Michael dipped his rag again and held the boot up over his arm, the better to spread polish over the calf, heel, and vamp.
“Miss Danforth passed your test with flying colors. Nobody would cut her when she’s out with Lady Freddy. You were examining her reaction to being out with you, and she earned top marks.”
Fable, being a rambunctious fellow in his prime, generally sported about Town in a double bridle, one having both snaffle and curb bits. The bridle was heavy, handsome, and perfectly clean, but something was amiss with it.
“Miss Danforth flunked miserably, Michael. The outing was intended to show her why association with me is not a sound idea, to give her a distaste for my company, but she was too distracted by the brutalities in her past to notice. She accused the Duke of Mercia of wanting charm. Who maintains these bridles?”
“Your head lad would know, a Kerryman named Belton. Why?”
“Because somebody has filed the curb chain on Fable’s bridle to a dangerous sharpness. The first time I brought my horse to an abrupt stop, the underside of his chin would be cut, and I would likely be sent sailing halfway back to France.”
The boot Michael had held aloft slowly lowered. “You aren’t even angry.”
Had Mercia cut Milly Danforth, Sebastian would have been angry. For the first time in years, he would have been angry and had difficulty keeping that anger in check. Mercia would have been pleased to know this.
Sebastian detached the curb chain and dropped it into the pocket of his riding jacket.
“Nobody rides the horse but me, and this mischief is tiresomely predictable, though it underscores why Miss Danforth must keep her distance. Many a domestic takes her employer into dislike, and she ought to be able to manage it with a little encouragement.”
The boot was subjected to some vigorous buffing.
“You could simply tell the woman it isn’t safe to be seen with you. She’ll comprehend the whys easily enough. I’ve already hinted as much to her.”
Sebastian moved down the line of bridles, finding the next one had been hung up without the bit being cleaned off.
“You likely lectured her cross-eyed. Send Belton to me when we’re done here, please. It’s time to install more locks.” And put the fear of the brooding, violent, Frenchie Traitor Baron into his stable master, though Sebastian had long since found that charade tiresome.
“Mercia didn’t cut you,” Michael said. “His Grace tipped his hat to the lady and exchanged greetings with you.”
Michael, Michael, Michael. He was a brave man and a friend, and Sebastian wished him back to the Highlands daily—if the Highlands were in fact still his home.
“Mercia should have cut me. He, of all Englishmen, should have put out my lights twenty times over.” The leather on the next bridle was so stiff Sebastian had trouble getting his little arrangement to work with it. “His hand looks to have healed.” Though when a fellow wore gloves, one couldn’t tell if his fingers worked.
“His marriage is reported to be happy.”
“God be thanked.” And this was a heartfelt prayer, for if anybody deserved happiness and a long, sweet life, it was Mercia. “I owe him whatever remains of my life, Michael.”
“When I kill you,” Michael said, very pleasantly, “it will be because I am puking sick of your Gallic fatalism. You’re in good health, the war is over, and you’ve survived more challenges than any man ought to suffer in a lifetime. Your auntie loves you, and you’ve apparently enough manly humors left to take notice of her companion.”
Michael liked to be right, and an aggravating percentage of the time, he was.
“Of course I like Miss Danforth.”
“So polite, Baron. You ‘like’ her—you like Cook, you like the old fellows at your flower club, you like your aunt’s card-party coven. You want Milly Danforth, want her naked and panting, spread beneath you while you rut yourself into forgetting your sorry past. That’s what all this wandering around the park is about. You don’t need to protect her from Society, you need to protect her from you and your mighty sword.”
His flower club? And yet, Michael was not overstepping, he was worrying, and he was prodigiously good at it.
Sebastian began an inspection of stirrup leathers next, saddle by saddle. “If Wellington’s boys are tenacious about their vendetta, I won’t live long enough to take advantage of the girl’s curious nature, Michael. You censure me for fancies any man with blood in his veins would entertain about the woman.”
Too late, Sebastian realized what he’d admitted. He did want Milly Danforth, badly. She was brave, loyal, and possessed of a kissably stubborn mouth. Worse yet, she bore the fragrance of Provence and understood how shame could corrode a soul.
“So marry her, why don’t you? You must have an heir, or the St. Clair holdings revert to the Crown. If Miss Danforth is so oblivious to gossip, then marry her, get some babies on her, and set her up at the family seat. Twenty years from now, your son should be able to barter his expectations for an heiress, new wars and new traitors will have arisen, and your infamy will be forgotten.”
Rather than tell Michael he sounded much like a certain elderly aunt, Sebastian straightened a saddle blanket folded carelessly on a trunk. “I would be condemning Miss Danforth to widowhood.”
“You weren’t this gloomy when we survived on bad rations at that frozen rock pile of misery known as the Château. Do you even want to live?”
“Oh, I do want to live. Increasingly, I do.” For months he hadn’t, but Aunt Freddy had bullied, pouted, sulked, and cajoled him along, and eventually, Sebastian had accepted that he might not want to live, but neither did he crave death.
He did, however, want to swive Millicent Danforth. This would be an encouraging step away from those first bleak months back in England, except wanting any woman was inconvenient as hell.
