Page 14 of The Traitor
He climbed back into the phaeton, and before he could retrieve the reins, Miss Danforth signaled the team to walk on. His geldings—a young pair given to occasional fits and starts—moved off smoothly.
“You were discussing your aunts, Miss Danforth.” He came off sounding like a headmaster trying to restore decorum to a classroom overtaken by chaos.
“Wewere discussing the civilizing influence of women on men compelled to make war. If I hadn’t been here, you would have trounced that fellow, wouldn’t you? I would have liked to have seen that.”
Heliked the sight of her, her posture the perfect, relaxed, graceful pose of a lady comfortable with the reins. Had her knitting aunts taught her how to drive? “You like seeing men behave like animals?”
“Of course not. I like seeing justice done. I like that very much. The donkey was afraid of the dogs hanging about the tavern.”
He thought of her cousins, who hadn’t had the decency to notify her of her aunt’s death. Oppressed and bloodthirsty were not the same thing. “Justice is a fine objective, bloody knuckles are not. Will you give me back the reins?”
She looked down at her hands in surprise, then over at him. “Must I?”
The smile she turned on him was complicated. Winsome, chagrined, a bit sad, and entirely feminine. Were she French, she’d learn to use that smile, because it made her not beautiful—her coloring was too vivid to be beautiful—but alluring.
“No, you need not. My horses have decided they like you. This is a great compliment.”
Heliked her. He liked that she hadn’t turned up sniffy because he’d threatened a ragman, discussed money in the street, and taken up for a homely jenny who was—to all appearances—merely exhausted and in want of courage.
Sebastian propped his foot on the fender and decided to make a clean breast of matters. “It is a failing of mine to interest myself in the fate of fractious animals. I will find the little beast work at the Chelsea farm if she can be made sound in body and spirit.”
Miss Danforth cooed to the horses, and they lifted to a spanking trot. “You get it from your aunt, then. I’m a fractious animal, and she’s found work for me.”
“You are not wearing driving gloves.” Miss Danforth was poor enough not to have a good second pair, and yet, Sebastian didn’t take the reins from her.
“Your geldings have velvet mouths. I was dreading this trip, but I’m enjoying it now. Aunt Hy would like that.”
Her smile was muted, but because he’d achieved a distraction from the near occasion of tears, Sebastian let her keep the reins and remained silent until they’d reached their objective less than an hour later.
Chelsea was little more than a village enjoying a spate of growth owing to its proximity to London, and yet, it was still a pretty village. Miss Danforth drove them down one of the quieter streets, to a tidy Tudor house set amid a riot of daffodils.
Sebastian saw many an Englishman’s dream in the snug, tidy cottage—many an Englishwoman’s too. “I am not cheered to think you left this for the stink and pretense of Mayfair.”
She gave him a look, suggesting his observation was unexpected. “I am not cheered to think of you watching over old women while cannonballs whizzed overhead. The key is around back.”
The cottage was more substantial that it appeared from the lane. Miss Danforth maneuvered the phaeton around back, where orderly gardens backed up to pastureland. When he’d set her down and tied up the geldings, she extracted a key from between two loose bricks and opened a back door.
She gestured him inside, which was a surprise. A man and an unmarried woman ought not to be in an empty house together, not according to the strangling list of proprieties adhered to by Polite Society.
“I am worried about Peter,” she said, taking off her bonnet and gloves. “The house might already have been let, and the next tenants are not likely to look kindly on him.”
A soldier learned to appreciate simple things—quiet, order, solitude, and cleanliness. The house offered these gifts in abundance. The kitchen was spotless and full of light from back windows overlooking the gardens. The copper-bottomed pots gleamed, the andirons were freshly blacked, the mullioned windows sparkled.
The curtains sported embroidered borders of pansies and morning glories, jewel-tone colors in riotous patterns. As Sebastian moved with Miss Danforth upward through the house, the same peaceful, pretty aesthetic prevailed.
“This is a happy house.” He could feel it, just as he’d felt the misery, pain, and despair in the cold stone walls of the Château.
“My cousins could not understand how we could be happy here, three spinster ladies with only modest means. My aunt’s bequest is in here.”
He followed her into a bedroom, and knew immediately this was where Miss Danforth had slept.
Except in this house, she’d been Milly. She’d been loved, and confident of that love. Her ease showed in the way she moved through the rooms, sure of her destination and her place. She knelt before a bed covered by an elaborately embroidered counterpane, peacocks and doves, beauty and peace in a pattern of green, blue, white, and gold.
“This was to be my trousseau,” she said, dragging a trunk from under the bed. The bed was raised; nobody would have thought to consider the underspace as storage, and the trunk was not small.
She’d flaunted propriety in the interests of availing herself of Sebastian’s muscle—practical of her. “Is there more you would retrieve before we depart, Miss Danforth?”
“A few small things.”
