“You can take care of yourself,” he said, setting the cat on the floor. “Miss Danforth is an innocent. She’s a liability to Sebastian because of it, a liability to the household.”
“Love is not a liability, Michael, though I have to wonder if this great excess of protectiveness is directed toward Sebastian. He can take care of himself, too, can’t he?”
Michael’s gaze stayed on the cat as it sauntered out of the sitting room.
“Sebastian cannot protect himself from a woman who regards torture as part of the ordinary course of battle. She scolded him, not for having men beaten and starved and questioned for hours, but for beating himself with his memories.”
Sebastian had never starved anybody—except himself, very likely—and yet, this news was fiercely gratifying.
“Stay out of it, Michael. Sebastian will not thank you for interfering, and I shudder to think what Miss Danforth would do should she learn you were eavesdropping and carrying tales.”
“It’s my job to carry tales, and well you know it.”
She did know it, which had probably been another aspect of Arthur’s cryptic warning. “So you’ve done your duty, Michael. I will share this news with the professor, and we’ll double the figurative guard. And, Michael?”
He paused with his hand on the door latch.
“Miss Danforth is not your sister. She’s not anybody’s sister.”
He nodded once, an acknowledgment, not an agreement, and left without making a sound.
***
“I was told I’d find ye here cowerin’ among the lilies.”
The words were not particularly menacing, but the Scots burr with which they’d been delivered sent a cold, sinking weariness through Sebastian’s body.
Sebastian rose, glad he’d at least been alone in the Society’s reading room—but for the potted lilies making the place smell like a house in mourning.
“MacHugh.”
To say anything more—“You’re looking well,” “A pleasure to see you,” or even, “Good day to you”—would be to invite rage, and Sebastian had had enough rage to last a lifetime.
MacHugh glowered as only a big, mean Scot in a killing temper could glower. “I hear ye’ve been bragging.”
“Then you, or someone else, has heard mistakenly.”
Emotion flared in icy green eyes. Surprise maybe, more likely pleasure at meeting with resistance. “My hearing is excellent, Girard.”
The name under which Sebastian had traveled while flying the French flag, and a bitter taunt. Sebastian said nothing, but noted that MacHugh was in Highland attire and would likely have a dagger in his right boot.
Though the fellow could kill with his bare hands easily enough.
A movement at the door had MacHugh glancing to Sebastian’s left. “Do ye want company for this, Girard?”
The same sort of exaggerated consideration Sebastian might have shown his prisoners. Sacre bleu, not again. “I am at your pleasure, monsieur.”
“So polite.” MacHugh fired off a toothy smile at the fellows standing in the door to the reading room—old Postlethwaite, a devotee of the rose, and a nervous young fellow named Chester, who had an avid interest in the sex life of the bean. “Ye lot will keep out of this.”
Postlethwaite stood his ground, but the green bean melted away as an enormous, purposeful fist came sailing at Sebastian’s jaw. “Name yer seconds, laddie. It’s time I was killin’ ye.”
Sebastian moved his jaw as pain radiated through his neck and shoulders. Nothing broken, a warning shot only, which hinted that MacHugh was not in as much of a temper as his burr and his words might indicate.
And the relief of the blow suggested Sebastian was in more trouble than even MacHugh knew.
“Am I to know the exact dimensions of my transgression, or do I conclude my drawing breath has offended you?”
MacHugh studied the place on Sebastian’s jaw that felt like it was turning a nice, rapidly swelling shade of red.
“Ye ran yer bluidy mouth, Girard. I was willin’ to tolerate yer presence among the living as long as the past remained the past, but ye’ve been telling tales, suggesting I couldna hold m’ liquor while in yer dubious keeping, and for that ye mun die.”
MacHugh had held a prodigious amount of liquor, attempting to drink Sebastian under the table. The misery resulting to Sebastian had lasted days, though MacHugh had failed to earn his freedom.
