Michael bent to pick up Milly’s cat, who appeared to have no qualms about the man’s uses or his loyalties. “I am not your enemy, St. Clair. I might have been at one point, but—”
Sebastian waited for the damned cat to start purring, but it leaped from Michael’s arms, hit the floor with a solid thud, and stropped itself against Sebastian’s boots.
“You needed at least one friend,” Michael went on. “A man can endure much, if he has one true friend. I’m not French, I’m not English, and that seemed to qualify me for the position.”
Which left the question, who was Michael’s friend, for Sebastian could not regard himself in that light because…
One confided one’s burdens in one’s friends.
“Aunt said Captain Lord Anderson is responsible for inspiring both MacHugh and Pierpont into challenging me. I suspect the others would also admit he had a hand in resurrecting their patriotic indignation.”
“Anderson is a buffoon,” Michael replied as Sebastian scooped up Milly’s pet. “He’s a good choice as a pawn, though. He looks the part of affronted military dignity, but for God’s sake, he spent less than a fortnight at the Château. That cat likes you.”
Michael sounded more puzzled than peeved, but then, the cat was not particularly French or English, either. The beast was purring and bopping its head against Sebastian’s chin.
“Peter is a defender of the hearts of women. His regard is worth having, but let’s see where the professor has got off to with that map.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sebastian had finally located the damned map in an old survey atlas. Michael found the street where Anduvoir’s rooms were, though the atlas gave it a different name.
“It’s a rooming house, is my guess,” Michael said. “One main entrance front and back, as if it used to be a dwelling for a family of some means. Three stories above the street, a tavern to the immediate left, a book shop to the right.”
Sebastian set the atlas aside, having learned all he could from it.
“We have about an hour of light if he’s taken Aunt to his rooms.” Time for him to arrive there, and time for Milly to get the hell home. No matter how often Sebastian silently cursed the clock, and no matter in which language, Milly was not yet safely home. “I want to rescue my aunt, but I need to find my wife.”
And God help him, God damn him and God help him, if he had to choose which one to protect.
“They were on foot,” the professor observed. “If he were intent on leaving the City, Anduvoir would have jumped into the nearest hack.”
Beyond the library, a door slammed elsewhere in the house.
Milly. Please, let that be Milly.
She came pelting into the library, no bonnet, no gloves. “Sebastian! Thank God you’re home. There’s a man, he’s French, he has Aunt Freddy, and you must listen to me.”
The cat vaulted onto the desk an instant before Milly slammed into Sebastian’s chest. Michael closed the door, and the professor sank into a chair.
“It’s all right,” Sebastian said. Now that he held his wife safe in his arms, everything that mattered was all right. “We know who he is, we know how he thinks. We know, and we’ll get Aunt out of there before the moon rises.”
Milly pulled back enough that Sebastian could see the desperation in her eyes. “No, Sebastian. Whatever you do, you must not go to your aunt’s aid. That’s exactly what he wants, and you must not accommodate him. It’s you he wants, and you he’s determined to see killed.”
***
“Of course, it is.” Sebastian sounded almost amused, and Milly wanted to pummel him—just as soon as she’d held on to him as tightly as her strength allowed and breathed in his sandalwood scent and kissed him to within an inch of his life.
“Shall I ring for tea?” Michael asked.
“No!” Sebastian and Milly answered in unison, Milly in a near shout, Sebastian in implacable tones of command.
“We haven’t time,” Milly said. “This man, this Frenchman, wants you to come looking for Aunt Freddy. He wanted to take me, but Freddy went out to cut some roses. His plan is…”
His plan was damned clever. Clever enough to work.
Sebastian nuzzled at Milly’s temple, a soft, soothing gesture. “Let’s sit, shall we?”
“I want to pace, Sebastian. I want to break things. He’s awful, that fellow. I think even Aunt was more scared than angry around him.”
Milly felt rather than saw the glance this comment provoked among the men.
