Page 19 of The Traitor
Milly was acquainted with one valet, her cousin Alcorn’s servant, Winslow. She knew not whether Winslow was a first name or a patronymic, and had never heard the fellow say more than, “salt, please,” or “good day, mum.”
Michael Brodie would make at least two of Winslow and was likely half his age, but those weren’t the only reasons Mr. Brodie made Milly uneasy.
“Good day to you, Miss Danforth. I understand condolences are in order.”
He stood in the doorway, unsmiling, her trunk in his hands, the only sound the rain pelting the window of the little sitting room outside Milly’s bedroom.
“Thank you, Mr. Brodie. If you would please put my trunk there by the wall?”
Not in her bedroom. Not even in broad daylight with the door ajar and the rest of the household likely to stroll by did she want to open her bedroom door to this blond, green-eyed Irishman.
As he walked past her, Milly caught the distinctive scent of vetiver. Valets were not to bear such a fragrance, nor were they to hoist trunks about like second footmen or porters.
“It’s a pretty trunk,” he remarked, setting it down and dusting his hands. Michael Brodie had big hands, and they were callused. Milly was certain Winslow’s hands were not callused.
Though the baron’s were.
“The baroness reports that you’ve lost the last of your family,” Mr. Brodie said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping off the lid of the trunk.
Peter chose that moment to appear from under the brocade skirt of the small table in the corner.
“Not the last of my family. I have a married cousin, and he has been blessed with three children.” And she had Peter.
“Who’s this fine lad?”
She wanted Mr. Brodie out of her sitting room, wanted back the last of the solitude guaranteed her by the baroness’s nap.
A brogue or a burr had whispered through Brodie’s question.An’ who’s this foin lad?
Mr. Brodie was trying to be friendly, and despite the chill in his green eyes, Milly felt compelled to acknowledge the overture. “Peter is a bequest from my aunt.”
He picked up the cat, and a predictable rumble underscored the rain against the windows. “A friendly fellow.”
“My aunts treasured that about him, as do I.”
Mr. Brodie glanced out the window, to the damp gardens beneath. The spring flowers were ebbing, and the summer blooms not in evidence, and yet Milly found the scene soothing.
“I am friendly too, Miss Danforth. Now, don’t be pokering up like that. All I mean to say is that if you’ve need of a ride out to Chelsea, next time you might ask me. His lordship would have spared me for such a task were I not from home.”
She wanted to snatch her traitorous cat out of his arms, but Peter was shamelessly snuggling against a broad male chest. “Thank you, Mr. Brodie. I took my request to her ladyship, and she assigned my driver. I trust his lordship was not too discommoded.”
“His lordship would ride to hell on a lame horse for his auntie, but you have to know…”
He paused and scratched Peter under his hairy chin, rendering the feline nigh cataleptic with bliss.
“What do I have to know, Mr. Brodie?”
He turned and sat on her trunk, cuddling the cat like a baby. The sight should have been charming. Milly instead found it presumptuous that Mr. Brodie would make himself so comfortable in her sitting room.
Mr. Brodie cuddled the cat more closely. “His lordship served in the French Army.”
“I know that. He was abandoned by his family after the Peace of Amiens—his English family—and had no real choice.”
Brodie stopped scratching the cat. “Abandoned? He told you that?”
“He offered it, I did not ask. A person’s past is their own business.” Every person’s, including Mr. Brodie’s—andMilly’s.
“Aye, ’tis, but many don’t see it that way. There are those who’d hold a boy’s tragedy against the man he became.”