“I laced your drinks with laudanum, MacHugh. I cheated. You would never have won free, not even if you drank me witless—which you did.”
In his cups—deep, deep in his cups, and aided by the poppy—the Scotsman had mumbled a few facts about a shortage of fodder for the cavalry mounts. Sebastian had been able to send word up the line that the regiment would soon be breaking camp, and had likely averted at least one nasty skirmish between forces all too ready for the winter cease-fire. He’d remembered MacHugh in his prayers ever since, and avoided the near occasion of whiskey.
“Then I’ll kill ye for cheatin’ and braggin’.”
MacHugh was not stupid. He was a canny, wily, hardheaded Scot whom Sebastian—may God help him—liked.
“I’d brag about cheating? About having to cheat?” Having to cheat so one officer at least hadn’t been threatened with torture as a means of loosening his tongue. Sebastian had considered the experiment a success—until now.
Green eyes blinked, putting Sebastian in mind of a large, hungry reptile, one capable of breathing fire. “Ye should have kept yer mouth shut, laddie.”
Sebastian would not contradict MacHugh directly, lest he be cindered right there in the reading room.
“Why do you suppose I waited more than two years to turn up stupid, MacHugh?”
“Because ye’re half-English, and they’re a bit slow. Ye’re half-French, and they’re more than a bit arrogant.”
One could not argue MacHugh’s logic. “Brodie will be my second. My choice of weapons is bare fists.”
A jolly smile bloomed on MacHugh’s craggy face—the man had campaigned across the entire Peninsula, endured months of imprisonment, and still had every one of his teeth.
“Clever. Ye want me to have to kill ye slowly, with my bare hands. Ye’re an optimistic soul if ye think conscience will prevent me from finishing ye off.”
The grin on MacHugh’s face suggested Sebastian was a dead soul.
“I am not an optimist. Upon whom should Brodie call?”
With the peculiar courtesy of a furious gentleman assured satisfaction on the field of honor, MacHugh passed over a pair of calling cards, bowed, and withdrew. Postlethwaite bellowed for some ice while Sebastian found a seat among the lilies and, once again, prepared to face death.
Nine
“Bare fists! You’ll let that damned Scottish meat wagon beat you to death?”
Milly paused outside the door to the library, Mr. Brodie’s words taking her quite, quite aback. She wanted him to repeat them, in part because she’d never met a Scottish meat wagon—she could not possibly have heard that correctly—but also because Brodie had sounded more Scottish than Irish himself.
And then there was that “to death” part, which had to be male hyperbole run amok.
She could not hear Sebastian’s reply, for it had to be Sebastian to whom Brodie addressed himself. To the rest of the household Mr. Brodie was unfailingly polite.
When he wasn’t snooping through their underlinen.
“Miss Danforth?”
The professor stood on the stairs, looking dapper in his evening attire.
“Sir?”
“I believe Lady Freddy could use your assistance to finish dressing for tonight’s card party. She muttered dire imprecations should she be outshone by a Mrs. Flynn. One fears for her health when such moods overtake her.”
The professor’s references to her ladys
hip’s décolletage were a marvel of delicacy.
Milly hurried past him up the stairs. “Summer is coming, Professor. We can hope for a mild evening.”
“A wiser bet than hoping her ladyship might learn a bit of decorum. My thanks, Miss Danforth.”
The professor went sauntering on his way—he was never in a hurry—while voices rose from the library. Milly could not eavesdrop with the professor underfoot, so she hustled up to Lady Freddy’s apartment.
“I have told that boy he is to stop this nonsense,” Lady Freddy muttered. She sat at her vanity, an aging goddess whose accuracy with a thunderbolt was not to be underestimated. “He’s even replaced my pearls with the genuine article, and I haven’t worn pearls for decades.” She swiveled her guns on Milly. “You could carry off pearls, even with that hair. Pearls in your hair would look quite fetching.”
“I have no need of jewels, my lady, and if his lordship wants to replace the St. Clair jewels, then future generations of St. Clairs will likely commend him for it.”
