Page 78 of The Traitor
Milly brushed his hair back from his temple, where he’d turn gray and distinguished long before she would consider abandoning him to his nightmares. “So I can understand.”
He lifted her off of him, carefully, and set her on one end of the settee. Before Milly could lodge her protest, Sebastian lay down on his side, his head pillowed on her thigh. He crossed his arms over his chest, as if settling in for a nap.
“This is cozy,” Milly said, stroking his shoulder.
“You will recall I tried to spare you this recitation, Baroness.”
She fiddled with the silky dark hair at his nape. “You will recall I am your wife.”
His smile was faint, fleeting, and sad.
“At the same time it became clear to me that the English advance across Spain would not stop, and that France’s cause was doomed, a duke came into my keeping. An English duke, and a man of more mental fortitude than you will find in six lifetimes did you spend them scouring the entire earth.”
He fell silent for a time, staring at the fire while Milly traced the shape of his ear.
“My duke was the reason I could keep Anduvoir cowed, the reason the guards never rebelled, the reason the other prisoners had time to heal in body and spirit. Before I could set him free, it became the duke who tortured me, and not the other way around… The pain that man could endure would have felled all the rest of Wellington’s staff put together, and for a time, it felled me.”
“Mercia?”
“Mercia. Christian Donatus Severn. On his silence rested the safety and well-being of every Englishman, Frenchman, dog, and cat at the Château. I could not turn my back without my own guards, my own commanding officer, attempting to break him, and they all failed. Thank God, they failed, for any success on their part would have seen the end of my role as the authority over captured English officers.”
“Mercia acknowledges you.” Though it made little sense, given what Sebastian was disclosing.
“He had enemies more diabolical than a mere provincial French army colonel with a foul temper and a sharp knife, and after a time, I think Mercia understood that my intent was not to destroy him.”
“Others sought to destroy him?”
“They were not successful.”
The fire threw out a decent amount of heat, and yet Milly was chilled. As shadows danced and flickered across Sebastian’s features, she tried to grasp the delicacy of his position: the English had hated and feared him, the French had resented him and exploited him, and likely had not trusted him either. In every direction, someone had been invested in Sebastian’s failure and his disgrace.
Despite all, he’d appointed himself both tormentor and guardian of his English countrymen and somehow kept both his skin and his sanity intact.
“You knew the French cause was lost, but you did not abandon your post, because you had to protect this duke.”
“I had to protect my people, and that included Mercia and the other prisoners. What Anduvoir would have done to them defies your worst imaginings—rations grew short, tempers shorter. The prisoners were half-starved, and the soldiers treated not much better. What I did to Mercia in those months does not bear contemplation, though I often think of little else. I decorated him with scars, Milly, the way others would draw a pattern on a canvas, to the point that the knife became his comfort. And then I took that away from him, too.”
He fell silent, which was fortunate, because Milly had been ready to cover his mouth with her hand. A knife could not be a comfort, and yet, Sebastian somehow understood it as such, and the silent duke had as well. Mercia had not been Sebastian’s only prisoner, but Milly gathered His Grace had become the focus of Sebastian’s memories.
She linked her fingers with her husband’s. “I recall the day I first understood my place in Alcorn’s household. The tweenie was ill.”
Sebastian shifted, nuzzling Milly’s thigh. He did not turn loose of her hand.
“The weather was beastly, miserably cold, and sopping wet,” she went on. “We’d gone shopping, and when the maid could carry no more packages for Frieda, I was expected to carry them.”
And somehow, she was to carry them without anything getting wet, except, of course, Milly, her hems, her last good bonnet, her boots, everything.
“I did not at first understand why it was necessary for Frieda to make all those purchases on that particular day. Not until I dropped something—a parcel of pins, something small—and was stoutly cuffed for my clumsiness. She never struck me when Alcorn was about, but she clouted me soundly that day.”
Sebastian rubbed his fingers over her knuckles, else Milly would have given up the recitation. Compared to the hell Sebastian had endured, Frieda and Alcorn were trivial aggravations.
“I can’t believe your cousin stopped there.”
“She did not. When we returned home, she passed me her boots and said that in the tweenie’s absence, I would have to clean them. She spoke an apology, while rendering my status that of unpaid boot boy.” The stench of horse droppings on a wet, miserable day tried to penetrate the warmth of the sitting room. “We’d come in from the mews, and Frieda had not been careful where she stepped.”
Or she had been careful, cruelly careful.
Sebastian untangled their fingers, sat up, and produced a handkerchief. “Marriage to me is making you lachrymose. I forbid these tears, Wife.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders.
