The Traitor

by Grace Burrowes

  “Order yourself a plate of kippers to go with your champagne. And you must not say another word to anybody regarding this situation with St. Clair.”

  Anderson brightened. “Kippers and champagne? Suppose I shall.”

  He turned to go, but Christian stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. Once, Anderson’s life had been Christian’s responsibility, and a dearth of intelligence was no more a man’s fault than a ducal title or a French mother.

  “In future, I’d avoid this Henri fellow, Anderson. It strikes me as curious that England would turn to a Frenchman to dispatch one of our own. We’ve plenty enough talented officers on hand to see to such a thing, if needs must.”

  Anderson blinked, and in the space of that blink, Christian perceived that Anderson himself had come to the same conclusion, and then, having no alternative short of admitting gross stupidity, had rejected it.

  “Avoid him, I shall. I’ll be too busy deciding what to name my heir and missing my kippers.”

  He sauntered off, a fool in charity with the world and intent on committing the gastronomic equivalent of treason by washing his kippers down with champagne.

  ***

  Milly did not know how to retrieve Sebastian from Toulouse, London, or whatever sad, safe place he’d gone. She cuddled down to his chest. “I am cold. The temperature has dropped considerably.”

  Sebastian grasped the blanket and wrapped it more closely around her. “You’re intent on consummating our vows now, aren’t you, Baroness?” He sounded amused, which was an improvement over his earlier mood.

  “Sooner would suit me better than later, Sebastian, and the idea that each of your twenty-nine servants will know exactly what we’re about when we retire this evening…it unsettles me. I never thought to be a baroness, you know.”

  “My apologies for the imposition. I thought you said there were thirty servants.”

  “The boot boy, Charles, must be presumed innocent of marital intimacies.”

  Sebastian’s chin came to rest against Milly’s temple. “You recall his name. You would have made a good commanding officer.”

  He’d no doubt meant it as a compliment, though Milly could not hear anything military as flattering.

  “Sebastian, you must lead this charge. Perhaps, in future, when I am more accustomed to my—”

  His kiss was soft, reassuring. He would lead the charge, but a full-out gallop was not where they’d start. “Let me get my breeches off. If we’re to consecrate the mill with marital intimacies, a fellow wants to be out of uniform.”

  He probably felt her cringe at that analogy. Milly now knew that only officers captured out of uniform were tortured. She pitched off of him onto the blankets, grateful somebody had thought to provide them three.

  Sebastian stood to remove his boots, stockings, and breeches. From the way he went about it, a snowstorm could have been howling and he would have been equally impervious to the elements.

  “You are wonderfully put together, sir.” Wonderful—had such a prosaic word been applied to the Apollo Belvedere? Sebastian was perfect proportions on a generous scale, his musculature in evidence as he tossed his breeches onto the clothes pile.

  And for a man who’d spent years soldiering, he had no visible scars.

  “Shall I strut my wares, Baroness?”

  She allowed him to leer, because he was trying to set her at ease. Trying to give her a few moments to gather her courage.

  “Your wares are adequately in evidence, though they do me no good wandering about the threshing floor.” Milly delivered her lecture with the blanket held firmly to her throat, and Sebastian’s leer became a smile—a tender smile.

  He settled beside her and let her have her blanket—his nudity, the cold, the cavernous space apparently of no moment to him.

  “I wonder if in the history of this venerable mill, anybody has ever put this threshing floor to the use we contemplate.”

  Thunder cracked, a loud, startling clap, followed immediately by a flash of lightning.

  “It’s private here,” Milly said, extricating her right arm from the blanket to brush Sebastian’s hair back from his eyes. “And I desire my husband’s intimate attentions.”

  Mostly. A small, spinstery part of her sought reassurances, not that those intimacies would be pleasurable—they would be, eventually—but that desiring them was not unladylike.

  Un-baroness-like.

  “An honest woman is worth more than rubies.”

