No human female ought to have skin like that, warm and smooth, and a sheer pleasure for a man to drag his fingertips over. He wanted to taste her everywhere, and that he’d never have the chance was the only thing that made him ease out of the kiss.
“You are alive,” he growled. “Be grateful for that. Don’t tempt fate by questioning your good fortune, because one day it will be you who lies in some churchyard.”
Or on a muddy battlefield buzzing with flies, or at the bottom of some ravine in the freezing Pyrenees, or blown to bits when a cannonball hit the powder magazine by merest lucky—tragic, horrible, unendurable—chance.
“You are alive, too.” Miss Danforth was much better at scolding with a kiss than Sebastian would ever be. She pressed her mouth to his, all business, though her hand on his jaw was gentle.
Before he marshaled his wits to react, she took her mouth away and patted his cheek, putting him in mind of his recent meeting with young Pierpont.
“Have some more wine,” she said, and Sebastian did not argue. When he’d finished, he passed the bottle to her without wiping the lip, and she too indulged in a healthy tot.
He was supposed to apologize for kissing her; he was sure of it in both the English and the French parts of his mind. He might as well apologize for the beautiful weather, for her aunt dying, for being a man, for Miss Danforth’s own glorious red hair. The kiss had been relatively chaste, at least compared with his thoughts.
The Frenchman in him decided he would not apologize for it.
Sebastian tossed the cat a few bits of ham, then wrapped the uneaten food in its cloths and stowed it behind the seat of the carriage. The blanket went into the hamper followed by the cat, and in short order, the team was headed back to Town at a spanking trot.
And now—of course—the sky was sporting the sort of low, sulking clouds that would only gather more and more closely, until rain was inevitable.
“We’ll beat the weather,” Miss Danforth said as they reached Earl’s Court. “When a storm threatens, it clears the traffic, so you can make excellent time. Thank you for taking me, your lordship.”
He hadn’t taken her, though had they kissed much longer, he would have wanted to. That kiss hadn’t been entirely meant as a scold or a lecture. He was too out of practice with lust to know where desire ended and anger began.
Anger or loneliness. He barely knew the woman, which seemed to be the primary prerequisite for an erotic encounter in his life.
“You will not rail at me for taking liberties, Miss Danforth? I might have made the same point without molesting your person.”
In the basket, the enormous cat shifted, making the wicker creak. The damned beast probably understood every word of English spoken in its presence.
“I do not consider myself molested, my lord.”
How he hated the my-lording, and how he approved of her answer. In the distance, off to the south, thunder rumbled. He could not tell her that he was lonely, though the notion had strutted into his thoughts with the unapologetic confidence of a personal truth.
Not a very useful concept, loneliness.
“You never did answer my question, Miss Danforth.”
She smoothed her gloved hand over her skirts, a hand that Sebastian now knew bore freckles across the back. The gesture told him she recalled exactly which question he alluded to: Who was the last man she’d kissed?
“I hadn’t any answer. You were my first.”
Another rumble of thunder, though thunder on the right was supposed to bring good luck.
“I gave you your first kiss?” The notion pleased him inordinately, and confirmed his sense that the men of England were a troop of witless apes. No wonder their womenfolk were such a twitchy, high-strung lot. “How did I do?”
She smiled a patient, female smile. “You were awful.”
Ah, but that smile told a different story. “Perhaps in the future, you will provide me an opportunity to improve on my performance.”
He winked at her, to show he was teasing and could be trusted, utterly, and because the day had abruptly become much less about death, scoldings, and shoving aside bad memories.
She did not wink back, but neither did her smile fade entirely from her eyes until they reached home.
Four
Milly was acquainted with one valet, her cousin Alcorn’s servant, Winslow. She knew not whether Winslow was a first name or a patronymic, and had never heard the fellow say more than, “salt, please,” or “good day, mum.”
Michael Brodie would make at least two of Winslow and was likely half his age, but those weren’t the only reasons Mr. Brodie made Milly uneasy.
