Lessons in French

by Laura Kinsale

  Dolly held the note, looking down at it. Callie could see that there was an imprint of deer antlers upon the cover, the inn's insignia. She hoped that Lady Shelford would not decide to throw some obstacle in the way of hiring a cook.

  "Most unseemly," Dolly said, lifting her pale and elegant chin. "I don't know why you wouldn't use an appropriate intermediary when dealing with a common innkeeper."

  "I've known Mr. Rankin since I was a little girl, ma'am," Callie said.

  "Indeed." She walked across the room and handed the note to Callie. "Pray leave any reply beside the table in the hall, and it will be forwarded for you. You need not concern yourself to convey it in person."

  "Thank you, ma'am." Callie kept her voice gentle. She wished only to escape the room. Hermey could not wed her baronet and give them an opportunity to depart quickly enough for Callie. She took the note, laid it down beside her cup, and offered to pour some tea. She did not want to retreat too hastily, for fear of arousing new suspicion. There was a slight chance that the letter was from Trevelyan—it was thicker than a mere confirmation of the cook's acceptance needed to be, and he might have used the inn's stationery to write. She dreaded to open it here. His earlier note to her had been quite unexceptionable, but with Trev there was no predicting.

  "I've already had my tea," Hermey said as Callie filled a cup for Lady Shelford. "Come up to my room, Callie, when you've done with yours. I want to tell you what Lady Williams said to me yesterday. You won't credit it, but she insists that striped redingote only needs to be edged with blue fur to make a winter coat. Pink and blue for winter! Can you just imagine what a sight I should make? Come and help me choose another lining."

  Callie took advantage of this transparent scheme, since they both knew that Dolly found nothing so tedious as discussing anyone's wardrobe but her own. "Perhaps the coquelicot wool you purchased in Leamington?" she asked.

  The countess made a sound of revulsion. "Please, you can't mean it, Callista. That garish poppy orange? It should be burned, to spare me having to look at it again. You ought to have bought a few more yards of the primrose I'm going to use for my pelisse, Hermione, as I advised you."

  "I think the coquelicot would be lovely," Hermey said loyally. "Come with us, ma'am, and we'll spread it out on my bed with the pink. You'll see."

  "I couldn't bear to look at it," Dolly said.

  "I'll come." Callie took a perfunctory sip of tea and then walked to the door, carefully timing her excuses to coincide with the arrival of a footman with Lady Shelford's barley water. "I can bear to look at anything."

  "Yes," Dolly murmured, "we've noticed."

  Callie walked with Hermey to her sister's bedroom. Neither of them spoke. As soon as the door closed, Hermey turned. "She's jealous! I vow it. You should have seen her yesterday, pawing at Madame's son. It was revolting. She can't even tolerate that he brought you a posy from his mother, of all things!"

  "Oh dear, I hoped no one knew of that."

  "Why shouldn't anyone know it?" Hermey demanded. "He made sure to correct the footman about it, and rightly so. I hope he may elope with you and put her in her place!"

  "I'll be certain to write to you from Madagascar if he does." Callie broke the seal on her letter.

  "Perhaps that's from him," Hermey said, leaning over her shoulder.

  "No doubt these are my instructions on how to make a ladder out of bedsheets." Callie stepped away. "You laid the coquelicot wool in your cedar trunk, if I recall."

  "You noodle, you don't truthfully think I'd pair that with pink?" Hermey shook her head and put her hand over her eyes. "And I won't peek, I promise."

  Callie looked down at the letter. It was directed to her, under cover of Shelford Hall, in a precise, broad hand that she did not recognize. She had not really expected it would be from Trev, but it was not from

  Mr. Rankin, either. She frowned, allowing the damp outer wrap to fall away.

  My dearest Lady Callista Taillefaire,

  I humbly beg you will accept my heartfelt apologies for causing you distress at our recent encounter. Such was far from my intention. My only possible defense is that, in my wonder at seeing you, I allowed my feelings to overcome me.

  Yet I cannot pretend that I came to Shelford without the express hope of calling upon you. I had intended to request your permission in writing before I imposed myself. However, I found myself taken utterly off guard to realize that I was in your presence. I think now that I should have picked up a newspaper and feigned that I did not exist. Indeed, how should I suppose you would even recognize me—instantly, as I did you?

  You think me a scoundrel, of course. And so I am. By what audacity I make this request, I myself can hardly fathom. You have and you should refuse me. Nay, I think you would be even more disgusted if I should tell you that my wife, God rest her soul, passed away these two years ago, and it was not a happy marriage, to my shame.

  What a botch I make of this. I am not a man to whom words come easily. I do not wish to impose myself on you, and yet I would do what lay within my poor power to stand your friend and amend the unforgivable.

  I have removed from the Antlers so that you may be easy, and will remain a guest at Col. Wm Davenport's house at Bromyard until Friday. I believe you are acquainted with him, as he tells me he has recently obtained a singular bullock from the Shelford stock.

  Do I have any hope that I have not sunk myself

  beneath reproach? If Friday passes and I have no

  sign of it, I shall know and leave you in peace.

  God bless and keep you, Lady Callista.