  He’d mangled his Proverbs. Milly did not quibble, though, because honest and virtuous were close enough, also because Sebastian had lifted her blanket and insinuated himself beside her.

  “I think it is you, Milly St. Clair, who must warm me.” He arranged himself over her, directly over her, braced on his knees and forearms. “Though I warn you, madam, I will not be rushed.”

  Words did not come biddably to heel. Milly’s body was blanketed by a large, warm, naked husband, his thighs between hers, his hard belly against her softer flesh, his chest inches from her beating heart.

  A woman who could not read well was accustomed to being caught up short and forced to rely on wits instead of words; nonetheless, Milly felt a thread of unease.

  “Tell me what to expect, Sebastian. Tell me what you expect of me. My aunts were forthright, but one needs details, not sly looks and—”

  “One needs to trust one’s husband. Kiss me.”

  Sebastian waited above her, as settled in his posture as the grinding stone that had been turning, turning, for centuries in the center of the mill. Trusting Sebastian should have been easy, and yet, Milly hesitated—because he did not trust her.

  He trusted no one, and that offended Milly on his behalf.

  She lifted her hips and spread her legs, watching as Sebastian absorbed her overture.

  He kissed her cheek. “Love, you will part me from my reason, and that is not well-advised for our first encounter.” He kissed her other cheek, and Milly understood these for the opening salvos they were. She relaxed and let go of another increment of anxiety, because Sebastian was making plain that not rushing was for her benefit.

  With her fingertips, Milly traced the muscles on either side of his spine. “You could rush just a little, Sebastian, couldn’t you?”

  “No, I could not. I want you mindless with need for what I can give you, and such an undertaking will not be accomplished with haste.” Oh, how very English he sounded, how lordly and patient. “You smell good, like lavender sachets. You must have washed…”

  Milly had washed. Had used five precious minutes to freshen up, and her last coherent thought was gratitude that she had.

  “You taste like lavender,” Sebastian went on. “Here.” His tongue lapped at the spot beneath her ear where Milly had dabbed a bit of eau du bain. “And you taste worried. Don’t worry, Milly St. Clair. These are among the few moments in a marriage nobody is required to manage or worry over.”

  He’d let her have some of his weight, a much-needed comfort as Milly gathered herself to him. His cock—old women could delight in shocking language—was hard, smooth, and warm against Milly’s belly, and the way Sebastian pressed it against her suggested this part of him did not need delicacy from her.

  Milly’s hands trailed lower on Sebastian’s back, until she felt the muscular contour of his derriere beneath her palms.

  “I like that,” Sebastian growled against her ear. “I like that you’re bold and curious, that you want this.”

  This. Milly had no experience with this. This made her breasts feel heavy and her spine as flexible as an old rope. “I want you, Sebastian. I want children with green eyes and dark hair, I want—”

  He covered her mouth with his, like an incoming tide, and even as Milly welcomed his kiss, she had the sense he’d needed to stop her words. His tongue touched her lips, bringing with it a hint of mint.<
br />
  Part of his five minutes above stairs had been spent on his tooth powder, which made Milly smile as that same tongue—a hot tongue—traced her teeth. “Open, Milly St. Clair. Kiss me the way a village girl kisses her swain.”

  She clutched at his backside, involuntarily at first, so naughty were his words, and then experimentally. “Even your fundament is muscular.”

  When she did it again, Sebastian shifted up so Milly was tucked more firmly beneath him. He could kiss her lazily from this angle, braced on his elbows as if he were a freight wagon whose brake had been set. The slow tour he made of the inside of her lips suggested he could take all afternoon acquainting himself with her mouth.

  Milly used both hands on his backside this time, anchoring herself before she touched her tongue to Sebastian’s. He returned the caress, the way duelists would test each other’s reactions with a beat and rebeat of their swords.

  “Again,” he whispered. “Take your time.”

