

He kissed her to silence and shifted them again, so he was above her, poised to join their bodies.

“We’ll talk,” he said. “Later. I understand that. We’ll talk all you please.”

He fell silent on a single, desperate, transcendently gratifying thrust, and Milly gave up on philosophy, strategy, and even thought. She put her rage and fear into her loving, her desperate need to protect him, and her consternation about how to protect herself.

He was ruthless, drawing out her satisfaction into a blend of pleasure and torment that inspired Milly to torment him right back. Never was marital discord so intimately prosecuted, until Milly understood that Sebastian needed her surrender, as she’d needed his.

They were allies, not captives, so she gave herself up to his loving, enduring pleasure upon pleasure, until Sebastian shuddered in her arms, and silence at last reigned over the battlefield.

***

“The women have been gone for hours.” Michael, predictably, was the one to voice the complaint Sebastian also felt.

Baumgartner twirled a quill pen at the desk in the town house library. “Lawyers are not usually motivated to be efficient. St. Clair, you should pay a call on Mr. MacHugh.”

Sebastian stopped staring into the library’s fire long enough to note that the professor was serious. “Why?”

“Because,” Michael said from his perch in the window seat, “MacHugh is not a hothead, not some fired up, titled puppy drunk on his expectations. Somebody goaded him into challenging you. Somebody lied to him convincingly enough that he’d risk his life over pistols or swords—and put your life in jeopardy as well.”

Lied to MacHugh, as Sebastian had lied to his wife, for reasons he himself was no longer entirely sure of.

“Somebody badly wants me dead,” Sebastian said. “And my wife is out running around the City with no one but Giles and Aunt Freddy to keep her safe.”

“St. Clair,” the professor said, tossing the feather to the blotter, “pay attention to your man. He makes sense. Talk to the officers who challenged you, and a pattern might emerge.”

And that pattern could lead straight to Michael, or straight to the Iron Duke himself, in which case emigration to Patagonia might extend Sebastian’s years on earth.

“Mercia could be behind it.” Sebastian rose from the couch rather than keep the library’s tray of decanters in sight. “My instincts have been spectacularly wrong on occasion.”

“Your instincts are superb,” Michael muttered. “They always have been.”

Suggesting what? Sebastian could not read Michael’s expression, because the man was staring out the window. Again.

“Fine, then. When Milly gets back, tell her not to wait dinner for me. I’m off to call upon MacHugh.”

Professor and valet exchanged a glance Sebastian could easily decode.

“Perhaps I should go,” Baumgartner said. “Or at least go with you. As an observer. I’m feeling decidedly Germanic, and perhaps even princely, now that I consider the matter.”

Michael let loose a particularly profane curse in Gaelic, an oath Sebastian hadn’t heard for more than a year.

“It’s him,” Michael said, springing off the window seat. “It’s Anduvoir. I know it.” Sebastian and the professor joined Michael at the window. “That fellow leaving the tavern on the corner, the one with his hat at the wrong angle.”