by Erica Ridley
And to prove to himself that if he hadn’t become a blacksmith, if the revolution had never happened and he’d attended the Sorbonne as his parents had planned, that he would have been every bit as worthy a pupil as his peers.
He glanced at the clock upon the mantel. His pulse jumped. Meg would arrive at any moment. He piled up his papers, tidied his appearance, and hurried out to the road to meet her.
As was the new standard, the drive leading to the smithy was clogged with carriages and tourists. Lucien was startled to realize he no longer missed being an essential part of the chaos. Instead of his world revolving about the smithy, it was starting to revolve around Meg.
Er, around English lessons. Student and teacher. That’s all this was. Simple and uncomplicated.
Mostly.
His heart kicked harder at the sight of Meg nearing his drive. The simplicity of her plain brown pelisse and biscuit-colored gown made Meg’s beauty stand out all the brighter. Wild black curls that framed an expressive heart-shaped face. Bright blue-gray eyes. Plump, come-taste-me lips. Lucien shifted his stance. Although he could not greet her with a kiss, he had little doubt she could read the desire to do so in his gaze.
Before he could ask her how her day was going, a group of young ladies perched inside a completely impractical landau pointed his way and tittered.
He clenched his teeth together and turned his back to them.
Meg arched a brow. “Do you think they’re talking about you?”
He sent her a flat look.
“Because I know they’re talking about you,” she continued. “You’re not just Cressmouth’s grumpiest blacksmith; you’re the handsomest man in England.”
His jaw tightened.
“Oh, did you want me to say ‘France?’ I cannot opine, because I haven’t met all the men in France.” She opened her eyes wide. “What if you’re merely the third most attractive Frenchman?”
“Pardon my forwardness,” one of the ladies called out. “Are you one of the twelve dukes of Christmas?”
“Allow me a moment to translate,” Meg called back in English. She turned to Lucien and said in earnest French, “What you have just observed is the mating call of the wild Northumberland silver-feathered debutante. A migratory species, she can be found this far north in the winter only when her nostrils catch the scent of a nearby Eligible Gentleman.”
“Tell her she and her giggling tourist friends can take their feathers and—”
“Alas,” Meg shouted back to the tourists. “While this is indeed a le Duc, he is not the duke you’re looking for.” She gave a small wave. “Wishing you a pleasant day.”
“Now what?” Lucien murmured, enjoying this more than he should.
“Now we flee,” Meg whispered back. “Migratory Northumberland debutantes are wily creatures not to be discounted, especially when traveling in packs. They can occasionally be confused with well-chosen words, but only for a brief moment. Make haste, good sir, make haste!”
She looped her arm through his and assumed a runner’s stance.
“The equally migratory southwestern French blacksmith,” he informed her, “flees at a respectable, sedate pace, like a proper gentleman.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s not how anyone flees. That’s how you get caught.”
Was it? He tightened their interlinked arms.
Rather than head straight to the front door, they circled round toward the rear of the cottage. Chef’s grunts and snorts grew louder as they approached. Meg’s daily gift of apples had quickly made her a favorite.
“Someday, I’ll bring you a boot,” she promised Chef as she tossed him today’s apple.
He grunted his appreciation as he made quick work of his treat.
She looked up at Lucien in apology. “I’m sorry there’s no treat for you.”
“I found one.” Lucien’s voice was husky as he brushed his lips against hers.
As much as he would have loved to kiss her thoroughly, the cottage’s rear garden was too close to the busy smithy for comfort.
Not that the inside of the house afforded total privacy. The dining table where they held their lessons connected via an open doorway to the drawing room where Uncle Jasper would be resting with his foot up and his eyes open.
Meg greeted Jasper as effusively as if he were her own uncle. The old man responded in kind, then held out his hand. Meg produced a stack of what appeared to be cinnamon and raisin biscuits and placed them in his palm.
Lucien stalked forward. “What is that?”
“Biscuits,” Uncle Jasper answered, at the same time Meg said, “Bribery.”
Jasper bit into a biscuit and sighed with happiness. “She’s a good one. You should keep her.”
Lucien’s mouth fell open. “You bribed my uncle to matchmake?”
Meg sent Jasper a stern look.
“No,” the old man said in English as he brushed crumbs from his chin. “She’s paying me not to speak French to you anymore.”
Lucien glared at them both. “Paying you. In biscuits.”
“Reallocating existing resources, if it makes you feel better,” Meg said in English. “Those biscuits came from the castle’s reception hall.”
“It does not make me feel better,” he answered in French. “You don’t understand. I can express myself in this language. Uncle Jasper is one of only a few people I can communicate eloquently with.”
“Not anymore,” Jasper said in English as he started in on a second biscuit. “She got to your siblings, too.”
Lucien froze in horror.
“It’s not a permanent embargo,” Meg assured him in English. She patted his arm. “Your loved ones love you, and they’ve agreed to have the first hour of conversation in any given day take place in English. If you want to speak French, you absolutely can. But you’ll have to soldier through an hour of English first.”
“It’ll take me that long to say anything at all,” Lucien muttered in French.
