The Traitor (32 page)
Authors: Grace Burrowes
“We have all of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels in the library, you know.” He offered this as they tarried on the steps of the town house, Sebastian two steps higher. Milly could see his face in the shadows of the porch light, could see he was asking a question.
“I cannot read well,” Milly said. “I never will. This does not matter to you, much as your military past does not matter to me, though anything that troubles you troubles me as well. I have longed for the ability to curl up with a novel on a rainy afternoon, swilling tea before a crackling fire while enjoying a rousing tale of love and adventure.”
“I want that for you too. I wanted it for you in Chelsea if I couldn’t provide it to you in Mayfair. I hoped you’d understand that.”
Milly touched the lavender on his lapel. “It’s a silly dream, to indulge in such a pastime. More than I ever wanted that rainy afternoon, I want a tale of love and adventure with you. You will read to me, Sebastian. You will deal with children who perhaps don’t read so well. You will guard my heart and allow me to guard yours. I will go to Patagonia with you, of course I will, if that dream can be ours.”
He came down the steps and enveloped her in his arms. “I will love you. I do love you.”
Milly twined her arms around him. “And I love you.”
She didn’t know how long she stood on the steps, reveling in her husband’s embrace, but the door opened, and Michael stood in the entrance, the light from the foyer turning his blond hair into a nimbus.
“I don’t know about all this talk of moving to Patagonia,” he said, “but Lady Freddy’s in the music room, threatening to decamp for the Continent, and the professor isn’t having much luck talking her out of it.”
***
Sebastian was not about to face Freddy without reinforcements. He tucked Milly against his side and headed for the music room.
“You, I will deal with later,” he tossed over his shoulder at Michael.
Michael, the imbecile, flourished a salute and fell in behind them.
“Sebastian, you must not be too hard on Aunt. She’s old, and she is more tenderhearted than she seems, and you—”
“Hush,” Sebastian said as he held the music-room door for his baroness. “We will deal with this.”
Lady Freddy sat in the middle of the sofa, while the professor stood sentry duty near the piano. “She thinks you will throw her out,” Baum said, a German accent much in evidence.
“For what? Conduct unbecoming?”
Freddy’s head snapped up. “I’ll go. You need not indulge in dramatics, though I will take a few days to make my farewells.”
She launched off the sofa, while Baumgartner looked increasingly distraught.
“Where will you go?” Sebastian asked. “France?”
“I hate France, and while we’re about it, I very nearly hate England,” she said, pacing to the window, turning, and pacing back. “Wellington left the decision in my hands, you see, and what was I to do? If you came home, you’d want to buy your colors anyway, and then—”
“There I’d be,” Sebastian finished for her, “wondering if I’d shot Cousin Luc today, or made a widow of Cousin Lisbette. Perhaps if the invasion of France were successful, I’d be treated to the sight of my men torching
Grand-père
’s estate, or pillaging his vineyards. What a fine treat that would have been.”
Freddy stopped fluttering around the room. She pretended to study a bouquet of bloodred roses, while her eyes filled with years and years of grief.
“Or you would have stayed here, humoring an old woman’s fears, hating your duty to the succession, worrying for your mother’s people. Here, you had only me. In France, you had aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents. Do you know how many letters I started, asking you to come home?”
“Too many,” Sebastian said.
“
Liebchen
,” Baumgartner murmured, “this serves nothing.”
“We’ll tour the pumpernickel courts,” Freddy said. “They’re a friendly lot, and my German is passable.”
“I’ll not have you deserting at this late date,” Sebastian said, “though if you truly want to muster out, say, for a wedding journey, I’ll consider it.”
Milly looked worried, and Sebastian’s heart felt none too sturdy, because his words seemed to have no effect.
“I suppose I could tolerate Italy, if we must winter there,” Freddy informed the roses. “Italian servants are insolent, though. I will probably deal with them very well.”
Sebastian strode over to the window and seized his aunt gently by the shoulders. “You will go nowhere you don’t wish to go.”
She blinked up at him, looking small, old, dear, and uncertain.
“I will go wherever I please, in any case, young man, but when your only paternal relation leaves you to deal with torture and treason on some frozen pile of French rocks, when she might instead have had you brought home with a full pardon, then you are entitled to your sulks and pouts.”
Rather than torment himself with her uncertainty, Sebastian wrapped her in a careful hug, the way a boy might hold a pretty bird caught fluttering against his window.
“I will sulk and pout past reason if you abandon me now.”
Up close, Freddy smelled of roses, and in his arms, she was tiny.
“You foolish boy, don’t you understand?
I
left
you
in
France.
My brother’s only son, and I left you there, and then you began that dangerous business with the money, and I knew—I knew—you would never come home, while all those other boys, those wretched, pompous
English
boys—”
Milly passed Freddy a wrinkled handkerchief, while Sebastian closed his eyes and swallowed past the ache in his throat.
“I am an English boy, sometimes wretchedly pompous—ask my wife if you don’t believe me—and I am home safe and sound. Cease with your dramatics, Baroness, and stop trying to manipulate me with your tears.”
His insults were of more use to his aunt than his handkerchief. She pulled out of his arms and sashayed over to the sofa. “Explain yourself, Sebastian. This exchange grows tedious.”
The professor settled on one side of her, Milly on the other, while Michael pretended to straighten a stack of music.
