Page 26 of The Traitor
Sebastian did tuck an arm around Miss Danforth’s waist. “So my aunt’s companion cannot read.Whatofit?Many well-bred ladies don’t trouble themselves with that effort, and my aunt employs a very competent secretary to deal with letters and the like. If you’re done befouling our morning, Upton, I suggest you allow Brodie and Helsom to escort you from the house.”
Beside Sebastian, Miss Danforth was gratifyingly quiet.
“It’s worse than that,” Upton sputtered. “Her faculties are comparable to that of a simpleton. She cannot readatall, can barely write her name, cannot read her Bible even, and that is despite every effort by competent governesses and tutors, and even my own lady wife.”
Sebastian twirled a languid finger. “Out. Now.”
Helsom and Brodie took a step closer to Miss Danforth’s relation, and that fellow, likely because he was as endowed with a taste for self-preservation as the next bullying coward, jerked his coat down over his paunch and spun on his heel.
“Don’t go after him,” Sebastian muttered, keeping his arm around Miss Danforth. “Don’t apologize, don’t plead, don’t mend fences. Don’t.”
“I want to plow my fist into his belly.”
“Don’t do that either. All that lard means he won’t feel your blow. You’re better off breaking his nose, which will hurt, and the blood will also scare him—messy business, breaking a nose, but he’s the kind who’d be more alarmed with the blood than the pain.”
She peered at Sebastian, and where he might have expected revulsion at his lapse into the thoughts and vocabulary of an interrogator, Miss Danforth instead looked intrigued.
“I would like to see him scared. I would like to see dear Alcorn terrified, and of something other than his wife.”
For her fierceness and her understanding, Sebastian wished, in the corner of his soul that loved the scent of lavender and missed Provence in summer, that he could give her what she wanted. Anything that she wanted, he wished he was able to give it to her.
***
Heknew.Somehow, St. Clair had divined Milly’s worst secret, her greatest sorrow and most profound humiliation. He knew, and yet he stood there, all elegance and unconcern, his arm around her waist as if they were about to promenade the perimeter of some ballroom.
While Milly clutched her piecework and felt sick, Lady St. Clair bounced to her feet. “Professor, you will join me in my sitting room. I must send out inquiries regarding this Upton creature. Sebastian, a medicinal tot for the poor girl. That is a dreadful cousin if ever I beheld one.”
She patted Milly’s arm as she swept past, the professor at her side.
“Some brandy, Miss Danforth?”
The solicitude in St. Clair’s voice nigh undid Milly. She must thank him, decline, and offer her resignation. Packing would not take long, but she’d have to send for her trunk later. “I want Peter.”
St. Clair gently disengaged her sewing from her fingers and set it aside. “You want to learn to read.”
The hurt went through Milly, old, brutal, and mean. “I am too stupid. I have this on repeated, emphatic, unassailable authority, though sometimes I manage fairly well with it.”
He shifted so his arms rested around Milly’s shoulders. On some other occasion, his presumption might have made her feel trapped.
On this occasion, she was tempted to rest her head on his shoulder and weep.
“They tried to beat your letters into you?”
How did he know these things, and why did it matter to him?
“Yes. I wore letters about my neck, as if one can learn to recognize letters upside down more easily than right side up. I stared at them repeatedly, endlessly, in chalk, pencil, and ink. I recited them, and that went swimmingly—I can spell many, many words out loud, like reciting so much poetry—but I cannot read or write nearly well enough, especially if I am tired.”
His scent was a comfort, not as great a comfort as velvet fabric between her fingers, or Peter’s purr against her chest, but a comfort. And when the baron held her like this, in a loose, undemanding embrace, Milly could hide her face against the lace of his cravat.
“If I teach you how to write your name, Miss Danforth, to write it beautifully, confidently, will you stay? Will you stay for at least another month, so I might find a successor to replace you in my aunt’s affections?”
Milly stepped back to peer up at him, because his lordship wasn’t making sense. “I don’t want to leave. I told my cousin the truth—I am content in your employ, more than content.”
He did not return Milly’s regard, but instead appeared to study the bouquet in the window. The lavender was in good repair, but the roses were going quite to pot.
“I am the Traitor Baron, Miss Danforth. You heard your cousin plainly enough. I served the Corsican loyally for years and have made no apology for it. I held English officers captive from time to time, and this is not something easily forgotten. You ought to take your cousin’s concerns seriously.”
Milly stepped away and closed the cover over the piano keys. “Yes, I ought. Alcorn is not concerned for me and never has been. When my uncle grew ill, he specifically charged Alcorn and Marcus to look after me—uncle never read very well either—and Alcorn took that to mean I was his unpaid help, his cross to bear. I do not enjoy being anybody’s cross, my lord.”