Complicated as hell, given the price on his head.
“Do you ever consider going back to France?” Michael asked as he set the second boot beside the first. “You might be safer.”
“France is a wasteland, Michael. What Napoleon’s army didn’t decimate, the invading forces did, and I do not trust the populace’s newly resurrected affection for royalty. The people are starving, angry, betrayed by their republican leaders, and unhappy with the alternatives.”
While much of the English populace was also starving, angry, betrayed by their royalist leaders, and unhappy with their alternatives, too.
Michael rose, his polished boots in hand. “More relevant than all that balderdash, you would miss your aunt and torment yourself for abandoning her. God knows, you missed England.”
“True.”
Michael started for the door, then hesitated. “Anderson is the bellwether, and MacHugh will likely come after you next, but Mercia could be the one agitating for all these duels. He might have shown you civility merely to throw you off the scent.”
Interesting theory. Sebastian shook out and folded the next saddle blanket. “I know Mercia, Michael, even better than I know you. I know his mind, I know his heart. I know him in ways his own duchess never will, if God is merciful. His Grace would look me in the eye, as he did once before, slap his glove across my cheek—soundly, not viciously—and call me out. Subterfuge is beneath a man of his honor.”
Michael snorted. “You hope. Considering the damage you did to him, the scars you left him with, I’d say relying on his honor is a risky bet. If you’d put me through what he suffered, I’d be mad for your blood any way I could spill it.”
Such honesty required no reply. Sebastian let Michael go, finished tidying up the saddle blankets, then followed Michael out of the stables. As he crossed the alley to the back gardens, the curb chain jingled in his pocket like so much loose change.
***
“Close your eyes.”
Had St. Clair spoken in tones of command, Milly wo
uld have defied him easily. Instead, he used tones of seduction.
“Why?”
“Because I do not want you to use your eyes to learn the shape of your name, Miss Danforth. I want you to learn it the way you learn a seam, the way you learn a pattern of notes, by feel. I want you to be able to make these patterns in the darkness, the way you could sew in the dark, or play a favorite serenade on an instrument you’ve loved for years.”
Perhaps he was making some sophisticated innuendo, but it was more likely that Milly’s naughty imagination found mischief where none had been intended. St. Clair’s theory was worth exploring, in any case, though Milly had wanted to watch as his hand guided hers over the paper.
“I can make the M easily enough.”
His fingers glided away from her knuckles as he held up a sheet of foolscap covered with her scrawling. “Most of the time, you can write the whole business legibly enough.”
“Legibly, like a child toiling to make it just so. When I’m tired, it’s nearly impossible. Spaces pop up in the middle of words, the ink blurs, sometimes the letters look like they’re swirling down a drain. If I must attempt to read or write, I never attempt it in the evening.”
He sat back, making the gilded chair creak. When the professor sat at this desk in that chair, he looked studious. St. Clair in the same pose looked elegant.
“Why would you deal with the reading or signing of documents when you were tired?”
“Because that’s when my cousin would ambush me with them. I never did sign, though. My aunts rescued me.”
He flicked the foolscap aside, rose, and crossed to a bouquet of red, white, and yellow tulips near the window.
“Explain.”
“I came into a competence from my mother’s settlements when I was eighteen. Alcorn sought to manage it for me, and there were documents involved. I never signed them. I could not satisfy myself as to what the documents said, not truly. The solicitors drew them up, and I’m sure everything was in order, but Marcus told me never to sign anything unless I was confident of its import. Because it was Marcus who told me that, Alcorn had to tolerate my delays.”
St. Clair rearranged the tulips, so the several white tulips were more in evidence, then stuck his finger into the blue ceramic vase they stood in.
“Go on.”
“A green vase would have gone better on that table, and with those colors.”
He shook a drop of water from his finger. “So it would. What else did your dear cousin want you to sign?”
Milly picked up a pen, dipped it in ink, and tried for an M.
“Nothing of any significance. Just the occasional correspondence, that sort of thing.” She brushed the feathery end of the quill over her nose, which had developed a slight itch, though the first M turned out passably well.
As far as she could tell.
“What of this competence, now, Miss Danforth?”
Another M went even better, so Milly became daring.
“The funds sit in the cent-percents, gathering interest. My aunts assured me the sum was tidy, and while I did not trust Alcorn, I did trust my aunts and their solicitor.”
St. Clair used the pitcher on the sideboard to add water to the vase. “Who might that be?”
Vowels were difficult, because they all consisted of curves. Curves could go awry more easily than straight lines. “Mr. Dudley. He’s in the City on Clockminster Court.”
Which was none of the baron’s business, but Milly had given up resisting his questioning, because she sensed his inquiries intended no harm to her.
“May I ask you a question, my lord?”
He’d wandered to the fire, which he was poking up, though the day was cool rather than cold. “You just did.”
“When we passed your fiancée in the park yesterday, and she gave you the cut direct, did it hurt?” She hadn’t been the only one, but Milly would have thought a man was owed some civility from a woman the newspapers claimed he’d been engaged to since childhood. The aunts had read the society pages out loud, and Milly was nothing if not an attentive listener. She was sure the papers had said not one word about the baron’s military past, though.