  Yr Servant,

  John L. Sturgeon, Maj. 7th Royal Dragoon Guards

  "Oh, do tell me what it is!" Hermey made an impa tient little hop. "You look as if you've seen a ghost!"

  Callie drew a deep, shaky breath. "Indeed. I believe I have." She handed the letter to her sister.

  Hermey snatched it and read, bouncing on her heels. Her mouth began to open wider and wider. She looked up at Callie as she finished. "And who is this gentleman? Is he a scoundrel in truth? Callie! Oh my, what have you been up to while no one was attending?"

  "I haven't been up to anything, I assure you. I was once engaged to marry Major Sturgeon. You don't recognize his name?"

  "Oh," Hermey said. "Ohhh." She sank slowly down onto the window seat and read the letter again. Then she looked up. "You've seen him?"

  Callie nodded. "He came into the Antlers yesterday morning, when I was discussing the cook with Mr. Rankin."

  "What did he say?"

  "Very little. He requested to call on me, and I refused, and he looked as if he'd like to run me through. And then he left. I can't imagine what he supposes to gain with this." She sat down on the dressing stool and pulled her shawl closer around her in the bedroom's chill. "Oh, I hope he will not persecute me all week."

  "Persecute you! But it's so romantic!"

  "Not in the least." Callie lifted her chin. "His wife has died, bless the poor woman, and now he wishes to take another look at my fortune. No doubt he needs a mother for his orphaned children too."

  Hermey looked down, still holding the letter. "No, I suppose… you would not consider it."

  "Certainly not. The man cried off, Hermey. Don't you even remember how angry Papa was? No reason given, but then Major Sturgeon up and married that Miss Ladd within the two-month. It was ghastly."

  "Yes, but—it was all so long ago, wasn't it? He's had a change of heart."

  "I doubt that very much. I suppose you were a bit young to know the particulars. You must have been no more than—oh, fourteen perhaps, at best."

  Hermey bit her lip. "I do remember that it made you cry."

  "Merely on Papa's behalf," Callie said staunchly.

  "Men are horrid." Hermey stood up and f lung the letter. It f luttered into the air and gently down onto the carpet.

  "Well, I've not had much luck with them, but I'm sure that you'll find it a very different matter." Callie leaned down and retri
eved the letter. "For one thing, you would never wear coquelicot with pink."

  Hermey gave her a distracted smile and sat down again on the window seat. She toyed with the new ring on her hand, tracing her fingertip round and round the opal cabochon. Callie watched her sister's profile against the gray light. Quite suddenly, she remembered Hermey's fear that Sir Thomas Vickery might not wish to have a spinster sister intrude on his marriage. "Oh—" she said and stopped herself.

  Hermey looked up.

  Callie avoided her eyes and spread the paper on her lap. She felt a tightness in her throat, some thing threatening to fill her eyes. She cleared it with a cough.

  "It's such an odd letter," she said, pretending to read it again. "My first impulse was to tear it up, but I must confess—this part where he admits he's making a botch of it…"

  "Perhaps he's realized he made a botch of it years ago," Hermey said fiercely. "Which he most certainly did."

  "He does say it was not a happy marriage. Perhaps he was…" Callie tapped her fingers on the sheet. "Well—things can happen, I suppose. Gentlemen find themselves… embarrassed."

  Hermey looked at her aslant, her neat eyebrows raised. Callie did not know if she understood.

  "I think perhaps he was in love with this other lady," Callie said.

  "Oh poo. Then why did he ask you to marry him?" Hermey asked naïvely.

  "Papa arranged it. But—" She broke off, at a loss to explain to her sister that it was quite likely Major Sturgeon had not been faithful to Callie during their engagement. "I'm not the one to cause a gentleman to forget his prior feelings, I don't think."

  Hermey rose abruptly and crossed the room. She sat down on the bench and gave Callie a hard hug. "This dreadful major doesn't seem to have forgot you, though. I wish you may make him fall wildly in love, and then give him the cut and let him pine away until he dies of consumption."

  "While writing poems in a garret."

  "A freezing garret. With rats."

  Callie turned the letter and squinted at it. "I'm not certain Major Sturgeon could bring himself to write a poem."

  "For you, he would do anything!" Hermey opened her arm in an eloquent wave.

  "Hmmm," Callie said. "Perhaps I will subjugate him and marry him after all, and keep him enslaved to my smallest wish for years."

  "Yes! Exactly like Sir Thomas," Hermey agreed.

  "I daresay it would annoy Dolly to have him call on me."

  Hermey's eyes widened. "Oh yes!" She caught Callie's arm. "Oh, you must. For that alone."

  Callie looked down at the letter. She blinked. "Yes," she said resolutely. "Yes, I think I must."

  The London physician did nothing to allay Trev's worst apprehensions. He had ordered Jock to bring back the finest professional man he could locate, and the valet had gone right to the top, it seemed. Dr. Turner came with excellent credentials, chief ly that he was an esteemed friend of Sir Henry Halford, president of the Royal College and physician in ordinary to the sovereign. According to Sir Henry's letter, Trev could repose his full confidence in Dr. Turner, to whom Halford preferred to delegate his regular practice while he was in attendance on the king.

