The Traitor

by Grace Burrowes

  She went back to her letters, but Sebastian was certain in his bones she was monitoring his progress as he took Byron down then replaced him on the shelf.

  “You should speak to her ladyship about the jewels, sir. She is vexed with you for wasting good coin on them.”

  Sebastian paused to study the fire, which was roaring along tidily.

  “They are not her jewels. They are the St. Clair jewels, and she pawned them because I was off larking about in the south of France rather than tending to the duties I was conceived and born to take up.”

  And she’d pawned each bracelet, tiara, and ring at Sebastian’s express instruction.

  Miss Danforth considered her letters, her expression similar to when she critiqued a bouquet.

  “You were off making war, you mean. Freezing in the winters, starving year ’round, earning the hatred of your countrymen on both sides of the Channel. The English considered you a traitor, while the French resented your competence.”

  Damn the woman and her casual insights. “More or less. What are you doing there, Miss Danforth? Waltzing about the page unsupervised, hmm?”

  As he closed the distance toward the desk, Sebastian saw that she’d known exactly what he was about, stalking her, and she’d feigned ignorance of his aims adroitly enough to keep him coming closer.

  “I’m practicing. Would you like to see?”

  Such boldness. He liked her boldness, but the real problem was that she trusted him. Millicent Danforth trusted him bodily, morally, logistically, every way a woman could trust a man, and her trust was a strong aphrodisiac to someone who’d arguably committed treason.

  He came around the desk and sat back against it without glancing down at her writing. “Millicent, this will not do.”

  “You should go to bed, then.”

  “I want to take you to bed with me. I want to keep you in my bed and make passionate love to you until exhaustion claims us both, then rut on you some more when we’ve caught a decent nap.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You won’t, though. Why not?”

  Damnation was too mild a fate for such a woman. “You want me to say that a gentleman’s honor forbids it. You are longing for me to give you that lie, but I am not honorable, my dear. I am the Traitor Baron, my days are numbered, and those whose loyalty I claim are put in danger.”

  “Everybody’s days are numbered.” He heard her aunts speaking, heard the toughness and scorn of old women in her tones, and wanted to scare her out of her complaisance.

  “I have been challenged four times in the last six months, Milly. Poison was attempted before that, and recently my horse’s bridle was tampered with. Somebody badly wants me dead. So I take you to bed and romp away a few hours with you and get a child on you. Then we must marry, and you become not the discreet dalliance of a disgraced baron, but his widow. Your social doom is sealed by that fate, and I cannot abide such a thought.”

  Because she deserved better, and because Sebastian could not bear the weight of even one more regret on his heart.

  ***

  His lordship was trying desperately to shock her, while Milly wanted desperately to impress him with her letters.

  “I will not marry you,” she said. Not for all the e’s, o’s, l’s, and even v’s would she worry him like that. “I am not of an appropriate station, for one thing, and I expect somewhere there’s a rule about baronesses being able to read and write. I confess the romping part piques my curiosity.”

  He swore softly in French but remained close to her, half leaning, half sitting on the desk. This late, his scent was softer, more spice, less sandalwood, and Milly had all she could do to keep her eyes open and not breathe too obviously through her nose.

  “The romping part would be the ruin of you.” The way he said it suggested romping might be the ruin of him as well, which notion both intrigued and saddened.

  “You lecture me when you could be kissing me, and then tell me you have no honor. There’s an inconsistency in your actions, my lord—or in your kisses. But no matter. I can find kisses and romping aplenty. I suspect your Mr. Brodie would oblige me easily enough were I simply plagued by curiosity.”

  She’d shocked him, which gave her no satisfaction at all, when she’d been trying to make a point.

  “You will not torment Michael the way you are tormenting me, Millicent, and we will not romp.”

  She tossed the pen aside and moved the inkwell to the corner of the blotter.

  “You dratted man, I could not care less about the romping. It’s you who plagues me. When Vincent kissed me, I wanted to wipe my mouth with my handkerchief. When you kiss me, I want to take my clothes off, and your clothes off too.”

  He studied his hands, and by firelight, his expression was long-suffering to the point of martyrdom. Milly heard Shakespeare whispering from the shadows, Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hands?

  “There will be no taking off of clothes, Miss Danforth. You are merely inquisitive, reckless, befuddled by your curiosity, and quite possibly by grief and”—his expression grew a trifle mean—“loneliness. Many a proper English lady has propositioned me, and do you know what they wanted, Miss Danforth?”

  He was near shaking with the force of his ire. “Those gentle flowers of English womanhood wanted me to bind them and beat them. To blindfold them and play at being the French colonel. They would offer me the cut direct should I ask them to dance, but they wanted me for their toy in private. I understand the need to use any means available to win a war, but I do not understand this depravity.”

  Milly perceived that more than outraged, St. Clair was sickened by the propositions he’d received—genuinely shocked and bewildered.

  “They did not see you as a person, just as you could not afford to see the English officers as people, but rather, as pawns on a chessboard.”

