Page 111 of The Traitor
“You came home on the strength of a pretty letter? I bare my soul to you, offer my most profound and heartfelt sentiments…?”
She did not want him marching off into the darkness, so she took his hand. “The letter was very nice, but the book decided me.”
Sebastian allowed her to tow him in the direction of their home. “You came back to me forMrs. Radcliffe?”
“I came back to you because my heart and soul were in your keeping, and if your sole fault was protectiveness toward me—a protectiveness which was apparently well-founded—then I stand guilty of the same transgression toward you. I could not leave you to deal with those enemies you referred to by yourself, and I could not forgive myself if I’d added to your worries when your enemies were skulking about London itself.”
He looped her arm through his, as a proper escort would, or as a man intent on preventing a woman from fleeing might. “Mrs. Radcliffe told you that?”
“Yes.”
Milly’s husband had more patience than she, because he let her wander along at his side in silence until they were nearly home.
“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 torchingGrand-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?”
