Lessons in French (17 page)

nothing made sense. "Yet?" She felt close to tears. "You're going back to France?"

"It doesn't matter." He leaned his forehead down, resting it against hers. "Would you let

me steal a kiss before I go?"

"Why?" she whispered, her voice breaking.

"Because my mother says I love you." His lips grazed her temple lightly.

Callie made a small painful sound. "Oh, of course." She stood back, holding her chin

up. "The way the chaperones say I have a very nice smile, and can't understand why I

never took. Why do you have to go away?"

His arms tightened, drawing her back to him. He bent his head and kissed her lips, his

skin warm and a little rough against hers. "Callie, do you remember this?"

She was breathing deeply, poised between anger and weeping and disbelief. But the

brush of his mouth on hers made her close her eyes, all the daydreams of years past

coming real. This was Trevelyan, the only man who had ever touched her this way, who

had ever made her want to be touched this way. It had all long ago faded into reverie,

deep and dangerous and hidden in a secret corner of her mind, as far away as if she had

only imagined it.

He was very real now. Very masculine, scented of drink and wood smoke and sweet

tobacco like the gentlemen when they returned from hunting or supper at a club. And

more than that—the special, particular scent of Trev himself, different from anyone else,

fixed in her mind with a certainty that she had not known she possessed until she

recognized it again.

He kissed her. She began to feel that sensation he had always made her feel—as if she

would lose herself in some sweet, aching fall toward oblivion as long as he held her this

way. He made a sound low in his throat, an echo of intense pleasure. It seemed so

implausible, so impossible to believe that he could feel it too. Yet he kissed her deeply,

pressing her to him. She could feel the stiff binding round his fingers, just touching the

back of her neck, a strange reality of starched cotton amid the dreamlike dimness.

He leaned his shoulders against the great wheel of the carriage, drawing her off balance

to him, kissing her throat and her temple and her hair. Through the oilskin coat and thin

protection of her night rail, her whole body touched his. She felt wildly outside all

bounds of decency and civilization. All her forbidden daydreams were concentrated in

Trev, in this shadow love and outlaw fancy, waiting just beyond the fence of her

everyday life. She reached up and put her hands to each side of his face. It had been no

more than memories, never something to depend upon or believe could come true. Only

this was true—that she stood here in the dark with a man who was going away, as he had

always been going away, always receding into remembrance and dreams.

"Wicked Callie," he said against the corner of her lips. "You shouldn't consort with

drunken Frenchmen in the middle of the night."

She made a small whimper as he grazed her ear with his teeth. She gripped her fingers

in his hair and pulled him closer.

His mouth hovered over hers. "I dream about you all the time," he murmured, his voice

a little slurred. "Do you know that?"

"About me?" She slipped her hands down and held his coat, squeezing it in her fingers.

"I don't believe you."

"I know," he said. "Damn it all."

"You say these things—"

"I know. I know I do. But some of them are true."

She forced herself to stand back a little, trying to be composed. "I don't even think

you're real. I don't think this is real."

He let go of a sigh and stroked his bandaged finger tips lightly across her hair. "If only

it weren't. Maybe then my hand wouldn't feel as if a camel just stepped on it."

It was almost a relief to recall his accident. "You think the horse trod on you?"

"The horse should have kicked me in the head," he said. "I deserve it."

"Yes," she said, biting her lip. "I think you do if you leave Shelford now."

He slid his hands down to her waist, following the shape of her. "You'd better go back,

wicked Callie in your boots and nightclothes, before I do something to deserve worse

than that."

She knew what he meant. She thought of her room and her bed, warm and dry and safe.

It was only a brief walk through the wind and rain, and a million miles away. Her whole

body seemed to glow under his touch.

He drew her hard to him suddenly, opening his mouth over hers with a rough invasion.

For an instant she was full of the delicious, smoky, sandalwood taste of him. She was

seventeen again, and she was dying again, that infinite plunge into his kiss and his body

pressed to hers, so familiar and so unknown.