  He closed his eyes. “Those Englishmen were my countrymen, and I was a traitor to them. I gained a reputation for knowing how to deal with English officers, for making them yield secrets to me even they didn’t know they were keeping.”

  St. Clair was attempting a confession or a condemnation of himself; Milly wasn’t sure which, but she did know she wanted to take him in her arms when he spoke like this.

  “Every time you describe your role, you paint yourself as more and more of an animal, and less and less a man.” And he let her see more and more of the cost to him for having played that role.

  He opened his eyes. “I am an animal, a traitorous animal, but I’d rather be honestly viewed as that than as any woman’s toy, ever.” He touched Milly’s chin, so she had to look him in the eye. “I tortured those officers, Milly. I studied them, toyed with their trust, and determined how best to wrest from them their dignity, their health, their sanity. Among the English I gained the sobriquet ‘The Inquisitor,’ and I was very, very good at what I did.”

  His hand remained under her chin, as if he’d will Milly to repeat his ugly words. His gaze pleaded with her to agree with their import, to accept the truth of his self-characterization.

  “And nobody was torturing French officers, were they?” Milly spat. “Englishmen are too noble, too decent, too moral to engage in such activities, even in times of war?” She rose, though she was too short to stand nose to nose with him. “But I forget! Here in England, we torture each other when needs must. I’m told there are all manner of ghoulish devices stored at the Tower for just such purposes. We’ve tortured Catholics and Jews, witches and imbeciles. Of all the Englishmen engaged in tormenting their fellow creatures, I suspect you were among the few whose justification qualified as typical wartime behavior.”

  “Milly, please don’t shout.”

  Milly. She loved that he called her Milly, and hated the sorrow in his eyes.

  “You are not a diversion to me, my lord. That you think I would consider you thus sugg
ests it’s you who cannot keep the role you played separate from the man you are now. I am the paid companion. You are my employer’s nephew and a titled lord. You are a decent man, and my regard for you is decent as well.”

  She’d surprised him with her bold speech, and that felt good. It felt right to set him back on his pins, to punch through his self-absorption.

  Which did not explain, not in any way, why she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek—gently, the way she might offer comfort to a friend on a sad occasion.

  “You are a man like any other, and they are silly, bored women whose husbands have neglected them for years. You are not depraved because you considered giving them something of what they wanted so that you might have something of what they offered.”

  One dark eyebrow quirked, and monsieur le baron abruptly joined the conversation. “What does a chaste companion know of such transactions?”

  “I know nothing of such transactions, but I know worlds about being lonely and invisible. I’ll thank you not to insult me for it.”

  That was her exit line, but he spoiled it, the wretch. He spoiled it by letting something show in his eyes—not humor, exactly, but tenderness, regret, and possibly respect tinged with self-mocking.

  “Mademoiselle is tired and must not be kept from her prayers. Bonne nuit.”

  He’d caressed the words, making them courtly and old-fashioned, ma demoiselle. My lady.

  And then he caressed her cheek, one large male hand cradling her jaw against his palm. His touch was gentle, warm, and enticing—also blessedly brief.

  “Good night, my lord.”

  A woman in a dressing gown and nightgown didn’t curtsy, not when the hour approached midnight and she’d accosted a fellow in his shirtsleeves by the light of a few candles.

  St. Clair’s lips quirked—the closest thing to a smile Milly had seen from him. She took the warning and turned to go, just as the blasted, treacherous, infernal rascal blew her a kiss.

  More Gallic foolery. His petty flirtation didn’t for one moment hide the fact that he was as lonely as Milly, and even more starved for tenderness.

  She picked up one of the few lit candles and left him to his darkness and shadows.

  ***

  Surveillance was more difficult than Henri wanted to admit, particularly when it involved sitting on a hard bench, hour after hour, pretending to swill ale and eat brown bread smeared with mustard while not appearing to stare out a flyspecked window.

  The ale grew flat, the brown bread stale, and the mustard—acidic, stinging, not a hint of spice to cut the most abrasive vinegar—was such as no self-respecting French innkeeper would have served to his pigs.

  And yet, surveillance gave a man time to think.

  St. Clair had walked in the park with a petite sparrow of a woman last week, the same sparrow of a woman who apparently went about with Lady St. Clair. The baroness took the sparrow with her shopping, socializing, and on the Sunday church parade in the park, suggesting either a poor relation had been added to the household, or a lady’s companion.

  Though St. Clair would not be walking out with a lady’s companion—would he?

  Henri tore off a bite of execrable brown bread and appeared to study it, when in truth he was watching the progress of a rotund fellow who had shown up twice earlier in the week at about this time.

  Too early for a proper morning call, suggesting the fellow was family or wanted to be certain to catch the family at home. Not a tradesman, though—St. Clair was scrupulous about paying bills when due, and the trades would skulk around back rather than lose custom by presuming on the front door.

  As on both previous occasions, Monsieur Well-Fed Englishman rapped on the front door, exchanged a few words with whoever answered, and then a few more words.

  Henri left some coins on the table and took his time pulling on his gloves—the English were to be honestly commended for their workmanship when it came to gentlemen’s gloves—the better to watch the little drama taking place on St. Clair’s front steps.

