Page 79 of The Traitor
“I do not understand you,” Milly said, blotting her eyes and taking comfort from the scent of his linen. “How can you nothate, Sebastian? How can you not hate Mercia? Hate the French, Wellington, your parents, everybody, and everything? I hated my cousins. I hated them bitterly. Frieda did not have to treat me thus, and Alcorn could have put a stop to it.”
This was her wedding day, and these were not memories she wanted touching any part of her wedding day.
“Hate serves a purpose,” Sebastian said—or recited. “Hate can lend us strength, but the loan always come due eventually, and the interest is usurious. I do hate Anduvoir, though. I hate him like I’d hate a rabid dog whose illness only makes him harder to kill. He delighted in destroying the recruits, in finding excuses to flog the unwary. The entire garrison dreaded his inspections, myself and the whores included. I believe he would have cheerfully staked me out for the English to find, but I was able to negotiate ransoms for some of the British officers—contrary to all regulations—and even Henri understood the necessity for coin.”
“Coin…for him? What of theRépublique? What of the bad rations, what of winter in the Pyrenees?”
Sebastian’s silence was explanation enough. He might have forgiven his superior for being severe, ill-tempered, and violent, but not for stealing the windfall of an illegal ransom from his own men.
And that garrison had included women and children. Milly curled closer to her husband’s side, craving the warmth of his body. “Don’t stop hating Anduvoir, Sebastian.”
A kiss brushed her brow. They remained thus for some time, until the fire burned down and the hour grew late.
“I don’t still hate Frieda.”
“Prisoners who escape can afford to be generous regarding their incompetent captors. Mercia must be extending me the same clemency, because he alone remained silent under my tortures. Are you ready to come to bed?”
Milly bit back a comment about Mercia being generous toward a competent captor, but Mercia himself likely did not comprehend the debt he owed the ill-tempered French colonel with the sharp, clean, careful knife.
“I’m ready to come to bed.”
He scooped her up against his chest, carried her to their bed, and made love to her, sweetly, slowly, and thoroughly, before Milly fell into an exhausted slumber, her arms around her husband.
When they rose in the morning, Sebastian reported that he’d slept soundly through the night—as had Milly.
***
“You couldn’t give me a single day to enjoy wedded bliss with my bride?” St. Clair gestured with the teapot, for he and his baroness had apparently been having a late breakfast on the back terrace when their guests had arrived.
A very late breakfast.
“No thank you.” Michael extracted a silver flask from his waistcoat and arched an inquiring eye at his employer. One took only so many liberties when imposing on newlyweds if the husband could easily kill an intruder, and the wife…could slay him with a look.
Some days, Michael hated each and every detail of his tiresome, convoluted existence.
“Feel free.” His lordship, while declining the proffered flask, appeared inebriated on the sight of his wife strolling among the roses with Professor Baumgartner.
“Lady Freddy is having an at-home today.” Michael might have used the same lugubrious tone to explain that Napoleon was missing from Elba, along with a quantity of soldiers, ships, and ammunition. The last thing needed at this point was a gaggle of hens clucking and pecking about the London premises.
Though Michael well knew that normality was the surest form of camouflage.
“And you could not simply remain in your garret, writing letters home or polishing your single pair of decent boots?”
The question did not merit an answer. Across the garden, Baumgartner flashed one of his rare smiles, appearing to share in St. Clair’s besottedness with the baroness amid the sunshine and flowers.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have peace?” Michael asked. “True peace, not this war by stealth and indirection you’ve endured since coming home.”
Which Michael had endured as well.
St. Clair stopped ogling his wife long enough to examine his guest. “You look tired, Michael.”
Marriage had done nothing to dull St. Clair’s perceptiveness, though it had apparently robbed him of his wits.
“You have a duel to the death scheduled for Tuesday next, my lord. I watch your pretty baroness inspecting your gardens, and I want to get blind drunk—or put period to your existence myself.”
His lordship sat back, looking relaxed, handsome, and not exactly well rested, but—confound the bastard—pleasantly exhausted.
“MacHugh won’t kill me,” St. Clair said gently. “He wants to teach me a lesson is all, and I am happy to be his pupil. I owe him that much reparation.”
