Page 53 of The Traitor
“Beating each other to death is not giving a good account of anything, and your barony is ancient enough that it likely can be preserved through the female line.”
They passed a lilac bush blooming next to a stand of yellow tulips, the lavender and yellow making a cheerful contrast to their dreary conversation. Sebastian bid Fable to pause so his rider might catch a whiff of lilac.
“What does the lilac symbolize to the English?”
“First emotions of love. You don’t have to marry the girl at all.”
“Yes, Michael, I do. Her reputation was at risk simply because she sought employment in my household, and Aunt’s cronies are not about to let my indiscretion remain a secret. Then too, Aunt caught me once before in a similar moment with Miss Danforth.”
A similarly lovely moment. Sebastian signaled his horse to toddle on.
“Milly Danforth is a companion, for God’s sake. A nobody, a nothing to Polite Society. They’ll dine on her bones for a week then go yipping and baying to their next kill. All you did was kiss her, or endure her kisses.”
Fable snatched a bite of some leaves hanging over the bridle path.
“Naughty boy,” Sebastian chided mildly. “Miss Danforth is a nobody, Michael, but that makes it all the more imperative that my behavior toward her be honorable, which it was not.”
He really ought to be ashamed of himself for that, but he was too pleased by the knowledge that Milly Danforth had started the kiss that had resulted in their engagement.
“I’ll find somebody to marry the damned woman,” Michael spat.
“Dear fellow, on general principles one should not procure a spouse for any female whom one refers to asthedamnedwoman. Miss Danforth is not pleased to have me for a husband. I don’t think she’d allow any convenient eligible of your acquaintance to so much as kiss her cat.”
The turn of phrase was unfortunately prurient, the mistake of a man who’d misplaced his native language for too many years.
“I daresay you won’t be kissing her—”
“Hush, Michael. One duel hanging over me is one too many.”
Michael turned his horse down the left fork of the path, the less traveled route, the one they always took. “You could apologize.”
“No, I cannot. MacHugh struck a stout blow before at least one witness. He wants no apology from me, he wants satisfaction, though I do wonder—”
He broke off as Fable’s head came up. The Duke of Mercia rode around a bend in the path, looking handsome and severe in the early morning light.
Sebastian gave a slow nod and nudged Fable onto the verge. For His Grace, Sebastian would have positioned his horse in the middle of a wet muck pit—and cheerfully dismounted in the same location.
“Mercia.”
His Grace checked his horse, a glossy, well-muscled chestnut with perfect manners. “St. Clair.” The duke glanced at Michael. “He’ll second you?”
“Mr. Brodie has that honor.” Again. Michael had seconded St. Clair when he’d met Mercia too, of course. And Pierpont, Neggars, and Cambert, as well.
Mercia switched the bight of his reins from the left to the right side of his horse’s neck.
“MacHugh is damned good with his fists, but he’s careless—or arrogant. He doesn’t close up his defense as snugly as he ought, and he leaves openings. His right is formidable, though he relies on it almost exclusively. Good day.”
Mercia touched a gloved finger to his hat brim and cantered off.
The duke’s short discourse was astonishing in several regards, not the least impressive of which was that it silenced Michael for a distance of two furlongs. When their path emerged near the sparkling beauty of the Serpentine, Michael found his tongue.
“I must write to my sisters at Blackthorn and ask them whether the wee piggies have sprouted wings.”
“Blackthorn is your estate in Ireland?”
Michael was silent for another half furlong, making the day nothing short of miraculous—or damned strange. “My mother’s people are Irish, and my sister Bridget married an Irish earl’s heir. My sire hails from Aberdeenshire. Hailed.”
Hence his Highland attire and his tendency to lapse from a brogue into a burr when in the grip of strong emotions.
