Page 2 of The Traitor
“I am sorry.” Such flaccid words Sebastian offered, but sincere. “You should not worry about my early outings. These men do not want to kill me any more than I wanted to kill them.”
Michael knew better than to offer his flask. “You didn’t kill them, that’s the problem. What you did was worse, and even if they don’t want to kill you—which questionable conclusion we can attribute to your woefully generous complement of Gallic arrogance—the rest of England, along with a few loyal Scots, some bored Welshmen, and six days a week, an occasional sober Irishman, would rather you died. I’m in the employ of a dead man.”
“Melodrama does not become you.” Sebastian cued Fable into a canter, lest Michael point out that melodrama, becoming or not, had long enjoyed respect as a socially acceptable means of exposing painful and inconvenient truths.
***
In Millicent Danforth’s experience, the elderly, like most stripes of human being, came in two varieties: fearful and brave. Her grandmother had been fearful, asking incessantly for tisanes or tea, for cosseting and humoring. Like a small child, Grandmother had wanted distracting from the inevitability of her own demise.
By contrast, Lady Frederica, Baroness St. Clair, viewed her eventual death as a diversion. She would threaten the help with it, lament it gently with her many friends, and use it as an excuse for very blunt speech indeed.
“You are to be a companion, not a nursemaid. You will not vex me with your presence when I attend my correspondence after breakfast. You will appear at my side when I take the landau out for a turn in the park. Shall you write this down?”
Milly returned her prospective employer’s beady-eyed glower calmly.
“I will not bother you after breakfast unless you ask it of me. I will join you when you take the air in the park. I believe I can recall that much, my lady. What will my other duties involve?”
She asked because Mr. Loomis at the agency had been spotty on the details, except for the need to show up at an unseemly early hour for this interview.
“A companion—you keep Lady St. Clair company!” he’d barked. “Step, fetch, soothe, entertain. Now, be off with you!”
The way he’d smoothed his wisp of suspiciously dark hair over his pate suggested more would be involved, a great deal more. Perhaps her ladyship tippled, gambled, or neglected to pay the trades—all to be managed by a companion whom the baroness might also forget to regularly compensate.
“You will dine with me in the evening and assist me to endure the company of my rascal of a nephew if he deigns to join us. What, I ask you, is so enticing about a rare beefsteak and an undercooked potato with a side of gossip? I can provide that here, as well as a superior cellar, but no, the boy must away to his flower-lovers’ club. Never mind, though. He’s well-mannered enough that he won’t terrorize you—or no more than I will. Are you sure you don’t need to write any of this down?”
Yes, Milly was quite sure. “I gather you are a list maker, my lady?”
Blue eyes lit up as her ladyship reached for the teapot.
“Yes! I am never so happy as when I’m organizing. I should have been a general, the late baron used to say. Do you enjoy the opera? One hopes you do, because nothing is more unendurable than the opera if one hasn’t a taste for it.”
Her ladyship chattered on about London openings she’d attended, who had conducted them, and what she had thought of the score, the sets, the crowd in attendance, and the various solos, duets, and ensemble numbers. Her diatribe was like a conversational stiff wind, banging the windows open all at once, setting curtains flapping, papers flying, and lapdogs barking.
“You’re not drinking your tea, Miss Danforth.”
“I am attending your ladyship’s recitation of my duties.”
The baroness clinked her teacup down on its saucer. “You were estimating the value of this tea service. Jasperware is more practical, but it’s so heavy. I prefer the Sèvres, and Sebastian likes it too.”
Sebastian might well be a follower. Milly had stolen a moment while waiting for this audience to glance over the cards sitting in a crystal bowl on the sideboard in the front hall. Her ladyship’s social life was quite lively, and by no means were her callers all female.
“The service is pretty,” Milly observed, though it was more than pretty, and perfectly suited to the pastel and sunshine of her ladyship’s breakfast parlor. They were using the older style of Sèvres, more easily broken, but also impressively hued. Her ladyship’s service boasted brilliant pink roses, soft green foliage, and gold trim over a white glaze. “Meissen or Dresden aren’t as decorative, though they are sturdier.”
The baroness used silver tongs to put a flaky golden croissant on a plate. “So you are a lady fallen on hard times?”
She was a lady who’d blundered. Paid companions did not need to know that fifteen years ago, Sèvres was made without kaolin, fired at a lower temperature, and capable of taking a wider and more bold palette of hues as a result.
“My mother was a lady fallen on hard times. I am a poor relation who would make her own way rather than burden my cousins any further.”
“Kicked you out, did they?” Her ladyship’s tone suggested she did not approve of such cousins. “Or perhaps they realized that underneath all that red hair, you’re quite pretty, though brown eyes are not quite the rage. One hopes you aren’t delicate?”
She passed Milly the pastry and shifted the butter a few inches closer to Milly’s side of the table.
“I enjoy excellent health, thank you, your ladyship.” Excellent physical health, anyway. “And I prefer to call my hair auburn.”
The baroness snorted at that gambit, then poured herself more tea. “Will these cousins come around to plague you?”
They would have to bother to find her first. “I doubt it.”