“Did Anduvoir see you, Milly?” Despite Sebastian’s calm tone, Milly knew the question was fraught.
“No, he did not. I overheard him as he strutted and preened about his room. It’s a pleasant afternoon, and his room is at the back of some little house thirteen streets from here. He left a window open.”
To sit beside Sebastian, to hear his voice and feel him solid and strong beside her, was exactly what Milly had been craving since seeing Aunt Freddy abducted. His presence gave her the strength to call upon her memorization skills, the skills honed in a dozen cold schoolrooms and hundreds of long evenings by the fire with her aunts.
“His plan is as follows—he wanted to impress Aunt Freddy with it, or intimidate her. He has notes waiting for you all over London, sending you on a game of fox and geese to rescue Aunt. He has paid people to deny you ever came to retrieve these notes, the first of which he will have delivered right here.”
“He’s been watching us,” Michael said. “Bloody hell, I should have seen—”
“Michael.” Sebastian hadn’t raised his voice or even put much emphasis on the single word, but Michael fell silent.
“The point of this haring about is for you to be unaccounted for this evening, while Anduvoir himself assassinates the Duke of Wellington, an act for which he will see you blamed. He’ll use more notes, and some sort of poison, so that Wellington collapses before a good two dozen of his former officers at some regimental dinner. Sebastian, Anduvoir has many samples of your handwriting, and he sounded…gleeful to contemplate you being hanged for murder.”
“And such a murder,” the professor murmured. “The last thing the French would do is stir up a hornet’s nest this grand.”
“Which leaves us with why Anduvoir is getting up to such tricks, and how we can stop him and retrieve Freddy from his clutches.”
Milly felt Sebastian’s lips as he spoke against her temple, and yet, beside her, his body had undergone a change. He was not relaxed; he was not calm. He’d gone into a state of battle readiness beyond calm.
He rose and drew Milly to her feet, wrapping his arm around her. “There being nobody else well suited to the task, I shall present myself at Wellington’s little fete.”
“They’ll kill you,” Michael said. “If you burst in uninvited on the lot of them, their dress swords at hand, the liquor flowing freely, they’ll fall upon you like a pack of dogs, and Wellington himself may not be able to stop them.”
Sebastian’s chin rested on the top of Milly’s head, while she clung to him.
“I am exhausted, Michael,” he said. “Weary to death of defending myself against all comers for actions that were the best I could manage at the time. My whereabouts will be impossible to deny if I attend this party, and my presence at Wellington’s table the only defense I can make. Then, too, I might be able to save His Grace’s life.”
Michael and the professor argued with him and swore and argued some more, but Sebastian’s plan made a kind of dreadful sense.
When it had been decided that Michael, the professor, and Giles would retrieve Aunt Freddy as soon as darkness had fallen, Milly found herself alone with her husband—her doomed husband.
“You’ve been very quiet,” Sebastian said, leading her over to the desk. He sat back against it, positioning Milly so she stood between his legs. “Talk to me, Milly.”
�
�I want to go with you.”
He kissed her, and in that kiss—sweet, tender, full of regret—he informed her that her daft notion would never form part of his plans.
“The less you’re associated with me now, the better. My suggestion for when this is all over is for you to retire to St. Clair Manor and enjoy being the Baroness St. Clair. You will be wealthy, you know, and you have a life estate in the dower house, regardless of what the Crown does with the succession.”
“I want no wealth, Sebastian. I’ve some money of my own, as it turns out. I want to grow old with you, to name our babies, to—”
Another kiss. “Milly, I know. I wish…I did not want you to hate me. I did not want my troubles to become yours. I did not want to leave you alone.”
The regret in his voice was piercing and genuine. Milly wanted to shake him to silence lest he break her heart.
