Lessons in French

by Laura Kinsale

  The duchesse smiled feebly. "Yes, I think that might be… wise."

  "I don't see how this can possibly succeed," Callie said, tossing more hay into Hubert's pile. She put down the pitchfork and dusted her gloves. "How is a drover to walk him to Hereford, out and about on the public roads where everyone can see?"

  "You say he'll do anything for Bath buns?" Trev's voice came to her hollowly through the spaces between the boards in the loft.

  She looked up, squinting against a little fall of straw. "I believe he would," she admitted. "Particularly if they're stuffed with white currants."

  "Then I'll get him there."

  She wished to argue, but now that she had agreed to this outlandish scheme he seemed to be exceptionally reticent about the particulars, a circumstance which only heightened her anxiety. "And when he arrives?" she asked. "What then?"

  "That puts me in mind of something," he said, his disembodied voice still muff led. "Do you have a chamber bespoke in Hereford?"

  "Yes. We always stay at the Green Dragon."

  "Where is it?"

  "It's just in the middle of Broad Street, where the show is held."

  "Good. How many nights do you stay?" he asked.

  "I'd intended to stay all three."

  "And who goes with you?"

  Callie hesitated and shrugged. "No one."

  "No one?" He sounded surprised.

  "My father and I used to go together every year." She ran her gloved hand over Hubert's poll, stroking him. "But no one else has very much interest in a cattle show. Lady Shelford doesn't like it, but she didn't forbid me. So… this is the first year I'll go alone."

  The boards creaked. He came to the edge of the loft and knelt down. "You won't be alone," he said with a slight smile.

  She lifted her lashes. In the dusky light of the stable, his rumpled neck cloth and open shirt points made him appear carelessly dashing, like a dark poet or some hero from a novel. She always felt as if she were living inside a story when she was with Trev, swept along on the excitement of some plot outside her own making.

  "You'll bring an abigail, won't you?" he asked.

  "Oh yes, of course." She awoke from the brief reverie that he had meant she wouldn't be alone, because he would be there. "Though—" She remem bered that she hadn't yet lit upon on a substitute for the lady's maid that she and Hermione shared. She stopped gazing up like a moonling into his face and busied herself with arranging the pitchfork on a hook. "Well, I must have someone, at any rate. Hermey needs Anne at home for the next fortnight, what with all the callers and visitations. Sir Thomas is taking her on a number of outings, and Lady Shelford has invited a great crowd of people for the hunting and a masquerade ball or some such." She sighed. "It's so difficult now to keep staff. I don't require anyone with experience. I might even borrow Lilly now that your mother has a nurse, if Mrs. Adam will spare her to me."

  "Perfect," he said with a grin. He rose and vanished again, keeping watch from some hole in the loft in case Major Sturgeon should return.

  Callie looked down at her toes. It really was quite all right. They would have one last lark and save his skin, and then… the rest of her life, she supposed.

  She pulled her gloves on tightly. "I should go," she said, taking up a notch in her horse's girth. "He'll be quiet now until this hay is gone. But be sure to keep a full manger and a bucket of water in front of him."

  "We will. The lane's empty if you make haste. Wait—do you still have that medicine box in your cattle barn?"

  She paused, holding the reins in her hand as she looked up at the loft. They'd used to use the medicine box as their secret place to exchange messages. "Yes, it's there."

  He made a satisfied sound. "Check it every morning."

  "What of the key?"

  For a long moment there was silence. Then he said quietly, "I still have it."

  Callie stood looking up at the bits of straw and cobwebs that dangled from the boards. She swallowed a slight, strange ache in her throat, anticipation and pleasure and pain all mixed, and turned away.

  "Can you use the mounting block?" he asked, his voice oddly gruff.

  "Yes, of course." She didn't look back, though she heard his boots hit the dirt of the stable f loor as she led her horse outside.

  "You'll have a message from me," he murmured. The door closed behind her with a wooden growl and thump.

