Page 55 of The Traitor
Wretch. “You are saying St. Clair has been only honorable toward me. What aboutmyhonor, Mr. Brodie? How am I to behave honorably towardhim?”
They ambled along, gravel crunching under their feet, the low, shrubby bushes making a pretty green carpet beneath the sun. Despair welled up as the odors of turned earth and stables imbued the very air with bucolic benevolence.
“How is your honor served by tucking tail and heading for the West Riding, Miss Danforth? Meaning no insult, you will not make St. Clair an ideal baroness. I told him to treat you to a long engagement followed by a quiet, well-compensated jilting. He listened patiently then politely told me to mind my own business.”
A capital notion, considering Mr. Brodie had sorted through Milly’s belongings and now had taken to sorting through her correspondence. Either Mr. Brodie was a very unscrupulous man, or his devotion to Sebastian was without limit.
Possibly both were true.
Sebastian stood across the field of lavender, head bare, dark hair riffling in the mild breeze as he conferred with his gardener. Milly took a moment to memorize the sight of her fiancé, just another Englishman being conscientious about his land—a handsome Englishman haunted by bad memories, a trying present, and a difficult future.
“I’m not abandoning him,” Milly said. “I’m trying to be sensible. I am a semiliterate companion, not a baroness. I cannot read a program at the theater, cannot write out my own invitations.”
Not that Sebastian’s baroness would have any invitations to send.
“St. Clair has spent at least two hours with you each day this week, working on your letters.”
“Are you jealous of me, Mr. Brodie?”
For this notion had occurred to Milly. Such was the influence of a pair of wily old ladies who’d known more of the world than anybody guessed, and such was the puzzle of Michael Brodie.
“I offered to find you another husband to marry you in his stead.”
First her letters handed back to her, and now this? Milly took another fortifying whiff of Mr. Brodie’s sorry excuse for an olive branch.
“Whatever can you be about, Mr. Brodie? If you agree that I’m not a proper fiancée for his lordship, if you’re willing to go to that unimaginable length to thwart this marriage, why sabotage my attempts to investigate employment opportunities elsewhere?”
He was silent for a moment, then gestured to a bench that bordered the lavender. Milly took a seat, though lounging about in the sun without her bonnet would get her a crop of freckles that would take weeks to fade.
“I’ve changed my mind, that’s why. For whatever time he has with you, I think St. Clair could be happy. He doesn’t care that you struggle with your letters. I think he likes it, in fact.”
The very problem in a nutshell.
“And two years from now, when I am still mistakingp’s,b’s, andd’s, Mr. Brodie? Will his lordship enjoy instructing his poor, stupid baroness then? When I cannot help my children with their letters? When one of my children turns out to share my affliction?WhenSebastian’s heir cannot sign his name any better than I can sign my own?Will he still enjoy pitying his wife then?”
The notion of sending her son off to Eton to be beaten and taunted and made a laughingstock for something he could not help, couldneverhelp…
A handkerchief appeared in her lap, snowy linen bordered with delicate lace, and monogrammed with the initialsMBO. Milly had to trace her finger over the big, flourishyBto be sure what it was.
“Cease sentimentalizing, Miss Danforth. St. Clair will hire the appropriate tutors and work with the boy himself, the way he’s worked with you, assuming he’s alive to see his son grow.”
Milly blotted her eyes with the handkerchief, the lavender scent on her fingers mingling with vetiver. “You are such a ray of sunshine, Mr. Brodie. One can see why Sebastian treasures your company.”
“If you’re to marry him—and I hope you do—you should do so with your eyes open. Many would rather he were dead.”
“You refer to all those English officers he stretched on the rack? They want him dead?”
“For some of them, it was worse than that.”
He spoke quietly, no teasing, no prickliness. The real Michael Brodie had come forth, and Milly liked his quiet reserve far better than his posturing and pride.
She was not as comfortable with the sense of remorse he exuded. Was he sorry for what Sebastian had done, or did Michael Brodie have his own regrets?
“Sebastian doesn’t speak of it,” she said. “He starts to, then he checks himself, as if my cousin never sent me letters telling me what war is really like. As if my aunts’ old friends never reminisced on the same subject.”
Late at night, several hours into the Madeira, while Milly embroidered in a quiet corner and hurt for old men who would never be free of their memories.
Mr. Brodie shifted, as if the hard bench pained him.