  The wind gusts picked up, and the tempo and volume of the rain against the mill’s roof rose, while amid the blankets, Milly went from warm to hot. That Sebastian could be so in control of himself was both reassuring and exasperating.

  She squirmed, pressing her breasts against his chest, and he groaned with an answering pressure.

  Like a village swain kisses his damsel. She pulled his hair rather than struggle for the words, holding him still so she could possess his mouth. When Sebastian broke the kiss and cradled her head against his shoulder, they were both breathing hard.

  Milly waited, the rain pounding down outside a perfect metaphor for the tumult inside her. They were not finished. Heaven help her, they were not even started, and already, she was struggling against the urge to weep.

  ***

  Sebastian rested his chin on his wife’s crown and mentally grabbed for some…some restraint. Thank God his path had not previously crossed that of any village girls, if Milly’s kisses were an indication of how they went about their pleasures.

  He’d have marks on his arse from the way she clutched at him. Marks he’d delight in knowing she had put there.

  “Stop wiggling.” He delighted as well in her name: Milly St. Clair. She’d think him daft if he appended it to his every remark.

  “Wiggling is part of it,” Milly replied, tracing her tongue up his throat. God abide, she was a fast learner. “Perhaps you’d care to demonstrate?”

  The way she patted his backside…affection, command, protectiveness, and desire, all in one small, warm caress.

  “Not until you stop thrashing about.”

  The slow undulations of her hips ceased, like an ocean going quiet as the wind died. And yet, like an ocean, Sebastian could feel currents moving in her even when the surface of her appeared calm.

  He shifted his weight to one elbow, took his cock in one hand, and nudged among her damp folds. “Do not think of moving.”

  An intended command came out sounding like the plea that it was. Milly kissed his throat and brushed her hand over his arse.

  Reassuringly?

  He pushed forward cautiously, assured himself he’d located the proper trajectory, and hitched himself over her.

  “Sebastian, I want—” She grabbed two handfuls of his backside and gave him a solid squeeze.

  “Hold on as tight as you please. It helps me…” Helped him resist the urge to charge headlong.

  “I want to move. I need to move. It isn’t fair that you’re moving…”

  He quieted her with a shallow rhythm, a slow, gentle invasion and retreat that would last as long as he needed it to. “Move, then. Never let it be said I was unfair to my bride.”

  What followed was a conversation of bodies new to each other, and in some sense, new to the business of lovemaking. For Sebastian, anything but a mindless rogering between strangers had been beyond his reach for years, and for Milly…

  He was her first, her only. No man had even kissed her before he’d appropriated that privilege for himself, and that…suggested he had judgment superior to any of the Englishmen strutting about old Albion.

  She delighted him, with her hair pulling and arse grabbing, but now that the moment of consummation was upon them, she delighted him with her trust. Her maneuvers were delicate, questions rather than commands. A flex of her hips here, then a pause. Have I got that right?

  He answered as civilly as enthusiasm would allow, with incrementally deeper thrusts. Perfect. You’re perfect. Again, please.

  Rhythm took over, not his, not hers, their rhythm. Milly’s sighs fanned past Sebastian’s neck; she hooked her ankles at the small of his back.

  He could hear her body awakening, could sense passion overcoming all her caution and self-restraint, and the wonder he felt to witness her transformation aided his control.

  “You’ll not rush me, love.” A vow, one that ought to be included in the wedding ceremony.

  “You’ll not… Oh, Sebastian.”

  Sebastian understood torment in all its forms. As Milly unraveled beneath him, bucking into his thrusts, mashing her face into the crook of his shoulder, moaning softly against his neck, he had his first experience with the bliss that lay on the far side of torment.

  For her, he could endure the sharp, burning ache of unfulfilled desire. For her, he could go quiet, stroking his hand over her hair, cherishing her in silence while his body clamored in vain for its own satisfaction.

  Her moment was his, her pleasure his goal and his glory.