“I love you.” Milly did not regret the words, only the circumstances under which she’d said them. “I love you because you are not hiding this awful business from me. You are not shutting me out as if I hadn’t a brain in my head. I love you because you could be catching a packet for somewhere far away right now, throwing your clothes into a trunk, grabbing the jewels, and fleeing, but that would only mean this nasty Frenchman has won, after you’ve fought so hard and so well against that very outcome.”
He pulled back and studied her for a long moment, his expression curious, not one Milly had seen him wear previously. “You understand.”
“I hate that you’re put in this position, but yes, I understand. Have you your knives?”
“I will not leave this house without them.”
“I’ll help you change. You must be quite the baron when you show up at this party, Sebastian, quite the English baron.”
He held her for one more instant, a moment in which Milly fought back all the arguments she had for joining him on that packet, sending him to his club rather than on this doomed outing, or trying to lock him in their rooms until this madness had passed.
Except that way would lead to more madness, more duels, more nasty Frenchmen, more war waged against Sebastian’s honor and his right to a peaceful old age.
“Come,” Milly said, stepping back and taking him by the hand. “None of your expensive cologne tonight either. You will reek of bay rum and English respectability, and make these men listen to you.”
While she would have his bottle of scent to torment herself with through all the years of her widowhood if they killed him instead of listening to him.
***
“Sir, you haven’t an invitation.”
Wellington’s staff was formidable, but no match for Sebastian’s resolve. “I have misplaced it, along with my patience. Where is His Grace?”
Something about Sebastian’s tone must have convinced the butler that here, despite a lack of uniform, was an officer expecting to be obeyed. “His Grace is in the kitchen, seeing to the final prep—”
“Get to the kitchen and tell him to not sample a single dish, most especially the mushrooms, not even one.”
The butler, a stocky fellow who could easily have passed for a gunnery sergeant in livery, blinked.
“Go, man! Your master’s life may depend upon it.” Rather than linger in the foyer, Sebastian dashed past the goggling footmen and headed for the stairs. A commotion above stairs could get His Grace’s legendary nose out of the soup pot faster than any bowing and scraping servant’s summons.
“But, sir! You haven’t an invita—”
“Fetch me the duke!” Sebastian bellowed over his shoulder.
He did not know the layout of Apsley House, but the dining room was readily apparent from the noise and merriment issuing from it. Sebastian forced himself to slow to a walk, a dignified, unconcerned, baronial walk.
And he tried not to think of Milly, sending him on his way with a kiss “for luck.”
She had not forbidden him to attempt this, and he wasn’t sure he could have thwarted her wishes if she had.
Sebastian said a short prayer for his wife’s happiness and sauntered into the Duke of Wellington’s formal dining room.
“What the deuce!”
“Damn me, if it ain’t St. Clair.”
“You mean Girard.”
Conversation stopped as Sebastian paused near the door. “Good evening, gentlemen. Don’t let me interrupt you.”
The sound of a sword being drawn scraped through the ensuing silence, while Sebastian noted food had already been placed on the table, including several plates of sautéed mushrooms.
“St. Clair.” The Duke of Mercia gestured from his place near the head of the table. He looked elegant and relaxed even while he glared murder at Sebastian. “Best hare off, sir. Not your type of gathering.”
Mercia had rank, and so the rest of the mob might follow his lead. He also had the presence of mind to remain seated, rather than provoke a full-out charge on Sebastian.
“It’s exactly his type of gathering,” somebody said as another sword was drawn. “It’s a welcome St. Clair should have been given months ago in some dark alley full of garbage and offal just like him.”
Mercia’s gaze darted to the door, suggesting footmen might be creeping up from the corridor.
“Captain Anderson,” Sebastian called over the rising murmur of ill will. “Let’s talk about garbage and offal. You’ve recently been keeping company with my former superior officer. You might know him only as Henri, or perhaps as Henri Montresslor or Henri Archambault. To me and some of your fellows, he was Henri Anduvoir.”
