Page 77 of The Traitor
“You don’t expect me to sleep alone, do you?”
Sebastian clearly had anticipated exactly that. He jerked the belt of his dressing gown closed and kept his hands around the ends of the belt, as if he’d draw out the moment while he formed a reply.
Milly rose off the sofa flanking the fireplace in his bedroom. “Sebastian St. Clair, I am your wife, not some servant to be summoned when your conjugal urges come upon you.”
She spoke as if she were annoyed, when what Milly felt was fear. Sebastian looked so wary, so burdened by her presence in his bedroom after dark.
“You could summon me,” he suggested, and the daft man was serious.
“I would summon you every night, and then I would beg you to stay with me, Sebastian. We aremarried.”
He gave the belt a final, solid jerk. “I take it Alcorn and his lady passed each night snuggled in each other’s arms, and so you think even among those whose domiciles permit separate chambers—”
Milly advanced on him, unwilling to hear any more meanness from a mouth she’d kissed only hours earlier. “Alcorn and Frieda have separate rooms. I do not aspire to emulate their situation in any regard; moreover, they have no requirement for an heir.”
“Do you think frequent copulation requires that we share a bed? I can assure you, marital relations can be undertaken in a variety of locations and at various times of day, as our recent trip to the mill proves, Baroness.”
In his voice, Milly heard a hint of the imperious French colonel, and something…something nearing exasperation. She matched it with an exasperation of her own.
“I want to sleep with my husband, Sebastian. If you find my company objectionable, you should not have married me.”
He said something under his breath, in French.
Which was the outside of too much. Milly took the last two steps so she could jab a finger at his chest. “Speak English. If we’re to have our first argument, we’ll at least have it in the same language.”
He trapped her fingers in his, his grip warm. “I am sorry. I had not realized I spoke French.” He kissed her knuckles with his eyes closed, the way a Papist would kiss a rosary or sacred relic. “I do not want to argue with you, Milly.”
“You do not want to sleep with me. Why?”
He stroked his fingers over her knuckles. “I married a stubborn woman.”
“Determined,” Milly said. Also worried, for him. “Give me a reason to abandon you each night, and if it’s a sound reason, I’ll accommodate it. My parents never spent a night apart once they married, and I would hear them as I fell asleep, talking over the day’s events or reading to each other. Their voices would grow quieter and quieter as my fire burned down.”
She’d forgotten this. Forgotten thousands of nights, each one the same, each one a piece of the pleasant, unremarkable puzzle that was her life before she’d been orphaned.
“You have so many good memories.” Sebastian tugged her by the wrist back to the sofa and took a seat beside her. “Did they become bad memories when your parents died? Did those memories torment you by illuminating the magnitude of your loss?”
She curled up against him, and he obligingly wrapped an arm around her.
“I never thought of it like that. Your English boyhood soured on you that way, didn’t it?” Because he’d traded a happy childhood, not for the grudging charity of relations, but for a war in which he had no allies.
He was quiet for a long time, while the fire settled on the andirons and Milly kept questions behind her teeth.
“I have nightmares, Milly. I thrash and mutter in my sleep. I wake up in a cold sweat, screaming obscenities in two languages. I cannot promise you would be safe, were I to waken in your embrace.”
And worse than all of it—which was awful enough—Milly sensed he was ashamed of himself for allowing his dreams to be haunted.
She shifted, so she was straddling his lap. “I cannot abide this, Sebastian.”
“I am sorry. I should have told you before we married, I know, but one doesn’t—”
Milly cradled his jaw with both hands, so he could not elude her kiss. “I cannot abide that you must suffer this way. Is it the same dream each night?”
Her kiss or her question seemed to foil his flight of self-castigation. “Often it’s the same, or it’s variations on the same theme.”
“You will tell me, please.”
“So we can share my nightmares?”
