Page 9 of The Traitor
“If your lordship is going out, I thought I’d spend some time with the piano. Lady St. Clair said I might use the music room when she has no duties for me.”
The bacon was dispatched in about three bites. He paused with a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth.
“She will not have use for you this morning. She is resting, and also plotting. Tonight is that bacchanal known as Lady Arbuthnot’s card party. Like witches, the coven gathers on the Tuesday nearest each full moon. They tell everybody they’re playing whist, but in truth they’re casting spells on fashionable bachelors for all their nieces and granddaughters.”
He was…teasing. Like any other nephew might tease about an elderly aunt upon whom he dotes.
“And has Lady St. Clair spared you from her magic, my lord? You would seem to qualify as a fashionable bachelor.”
The baron also qualified as titled, wealthy, handsome, and at a marriageable age without an heir to his name, which constituted a puzzle.
He held up another crispy, aromatic strip of bacon as if regarding a bottle of wine or a fine miniature.
“This is curious, now that you mention it. Aunt has powerful magic—she claims Gypsy blood on her dam side—and yet I sit before you unscathed by holy matrimony.” He bit off an inch of bacon and crunched it to oblivion. “Much like yourself.”
Milly took refuge in her pastry, because just possibly, that was a rebuke.
Very likely that was a rebuke.
He waved his fork with an elegant gesture of the wrist. “Who is your favorite composer?”
“Herr Beethoven.”
“You prefer a German over your native talent?”
Not “our” native talent. Perhaps that was why he was unmarried. He did not favor English beauties, and they did not favor him. He was large, dark, and French, after all.
Milly considered her lemon pastry. “Herr Beethoven’s music balances abundant technical talent with abundant passion. He’s not afraid to rage or laugh or grieve in his music, though one is told the man is stone deaf.”
She braced herself for another tease/rebuke/challenge, but St. Clair only twirled his teacup a quarter turn by its tiny handle.
“Well put. Would you like a few pages of the paper, Miss Danforth? The society pages, perhaps?”
He was neither teasing nor rebuking nor challenging, and yet his polite question was worse than if it had been all three.
“No, thank you, my lord. Would you pass the jam pot, please?”
The question came out too brightly, and Milly endured a baronial perusal before he moved the raspberry jam closer to her plate. Raspberry symbolized remorse, and it was her favorite flavor of jam.
“I enjoy Beethoven as well,” St. Clair said, getting back to his eggs. “Though Clementi is a pleasure for the hands, and Mozart can be a wonderful confection for the ear. More tea, Miss Danforth?”
“Please.”
She wasn’t used to him, was the trouble. He seldom came down for breakfast and had accompanied his aunt on an evening outing only once in the two weeks since Milly had accepted this post. He’d joined them in the coach as far as Haymarket, seen them deposited at the theater, then gone off on some gentlemanly errand and sent the coach back for them.
Which meant he’d walked home alone through the streets of London in the dead of night—or spent the night with his mistress.
He poured for her, set the teapot down, and added cream and sugar to her cup. “What else will you do with your liberty, Miss Danforth? One can play Beethoven for hours, of course, but a day is also livened by variety.”
Milly appreciated that making small talk with the paid companion was gallantry of a high order for a baron at his breakfast, so she mustered a response rather than commit the public eccentricity of applying raspberry jam to her lemon tart.
“If the day holds fair, I’ll likely walk in the park.”
“Take a footman, at least. Take Giles, in fact. He enjoys the park and is sent stepping and fetching all over Town the livelong day because he’s such a brute.”
Giles was a genial giant, and his company would be pleasant, but the idea that Milly merited such an escort was absurd.
Also…flattering. “Yes, my lord.”