  The argument went on, for it was an argument. The Fat Fellow gesticulated with his walking stick as if it were a drover’s staff, and from within the house, the door was drawn closed.

  My enemy’s enemy is my friend.

  This little aphorism was perhaps Roman in origin, so honestly did it summarize one reality of warfare. Henri tapped his hat onto his head squarely, in the English fashion, mentally imbued his walk with an English strut, and quit the Jugged Hare as if late for an appointment.

  By maintaining the same attitude, Henri neatly intersected the chubby man’s path as that worthy came waddling down St. Clair’s steps, muttering under his breath about idiot women and ungrateful cousins.

  Henri fell in step beside this beleaguered soul because clearly, like all of God’s creatures from time to time, this Englishman was in need of a sympathetic ear.

  ***

  “My lady, you should know that your companion was closeted with his lordship for a good twenty minutes last night when the rest of the house was abed.”

  Dear Michael was clearly not happy to be peaching on his employer, while the baroness was ecstatic with his report.

  “Which of them do you expect me to scold, sir? They are both of age, and need I remind you, at least one of them has a duty to the title he has yet to fulfill.”

  Sebastian’s bodyguard-stalking-about-as-a-valet picked up the cat stropping itself around his boots. “Shall we conclude they were discussing that duty late at night, behind the closed door of the library?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  The cat squeezed its eyes shut and began to purr as Michael scratched its hairy head.

  “Baroness, you seek to provide St. Clair companionship, secure the succession, and perhaps even see the young lady well married, but that is not what awaits them.”

  Lady Freddy had managed the St. Clair holdings for more than ten years without benefit of a baron at her side, or many material resources, and she’d learned in those years whom she could trust and whom she had to watch.

  Michael Brodie fell into both categories.

  “What aren’t you telling me, young man? Sebastian and Milly will soon be head over ears for each other, and neither one is in a position to be picky. In my day, we were more practical about these things. I did not hold the barony together so Wales could fritter away our valuables on his infernal art collection.”

  George would forgive her for that characterization—he’d always been a tolerant boy when sober, particularly where the ladies were concerned.

  Michael wanted to pace. Lady Freddy could sense it in him, the way the switching of a cat’s tail presaged a great pounce.

  “St. Clair’s enemies are not rational,” he said. “They do not tell themselves, ‘Oh, well, five challenges would be excessive and vindictive, and St. Clair has paid enough for the crime of loyalty to his mother’s people. Surely we should let him go in peace to raise up a passel of babies in the grand English tradition.’”

  He shifted the cat to cradle it like an infant, and the shameless beast only purred more loudly.

  “Michael, what do you know that you aren’t saying?”

  “Nothing. I hear things, though, rumblings and rumors, and none of them suggest Sebastian’s troubles are over.”

  Well, of course they weren’t. “Wellington stood up with me the other night.”

  Michael left off scratching the cat’s chin. “His Grace is said to be an excellent dancer.”

  In more ways than one, as Lady Freddy could attest. “He gave me a different version of the same warning you’re delivering.”

  Michael paced to the window, which, being at the back of house, overlooked the mews. Soldiers never really lost the need for reconnaissance, good soldiers anyway.

  “What did he say?”

  “He cauti
oned me to mind my own business, essentially, because Sebastian’s business could become untidy at any moment.”

  The sunlight streaming in the window showed lines of fatigue at the corners of Michael’s handsome mouth and around his eyes. If he didn’t soon give up the task of safeguarding his former commanding officer, he was at risk for growing prematurely old.

  “What did His Grace mean, my lady? Sebastian’s business has been chronically untidy for years.”

  “That’s the challenge in the game we play, isn’t it? What did he mean? Arthur and I are old friends, such as one can be friends with such a scamp, and in that context, I believe he was telling me to look after my nephew. Milly Danforth would look after Sebastian better than I ever could.”

  “Milly Danforth got a dose of cold, hard truth last night. St. Clair explained to her exactly what his role was at the Château, used the words torture and inquisitor because calling himself a traitor didn’t drive the woman from the room.”

  The cat squirmed, as if Michael might have been holding it too snugly, but rather than set the beast down, Michael shifted it against his shoulder, another posture suited to cuddling infants.

  “Michael, those who listen at keyholes are seldom happier for it.”

  “Those who don’t listen at keyholes often live only long enough to regret their virtue. You might want to advertise for a new companion.”

  Lady Freddy rose from her escritoire and approached the man so intent on bringing old wars into her sitting room. He watched her with the wariness of one who did not entirely understand women.

  “He’s such a handsome beast, this cat.” She ran her hand over thick, dark fur. “More placid than many of his kind. You should allow him to be a good influence, Michael. He permits himself regular doses of rest and affection, while you eschew both.”

  “I do not want to see St. Clair’s brains spattered across some sheep meadow, but even more, I do not want to see him lose a woman he’s come to cherish. You—”

  Lady Freddy left off petting the cat and waited, because in the way of men, Michael had finally come around to the point.