“Good day to you, Miss Danforth. I understand condolences are in order.”
He stood in the doorway, unsmiling, her trunk in his hands, the only sound the rain pelting the window of the little sitting room outside Milly’s bedroom.
“Thank you, Mr. Brodie. If you would please put my trunk there by the wall?”
Not in her bedroom. Not even in broad daylight with the door ajar and the rest of the household likely to stroll by did she want to open her bedroom door to this blond, green-eyed Irishman.
As he walked past her, Milly caught the distinctive scent of vetiver. Valets were not to bear such a fragrance, nor were they to hoist trunks about like second footmen or porters.
“It’s a pretty trunk,” he remarked, setting it down and dusting his hands. Michael Brodie had big hands, and they were callused. Milly was certain Winslow’s hands were not callused.
Though the baron’s were.
“The baroness reports that you’ve lost the last of your family,” Mr. Brodie said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping off the lid of the trunk.
Peter chose that moment to appear from under the brocade skirt of the small table in the corner.
“Not the last of my family. I have a married cousin, and he has been blessed with three children.” And she had Peter.
“Who’s this fine lad?”
She wanted Mr. Brodie out of her sitting room, wanted back the last of the solitude guaranteed her by the baroness’s nap.
A brogue or a burr had whispered through Brodie’s question. An’ who’s this foin lad?
Mr. Brodie was trying to be friendly, and despite the chill in his green eyes, Milly felt compelled to acknowledge the overture. “Peter is a bequest from my aunt.”
He picked up the cat, and a predictable rumble underscored the rain against the windows. “A friendly fellow.”
“My aunts treasured that about him, as do I.”
Mr. Brodie glanced out the window, to the damp gardens beneath. The spring flowers were ebbing, and the summer blooms not in evidence, and yet Milly found the scene soothing.
“I am friendly too, Miss Danforth. Now, don’t be pokering up like that. All I mean to say is that if you’ve need of a ride out to Chelsea, next time you might ask me. His lordship would have spared me for such a task were I not from home.”
She wanted to snatch her traitorous cat out of his arms, but Peter was shamelessly snuggling against a broad male chest. “Thank you, Mr. Brodie. I took my request to her ladyship, and she assigned my driver. I trust his lordship was not too discommoded.”
“His lordship would ride to hell on a lame horse for his auntie, but you have to know…”
He paused and scratched Peter under his hairy chin, rendering the feline nigh cataleptic with bliss.
“What do I have to know, Mr. Brodie?”
He turned and sat on her trunk, cuddling the cat like a baby. The sight should have been charming. Milly instead found it presumptuous that Mr. Brodie would make himself so comfortable in her sitting room.
Mr. Brodie cuddled the cat more closely. “His lordship served in the French Army.”
“I know that. He was abandoned by his family after the Peace of Amiens—h
is English family—and had no real choice.”
Brodie stopped scratching the cat. “Abandoned? He told you that?”
“He offered it, I did not ask. A person’s past is their own business.” Every person’s, including Mr. Brodie’s—and Milly’s.
“Aye, ’tis, but many don’t see it that way. There are those who’d hold a boy’s tragedy against the man he became.”
Abruptly, Milly felt the need to sit as well. Mr. Brodie was trying to warn her of something, something uncomfortable.
“I know about the duels, Mr. Brodie. Her ladyship knows of them too, somehow.”
He muttered something in…Gaelic? “Her ladyship probably knows what flavor of jam Wellington had on his toast this morning, but she cannot stop the fools who challenge a man, though all he wants is to tend his acres in peace.”
Was that all St. Clair wanted? Milly thought of him looming over the ragman, thought of his kiss, and hoped Mr. Brodie was wrong.
“What are you trying to tell me, Mr. Brodie?”
