Page 74 of The Traitor
“You are hungry.” Milly lifted herself away from the warmth of his chest, let the blanket fall from her shoulders, and stretched,lazily.
Sebastian goggled at her Neglected Parts for an instant, then tried to hide his fascination.
“Iamhungry,” he said. “Breakfast was ages and some exertion ago. We’d best locate our attire lest a searching party find us as God made us.”
He sounded disappointingly determined. Milly gathered the blanket about her but didn’t move off of him. “Can one make love only once per day? Is this another pertinent fact nobody tells a woman until she’s taken a husband?”
“Takena husband?”
Sebastian’s tone curdled the edges of Milly’s sense of well-being and wonder. “Don’t sound so amused. Youtooka bride, as best I recall.”
He brushed a stray lock of hair back over her shoulder. “And she took me, you are quite correct. Now I would be pleased if she’d allow me to provide her some sustenance.”
His touch had been gentle, but something in his words rankled. Milly moved off of him—being a bride was not the most dignified undertaking—and realized Sebastian had subtly implied that lovemaking was not sustenance.
She fussed the blankets and appropriated Sebastian’s shirt. “You didn’t answer my question. Do we make love only once at a go? Must we eat between rounds, sleep, dress, receive callers, that sort of thing?”
He found his breeches and pulled them up, but left half his buttons undone. “I could make love to you until neither one of us could recall how to walk or why we’d want to. Do you care for strawberries?”
While Milly sorted through her feelings, Sebastian plundered the hamper. He was all that was considerate, offering her the choicest strawberries, encouraging her to swill a fine, fizzy vintage directly from the bottle, and buttering her bread for her. As picnics went, this one would do.
And yet, he tugged the shirt closed over Milly’s breasts and fastened two of the buttons. He sat two feet away, neither facing her nor touching her. For a man who professed to be famished, he only picked at his food and downed rather more than his share of the wine.
“The rain has stopped,” Milly said, declining more wine. “The paths back to the manor will be soaked and the trees dripping.”
Sebastian paused, the bottle two inches from his lips. “I can carry you, if you’re concerned for your hems.”
Milly was concerned for her marriage. Already, and for reasons she could not articulate, she was concerned for her marriage.
“The countryside is beautiful following a late-afternoon shower. The sun comes in at the right angle to illuminate everything, and we might even see a rainbow.” A rainbow would be a good omen, and Milly felt the need for one of those on her wedding day.
Sebastian corked the bottle without taking the final sip. “We might. I would wish that for you, Milly St. Clair.”
His expression was sweet and solemn, and sufficiently hard for Milly to look upon, that she crawled across the blanket and tucked herself against him. “Sebastian,what’s wrong?”
She hadn’t wanted to ask him, hadn’t wanted to pester him. A wife was supposed to know her husband and respect his privacy. They hadn’t even been married a day, and already she was begging him for confidences.
“If I tell you nothing is amiss, you will be hurt,” he said, gathering her against his chest. “I do not want you to be hurt, and yet, I don’t know how to answer you.”
At least he wasn’t pretending, or worse, condescending to her. “Talk to me. I won’t allow you to have your shirt unless you try to talk to me, Sebastian.”
The rain no longer drummed on the roof, but the stream, swollen from the cloudburst, could be heard rushing past beyond the mill’s walls.
“I could take you again, Milly, right now, and then again after that. A man’s passion usually requires some time to recover—not long for a young man, though I hardly consider myself young—but you…”
Sebastian was feeling his way, threshing through the words, separating truth from platitude in a way that cheered Milly.
She kissed his chest, felt the beat of his heart with her lips. “But I?”
“I am a stranger to pleasure, Milly.” His hands on her back could not have been more cherishing. “I know torment. I know how to use pain and deprivation to show a man his most frightening truths, I know how to wrap suffering around an experienced soldier so it consumes him the way ivy obscures then obliterates even a church made of stone. I know how to present death as a longed-for blessing. And then along comes Millicent Danforth, and this…”
He was trying so hard, and yet Milly could barely comprehend his words for the horror she felt on his behalf. “Tell me.”
“I am wary of the pleasure you bring me. I don’t understand why you are not wary too, of me, of this marriage, of this pleasure.” Then, more softly, “You should be.”
Milly relaxed against him, because in his words she found a thread of hope.
“Wariness and a care for your own survival is why you yet live, Sebastian. I am all at sea, too. One might even say I am frightened, and yet, I would not trade the past hour with you for any safe, comfortable, predictable path I might have otherwise chosen.”
