Page 83 of The Traitor
“Then that’s our next destination, but, Sebastian?”
“My dear?” He’d almost called her “my love.” He waited for her reply while they turned their horses toward the rise, away from the mill.
“I still do not entirely trust Michael Brodie, though I like him.”
Sebastian reminded himself that his baroness had appropriated a place in his bed as if he owed her his very nightmares. Fainthearted, Milly St. Clair was not, and he loved her for it.
“I’ve known Michael for years, and for many of those years, I would have said he was my only friend.” But was he an ally? Had he ever been?
“He’s a good fellow, but sometimes good fellows cannot entirely choose the paths they take.”
“Delicately put.” Sometimes good fellows could not even choose what countries they dwelled in or fought for. “Why don’t you trust him, Milly?”
“I’m not sure. He warned me that any woman who mattered to you could become a liability to you, like an Achilles’ heel.”
Michael, Michael, Michael…though in truth, Sebastian approved of his initiative. “He was being honest, Milly. You know I’ve fought duels. Not all my enemies are as honorable as the English officers I’ve met over pistols.”
Her mare, perhaps thinking they were turning for home, picked up the pace of her walk. “I’ll have no more of that pistols-at-dawn nonsense, Sebastian. You’ve a succession to see to, and a wife who can barely read a menu. Freddy isn’t getting any younger, and in any case, the war is over.”
He assayed a husbandly smile. “No pistols. I do understand.” Which left swords, bare fists, knives, whips…
“Do not humor me, Sebastian.” Her tone was a trifle sharp. “I woke up today and found I am a baroness. This was not in my plans, and I’d be cross to find it so, except I also woke up next to you.”
She’d woken up mostly under him. He’d woken up mostly inside her. All three times.
“No pistols, Milly. You have my word, and don’t be concerned about Michael. He and I get along well, in part because his mother was Irish and his father Scottish. Like me, Michael is a mongrel.”
“Which accounts for why he has a brogue sometimes and a burr at others.”
She fell silent, though Michael would be appalled to realize she’d heard his slips—and heard them, she had. Milly did not read easily, but she listened prodigiously well.
“Do you notice anything else about Michael that makes you uneasy?”
She fiddled with her reins, she petted her horse, she looked all about, as if trying to recall how they’d arrived to their present location.
“Yes.” In one syllable, she conveyed her reluctance to find fault with her husband’s fellow mongrel. “If he’d desert the English cause when he was a duly commissioned officer, and the war was mostly going in England’s favor, what’s to stop him from deserting your cause eventually too?”
Ifhehasn’t already.“Michael will be leaving soon to visit family in the North, if that’s any comfort to you. Shall we let the horses stretch their legs a bit?”
And if Michael did not care to visit family, then Sebastian was left in a quandary: Was he better off knowing exactly where Michael was, and when he came and went, or would he benefit from having Michael out from under his roof, up to who knew what, and on behalf of who knew which government—or clan?
Milly’s mare cantered off, and Sebastian followed, admiring his wife’s seat and the fearless way she allowed her mare to go thundering over the countryside.
***
The professor had explained to Milly in one of their penmanship sessions that English was a large language, a language that did not discard the old in favor of the new, but instead added to its arsenal of vocabulary. The Romans had come and gone, and much of their language had been added to that arsenal, similarly with the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes, the Vikings and the Normans. As a consequence, most any thought requiring expression in English words could take a variety of forms.
A husband could also be a spouse or a marital partner. A dog could, depending on one’s regard, be a canine, a hound, a companion animal, or a mongrel.
And of all the words available, in English, in any language, the only description Milly could find appropriate to her domestic situation was “fallen in love.”
She had fallen in love with her husband. He had not intended this result—theirs was a pragmatic union born of his honor and her lack of alternatives—but he was the cause of it.
After making love at the ruins, they’d fallen asleep the previous night entwined in each other’s arms, talking, kissing, petting, and talking some more.
Sebastian had been physically sick after the first time he’d taken a knife to Mercia, and the second.
He’d been unable to attend his grandmother’s funeral, because his commanding officer, the dread Anduvoir, had been threatening to make an inspection of the Château.