  With that strong a recommendation, there seemed little hope that Turner's discouraging opinion could be dismissed as quackery. He didn't even try to replace the medicines with his own concoctions, as every other doctor Trev had ever known had done. After the examination, he sat with Trev in the parlor, writing instructions in a businesslike manner, before he finally looked up and said in an even voice that the duke would be wise to help his mother to put her affairs in order.

  His meaning struck Trev like a blind-side blow in a sparring match. He had thought tentatively of future concerns, of course. He'd even sent his letter just yesterday to the French Chapel Royal in Little George Street, to request the attention of a priest to his mother's illness. Merely as a comfort, because he knew she must have been unable to attend any mass herself for some time. Certainly not for any idea of immediate danger. But to have it said so frankly, by a medical man… Trev found he could not seem to grasp the news. He only sat motionless, gazing at the physician's pen as it scratched across the page.

  When he finally composed himself far enough to protest that she had been improving since he arrived, Dr. Turner merely nodded. That was characteristic of such cases, the doctor said; the patient underwent a sudden burst of energy and activity just before the final crisis, caused by migration of blood from the lungs to the heart. The winded speech and high color in his mother's cheeks were a sign of this phase. It might last a few days or a month, but she was much debilitated, and the doctor did not think she had a great deal of strength to spare.

  Dr. Turner had brought with him a nurse, and a surgeon to assist with bloodletting. Trev was not fond of surgeons. He recalled too well the sensation of faintness and nausea that had accompanied the bleeding treatments his grandfather had insisted upon until Trev was old enough to bodily rebel. He had not let a knife or lancet touch him since the age of eight, and he didn't intend to allow it again, however impru dent and eccentric that might be. He didn't think his health had suffered a jot from keeping his ill humors shut up inside, though he was willing to admit it might have contributed to his dubious character.

  He imagined trying to speak to his mother about putting her affairs in order and felt a familiar and potent urge come over him—the strong desire to be elsewhere. London. Or Paris. Or better yet, Peking. He hardly realized that Dr. Turner was rising to depart, or even felt the sleet on the back of his own neck as he escorted the physician under an umbrella to lodging at the Antlers. He woodenly expressed his gratitude for the doctor's forethought in making a professional nurse available for as long as his mother might require it, and promised to convey all instructions to the local surgeon. When he stood in the street again, he could think only that he needed fortification before he could face his maman. Not to put a fine point on it, he needed to be deeply, blessedly, besottedly drunk.

  Not at the Antlers, of course. Nowhere in Shelford. Feral instinct pointed him toward a small alehouse that he recalled having passed on the Bromyard road. He was not a habitual tippler; he liked to keep his wits about him too much for that, but barring Peking, drink seemed the only recourse. He began to walk, holding the umbrella until the wind threatened to collapse it, and then put his face down and strode into the stinging drops.

  At the pace he set, it was hardly more than a quarter hour before he saw the low thatched roof and cheerful smoke rising up through the sleet. As he pushed open the door, the scent of damp, sweaty wool and home brew engulfed him, carried outside on the rumble of laughter and talk.

  He shoved his way in among the crowd of laborers and idle sportsmen. The Bluebell was clearly one of those places deplored by moralists in lecture and print, where all levels of society mingled on free terms. A convivial gathering to escape the weather, relentlessly masculine but for a barmaid who could give back as good as she got—it was just the situation Trev preferred at the moment. He used his smile to ruthless advantage, obtaining a tankard from the barmaid and a jeer from the table she ignored on his behalf, but he bought them all a round and dragged up a stool, downing his ale in one long draught. He knew well enough how to purchase a welcome here.

  The crowd was in the middle stages of alcoholic mirth, singing bawdy songs and wagering on whether a carter could lift a table on his back with five men atop it, when a pair of gentlemen joined the company. They stood near the door, peeling out of wet overcoats and checking the oilskin covers on the locks of their rif les.

  Trev left off watching the carter's losing struggle and glanced at the newcomers as they hiked their guns into a rack. It took him a moment to recognize Major Sturgeon, dressed as he was for shooting and wet to his skin. The two men seemed in excellent humor in spite of the weather, hanging a bulging game-bag beside their guns. Sturgeon's companion appeared to be some respected local squire. Men touched their forelocks and vacated the inglenook by the fireplace
, leaving the best seats open for the new arrivals.

  Trev set his stool back on two legs, his elbows propped behind him on a table. The others were laughing and yelling at the carter now, goading him for his defeat, while he shouted back, red-faced, demanding another try and making himself look a fool on top of a failure. He was clearly not the sort to take a ribbing.

  Trev lifted his mug in the air and began to sing "The British Grenadiers." He raised his voice over the carter's hot complaints. "Whenever we're commanded to storm the palisades," he bellowed in good John Bull style, "our leaders march with firelocks, and we with hand grenades!" By the time he got to "tow, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers!" he had his own table singing along at the top of their drunken lungs. He finished off his ale and saw Sturgeon looking at him with a cold gaze. The rest of the tavern had taken up the song in loud chorus, forgetting the carter in their new enthusiasm.