Page 42 of The Traitor
Christian listened as Wellington provided a concise, dispassionate military briefing on a situation Christian wanted nothing whatsoever to do with. His tea cooled in his cup, bars of sunlight crept across the thick carpet, and something akin to pity stole across Christian’s heart for a man he ought to go to his grave hating.
Eight
Strategic retreat was a tactic in every commander’s arsenal, and Sebastian resorted to it shamelessly. If Miss Danforth was in the parlor playing cards with Aunt Freddy, Sebastian was in his study, poring over pamphlets on the cultivation of herbs and flowers. If she took tea in the music room, Sebastian went riding. Avoiding her was not complicated.
Neither was it easy.
“Go to bed, Michael. If the weather holds fair, we’ll hack out at first light, and you need your rest.”
Michael set aside the volume he’d been reading—Byron?—and rose.
“You and your flowers. Are they really so much more enjoyable than your dreams would be?”
Sebastian’s dreams were usually of men in chains, spewing vile curses then begging God to take their lives, moaning for their mothers then begging Sebastian to take their lives. He had been unable to oblige them, and thus the moaning and cursing had gone on endlessly.
“My French lavender is not thriving here. I give it the best soil, the most careful pruning, the most sheltered start in life, and it does not thrive.”
Michael put Byron back up on the shelf where Aunt kept her favorite volumes. “Is your concern financial or sentimental?”
Curious question from a man who struggled mightily to hold himself above matters of sentiment. “It’s both. Go to bed. That’s a direct order,monami.”
Michael gave an ironic salute and sauntered off into the darkness of the corridor. Only half the sconces were kept lit, another manifestation of financial worry, and the fire in the grate had been allowed to burn down to coals.
The lavender would not thrive, but it did not die either. Sebastian’s fellows at the Society muttered sympathetically, but were either too politically delicate to venture any ideas why this should be or too involved with the appearance of horticultural enthusiasm rather than the substance of it.
He tried for another hour to absorb himself in translating some old Roman doctor’s maunderings about the medicinal qualities of lavender, and was making some headway when the door creaked open.
Milly Danforth stood in the gloom, her nightclothes making her look like a pale shade. “Excuse me, my lord. I wasn’t aware the library would be occupied.”
And yet, even clad in her nightgown and dressing gown, she did not withdraw.
“Miss Danforth, hadn’t you best be in bed?”
Alone. Immediately. Dreaming virginal dreams about…her cat, perhaps?
Or Sebastian’s kiss from five days ago.
She advanced into the room, gathering a paisley shawl more closely about her shoulders. “I could not sleep. Why have you let the fire nearly go out?”
With the efficiency of a woman comfortable shifting for herself, she took up the wrought iron poker and moved the coals about, poured more coal onto the andirons, then used the bellows to inspire the flames to life. She finished by tidying up the hearth with the ash broom and dustpan, then replacing the screen and dusting her hands together.
“Perhaps I was trying to save on coal.” He would certainly hoard up images of her, auburn braid swinging down her back as she built up his fire.
She gathered the shawl around her again, a pretty blue-and-green peacock silk that contrasted with her plain bedclothes.
“Lady St. Clair knows about the jewels, my lord.”
Sebastian took a moment to fathom the mental leaps Miss Danforth had executed. “You think I let the fire go out because I need to economize, so that I might finish replacing Aunt’s jewels before she knows what I’m about?”
“She says pinchbeck and paste don’t weigh the same as gold and gems, don’t feel the same against the skin. She knows when you replace the paste with something real, and she wishes you would not bother.”
He ought to say something imperious and French, go back to his old Roman doctor, and shame Miss Danforth into leaving the room. He rose and came around the front of the desk.
“My lavender is not thriving. This keeps me awake at night, but I am like wine, Miss Danforth. I prefer darkness, cool, and calm.”
And, apparently, he preferred stubborn little redheaded women who were eager for his kisses and had middle names like Harriette.
She sidled over to the desk and appropriated his seat—an audacious move that left him with another image to memorize. “My aunts’ lavender always did well. You’ve been puzzling over this for some while.”