  Being cordially disliked by Lady Shelford did not afford Callie any relief from attending the teas, dinners, and house parties that the countess—once released from the punctilious obligations of mourning—had begun to host at Shelford Hall. This unaccustomed invasion of county society was only slightly less daunting, in Callie's view, than the full round of gaiety in London during the season, but somehow she was a little less reticent than usual. When she found herself feeling intimidated amid a group of strangers, she thought of Trev feeding Hubert a tomato and grinning at her in the demolished kitchen of Dove House, and her lips would curl upward in a smile that seemed to make some guest smile back at her, and they would exchange a word or two, which was more pleasant than she would have expected in the circumstances.

  She had never been obliged to suffer such a bustle of social doings at her home before. After harvest time, autumn and winter at Shelford had always been quiet. Though the Heythrop country was near enough for convenience, her father had held mixed opinions regarding foxhunting. He was by no means averse to the destruction of foxes, but he had the inborn objection of a true farmer to seeing his fences and cattle overrun by cavalcades of youngbloods on their bang-up high-bred hunters. So there had never been any proper hunting parties held at Shelford, only a few of her father's close friends who stabled their extra mounts there when the stalls were full at Badminton, and stayed over a day or two from time to time when they came to retrieve their second string.

  Now, though, with the end of cub hunting and the true season about to begin, Lady Shelford seemed to have enticed half the nobility to what she fondly referred to as her family's ancestral seat. Callie tried not to feel offended by this description of Shelford Hall. It was true of course that the property now belonged to Cousin Jasper, and thus to his wife, and eventually to their eldest son, though an heir had not yet been produced. Indeed, the Taillefaires did not seem prolific of sons in their recent generations. Callie's own father had outlived three wives without procuring a boy for his trouble—and trouble it had been, from what Callie recalled. Once he had even said to her, with some anguish, that he would have been glad to leave her the whole if he might, for she was as fine a successor as any man could hope for, and then he could have done without these plaguey women upsetting everything with their vapors.

  Callie had smiled at that but never allowed herself to lose sight of the fact that she would be leaving Shelford Hall. If there had been more fond ness between them, she might have remained as a companion to Lady Shelford, one of those maiden aunts who made conversation over the needlework and doted on the children, but no one had ever contemplated that notion for more than an instant. In truth, if Callie must dote on someone else's offspring, she preferred her sister's, or even Major Sturgeon's, for that matter. The changed atmosphere at Shelford was already painful enough.

  This evening it was a formal dinner party large enough to fill the entire long table in the dining room. Callie partook of the extravagant meal with stiff care, dreading to make some faux pas that would draw Dolly's attention to her. She impressed her dinner partner—some viscount or other—only with her silence. Amid the murmur of conversation, the candles and glitter of silver and diamonds, she indulged herself in imagining a dining salle in Paris, with the conversation all in French, and herself the enchanting new bride of a duke—nameless, of course, but resembling Trev in every particular. Somewhere in her fantasy all the guests mysteriously vanished and he drew her up a gilded staircase to a bed that rather resembled the entire city of Byzantium, kissing her hands and then—

  "Lady Callista?" Her dinner partner w
as standing, waiting to pull out her chair. Perforce, she took his arm and joined the guests in the drawing room.

  Hermey had taken a place near the door with Sir Thomas, enjoying her time in the sun, accepting felic itations from some of the new arrivals who had been invited for the music after dinner. Callie had found her own brief betrothals and the attendant ceremonies to be excruciating, but clearly Hermey loved it. She readily offered her cheeks to be kissed and her gloved hands to be pressed. Her eyes sparkled when she looked toward the staid figure of Sir Thomas. It was pleasing to see. Her sister's evident happiness put Callie in such an expansive humor that she even exchanged a few words about the weather with the viscount.

