The Traitor (29 page)

“He’s too far away to be sure,” Sebastian said, but the hair on his arms and nape was prickling disagreeably. “It could be him.” Anduvoir prided himself on the creative use of heel lifts, costumes, and cosmetics, but something in the arrogance of the walk, the angle of the hat, the attitude of the walking stick was definitely Continental.

“It’s him,” Michael said, moving swiftly toward the door. “I know that little shite’s bullying swagger.”

“Michael!” Sebastian’s voice stopped him at the door. Michael turned, impatience in every line. “Don’t let him see you. If he’s here, there’s a game afoot, and his games usually end up deadly for those who least deserve it.”

“He’ll not catch sight of me.”

Michael was gone, a wisp of lethal Celtic smoke dissipated on the spring air, but Sebastian spoke aloud anyway. “Be careful. For God’s sake, my friend, be careful.”

The professor remained to the side of the window, where light and shadow would not reveal his presence unless a person knew exactly where to look. “Brodie can take care of himself, but you do realize our womenfolk are abroad without us, and now Anduvoir is loose in the same city?”

Dread curled into a hard ball in Sebastian belly.

“I made Anduvoir rich and earned him more than one promotion. He has no reason to bear me ill will.”

The words were like a child’s prayer, equal parts fantasy and hope.

“Anduvoir bears every living creature ill will,” the professor said. “He’s a putrid excrescence on the face of humanity. My guess is the French won’t mind should we find a dung heap to fling his remains upon.”

“I would mind. I served France for five years without once taking a human life. My wife would not be pleased were I to turn up murderer now.”

Baumgartner gave a shrug that looked far more Gallic than German. “So don’t tell her. Lady Freddy and I long ago came to the realization that discretion is not only prudent on some occasions, it is also kind.”

For all the pragmatism in Baum’s words, he seemed uncomfortable with them. And well he should.

Amid the panic swirling in Sebastian’s gut, and the dire possibilities crowding his mind, he found a point of stability.

“I would tell my wife if I’d gone after Anduvoir. Milly would want to know. She would rather endure my truths than my self-serving attacks of kindness. I realize that now.”

She would deserve to know, because her loyalty was that reliable, and because Sebastian could not afford cowardice where she was concerned. He only hoped he had a chance to explain that to her.

“Michael’s on his tail,” Baumgartner said softly.

Out on the street, as Anduvoir strolled around the corner, a big, shambling character in a disreputable coat sauntered after him. The disreputable character paused to buy a nosegay from a flower girl, a useful ploy for reconnoitering the street and for giving a man something to hold before his face should the need arise. The fellow tipped a battered hat at the flower girl and disappeared from view.

***

“Where the hell is my wife?”

Sebastian’s tone assured Freddy he was no longer her indulgent, faintly amused nephew. He was a tormented man.

“I have no idea.” Freddy wrenched off her gloves. “She deposited me in the mews then had John Coachman drive her elsewhere. If I never meet with another solicitor again, it will be too soon.”

Rather than face more questions to which she hadn’t any answers, Freddy made a try for the stairs.

“You will join me in the music room,” Sebastian said, voice cracking like a whip. “And do not think for one instant that a megrim or any other petty drama will spare you my company. Anduvoir is in London.”

Freddy paused, hand on the newel post because she needed the support to remain upright. “Henri Anduvoir is in London?”

“Michael spotted him and went in discreet pursuit. The professor is taking a few pints at the tavern on the corner in hopes of learning more. You are coming with me.”

He spun on his heel with military precision, no proffer of a polite escort, no waiting for Freddy to gather her wits. More than she’d feared the English troops, more than she’d feared winter in the French Pyrenees, more than she’d feared Wellington himself, Freddy had feared Henri Anduvoir would be the death of her nephew.

So she swept into the library, head held high. “Do you know it’s Anduvoir? Frenchmen in London are common enough these days.”

Sebastian glowered at a painting of puppies playing tug-of-war with a hunting whip.

“Michael was certain, and if the impulse to cast up my accounts is any indication, I am certain as well.” He ran his finger across the bottom of the frame, as if checking for dust. “Somebody should notify the foreign office, or Wellington.”