The idea that somebody would commend the baron for something struck Milly as appropriate, though she’d rather the praise not be exclusively posthumous.
Lady Freddy dropped her pearls onto a tray of white-and-gilt porcelain. “My dear girl, there will be no future generations of St. Clairs at the rate Sebastian goes on. He has a duty to the succession that he should have attended to the instant hostilities ceased, but no, he must break my heart instead while he frets over his drooping herbs. What do you think of topaz with my new cream-and-gold ensemble?”
Milly crossed the carpet to stand behind Lady Freddy and consider the image in the folding mirror.
“I think you know more than you should about waging war with silk and jewels, but turquoise or sapphire will go better with your coloring if you’re set on wearing the new dress.”
“Amber would serve for you,” Lady Freddy said. “Though jade would serve better.” She fished through the tray and extracted a sapphire bracelet.
“Let me fasten that,” Milly said, taking Lady Freddy’s left wrist in her hands. “You know, it might be that his lordship cannot see to the succession.”
“Cannot?”
“War affects some men that way; then too, there are injuries a man can sustain that do not take his life, but take his ability to beget life. There. I think it looks very well on you, ma’am.”
Milly sent up a request for forgiveness to the Almighty. Sebastian St. Clair showed every evidence of being in good reproductive health.
Her ladyship admired the bracelet then retrieved its twin from the tray. “Milly Danforth, you shock me. I ought to increase your wages. How could you know of such injuries?”
“My aunts entertained many fellows who served in the Colonial wars. Two in particular were frequent callers. I suspected the gentlemen had an unnatural relationship, but Aunt Hy explained one of them had been injured. The necklace too, my lady?”
“And you know of unnatural relationships! My, what a worldly place Chelsea has become. Yes, the necklace too.”
They experimented with different lengths of the necklace. Lady Freddy eventually decided it should lie exactly where a young widow might have positioned it—so the gold pendant fell right above her cleavage.
“Have I shocked you, Milly?”
“To my very toes, my lady. I shall endeavor to age every bit as shockingly as you have. The professor will be the envy of all who behold you. Though it might be chilly later on, best tuck a fichu into your pocket, my lady.”
Lady Freddy rose from her dressing stool and remained still while Milly unfastened the bracelets and passed her a pair of long white evening gloves. “You’ll take the rest of these baubles down to Sebastian to put in the safe?”
“Of course, my lady.”
The final touches—refastening the bracelets outside the gloves, adjusting Lady Freddy’s wrap just so, choosing a pair of blue silk handkerchiefs edged in gold lace—meant the professor was tapping his toe at the foot of the stairs when Milly eventually shooed her charge off to the Tuesday night card party.
Her ladyship took the professor’s arm and sailed out into the night when Lady Avery’s coach-and-four pulled up.
“God help Lady Avery and Lord Avery, and anybody who thinks the evening is about cards,” Milly muttered as silence settled over the foyer. No raised voices came from the library, even while Milly lingered by the front door, touching up the bouquet of forced white roses and frothy ferns perfuming the air.
She tidied up the capes hanging on the hooks near the porter’s nook, leaning in for a whiff of his lordship’s greatcoat. She examined her hair—which would never sport pearls—in the mirror and then returned upstairs to set Lady Freddy’s boudoir to rights.
Casualties of the battle preparations lay all about, and Lady Freddy’s lady’s maid was no doubt below stairs, enjoying a much-deserved and much-delayed evening meal. Milly rehung dresses, organized cosmetics, refolded handkerchiefs, and put away a gold lace fichu her ladyship had—purposely?—neglected to tuck into a pocket.
The last task required before Milly could curl up with her embroidery was replacement of the jewels in the safe.
Real jewels. Lady Freddy claimed the pearls were the last of the St. Clair valuables to be restored to genuine status, and they were lovely, lovely jewelry. Each single pearl bore a soft, luminous quality and exactly matched the rest of the rope.