  He answered courteously as he seated her on the small sofa in the corner, screened as close behind one of the Corinthian columns as she could manage. His attention then being engaged by a fellow hunting-man regarding the condition of the coverts in the Cotswolds, and how it would affect the Beaufort pack, he forgot all about her. Callie accepted a cup of lemonade from a footman and sat looking at her toes, still drifting in her mind with Trev amid gilded towers and silken bedsheets, waiting for the first moment she could excuse herself to go out and feed the orphan calf.

  "But where is your handsome French beau, le duc très bon?" a female voice murmured coyly. "Monceaux, was it? He didn't linger the other day. I had so hoped to have an introduction to him."

  Callie's head came up in startlement. But no one was speaking to her—it was a lady on the other side of the column talking to Lady Shelford. Callie could just see the spangled train of Dolly's gown lying across the fringe of the India carpet.

  "Oh, he sent his regrets tonight," Dolly said, with a low laugh. "How he regrets! His tiresome mother is ill."

  "A dutiful son," the other voice said. And then, softer: "But that is so charming, n'est-ce pas? No doubt an attentive lover too."

  "He's French, is he not?" Lady Shelford murmured.

  "Let us pray his dear mother recovers sufficiently that he can leave her side," her friend said sugges tively, "while I'm yet here at Shelford to offer him my sympathy."

  "Indeed. But I fear I must claim precedence there, Fanny darling, as your hostess."

  "No, it's too ungenerous of you!" The other woman had a smirk in her voice. "Didn't we always share everything at school?"

  They giggled quietly and moved away, leaving Callie staring at the foot of the column. She was shocked, not least to find that Dolly must have sent him a card for the dinner. She sat fixed to the sofa, hardly knowing where to look. Trev grinning at her over the horns of a misplaced bull and the très bon duc de Monceaux were two entirely different persons, she realized. She came to that insight with great sudden ness, on the heels of recalling that she was wearing a plain stuff gown that Hermey had cheerfully declared to be fit for a milkmaid, and her hair was unadorned except for a single ribbon in a shade of puce that Lady Shelford detested. Callie had not, when she dressed for dinner, taken any note of these opinions, because she intended to go out the barn later, but abruptly they took on a dangerous significance.

  She was a spinster dowd. That was no fresh news, but she had rather a habit of forgetting it just recently, having been beguiled by the suggestion that her cheeks more closely resembled strawberries than a pudding, and the matter of certain gentlemen attempting to recover certain bulls on her behalf. But the knowledge was not something that she could afford to disregard, even under the allure of her daydreams. She and Trev were great friends, but he was indeed French. Flirtation and lovemaking were in his blood. He would say such things as he said to Callie to any lady. And now Dolly and her friend spoke of him in that horrid insinuating way, as if it were quite natural to suppose that they could share his attentions if they pleased.

  Callie stood up abruptly, making her way toward the door before the violinist had even started to play. The room felt close and hot. Such a wave of resent ment and despair had possessed her that she nearly grew ill. She had to go out into the chilly air to escape from this press of elegant strangers. She hurried down the stairs to the little vestibule on the ground f loor where her cloak and muck boots awaited her. No one paid her any mind, though doubtless in the morning Lady Shelford would have some acid comment on her ungraciously early departure. Callie would say she had felt unwell. It was no more than the truth.

  Major Sturgeon made his second and third calls without successfully cornering Callie alone. As the days passed, she observed with mild interest the colors of the bruise on his jaw fade from black and blue to green and purple. With each call he brought the latest news from Colonel Davenport regarding the search for Hubert, recounting the lack of success in grave tones. Poor Cousin Jasper was closely interested in this topic, asking anxious questions and proposing several absurdly optimistic theories about where the bull might have got off to—none of which would have comforted Callie in the least if she hadn't already known Hubert was safe.

  Hermey also lent her chaperonage to the major's visits, sitting primly beside Callie and attempting to dislodge Cousin Jasper so that Callie could be left alone with her suitor. Their cousin seemed oblivious to all hints, however, chatting with the major in that slow, fretful way of his that always made Callie feel sorry for him. Major Sturgeon was relentlessly cour teous, but by his third call, she could see that he was losing patience.