Anderson turned so the sideboard was at his back. “I know of no Henri Anduvoir.” He tossed back a drink, while the room again fell silent.
“Short, balding, well fed. He plucked at your pride and told you a pack of believable lies without ever offering any proof of his rank or authority. Probably told you he represented the entire French nation, without any orders, letters, or corroboration—and I wouldn’t eat that mushroom, Dirks. Might give you a nasty, permanent bellyache.”
Dirks put the mushroom down and wiped his fingers.
“You’re the one who’s lying,” Anderson retorted.
Mercia set his drink aside and rose. “Anderson, perhaps you’d like to reconsider your words.”
“I’m under orders,” Anderson said, drawing himself up. “St. Clair is an embarrassment to two sovereign nations.”
The assemblage apparently agreed with this conclusion as more swords came into evidence. Mercia mouthed the word, “Go,” though Sebastian wasn’t about to turn his back on this mob.
“I’ve met this Anduvoir. Rather wish I hadn’t.” The speaker was a lean fellow of about six feet. He wore a captain’s uniform.
“Mr. Pixler.” Sebastian bowed, though the man was his social inferior. “Good evening.”
“You say Anduvoir is here in London?” Pixler asked.
“Then we’ll kill him too,” somebody volunteered.
“Not until you hear me out,” Sebastian retorted. “The lot of you are being manipulated by a Frenchman whose only loyalty is to his own schemes. Anderson goads you into challenging me, thinking he’s following some obscure orders, and you risk your lives to settle a score that His Grace put to rest decisively at Waterloo.”
“Time somebody put you to rest,” Anderson sneered. The uniformed rabble around him seconded that sentiment, and Mercia’s gaze became resigned.
Sebastian was about to reach for his knife when the sound of a bottle breaking against the edge of the table galvanized the two dozen brave fellows around him.
“Not a fair fight, gentlemen,” Mercia observed, though the comment hardly helped matters.
“As if he was fair to us,” Anderson said, brandishing a sword that looked more functional than decorative. “For two weeks I suffered his attentions, and I’m lucky I can sleep at night.”
<
br /> The quiet in the room shifted, and Sebastian sensed movement behind him.
“One hears you’ve been doing something other than sleeping at night, Anderson,” said the Duke of Wellington. “And that your lady wife is to be congratulated accordingly. Gentlemen, stand down.”
For perhaps the first time in a long and distinguished military career, the Duke of Wellington was not immediately obeyed. Nobody sheathed his sword; nobody stepped back.
“He’s left us with more nightmares than any man has a right to, Your Grace.” Pierpont offered that retort, and the men closest to Sebastian edged nearer.
Wellington did not look amused. “Are you countermanding a direct order, Captain?”
An ugly silence spread. These men were no longer under Wellington’s command, and yet, they were guests in his home and had served under him, some of them for most of their adult lives.
And still, not one soldier heeded the duke’s mandate.
Eighteen
A loud crash sounded toward the back of the room, where a second door led to adjoining parlors. All heads turned to see a porcelain vase in shards on the floor.
“If you won’t listen to His Grace’s common sense, you will listen to mine.”
“Her again. I thought ye said she wasna daft,” came from another corner.
Milly swept forward through the officers, her cloak a magnificent green velvet, her red hair an artful cascade, jewels flashing at her throat, ears, and wrists.
“Baroness.” Wellington himself bowed over her hand, and the mood in the room abruptly shifted from ugly to…awkward. A lady had invited herself to a summary execution, and that, in the opinion of every officer there, would not do.
Milly curtsied prettily but none too low to the duke, then turned to survey the room.
“When a child is caught being naughty, he invariably blames his governess or his mama or his puppy, but seldom his own poor judgment. You fellows similarly blame St. Clair for your capture, but I tire of pointing out that he captured none of you. He deprived none of you of your uniforms. He challenges none of you to these stupid duels, and if this keeps up, I will inform your ladies of your foolishness.”
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