Page 67 of The Traitor
She did not need to. The bleakness in his words filled the entire grist mill.
“Yes, but whyyou? Was it a test of your French patriotism?”
His lips brushed her hair. Milly encircled his waist with one arm, closed her eyes, and felt Sebastian arranging the third blanket over them.
“At first, maybe it was a test, but not entirely. I’d gone into Toulouse to meet with my superior, a nasty little man by the name of Henri Anduvoir. He’d had an English prisoner beaten nearly beyond recognition, and still, the fellow had told them nothing except his name and rank.”
A hint of an accent had crept into Sebastian’s words—the vowels broadened, initial consonants softened:’ee’d told hem nawthing…
Milly kissed her husband’s throat, where these words had to be choking him.
“But you did recognize him?” Thunder rumbled at a benign distance while the rain drummed on the roof and Milly waited for Sebastian to answer.
“I did not immediately recognize the captive. Anduvoir had the man’s name, and I realized I’d spent a couple of years at school with an older brother. They shared a family resemblance, same blond hair, same build…”
Something in his voice implied not much of the man’s face had remained untouched as a result of the beating he’d sustained. Milly clutched her husband more tightly. “Tell me.”
Sebastian’s chest heaved up with a slow sigh, and Milly thought he’d keep his memories locked inside him, like the poison they were.
“The fellow I’d known, Daniel Pixler, Viscount Aubrey, was the oldest of four boys, one hell of a batsman, and a decent chap. This was the youngest boy, Damien. I knew they had a sister, one sister. She was the youngest, and a bit slow. Daniel had written to her each week, printing the words for her.”
“A good brother, then.” A very good brother who did not require a woman to read well in order to hold her dear.
“I gambled that Damien was cut from the same cloth as Daniel, and told Anduvoir to stop criticizing England’s mad king, and fat, nancy prince, whom any boot boy was free to criticize and regularly did. I told him to stop beating a man who could no longer feel the pain, a man for whom each blow only fortified his resolve to remain silent.”
Beatings could do that. Milly knew this from experience, and Sebastian had reminded her of it when they’d walked in the park.
“What did you do, Sebastian?”
The next kiss landed on Milly’s brow. “In a sense, I was the one who broke.” Then more softly, “I was always the one who broke.”
Sebastian was broken, Milly did not argue that, but she doubted he’d been the one to spill England’s secrets before her enemies.
“I could not endure what I saw before me, could not tolerate seeing a man—a good, decent soldier, regardless of his nationality—made to suffer because he’d forgotten his jacket in some tavern. They would spare his life—Anduvoir was not about to give up such an intriguing and valuable toy—but they would…”
The things human beings could do to one another once decency had been cast aside in the name of some national delusion were the stuff of old men’s nightmares.
“You did not allow him to become Anduvoir’s pet depravity.”
Another big sigh, but to Milly, the quality of it was different, more weary, maybe a touch grateful that she’d not made him illuminate the darkest corners of his memory for her.
“I told him to insult Pixler’s sister, as violently and vulgarly as he could. Told him how to threaten the girl by name, described the family seat where she lived, so Anduvoir could suggest her safety hung in the balance. I insisted that an offer of private ransom be put before the man as well, a sincere offer. For hope to be an effective torment, it must be grounded in reality. Anduvoir was as greedy as he was cruel, and my plan was…successful.”
Successhad never been achieved while bearing such a razor-sharp blade of irony. Sebastian’s plan had worked out well for this Anduvoir demon, for theRépublique’s coffers, and even for Mr. Pixler, who likely strolled the grounds of the family seat with his sister to this day.
Milly pushed Sebastian to his back and straddled him. “You preserved Damien Pixler from becoming Anduvoir’s pet depravity, but condemned yourself to that torment instead.”
She uttered the words because she could not bear to make him say them. Beneath her, a soldier felled by memory stared up at the beamed ceiling of the dusty old mill.
“Not immediately. The next time Anduvoir caught an officer out of uniform, he miscalculated, and the prisoner died without offering up any information. The fatality was a boy, barely sixteen. My guess is he had nothing to give, but a general got wind of it and had all the English officers sent to me if they were caught without the protection of their uniform.”
Milly silently cursed astute generals, war, France, Anduvoir, and boys who joined up before they learned to shave.
“Love, don’t cry.” Sebastian kissed her cheek, where a stupid tear was tracking down toward her chin. “Please, don’t cry. It was long ago and far away, another time, another country.”
His voice was rough, the accent banished. Milly lashed her arms around his neck, knowing that for Sebastian, these awful memories, the experience of them, was no farther away than the great, ancient grinding stone at the center of the mill.
The thunder came again, closer, as Milly sat up and fumbled with the fastenings of her dress. She’d purposely chosen something simple, a garment that let her unfasten a few buttons and get at the front laces of her country stays.
