Page 36 of The Traitor
She could tell nothing from his schoolteacher inflections, so she snatched the paper away from him and put it on the desk before her.
Only to see a perfect, curling chorus line ofe’s,o’s, andl’s looping over the page.
“They’re beautiful.” She beamed up at her instructor, amazed, terrified, and thrilled at the results of his tutelage. “I made beautiful letters. We did. We danced the letters onto the page.”
“Well done, Milly Danforth. Perhaps I shall call you Milly Danceforth?”
What a lovely nickname. Milly stared at the page, comparing her previous efforts with the ones St. Clair had inspired. Herg,r,i,m,a, andewere recognizable, but not flowing, not elegant.
Those letters did not dance.
St. Clair picked up the paper again as if to admire it, then turned and sat on the corner of the desk, an informal pose, and not quite friendly.
“This is odd. These letters you chose to work on while we were talking earlier, they are a peculiar collection of consonants and vowels.”
The joy suffusing Milly evaporated in an instant. She could not rise, because St. Clair had effectively blocked her in. She took out another piece of paper and tried to recapture the feeling in her belly of the looping, pretty letters, but it was no use.
“It’s just a collection of letters.”
“The very collection of letters used to spell the word ‘marriage,’ my dear.” He leaned closer, and this time, his elegant scent was not so comforting. “I think you had better tell me who Vincent is, hmm?”
Seven
A skilled interrogator could use fear like a powerful lantern aimed in the direction of truth, a far more accurate source of illumination than physical pain itself. Pain was a crude and inexact tool, though some—Henri Anduvoir, for one—had been all too eager to use it.
And for what? To reveal that a man’s deepest truth was that he did not want to die? That he longed to see his mother? That he yearned to apologize to the vicar’s daughter with whom he’d taken liberties before buying his colors?
Sebastian regarded Milly Danforth as she pretended to draw her letters—because she did draw them, they were art to her, not sounds—and accepted the fact of his own fear.
He did not want her to be engaged to this Vincent fellow. He wasafraidshe was spoken for, afraid she’d given her heart to some buffoon unworthy of her—not that she ought to consider Sebastian worthy.
“Vincent is a friend of Alcorn’s and some distant relation of Frieda’s.”
“That is two strikes against him. Waltz those letters, Miss Danforth.”
Another source of illumination was silence, though Sebastian doubted it would be effective with Milly Danforth. She’d been schooled at the knees of old women, and what they knew about silence could ambush entire armies—witness, Aunt Freddy.
“One cannot waltz the letters with a large, scowling fellow looming over one,” Miss Danforth replied, considering her work. “One needs room to dance.”
Strong spirits could loosen a reluctant tongue, as could hunger or thirst. With Major Pierpont, fatigue, fear, and a few well-placed blows had been enough to render him a babbling imbecile in less than three days.
Sebastian leaned closer.
“The English alphabet includes twenty-three more letters, my dear, and they each come in upper- and lowercase. You’ve told mewhatVincent is, but notwhohe is to you.”
She scooted out of her chair so quickly, the top of her head nearly whacked Sebastian’s chin.
“Vincent Aloysius Fontaine. He holds the living at St. Andrew the Apostle in West Hamley, Surrey.”
Any fellow who’d spent formative years in France would know Andrew the Apostle was the patron saint of unmarried girls and old maids.
“You’re making that up.” Lying, she was, while wandering off toward the tulips.
“He arrived to St. Andrews from a series of smaller congregations, and to hear him talk, Bishop of London will be the end point of his ecclesiastical itinerary.”
Sebastian’s nose twitched as Miss Danforth bent to sniff at a tulip. Tulips had virtually no scent, once picked, which further convinced him she was prevaricating. “He wanted to marry you, wanted to get his hands on your competence.”
In typical female fashion, she nudged a red tulip a bit this-a-way, lifted a yellow tulip from here and replaced it there, so the entire bouquet acquired a more symmetric appearance. She crossed her arms, when Sebastian knew she longed to put the flowers back the way they’d been.