  “Sebastian St. Clair.” She kissed his jaw. “You…You… I shall cry now. Please tell me it’s permitted. Nobody warns one, nobody even hints…”

  He gathered her close, cradled the back of her head in his palm, and became her personal handkerchief. For an instant, he entertained the possibility—the fear—that he might have hurt her, but the way Milly moved—like a houri far gone in her bliss—banished the notion.

  “Again, Wife.”

  Her grip on him became desperate. “Not again. I could not bear—”

  She bore it. She bore it with such unbridled enthusiasm that it was likely a good thing old mills were built on double foundations. She bore it as the thunder rumbled, the rain beat down, and every corner of Sebastian—heart, soul, mind, and strength—gave itself up to furthering and then sharing in her pleasure.

  When he was certain Milly’s body had wrung from him the greatest satisfaction he could give her, he let himself fly free, let himself pour into her not only his seed, but everything he was or would ever be.

  And for a moment, for a procession of moments wrapped in old wool and a new wife on a hard oak floor, Sebastian felt light—he felt both weightless and illuminated from within, as if he were radiance itself.

  He did not know how long he drifted in that light, how long he lay collapsed on his wife, filleted of all worry, all intentions, all past and future. Milly’s hand drifted through his hair like a benediction; her breathing gave his own exhalations their rhythm.

  “I’m crushing you.”

  She murmured something about wheat being ground into flour, of all things, but made no move to push him off. Sebastian managed to hike one knee—a knee somebody had abused, come to that—under him, enough to give Milly some space.

  “Stay.” Her word was clear enough, as was the way she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck. “Please.”

  She rubbed a damp cheek against his jaw, reminding him that he’d made her cry. He wiped her cheeks with a handy shirttail, then tucked her under him and prepared to beg. “You’re my wife now. I’m your husband. I forbid you to cry.”

  Beneath him, she chuckled, which was inordinately reassuring. Women—tenderhearted women—sometimes cried in bed. Men, by contrast, cried after battles, if they were lucky enough to survive.

  Milly had known a few battles. He kissed her nose.

  “That’s better.” He
rolled with her, which untangled his softening cock from her body but also put her straddling him. “I neglected your breasts again.”

  She tried to bat his hands away from her neglected parts. “Sebastian, hush, and don’t be difficult.”

  He did not feel difficult. For the first time in years, he felt easy. He wrapped the blanket up over her, lest her mortification at his frank appreciation for those breasts set the mill afire.

  “Do you feel like a wife now, Milly St. Clair? Like a baroness? Will I do as a husband?”

  The scent of sex mingled in the air with the scent of the passing storm, old grain, and spring flowers. The fragrance of the moment was unique, as unprecedented as the ease with which Sebastian drew breath and the temptation he felt to laugh.

  “I feel like your wife,” she said, a little peevishly. “Also like having a short nap.”

  The lady clearly wanted to hide, to find some quiet and safety in sleep, and some peace from him and his mischief. That Sebastian knew this told him Milly was, in truth and already, his wife.

  “Sleep, then,” he said, tugging her down to his chest. “You’ve earned your rest, and I’ve earned the right to hold you while you slumber. We’ll attack that hamper when you’ve napped.”

  She ducked her head against his shoulder, but not before he saw her smile at his gallantry. In moments, she was breathing regularly, her weight warm and comforting over him.

  Beneath him, some knot or gnarl in the oak floor made a nuisance of itself in the vicinity of his left buttock. Sebastian moved a few inches without disturbing his wife, but had the odd thought as he dozed off that oak leaves symbolized bravery.

  Married to him, Milly would need her courage.

  And married to her… Sebastian’s sense of lightness dimmed as sleep drew nearer. Married to Milly, he would need the ability to treasure each moment, to hold shadows and duels and memories at bay, lest he ruin for himself and his wife the gift of whatever time they had together.

  ***

  “I know when somebody feigns sleep or unconsciousness, and you, Madam Baroness, are no longer asleep.” Sebastian spoke so close to Milly’s ear as to tickle her with his words.