“What’s that?” Uncle Jasper raised a biscuit toward Meg in toast. “I’m an Englishman who only speaks English for the next fifty-five minutes.”
Lucien glared at Meg. “There had better be biscuits in that bag for me.”
“I have something even better for you.” She bounced on her toes. “The castle solicitor has just informed me that the lending library has taken delivery of all four volumes of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language!”
He crossed his arms. “I would have preferred biscuits.”
“I couldn’t bring them with me,” she continued, ignoring him, “not just because the set weighs over twenty pounds, but because Mr. Thompson correctly prefers such a valuable asset to remain in the library for safekeeping. He’s arranged a quiet study nook for our tutoring sessions in the chamber next door. Where’s your coat? I can’t wait for you to see all the cunning little samples that help explain each word.”
Intrigued despite himself, Lucien sent Uncle Jasper a final glower, scooped the study materials from the table, and escorted Meg out of the door.
“Mr. Thompson also procured a copy of Claudius Hollyband’s Dictionarie French and English,” she bubbled, “but it is horribly out of date and also cheating. If you wish to become fluent, you’ll have to stop translating in your head and start thinking in the new language.”
“C’est—”
“English, please,” she sang out.
“—difficult,” he finished.
“I know,” Meg said softly. “I remember.” She curled her fingers about his arm and gave a comforting squeeze. “But you can do it. It’s a matter of practice. One day you can’t, and then the next day, the words are suddenly there, and you don’t have to try to find them anymore.”
“You swear… that will happen?” he asked doubtfully.
“I can’t promise it will happen by Twelfth Night,” she admitted, “but I assure you it will happen if you keep practicing English without using French as a crutch. If you don’t know a word, ask me and
I’ll tell you. But during lessons, it’s better practice to communicate in bad English than to mix English with French.”
Lucien’s entire body tensed. Part of him rebelled against the specter of becoming mute and awkward all over again with Meg, now that their long afternoons together had become the highlight of his day. On the other hand, he longed to be able to communicate effectively with everyone, to be eloquent with Meg in her own language, to read stories to his niece and nephew, to understand jokes and idioms and nuance.
“French… after?” he asked.
“French after,” she agreed, and sent him an impish grin. “French all night long, if you like.”
He would like, very much, although that was not a liberty he intended to take. He could scarcely believe that less than a month ago, his opinions on both Meg and English had been very different.
Shame still burned at the memory of his initial flash of joy when she’d said her true name was Marguerite… and her admonishment to look inside himself to find out why.
Lucien didn’t like what he’d found. It had made him question his own judgments, and wonder if he’d been discounting Meg for the same unfair reasons Bastien’s father-in-law used to denigrate him.
It was not a nice revelation.
The truth was, Meg was extraordinary. Utterly fearless, as unstoppable as a tornado and with a heart big enough to crumble even Lucien’s staunchest battlements. He might not comprehend why she would choose a wintry rural village over the southern coast of France, but he certainly understood why Cressmouth wouldn’t be the same without Meg.
As soon as they reached the castle, she raced up the stone steps with Lucien right behind her.
When they burst into the library, no one else was present, so she took him straight to the far wall, where all four dictionary volumes were displayed atop a long narrow bookshelf.
Meg flipped to the title page and read aloud. “A dictionary of the English Language: in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers, to which are prefixed a history of the language and an English grammar.”
Lucien leaned forward, impressed. She was right to be pleased with the castle’s purchase. The dictionary was incredibly thorough. So was Meg. He was starting to realize just how lucky he was not just to have her in his life, but also to have her as a tutor. She filled him with hope. No—more than hope. She filled him with optimism.
“Remember,” she told him as they arranged themselves in the study nook. “Stop being so preoccupied about whether the words come out perfectly.”
He could not hide his skepticism.
She smiled at him anyway. “Perfection doesn’t exist, and I wouldn’t want it even if it did. The best way to miss out on everything that matters is to seek perfection instead of enjoying life.”
Or perhaps, as Lucien was beginning to suspect, the realization that one’s definition of perfection might evolve into something different than it once was.
“I’ve been working hard… on the translations,” he said. “You assigned one page, but…”
He pushed the painstakingly copied pages in her direction.
Meg’s face filled with horror.
Mortified, he tried to grab the pages back.
She held them tight.
“Your translations are lovely, but…” Her voice shook. “Why do men have such terrible handwriting?”
He flopped backward in his chair. “You are disappointed in… my handwriting?”
“I’m very sorry, Lucien.” The sparkle in her eyes belied her grave expression. “The only man I’ve seen scribble even worse is Nottingvale. Don’t sink to his level.”
Don’t sink to the level of… the wealthiest, handsomest, most high-ranking, most talked about, actual duke in the entire community?
“Wait.” Lucien frowned. “When did you see Nottingvale’s… penmanship?”
He was definitely not jealous. Penmanship wasn’t a euphemism. There were all sorts of completely ordinary reasons why Meg would find herself in possession of one or more documents handwritten by the fashionable duke whose exclusive Christmastide house parties caused more furor than London’s Frost Fair on the Thames.
