Page 112 of The Traitor
“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?IleftyouinFrance.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, pompousEnglishboys—”
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.