He rose and passed her the cat, but continued to stroke its cheek with two fingers. “I’m trying to tell you that it isn’t safe for anybody to be too close to St. Clair. He has enemies, and they would destroy anyone and anything near him to end his life or simply to torment him. For some, the war will never be over.”
“Are you threatening me?”
He dropped his hand. “No, lass. I’m warning you. You’ve noticed St. Clair doesn’t escort his auntie if he can help it, noticed he never takes a groom when he rides out. You will notice that his aunt doesn’t press him to socialize beyond the perfunctory meddling of an elderly relation.”
Peter leaped from Milly’s arms without warning, his powerful back legs imprinting an ache on her chest.
“That is no way to live. His lordship cannot help that he served for his adopted country. He’s not the only person for whom the Corsican’s bloodlust resulted in impossible choices.”
Mr. Brodie studied her for a moment. He was not only big, blond, green-eyed, and muscular, he was also handsome, particularly with that sad light in his eyes.
“Your principles do you credit, Miss. See that they don’t get you or the baron killed.”
He bowed and left her alone, with more to think about than ever. She closed the door behind him and poked up the fire, wanting instead to beat something or somebody with the poker.
“Is St. Clair to live the rest of his life like a leper?” she asked the room in general.
Peter sprang to the windowsill and commenced to bathe himself.
“Alcorn and Frieda have resented me my entire life simply for being born. Some people delight in carrying grudges, but I do not think my cousins would attempt to kill me.”
In pursuit of his ablutions, Peter adopted an indelicate pose most humans would find impossible, if not uncomfortable.
“They would encourage me to find a husband, though, and then sabotage my chances in that regard.” Humiliating her endlessly in the process.
Thoughts of marriage were enough to send Milly into her bedroom for her workbasket. She wanted to think not of marriage, but of the baron’s kiss, of the mischief in his eyes when he winked at her, of the novelty of feeling feminine, desirable, and cherished, if only for a moment, if only by a near stranger.
A handsome near stranger who knew how to scold and comfort both, in a single kiss, then how to tease so neither the scold nor the comfort ached much at all.
Milly drew her workbasket out from under the bed. Something made her pause as she straightened, a sensation like being watched. She turned slowly, trying to place the origin of that feeling. The room was small, furnished with comfortable, mismatched pieces that nonetheless felt cozy. But something…
Vetiver. The scent of it was concentrated here by the close air of a small upper room on a rainy afternoon.
Michael Brodie had already been in her bedroom, the same Michael Brodie who’d warned her the baron had unseen enemies.
***
“Michael, I have been foolish.” Sebastian had kept this announcement to himself for the entirety of three days, for the distance of several long walks in Hyde Park, for the duration of two morning hacks that had taken him, of all places, to the Agrarian Society’s experimental farm outside Chelsea.
Michael spread his cards on the table. “You have been nothing but foolish, lately. I’ve a double-double run, and I shall beat you handily if you don’t start minding the game.”
Michael was ferocious about his cribbage, and about as subtle as a cavalry charge when provoked on certain topics.
“You are working up to a speech, my friend.” Sebastian advanced his peg one point, because he’d pulled the jack of the same suit as the cut card. “Let me guess. I’m overdue for ‘Why survive five years in the Pyrenees with Henri breathing down our necks, the English pounding at the gates, and rations bordering on poison, only to be killed by an excess of English vengeance now?’”
Michael turned over his crib, another hand of four cards. “Not a point to be had. There being no hope for you whatsoever, I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘Are you trying to get your aunt’s companion killed too?’”
Sebastian gathered up the deck and let the cards riffle through his hands. “She was safe enough.”
From English vengeance.
Michael rose and went to the decanters across the library. “Miss Danforth is an innocent. Innocents have a way of getting caught by stray bullets.” Michael had younger sisters, one of whom he’d never met, and all of whom had been born with red hair, much like Miss Danforth.
“We’re in London, Michael. English officers do not fire upon innocents in broad daylight, and I tell you, they don’t want to kill me. I’d be dead four times over if they did. If I’m killed, then some old English general will die in retaliation, and nobody wants to provoke such an embarrassing feud now that England and France are great good friends again.”
