Page 87 of The Traitor
“Someday, I hope you can see yourself just as clearly, Husband, for I already do.”
***
“St. Clair is not as easy to hate as I’d like.” Gillian, Duchess of Mercia, offered this observation as she and her spouse rounded a bend that would take them from St. Clair’s sight.
“Your conclusions astound me, my dear. You said not one word to St. Clair beyond ‘good day, my lord,’” Mercia observed. “Is it possible these dogs are still growing?”
“For another six months, at least.” Though His Grace would have to do much better than that if he wanted to distract his wife. “Once the pleasantries were concluded, you neatly prevented me from asking St. Clair how he slept at night after the horrors he perpetrated on your person, or how he justified drawing breath, after all the miseries he inflicted on officers defending the interests of his native soil.”
Christian Severn had learned much about silence, but one thing Gilly knew for a certainty: he would never use silence as a weapon against her or their children. And yet, he would choose his words, sometimes choose them slowly.
“I suggested to him that you and the baroness might strike up an acquaintance.”
“Her, I liked, but why would you make such an overture, Christian? They are besotted. Where she goes, St. Clair is sure to follow.”
His Grace stretched up in his irons, as if saddle weary, though they’d traveled less than thirty minutes from the stables.
“He won’t be following his baroness if he’s dead. St. Clair has been challenged again, and the fellow who called him out is lethal on a bad day, not some strutting boy prone to ranting when in his cups. They’re using the same location where I met St. Clair, not even bothering to keep the arrangements discreet.”
Not every husband would confide such a thing in a wife, much less in a duchess.
“You feel responsible for this.” Christian’s sense of responsibility was bred in the bone, unshakable, and—in Gilly’s opinion—not entirely rational. “Explain this to me, lest I develop a headache trying to fathom the Stygian abyss that passes for male reasoning.”
Ahead of them, the dogs caught the scent of something fascinating, for they both went dashing off into the undergrowth amid a great lot of flapping ears, sniffing, and woofing.
“I was the first to challenge him,” His Grace reminded her. “Called him out at his very club, with witnesses all around.”
Gilly’s mare wanted to chase after the dogs, so Gilly had to check her rather firmly. “And then you stood down, the both of you.”
Christian whistled for the dogs, a piercing shriek that startled the horses and did not agree with Gilly either. Nor did it produce any dogs.
“The gentlemen of Polite Society do not know that St. Clair and I reached an accommodation, but until I challenged him, he was permitted to live quietly, resuming civilian life like the rest of us.” After a moment of watching the undergrowth to no avail, His Grace added softly, “Wellington has forbidden me to interfere.”
In terms of precedence, Mercia outranked Wellington, who for all his military successes was merely afirstduke.
“Wellington is no longer your superior officer, Christian. If you wish to interfere, you’d be within your rights to ascertain why Wellington has taken a hand in matters. What can those dogs have found?”
“Running riot, no doubt. This time of year, the young of many species lurk in the hedgerows.”
The mastiffs were both enormous and too immature to have any self-restraint around fawns, baby rabbits, fox kits—all of them helpless and unsuspecting, much like St. Clair’s brand-new baroness.
“Lady St. Clair believes her husband is safe from honorable gentlemen who want to blow his brains out. I do not like that she’s being deceived, Christian. She pronounced herself smitten with the brute.”
His Grace let forth another ear-piercing whistle and bellowed for the dogs by name in what his daughter called his Papa-Is-Vexed voice.
“He’s smitten with her too, though I doubt he realizes it. Said ‘his Milly’ likes to garden. I can ask Wellington for more details, though Old Hookey doesn’t take well to pestering.”
A rustling in the bushes suggested the mastiffs were heeding the duke’s summons.
“Consider this, Christian: the Baroness St. Clair will not take kindly to being widowed a week after saying her vows, and the aggravation that was Bonaparte will pale compared to the wrath of that woman if harm befalls her baron, particularly if those who could have aided him did nothing.”
“You don’t even like him.”
“True.” The dogs emerged from the hedgerow some yards up the lane. “But I love you, and you feel responsible, so you must bother dear Arthur, regardless of his temper. You haven’t refused his most recent invitation, you know.”
His Grace heaved a martyred sigh. “Another hail-fellows-well-met at Apsley House?”
Gilly gave him the date, upon which, she knew for a certainty, he had no other obligations.