“I did not understand that Michael was serving an English master,” Sebastian said when Aunt had assembled her court. “Did not even suspect it until recently. From time to time, he’d ask if I thought about returning to England, and intimated that he could see such a thing done. He was most insistent, I assure you. I would list difficulty after difficulty, and for each obstacle, he had a solution. There were pardons, quiet, informal prisoner exchanges, diplomatic accommodations, impunities, all manner of magic wands Michael was certain would be waved on my behalf. I never once took him seriously.”
Michael left off fussing the music.
“I tried, my lady,” he said with creditable long-suffering. “I did try, repeatedly. St. Clair would not leave the Château, though I knew if I presented St. Clair under Wellington’s very nose, we’d have had no trouble. Believes in the peerage, does Old Hookey. He believed in St. Clair’s honor, too, more’s the pity. I came very close to taking your nephew captive, not for his benefit, but to spare my own poor nerves.”
While Michael exhibited a propensity for convincing fictions, an exchange of handkerchiefs was under way, like so many flags of truce. The professor slipped his linen into Milly’s hands, while Aunt traced the initials on Sebastian’s handkerchief. Sebastian saw that Milly was pleased though, relieved and smiling through her tears.
He had the odd thought that breeding women could be lachrymose.
“So you see, Aunt, Wellington put the decision to you. Michael repeatedly put the decision to me, and my judgment was in accord with your own. If you leave my household, I hope it will be because the professor seeks to make an honest woman of you, or because you’ve a sudden longing for sauerbraten and pine forests.”
Freddy looked at the roses, at the music Michael had stacked, at the little square of cloth in her lap, and—fleetingly—at the professor.
“I hate sauerbraten, and if we’ve beaten this subject to death, I will allow the professor to escort me up to my sitting room.”
She marched off the field on the professor’s arm, which meant Sebastian could settle in beside his wife.
“Shouldn’t you be off petting a cat?” Sebastian asked Michael. “Or perhaps making plans to leave for Scotland?”
“When Anduvoir’s on a packet for Calais, bound hand and foot or in a coffin, then I’ll leave for Scotland.”
Sebastian kissed his wife’s cheek, in part because he had to, and in part because such overtures stood a chance of embarrassing Michael into a retreat. “I thought you had a wife or a fiancée secreted in the Highlands.”
“A bit of both actually.” Still the man sat upon the piano bench.
Milly lifted her head from Sebastian’s shoulder. “Both, Michael?”
“We do things differently in Scotland.”
“And you haven’t seen this woman in how many years?” Sebastian asked.
Michael stood, his expression not that of a man anticipating a romantic reunion. “If I
had
offered, even once, to get you off that godforsaken rock pile, would you have come?”
Lavender-scented fingers settled over Sebastian’s mouth. “Don’t answer that,” Milly said. “He didn’t offer, and you were both very kind to poor Freddy.”
“I have a cat to pet.” Michael bowed to them and departed, closing the door quietly behind him. Though he’d tried to hide it, he’d been smiling as he left the room.
Milly subsided against Sebastian, and if he’d had the ability to purr, he would have.
“A wife and a fiancée sounds complicated. I wonder if I should be flattered that Michael chose my company over theirs.”
“You’ll miss him. We’ll visit him, once he’s sorted out his ladies. You had an ally you did not understand as such, and Michael has been more alone even than you.”
Yes, poor Michael, guardian angel at large.
“I owe him an enormous debt, which I can never repay, and so on and so forth. At the moment, I’ve had rather enough of duty, honor, debts, and deceptions. May I please read Mrs. Radcliffe to my wife?”
He thought maybe she’d fallen asleep, so long did it take that wife to respond to his question.
“Mrs. Radcliffe can keep, for now,” she said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I had rather we put the evening to a different use, sir.”
Alas for Mrs. Radcliffe, in the years following, when the Baron St. Clair offered to read to his wife, she frequently declined his literary generosity in favor of those different pursuits. While Mrs. Radcliffe was neglected, the St. Clair nursery became full to bursting, the quiet of the household entirely cut up by the laughter of the children and the many blessings of a lasting and well deserved—if noisy!—peace.
Order Grace Burrowes's other books
in the Captive Hearts series
The Captive
On sale July 2014
The Laird
On sale September 2014
Order Grace Burrowes's other books
in the Captive Hearts series
The Captive
On sale July 2014
The Laird
On sale September 2014
The Laird
The third installment in the Captive Hearts series
by Grace Burrowes
New York Times
Bestselling Author
He left his bride to go to war…
After years of soldiering, Michael Brodie returns to his Highland estate to find that the bride he left behind has become a stranger. Brenna is self-sufficient, competent, confident—and furious. Despite Michael’s prolonged absence, Brenna has remained loyal, though Michael’s clan make it clear they expect him to set Brenna aside.
Now his most important battle will be for her heart.
Michael left Brenna when she needed him most, and then stayed away even after the war ended. Nonetheless, the young man who abandoned her has come home a wiser, more patient, and honorable husband. But if she trusts Michael with the truths she’s been guarding, he’ll have to choose between his wife and everything else he holds dear.
Praise for Grace Burrowes:
“Grace Burrowes has quickly become one of my favorite historical romance authors. The stories she tells will capture your heart and mind.”—
Night Owl Reviews
“Burrowes has a knack for giving fresh twists to genre tropes and developing them in unexpected and delightful directions.”
—
Publishers Weekly
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