Though Michael had a damnably valid point, and they both knew it.
Sebastian tried to tattle on himself again. “I was referring to foolishness of a different order.”
Michael paused mid-sniff over a decanter. He preferred whiskey that didn’t reek of peat smoke, and Sebastian made it a point to keep some on hand.
“Your aunt has been tippling my favorite whiskey,” Michael said, bringing half a glass to the table. “That is foolishness. The woman is no bigger than a minute and ought not to be indulging so freely.”
Aunt could probably drink Michael under the table. “She has her reasons. Soon she’ll have another.”
“Because she’ll be measuring you for your shroud?” The question was cheerful, as only a peevish, tired Scot could be cheerful.
“Because she’ll be in want of a companion.”
The good cheer in Michael’s eyes died, though he took a respectful moment to sample his whiskey before asking the inevitable. “How did Miss Danforth find out about you so soon? You didn’t tell her yourself?”
“I told her I’d served in the French Army.”
“Many did. The parole towns are full of Frenchmen still. That alone wouldn’t drive Miss Danforth off. She needs the coin, her heart’s aching for the loss of her aunties, and she has no family worth the name.”
An accurate summation, one that inspired the guilt roiling in Sebastian’s gut to burn up from his belly toward his throat. “All true. Shall we finish this game?”
“You shall finish unburdening yourself first. I believe the words, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…’ might get you started. Particularly if you told the girl about the nature of your duties on behalf of the République.”
“Papist.”
Michael winked and lifted his glass, though Sebastian knew the rosary worn under Michael’s shirt was in memory of his middle sister, and not an indication of popish sentiments.
&nbs
p; “I did not tell Miss Danforth what went on at the Château. What I did was worse than that, though I’ve come to think I did the woman a kindness.”
Michael set his drink aside and shuffled the cards. The sound was familiar to any former soldier, and should have been a comfort. “I am not likely to be impressed with this great kindness of yours, am I? And she’s a lady, not a woman.”
“I kissed her, Michael.”
This admission did not result in a deluge of guilt and remorse, as Sebastian had been half hoping it would.
“She’s pretty, though she tries to hide it. Any sensible woman in service hides good looks,” Michael said, his tone sympathetic. “As long as we’re confessing our misdeeds, you need to know I searched her room.”
Old habits died hard, particularly when a fellow enjoyed indulging them—old bad habits.
“On whose authority would you violate a young lady’s privacy, Michael? I cannot recall giving any such order. Or do we make war on small, defenseless women now?”
When Michael should have bristled and returned fire regarding the weapons available to females of any nationality, he instead cut the deck then shuffled again.
If Sebastian’s enemies had finally succeeded in compromising Michael’s loyalty, then matters had come to a sad pass indeed, for Michael alone was privy to the battles Sebastian had fought, won, and lost in the bowels of the Château.
“If she’s a spy, she’s a damned good one,” Michael said when the cards were neatly organized. “Six dresses, all turned at least once, each one plainer than the one before it. One pair of boots, two pairs of house slippers, not a new heel on any of them. Underlinen so thin I could practically see through it.”
Michael’s recitation was disinterested, but Sebastian disliked the idea that Michael—that anybody—had seen Miss Danforth’s underlinen. “What else?”
“Lavender sachets, a few letters from some soldier boy, a lock of blond hair, bits of household lace, and the most unbelievable quilt you’d ever want to see.”
What would Michael consider an unbelievable quilt? “Anything else?”
“Her workbasket is large and well organized. I couldn’t get to her reticule because she was off seeing the sights in Chelsea with some fool who’s trying to get himself killed. No lap desk, no jewel box, no dancing slippers.” Michael set the cards aside and took another swig of his whiskey. “Why can’t you find a mistress to dip your wick? Fine English gentlemen have mistresses.”
The Traitor Page 6