  "Will you take a turn in the shrubbery with me, Lady Callista?" he demanded. It was phrased as an invitation, but clearly he was a man accustomed to giving orders.

  She was to leave for Hereford at first light. Knowing that he could not continue to pursue her after today, she submitted to the inevitable. She had spent long hours staring into the dark canopy of her bed, considering her future. Of course she wasn't a beauty. Anyone could see that. She was far past the age of matrimony. She had no wit or even sensible conversation in company. She did possess a distinguished rank and pedigree, but there had always seemed to be more than an adequate supply of earls' daughters to fill the demand at Almack's, and she had been dismissed by the patronesses as a hopeless quiz after her first season anyway. Her jiltings had confirmed their judgment: Callie was a social outcast. The only thing that she possessed to attract a husband was her money.

  She knew all that in her head, but since Trev had returned, he had confused her in her heart. His sentiments appeared to vary from the romantic to the unfeeling; he said he was going away, and yet he stayed. He mentioned in an offhand way that he might love her, but neglected to expand upon the topic to any particular purpose. She'd found no sense in it, but what she had overheard from Lady Shelford and her guest had brought Callie back to cold reality.

  Trev might be her dear friend, but truthfully, what could a man like the duc de Monceaux possibly want with her? He had regained his own fortune. He was titled. He was rich. In spite of a penchant for devilry, he was perfectly fitted to the elevated continental society for which he had been bred. She had seen enough of the bon ton to know that. Callie at the head of a great French noble house? It was a preposterous idea. She was unsuitable in every way. She wasn't French, she wasn't Catholic, she wasn't young or gay or beautiful. She knew no better than to wear poppy orange with pink.

  She imagined herself sitting against the wall in a Parisian salon the way she had sat in Almack's, conspicuously gauche, while the fashionable gossips whispered behind their fans and wondered what could have induced him to marry this unfortunate English thing. They would conjecture how she had trapped him and invent unpleasant stories about her. She knew well enough the sort of things people could say, having been jilted three times. Some no doubt would feel sorry for her and murmur that he had married her out of pity, a thought that made her feel wretched.

  She allowed Major Sturgeon to escort her to the shrubbery. Hermey positively grabbed Cousin Jasper by the arm, detaining him from following. Callie sat on a stone bench and folded her hands, examining the polish on the major's boots as he took all the blame upon himself for the breaking of their previous betrothal—as w
ell he might, she thought dryly— proclaimed that he was a reformed man, swore to devote the remainder of his life to her welfare, and declared himself to be prostrate at her feet. He did not, thankfully, claim to be in love with her. He seemed to have at least a smidgen of shame left to him.

  She listened to his proposal in silence and then said that she must have a fortnight to think about it.

  Twelve

  CALLIE LOVED AGRICULTURAL FAIRS. HER SITTING chamber at the Green Dragon, the same one she and her papa had always used, directly overlooked the wide street where all the stock would gather. They had spent many hours standing in this same window and trying to guess what sort of calves were hidden inside Mr. Downie's tarpaulin enclosure, or commenting on the suitability of some crossbred yearling ox for plowing. The earl would lean out the window and salute his friends, calling down to invite them inside to share a breakfast.

  There was no standing off or holding oneself up stiff ly above the others. Humble Farmer Lewis would bring a jug of his best perry made from the celebrated black pears of Worcester, touch his forelock respect fully, and be welcomed to sit down to the table with the earl and everyone else. Callie always kept a place on the little sofa near the window, taking effervescent sips of pear cider and listening to the talk of sheep and orchards. She enjoyed the familiar whiff of soap scrubbed skin and tobacco, the earnest mixture of best Sunday clothes and work-toughened hands. There was always a sense of gay excitement, especially on the first day as the animals arrived, much hearty laughter and dreams of silver cups and prizes. Everyone felt as if anything could happen.