St. Clair stood by the hearth, the poker in his hand. When Milly dared to peek up from several attempts on a lowercase r and that perennial rascal, the letter g, his expression was amused.
“Noticed that, did you? Or have the servants been gossiping?”
“When a titled lady jilts a fiancé of long-standing, the gossip goes beyond the servants’ hall, my lord. She’s very pretty.” In a blond, blue-eyed, wealthy, titled sort of way—with a narrow nose.
He set the poker back on the hearth stand, then moved it to the other side of the ash broom.
“Would she and I have suited, Miss Danforth? She told me in no uncertain terms what she thinks of a man who would serve the Corsican. She and her family might well have dubbed me the Traitor Baron.”
His tone was light, still amused, while Milly wanted to hurl the ink pot and overturn the flowers.
“She’s an idiot. Had you been a French boy sent to England for an education, then drafted to serve under Wellington, I doubt the French would be so judgmental. I do hate the letter e.”
“A woman of violent passions never fails to hold a man’s attention. Why does the letter inspire your ill will?”
Something was provoking St. Clair to smile, and not a charming smile, but rather, a private, pleased smile.
“Don’t make fun of me and my letters, sir. You waged war against England. I wage war against being unlettered, and hostilities are not yet concluded. When a letter consists only of a narrow little loop, one loses track of it. When I drop a stitch, I know it. When I drop a letter—”
Some helpful, overbearing soul invariably pointed it out to her.
“Come here, Milly Danforth.” He held out a hand, the way a gentleman might offer a lady assistance into or out of an elegant coach. Milly rose, because that was what one did when St. Clair issued his orders.
She took his hand, and he arranged her in waltz position. “Close your eyes.”
Why not? She closed her eyes, the better to enjoy his fragrance, the better to enjoy the fiction that they might, even in this parlor, indulge in a few steps of the dance.
The door was open, in any case. Let the footmen think what they would.
“You will let me lead you in an exploration of the letter e.” He gathered her closer and moved off with her, slowly but confidently. Three steps up, a little shift, and three steps back. Another shift, and the same pattern, again and again.
“You’re making a chain stitch with me.”
“You have maligned a perfectly agreeable letter, Miss Danforth. A simple loop exists not to confound you, but to pleasure your hand in its making.”
Or her entire body. He danced wonderfully, and to be held like this—Milly’s opinion of the letter e underwent a drastic revision.
“I think you have it, madam, but now we will venture on to the letter l.”
She liked the letter l even better, because it was six steps up, and six steps back, a more ambitious undertaking in the small parlor.
“There are two l’s in Millicent,” she said. And for no reason, no reason at all, this inspired her to lay her cheek against his chest. They e’d and l’d and o’d (as in Danforth) a while longer before St. Clair came to a gliding halt.
“Keep your eyes closed, my dear.”
Milly could feel the breath of his words against her forehead. He grasped her by the wrist and led her a few steps closer to the window—the cooling temperature told her that much.
“Sit, if you please.” He scooted her chair for her, and then a pen was placed in Milly’s hands, her fingers arranged around it. “Now our hands will dance a bit.”
His fingers closed over hers, and he waltzed the pen across a paper,
one-two-three, one-two-three, first e’s, then l’s, then a few o’s. “Do you feel these letters, Miss Danforth? Could you play them like notes in the dark?”
Milly could tell he was standing bent over her, could sense the heat and size of him as he guided her hand across the page, but she shoved those distractions aside.
“I want to peek.”
“Not yet. You must solo first.” He took his hand away. “Dance me some pretty letters, Miss Danforth. One-two-three, one-two-three…”
He dropped into French dancing-master—“un, deux, trois”—to count off the waltz, and Milly struck off across the page.
“Stop.”
Before Milly could open her eyes, he’d whisked the paper away from her and held it up above her line of sight. “We have a few more dances ahead of us, Miss Danforth.”
She could tell nothing from his schoolteacher inflections, so she snatched the paper away from him and put it on the desk before her.
Only to see a perfect, curling chorus line of e’s, o’s, and l’s looping over the page.
“They’re beautiful.” She beamed up at her instructor, amazed, terrified, and thrilled at the results of his tutelage. “I made beautiful letters. We did. We danced the letters onto the page.”
“Well done, Milly Danforth. Perhaps I shall call you Milly Danceforth?”
What a lovely nickname. Milly stared at the page, comparing her previous efforts with the ones St. Clair had inspired. Her g, r, i, m, a, and e were recognizable, but not flowing, not elegant.
Those letters did not dance.
St. Clair picked up the paper again as if to admire it, then turned and sat on the corner of the desk, an informal pose, and not quite friendly.
“This is odd. These letters you chose to work on while we were talking earlier, they are a peculiar collection of consonants and vowels.”
The joy suffusing Milly evaporated in an instant. She could not rise, because St. Clair had effectively blocked her in. She took out another piece of paper and tried to recapture the feeling in her belly of the looping, pretty letters, but it was no use.
The Traitor Page 10