Sebastian did not like to even say the duke’s name.

“You would notify His Grace?”

“Henri is a scourge whose menace transcends national boundaries, and thanks to me, he’s a wealthy scourge, much respected in a certain strata of French society. What transpired at the solicitors?”

“I hardly know.” Freddy took the seat at Sebastian’s desk, for several reasons. A wall at one’s back was generally a safe proposition, the desk commanded a good view of the entire room, and it afforded some protection against whoever might come charging in the door—or across the room.

“I have no patience, Baroness. None. My wife might well be running away from me, right into Anduvoir’s waiting arms. Do you know what he’d do to one of Milly’s strength of will? She has no allies, no safe harbor, no one whom she feels she—”

“Whom she feels she can trust,” Freddy finished for him. “And you know the exact contours of such misery.”

Knew them only too well. Freddy very much wanted to get drunk and give His Grace the Duke of Wellington the rousing set down he richly deserved.

“Where is my wife?”

“I expect John Coachman can tell us when he returns. Milly closeted herself with that dusty little fellow who worked for her aunts, while I kicked my heels in an anteroom and was roundly ignored by a bunch of children masquerading as law clerks.”

Sebastian focused on a point above Freddy’s left shoulder. “You did not read her any documents?”

“Not a one. She was with the solicitor for ages, and need I remind you she was exhausted before we departed for the City. I’m fairly certain she had documents in her reticule when we left.”

Sebastian was exhausted too. The grooves around his mouth, the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his posture were proof of his need for rest.

“You will make a series of social calls,” Sebastian said. “Start today, now, with MacHugh.” He listed several other names, each one a former prisoner of his who’d challenged him unsuccessfully.

“I am happy to ask these fellows for the details regarding who goaded them to their foolish bravery, but aren’t you concerned they’ll say you’re hiding behind my skirts?”

“I am hiding behind your skirts,” Sebastian snapped. “I’d bloody wear skirts down the middle of St. James’s Street if it would bring Milly home to me safely, but I can’t leave this house until she’s been located. If she comes home to find me gone—”

“You’re afraid she’ll pack her things and slip away permanently.”

Long ago, Freddy had been Sebastian’s confidante, the harmless older relation to whom a boy could confess his dreams and troubles. That boy was as dead as many of Wellington’s brave soldiers, and Freddy did not know whether to blame the duke or the French—or herself.

“I am afraid of that very possibility, Aunt: that Milly will leave me, and then she’ll try to make her way, without coin, without much ability to read, without a character, without friends…while my enemies, whom I taught a great deal about torture and interrogation, lie in wait for her. How does a woman keep herself safe when she can barely read street signs?”

“The solicitor treated her quite well, all bows and good manners. He did not treat her as if she were a penniless bother. Milly knows how to command respect.”

Though what a miserable measure of the situation, that Freddy was reduced to offering a solicitor’s manners as a comfort.

The door banged open, and Michael strode in, looking like some Midlands drover after the sheep had been delivered and before the drinking had concluded.

“It was Anduvoir. I followed him to his rooms in Bloomsbury, and he’s traveling under a fictitious last name. He’s gained weight and lost hair.”

Milly’s cat came strolling in behind Michael, who closed the door when the animal had made its stately progress into the room.

Sebastian swore creatively in French and English both.

“Milly hasn’t come back. Aunt, please send a footman to retrieve the professor. We must make plans, and you must make calls.”

She was being dispatched like a recruit taking messages to the officers’ mess, a punishment for having failed so badly on the outing to the solicitors. Freddy scooped up Milly’s cat, which had gained weight and
not
lost hair since joining the household.

“I will be gone within the half hour, Sebastian, and I will find you some answers, you may depend upon it.” She owed him at least that—some answers, not all the answers.

Freddy deposited the cat in Sebastian’s arms, and couldn’t resist a single blow in her own defense.

“The way you feel now, sick with dread and worry, afraid anything you do to remedy the situation might make it worse? I felt that way for years, about you, and you came home in one piece. Remember that.”

For an instant he looked puzzled.

“The coach is back,” Michael said from his post at the window. “I don’t see the baroness getting out of it.”

