Page 33 of The Traitor
“Mercia didn’t cut you,” Michael said. “His Grace tipped his hat to the lady and exchanged greetings with you.”
Michael, Michael, Michael. He was a brave man and a friend, and Sebastian wished him back to the Highlands daily—if the Highlands were in fact still his home.
“Merciashouldhave cut me. He, of all Englishmen, should have put out my lights twenty times over.” The leather on the next bridle was so stiff Sebastian had trouble getting his little arrangement to work with it. “His hand looks to have healed.” Though when a fellow wore gloves, one couldn’t tell if his fingers worked.
“His marriage is reported to be happy.”
“God be thanked.” And this was a heartfelt prayer, for if anybody deserved happiness and a long, sweet life, it was Mercia. “I owe him whatever remains of my life, Michael.”
“When I kill you,” Michael said,verypleasantly, “it will be because I am puking sick of your Gallic fatalism. You’re in good health, the war is over, and you’ve survived more challenges than any man ought to suffer in a lifetime. Your auntie loves you, and you’ve apparently enough manly humors left to take notice of her companion.”
Michael liked to be right, and an aggravating percentage of the time, he was.
“Of course I like Miss Danforth.”
“So polite, Baron. You ‘like’ her—you like Cook, you like the old fellows at your flower club, you like your aunt’s card-party coven. YouwantMilly Danforth, want her naked and panting, spread beneath you while you rut yourself into forgetting your sorry past. That’s what all this wandering around the park is about. You don’t need to protect her from Society, you need to protect her from you and your mighty sword.”
Hisflowerclub? And yet, Michael was not overstepping, he wasworrying, and he was prodigiously good at it.
Sebastian began an inspection of stirrup leathers next, saddle by saddle. “If Wellington’s boys are tenacious about their vendetta, I won’t live long enough to take advantage of the girl’s curious nature, Michael. You censure me for fancies any man with blood in his veins would entertain about the woman.”
Too late, Sebastian realized what he’d admitted. Hedidwant Milly Danforth, badly. She was brave, loyal, and possessed of a kissably stubborn mouth. Worse yet, she bore the fragrance of Provence and understood how shame could corrode a soul.
“So marry her, why don’t you? You must have an heir, or the St. Clair holdings revert to the Crown. If Miss Danforth is so oblivious to gossip, then marry her, get some babies on her, and set her up at the family seat. Twenty years from now, your son should be able to barter his expectations for an heiress, new wars and new traitors will have arisen, and your infamy will be forgotten.”
Rather than tell Michael he sounded much like a certain elderly aunt, Sebastian straightened a saddle blanket folded carelessly on a trunk. “I would be condemning Miss Danforth to widowhood.”
“You weren’t this gloomy when we survived on bad rations at that frozen rock pile of misery known as the Château. Do you even want to live?”
“Oh, I do want to live. Increasingly, I do.” For months he hadn’t, but Aunt Freddy had bullied, pouted, sulked, and cajoled him along, and eventually, Sebastian had accepted that he might not want to live, but neither did he crave death.
He did, however, want to swive Millicent Danforth. This would be an encouraging step away from those first bleak months back in England, except wanting any woman was inconvenient as hell.
Complicated as hell, given the price on his head.
“Do you ever consider going back to France?” Michael asked as he set the second boot beside the first. “You might be safer.”
“France is a wasteland, Michael. What Napoleon’s army didn’t decimate, the invading forces did, and I do not trust the populace’s newly resurrected affection for royalty. The people are starving, angry, betrayed by their republican leaders, and unhappy with the alternatives.”
While much of the English populace was also starving, angry, betrayed by their royalist leaders, and unhappy with their alternatives, too.
Michael rose, his polished boots in hand. “More relevant than all that balderdash, you would miss your aunt and torment yourself for abandoning her. God knows, you missed England.”
“True.”
Michael started for the door, then hesitated. “Anderson is the bellwether, and MacHugh will likely come after you next, but Mercia could be the one agitating for all these duels. He might have shown you civility merely to throw you off the scent.”
Interesting theory. Sebastian shook out and folded the next saddle blanket. “I know Mercia, Michael, even better than I know you. I know his mind, I know his heart. I know him in ways his own duchess never will, if God is merciful. His Grace would look me in the eye, as he did once before, slap his glove across my cheek—soundly, not viciously—and call me out. Subterfuge is beneath a man of his honor.”
Michael snorted. “You hope. Considering the damage you did to him, the scars you left him with, I’d say relying on his honor is a risky bet. If you’d put me through what he suffered, I’d be mad for your blood any way I could spill it.”
Such honesty required no reply. Sebastian let Michael go, finished tidying up the saddle blankets, then followed Michael out of the stables. As he crossed the alley to the back gardens, the curb chain jingled in his pocket like so much loose change.
***
“Close your eyes.”
Had St. Clair spoken in tones of command, Milly would have defied him easily. Instead, he used tones of seduction.
