Page 85 of The Traitor
They debated whether they could propagate enough plants from cuttings in what remained of the growing season, and whether those cuttings could be safely wintered over in the experimental farm’s small propagation house. All the while, Milly tried not to watch her husband’s mouth, his hands on the reins, or the muscles of his thighs as he rode along.
“We’re not the only ones enjoying a pretty day,” Milly said as another couple approached on horseback. The gentleman rode a big sleek chestnut, and the lady was on a pretty gray. Two half-grown mastiffs gamboled along beside the horses.
Beside Milly, Sebastian’s demeanor shifted, though she could not have said how. Fable sensed the change as well, and left off making halfhearted swipes at the foliage along the lane.
“Milly, I cannot vouch for—”
“St. Clair.” The Duke of Mercia touched his hat brim. “Baroness. Good day.”
He’d brought his horse to the halt, and so had the lady. A beat of silence went by—this was the man who crafted silences sturdier than a granite garrison—before Milly realized the pause in conversation was harmless, even polite.
“Sebastian, I believe His Grace is waiting on introductions.”
Another infinitesimal increment of quiet, while Milly’s words penetrated the tension her husband gave off.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace. Your Graces.” He tended to the civilities, and Milly was pleased to note he did so sounding quite English.
“We’re visiting a property Mercia inherited from a cousin,” the duchess explained. She was a small blond lady who watched her duke the way Milly probably watched Sebastian. “We’re having the dower house demolished, and I wanted to see that.”
Within minutes, the men were riding ahead, and the dogs had disappeared into the hedges, leaving Milly to make small talk with…a duchess.
“You wanted to watch a building being torn down, Your Grace?”
Perhaps duchesses were given to eccentricity. One heard about inbreeding in the aristocracy.
“I want Mercia to blow it up. I was married to the property’s previous owner before His Grace made me his duchess, and those were not happy years.”
Did everybody arrive to adulthood incarcerated by memories of misery?
“Then you should schedule the demolition for nighttime, Your Grace. The explosion will be like fireworks, and the ground will be more damp, so there’s less chance of any fire spreading.”
“Splendid notion!” Their horses ambled along the pretty country lane for some yards before the duchess spoke again. “I wanted to hate your husband, you know. Wanted to arrange a slow, painful, disfiguring death for him. Several deaths.”
This duchess was not eccentric, but she was apparently quite fierce. “You have revised your opinion of St. Clair?”
“I’m considering it. Mercia seems to respect him, which I cannot fathom, but one doesn’t rush some discussions. I know whatever the tally between the two of them, Mercia regards the balance as even. There was a duel…there was supposed to be a duel, but they came to an understanding instead.”
Her Grace fell silent, a habit she’d perhaps learned from her handsome spouse, or from those difficult years.
“I know Sebastian has dueled, but he’s promised me he’s done with that. He has no heir, you see, and I have much to learn if I’m to be a proper baroness to him.”
Ahead of them, Sebastian was pointing at the well-drained, south-facing field, and the duke appeared to be offering suggestions.
“I think you are already a proper baroness to him,” Her Grace observed. “You genuinely care for him, don’t you?” The duchess was puzzled to find it so. Her expression didn’t suggest it so much as her tone of voice.
“I am smitten, Your Grace. Sebastian has endured much, had no allies through any of it, and still grapples with the results of decisions he had no hand in. He needs no defending, but he deserves loving.”
Her Grace adjusted her whip. “He tortured my husband, among others. If you could see—”
Mercia had come to find the knife a comfort. Milly still did not fathom what Sebastian had meant, and she might never.
“Icansee. I can see that Sebastian’s choices haunt him, and I can see that every man he held captive is now strutting around on English soil, nursing a grudge with more care than you likely shower on His Grace’s heir.”
Somewhere, it was likely written in elegant, flowing, thoroughly indecipherable prose that one didn’t interrupt a duchess. Her Grace apparently hadn’t yet read that tract, because she offered Milly a smile, a conspiratorial, purely friendly smile, and she stopped fussing her whip.
“You are quite ferocious, Baroness, and you sound like my husband. I cannot like the man you’re married to—I cannot understand him—but I like you, and I’m glad he’s married. For everybody’s sake, at some point the past must be allowed to become the past.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. I begin to wonder if anybody knows Sebastian, or if all England is content to hate the person they think he is.”