Freddy left to execute her assignments. She’d had a chance to say her piece, which was as much as any condemned prisoner was allowed.

***

Sebastian watched his only relative leave, and cuddled Milly’s cat as if the damned beast could bring him some comfort.

“Does Aunt think I didn’t worry for her? Didn’t fret nightly the French would make off with her for some stupid lark? Didn’t treasure her every letter? For God’s sake, I love the woman—”

He sounded more French the more exhausted and indignant he became—the more desperate he felt.

Michael scratched the cat’s chin, and a predictable rumble began.

“Shall I tell Lady Freddy of your love when Anduvoir has sent you to your dubious reward?”

“Sod yourself.” The most English foul language Sebastian knew, words he could lay claim to honestly. “I told Milly I loved her, but I botched it.”

The pity in Michael’s gaze was hard to look upon, but even when Michael dropped his hand, the cat kept purring.

“How can a man botch telling the woman who loves him that he loves her too?”

“To Milly, I used the words as a weapon. I let the wrong instincts guide me.”

“Truth can be a powerful weapon.”

“A husband’s truth, possibly, not an inquisitor’s. An inquisitor deals in threats, manipulation, fear, and false hope.”

“You never dealt in false hope.”

They were arguing history, and miserable history at that, while Anduvoir was skulking about Mayfair and Milly was without protection.

“Enough, Michael. I’m off to find John Coachman. Ask the professor to wait for me.”

A lift of Michael’s eyebrow suggested he knew damned good and well Sebastian was excluding him from the interview with the coachman. Michael’s loyalties had become suspect, and bringing Anduvoir to Sebastian’s attention would be a convincing way to allay those suspicions.

Sebastian passed him the cat and headed for the mews.

Only to be radically disappointed.

“She got out at a hackney stand in Piccadilly,” John Coachman said. “Cabs lined up in the street, patrons lined up on the walk. You can get a cab to pretty much anywhere from Piccadilly, my lord, including to King’s Cross.”

From whence the postal coaches took the Great North Road to points varied and distant.

Sebastian wanted to wring the old man’s neck. “She gave you no indication of her direction? She popped out of the carriage and simply sent you on your way?” Milly might well have behaved exactly thus.

“She said I wasn’t to worry, but to go directly home.”

The coachman wasn’t to worry. The
coachman
wasn’t to
worry
. The dread congealing in Sebastian’s chest acquired a new intensity, and a veneer of admiration. Whatever course she’d set, Milly was confident in it.

“What direction did the hackney stand face?”

“Northbound,” the coachman said.

“T’weren’t northbound.”

Giles, Sebastian’s largest footman, shifted from foot to foot two yards away.

“Now see here,” the coachy said, drawing himself up. “You’re not to interrupt your betters nor even to take notice of ’em without permission, young man. His lordship weren’t asking you—”

“Why do you say it wasn’t northbound?” Sebastian asked.

“We had to turn the coach around, and while we did, her ladyship crossed the street and hailed a westbound cab. I heard her holler to the fellow to take her to Chelsea, and she had a little satchel with her. I waved to her, and she waved back.”

A woman utterly broken in spirit did not wave at her servants across a busy thoroughfare. A fraction of Sebastian’s unease relaxed.

“You’re sure she said Chelsea?”

“Aye, milord. Driver answered her clear as day, ‘Chelsea, it is!’ Probably wanted to show the other fellows he’d landed a good fare.”

Milly had been safe and happy in Chelsea; she’d had allies there. Of course, she’d seek comfort in familiar surroundings when her marriage was no comfort at all.

“Thank you, Giles. Walk with me, if you please.”

As Sebastian traversed a short distance down the alley, he sorted through options. His first impulse was to retrieve his wife the way he’d pursue an escaped prisoner. She was his wife, and she belonged with him—belonged
to
him, and he to her. Except that sentiment bore a noticeable stench, not of loyalty or protectiveness, but of command and possessiveness.

His second impulse was to throw a saddle on Fable and tear out to Chelsea, which notion bore more than a whiff of desperation.

“Did her ladyship seem upset, Giles?”