“When?” With a laugh, Meg rolled her eyes. “Only every winter. If the man wants any hope of his guests responding to his invitations, he needs to send them something they can read. I happen to have exceptional handwriting. I’ve kept a diary since a young age. I’ll loan it to you if you’d like to glimpse my innermost thoughts on hollandaise or how my hair tangles every time I wash it.”
Lucien doubted anything at all in Meg’s diary would be appropriate for mixed company. He would most likely have learned English far quicker if he’d begun with that reading material rather than A Very Pretty Pocket-Book, but he still couldn’t get past the image of Meg seated at a table just like this one, elbow-to-elbow with—
“Nottingvale has…” A man of business. Several secretaries. An army of servants. A mother. A sister. “He doesn’t need…”
“Me?” she finished drolly.
Oh, very well. He was jealous. Unreasonably.
“Let me explain. You are an extremely competent blacksmith. I can do… this.” She sharpened a quill at an odd angle, dipped it into the ink pot at the center of the table, and then began to draw fluid, curling lines on a fresh sheet of foolscap.
It said LUCIEN. Ostensibly. But each stroke was a calligraphic work of art; each curlicue as delicate as a spring leaf, each line a bold trunk from which a dozen other curls sprang forth.
He stared in awe.
She grinned at him unabashedly and whispered, “No one ever says no to one of these. My fingers are the discerning host’s secret weapon.”
He inclined his head. “You are… very talented.”
“If only ‘good penmanship’ was a quality with which one could become rich,” she said, then sighed. “Men get all the secretarial positions, and the planning of parties goes to wives. As soon as Nottingvale takes a bride, I won’t even have seasonal invitations to amuse me.”
Lucien leaned back. He suspected it was not amusement that Meg sought, but rather a longing to be needed, to be important. He knew what it was like to feel that way, and he knew what it was like for that comfort and certainty to go away.
Perhaps she performed this “favor” for Nottingvale for the same reason Lucien kept stopping by the smithy he no longer worked at, just in case someone was in need of a hand or good advice. He didn’t envision himself as a lifelong blacksmith any more than Meg likely yearned to be the-spinster-who-addresses-other-people’s-Christmas-invitations. But being part of something bigger than oneself was what made all the small stuff worth it.
“Would you want to be… a secretary?” Lucien asked. He supposed he could just as easily have said a wife, but voicing the word hadn’t seemed easy at all.
She stared at the snow falling outside the window for a long moment before responding.
“I want to stay in Cressmouth,” she said at last. “I’ve been living with my cousin, but they’re starting a family, and I’m blocking the nursery. I’ve been hunting for a solution. Every afternoon as I walked to or from your farm, I took a different path in order to knock upon every door along the way and inquire whether anyone has a room to let.”
The despondent expression on her face made the answer clear. “They do not?”
“They do not,” she agreed in frustration. “It’s no one’s fault. Cressmouth is small, and so are the cottages. We don’t have hotels and coaching inns. We have a castle.”
He straightened.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “The castle has plenty of rooms. At a price per night greater than what I pay for a month’s rent. Mr. Thompson offered me a discount of fifty percent, but even if I were willing to accept such charity, the price is still too dear.”
She tried to smile.
“Besides, the last thing I want is to be a day-to-day renter like th
e tourists. I don’t want something temporary. I want a home. A place I can hang portraits and make tea in my stockings if I want to. A place that will still be here ten, twenty, thirty years from now. Which means…” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m going to have to expand my search outside of Cressmouth.”
He frowned. “How far outside Cressmouth?”
“Not more than a day’s drive,” she said without hesitation. “I’m about to be a… second cousin once removed? Let’s say ‘aunt.’ Jemima and Allan are the only family I have left, and I hate the idea of even being that far away.”
Lucien hated the idea of Meg being far away, too.
Somehow, when it was him doing the leaving, it hadn’t seemed so threatening. So lonely. He’d been counting down the days to Epiphany because that was when he’d finally set sail for home… but what if he lost Meg even before that?
“What if there’s… nothing?” he asked.
“There’s something. Several somethings.” She pulled a small stack of well-read letters from her bag. “Two rooms to let in Houville, three even further afield…”
Lucien’s muscles tightened. He didn’t want to touch those letters. The only thing he wanted in his hands was Meg. Without another word, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
This embrace was different from the countless stolen kisses after Meg had made some outrageous remark, or Lucien had managed to correctly conjugate the subjunctive tense. This kiss was not a reaction to something that had happened, but rather to all the somethings that would never happen. The afternoons they would no longer share with each other, the Christmases they would spend apart, a lifetime of separation yawning wider and wider in their future.
It was a kiss that said remember me, and I’ll never forget you. That she did not have to try so hard to seem important because she already was important. To her family, to this village, to Lucien. He would never be able to hear an English accent without thinking of her. Hell, he’d never even be able to hear a French accent without thinking of hers, too. She would color everything that ever happened, even if she had to do it from afar.
Because this was also a kiss of goodbye. Of inevitability, of our-days-are-numbered. It was a kiss to burn into their memories because memories would soon be all they had.