Milly resisted the urge to twine a strand in her hair, and scooped up the lot of rejected gems. She did not knock on the library door, it being past the hour when his lordship usually went out, and Mr. Brodie’s entitlement to courtesy being dubious.
“Excuse me, my lord. I wasn’t aware you were still at home.”
Not only was he at home, St. Clair was only half-dressed. His coat was nowhere in evidence, his cuffs were turned back, and his cravat was gone. He stood and came around his desk, though Milly’s sense was that he sought to block her advance into the room rather than to show her the courtesy of rising from his seat.
“Miss Danforth.”
“I thought you’d left. My apologies. Lady Freddy asked that her jewels—”
He shifted closer, taking the tray from Milly’s hands. “Shall I tell you the combination to the safe, Miss Danforth? You won’t have to risk coming upon me of a late night to return them to their proper place.”
As if coming upon him was such a hardship?
“I don’t want to know the combination.” She did, however, want to run her hands through his hair. It stuck up in all directions, as if he’d just risen from a dead sleep, or been sitting at that desk for hours, thrashing through difficult matters.
He set the jewels on the corner of the desk. “Freddy knows the combination, and the professor knows it. I see no harm in you knowing it as well.”
As he moved closer to the candles on the desk, Milly could see that St. Clair was tired. He’d been on his horse before the sun rose, coming and going all day, then closeting himself with Mr. Brodie directly after tea.
“I would as soon not be privy to such information, sir.”
He nudged aside necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, and picked out a brooch from the pile of beauty on the tray. “Take this.”
Milly did not move. “Are you mad? So I can be accused of stealing it?”
Her words did not offend him. Instead, he held the brooch out to her, the gold setting winking in the candlelight.
“Gold and emeralds, Miss Danforth. Your coloring demands emeralds.”
Lady Freddy had said jade should have been her lot. “My coloring might demand emeralds, my lord, but my station in life demands common sense. Put the jewels away, please.”
The room did not smell as if he’d been overimbibing, nor was there brandy among the papers on the desk, and yet his gaze held a forlorn quality, something Milly was used to seeing in a muted
version.
“I want you to have this, Milly Danforth. The brooch was my mother’s, and not part of the St. Clair estate. Giving it to you is simpler than involving a lot of lawyers and documents.”
A premonition slithered down Milly’s spine, from her nape to her belly. “What document are you working on, St. Clair?”
“Nothing you need puzzle over at this late hour, Miss Danforth.” He tossed the gorgeous little brooch aside like so much worthless sentiment. “Come, I will escort you above stairs and order you a pot of chocolate so you might keep your cat company. I cannot believe you prefer the companionship of a feline to that of her ladyship’s coven.”
He would not let Milly get near that desk. Perhaps he was writing to somebody in France, somebody he ought not to correspond with.
“Put the jewels away first, my lord. They shouldn’t be left sitting out to tempt any footman or parlor maid who comes around to tend the fire.”
His smile was tired, and all the more charming for it. “As you wish.”
He moved aside a painting of the casting of the hounds: a jolly field of squires and their ladies having a nip under the trees while the hounds went sniffing around for the scent of their quarry. He stowed the jewels in their vault, and yet, Milly’s anxiety increased.
“Why aren’t the dueling pistols on the mantel?”
St. Clair replaced the painting and regarded the hounds nosing about in the undergrowth on the canvas.
“Michael cleans them from time to time. I suppose it’s a habit left over from his military days. Would you like some scones with your chocolate?”
What she’d like was some honesty with her baron, but when he took her arm and propelled her toward the door, she did not fight his effort to eject her.
“I didn’t realize a valet was charged with maintaining the arsenal.”
“There is much you don’t realize, Miss Danforth. When you’re saying your prayers tonight, your cat purring at your feet, add that to the list.”
Perhaps fatigue was making him French, for his consonants and vowels had stolen off across the Channel.
The Traitor Page 14
