Page 28 of The Traitor
“No thank you, my lady.”
“Most of those riding dispatch had simply accepted sealed orders and gone galloping off with a tidy packet of intelligence just waiting to be captured and deciphered.”
Aunt looked thoughtful while she stirred sugar and cream into her tea. “I gather you took a different approach?”
He’d taken many different approaches. “When I needed information sent to a higher command, or sent”—he shot his cuffs and did not look at Baumgartner—“elsewhere, I relied on the peasantry, the unlettered and the unremarkable, to relay my messages.”
“And this worked?”
“Not always.” No method, no procedure, no clever scheme had been without its failures, some of them spectacular. “I found, though, that those who could not write had prodigious memories. They had far more accurate recall of what they’d been told than those who’d merely shoved a packet of paper into their kit bag and ridden away.”
“And Milly Danforth has such a memory.” Aunt held out a plate of tea cakes to Sebastian, but not to Baumgartner, who would not bother with sweets when there was business to be transacted. “She can recite anything she’s heard practically word for word, sometimes when I’d rather she didn’t.”
Sebastian had listened to Miss Danforth often enough over breakfast, but her ability to recall conversations hadn’t registered, not until her cousin’s visit.
“She has no lap desk,” he said, “and she didn’t send written word to her aunt when she arrived here that she’d found a decent post. She has no Bible, no Book of Common Prayer with her name inscribed in it. She neither sent nor received any written communications. The neighbors got word to her not by sending a note, but by word of mouth when somebody had an errand in Town and could stop by the kitchen door to pass along the news in person.”
“To have no letters, none in any language, is a sad, sad poverty,” Baumgartner observed.
“To have that Upton swine as your sole male relation is a worse poverty yet,” Aunt snapped.
“To have the Traitor Baron as your nephew is the saddest poverty of all,” Sebastian said. “And yet, Miss Danforth has agreed to remain in our household, despite that unhappy connection.”
“Of course she did,” Aunt said. “I pay well, and my company is agreeable.”
Both men remained silent.
“I payverywell, and my company isnotdisagreeable,” she amended. “And you two are no gentlemen. Sebastian, be off with you. The professor and I have letters to write.”
He rose, exchanging a look of sympathy with Baumgartner. The German was in every sense in Aunt’s confidence, not a particularly comfortable honor.
And Baumgartner’s sympathy for Sebastian? To claim the Traitor Baron as one’s only male relation was indeed a sad, sad poverty.
***
Parisians were sensible people. They appreciated the great blessing of living in one of the most beautiful, vibrant cities on earth, and assembled at cafés and along the boulevards when social inclinations overtook them. An occasional stroll in the ordered and civilized surrounds of the Tuileries sufficed to assuage their bucolic impulses.
Parisians did not feel compelled to associate with cows, geese, rabbits, deer, and other beasts in their very parks, while the Londoners—yeomen all, at heart—did. Henri nonetheless chose a shaded bench in Hyde Park for his next assignation with Captain Lord Anderson, in hopes that his lordship might be less remarkable in such an environment.
Anderson did not disappoint. He came striding along in the uniform of the English gentleman—shiny boots, close-tailored doeskin breeches, blue waistcoat, brown topcoat, hat, and walking stick. His watch fob was a tasteful wink of gold, and his gloves were spotless, dyed or chosen to exactly match his breeches. He took a seat on the bench as if enjoying the pretty day, not an ounce of imagination or idiosyncrasy in evidence in his dress or his demeanor.
“Have some gingerbread,monami.” Henri passed over a slice of sweet that would never compare with his own sainted grandmother’s recipe, but did not offend when decently covered with butter. “It’s still warm, and I bought more than I should have.”
Anderson looked momentarily nonplussed, no doubt because one did not eat with gloves on, but the English schoolboy won out over the man of fashion. He took off his gloves and accepted Henri’s offering.
“My thanks.” Anderson popped a bite into his mouth, managing to get a crumb lodged in his moustache. “Quite good.”
A bit heavy on the ginger, and a hint of cloves would have smoothed out the aroma nicely. “English gingerbread, like English ale, has no equal,” Henri said. “Have you anything to report?”
He wasn’t about to compliment the English weather. Even Anderson would pick up on that tripe.
“Dirks told me to take myself the hell off. Those were his very words.” His lordship stuffed the last of his gingerbread into his mouth, and damned if the man didn’t even chew like an Englishman—all business, like a bullock with its cud, as if food were not akin to sex in the sensual pleasure it might afford.
“Dirks is Scottish, and you are English. Does he want you to beg, perhaps?”
“Iservedwith him, Henri.”
And such was the bond among Wellington’s former subordinates that it even, apparently, transcended centuries of national animosity. Henri took another bite of warm gingerbread and decided not to chastise Anderson for using his name. Half the French nation was naming its babies Henri, and he hadn’t given Anderson any other means of addressing him—nor would he.
