Page 101 of The Traitor
They were arguing history, and miserable history at that, while Anduvoir was skulking about Mayfair and Milly was without protection.
“Enough, Michael. I’m off to find John Coachman. Ask the professor to wait for me.”
A lift of Michael’s eyebrow suggested he knew damned good and well Sebastian was excluding him from the interview with the coachman. Michael’s loyalties had become suspect, and bringing Anduvoir to Sebastian’s attention would be a convincing way to allay those suspicions.
Sebastian passed him the cat and headed for the mews.
Only to be radically disappointed.
“She got out at a hackney stand in Piccadilly,” John Coachman said. “Cabs lined up in the street, patrons lined up on the walk. You can get a cab to pretty much anywhere from Piccadilly, my lord, including to King’s Cross.”
From whence the postal coaches took the Great North Road to points varied and distant.
Sebastian wanted to wring the old man’s neck. “She gave you no indication of her direction? She popped out of the carriage and simply sent you on your way?” Milly might well have behaved exactly thus.
“She said I wasn’t to worry, but to go directly home.”
The coachman wasn’t to worry. Thecoachmanwasn’t toworry. The dread congealing in Sebastian’s chest acquired a new intensity, and a veneer of admiration. Whatever course she’d set, Milly was confident in it.
“What direction did the hackney stand face?”
“Northbound,” the coachman said.
“T’weren’t northbound.”
Giles, Sebastian’s largest footman, shifted from foot to foot two yards away.
“Now see here,” the coachy said, drawing himself up. “You’re not to interrupt your betters nor even to take notice of ’em without permission, young man. His lordship weren’t asking you—”
“Why do you say it wasn’t northbound?” Sebastian asked.
“We had to turn the coach around, and while we did, her ladyship crossed the street and hailed a westbound cab. I heard her holler to the fellow to take her to Chelsea, and she had a little satchel with her. I waved to her, and she waved back.”
A woman utterly broken in spirit did not wave at her servants across a busy thoroughfare. A fraction of Sebastian’s unease relaxed.
“You’re sure she said Chelsea?”
“Aye, milord. Driver answered her clear as day, ‘Chelsea, it is!’ Probably wanted to show the other fellows he’d landed a good fare.”
Milly had been safe and happy in Chelsea; she’d had allies there. Of course, she’d seek comfort in familiar surroundings when her marriage was no comfort at all.
“Thank you, Giles. Walk with me, if you please.”
As Sebastian traversed a short distance down the alley, he sorted through options. His first impulse was to retrieve his wife the way he’d pursue an escaped prisoner. She was his wife, and she belonged with him—belongedtohim, and he to her. Except that sentiment bore a noticeable stench, not of loyalty or protectiveness, but of command and possessiveness.
His second impulse was to throw a saddle on Fable and tear out to Chelsea, which notion bore more than a whiff of desperation.
“Did her ladyship seem upset, Giles?”
“Tired, not upset.” Giles was quite sure of his conclusion. “I have six sisters, milord. Her ladyship weren’t in a taking. Them lawyers would try anybody’s patience.”
“Describe the satchel.”
Sebastian listened with half an ear, because he knew well the little traveling bag Milly had appropriated from his wardrobe. He’d carried it to France as a boy, and brought it home from France as a man. The satchel was battered, sturdy, and stored with lavender sachets when not in use.
A third option emerged in Sebastian’s mind, this one having a certain difficult rightness to it—a punishment to fit the crime, or a well-crafted penance. He was to do exactly as he’d expected his wife to do if she’d learned he’d gone off to a dawn meeting, and her all unsuspecting.
He was to sit at home anddonothingexcept worry and trust to her luck and her judgment. Chelsea was, after all, where Milly had kissed her husband for the first time, too.