He set her away as abruptly as he had kissed her. "Enough," he muttered. The f licker of

the candle shadowed his eyes. "Give me a few hours' sleep now, and then I'll be on my

way."

Callie gazed at him. As unlikely as it seemed to believe he was here, it was more

impossible to believe that in a moment he would be gone from her life again. She hugged

herself, shaking her head slowly, as if to clear her brain.

His lip curled. "You didn't suppose I'd be any less a cad than the rest of them, did you?"

he said harshly. "Your father was right. You're well out of a connection with me, Lady

Callista. I assure you it won't be long before you thank him for the second time."

She stood numbly, unable to summon any words amid the welter of feelings. She

turned away and then turned back for a moment, as if to ask a question, but she could

think of no question that he had not already answered with perfect clarity. In the dimness,

all she could see was his rigid face, with that same expression of bitter disdain that he'd

worn when her father hit him.

"Don't look at me as if I've swindled you," he snapped. "It's a dream. It was always a

dream. Go back to the house." He took a step toward her. "Get out of here, you silly

wretch, before we both regret it."

She turned and ran, her face and body hot with emotion, the way she had run before.

He was right, of course. It was a dream and always had been—another castle in the sky,

dusted with just enough reality to make it more vivid and persistent than the rest of her

foolish daydreams, her fanciful visions of being beautiful or adventurous or admirable in

any number of highly unlikely ways.

Callie realized she had worn her muddy boots into her bedchamber and kicked them

off. Being right about dreams did not buy Trev any gratitude from her. She tore off the

wet oilskin and threw it on the floor. She hated gentlemen. She hated every single one of

them, the ones who had jilted her and the ones who had not. They were useless, hopeless,

impossible, and mean. He said he was a cad like all the rest, and she heartily agreed.

Doubtless he had a wife already, or perhaps a dozen, and mistresses by the score back in

France, all of them beautiful and charming and never at a loss for words. Women adored

Trev, all sorts of women threw themselves at him, she had no doubt, and the least of them

would be more appealing than Callie on a good day.

She lay facedown on her bed, not quite sobbing into her pillow, but huffing rather

brokenly while she envisioned herself running them all through with a hay fork. She

would have nothing more to do with gentlemen, or any other people for that matter. She

would go and live with her animals, so that she wouldn't have to speak to anyone ever

again. Residing under a hayrick in the fields, with only the cattle for company, would be

a perfectly blissful existence in Callie's view. She could not imagine how she had ever

considered any other arrangement.

She plumped up her pillow and beat at it. Indeed, she really didn't like people at all. She

didn't like to make conversation or be looked at or have friends. It was all painful and

hopeless, and it would be worse when she lived with Hermey and everyone pitied her the

more because she was a useless spinster sister who had been jilted three times.

No—she loved Hermey—but she couldn't bear it. She refused to do it. She would

become a hermit instead, or possibly a witch, and frighten little children by haunting

some dark wood with her moans. She would adopt a large-brimmed black hat, the more

out of fashion the better, and encourage a great number of cats to hang about her.

No one would wonder at this in Shelford. Everyone here would perfectly comprehend

that she preferred animals to people. Particularly to gentlemen. Most particularly to

French gentlemen. They could all join Bonaparte on that island of his at the ends of the

earth, and very happily she hoped they would be there, drinking good claret and singing

"La Marseillaise," while she lived out her life under a stump.

She fell asleep contemplating these joyful plans, her pillow soaked in tears.

Major Sturgeon stood very stiffly beside the mantel piece in the lesser drawing room.

Instead of his uniform, he had worn a dark green coat with exceptionally high collar

points, so that his entire jaw was swathed in linen. Even so, his clothing could not

obscure a great bruise and swelling that made his mouth and left eye appear oddly

crooked.

Callie sat beside the garden window, as distant from him as was possible, which was

not very distant in the modest chamber. She should have received him in the more formal

atmosphere of the pink drawing room, but there was no fire laid there before Lady

Shelford's afternoon calling hours. Major Sturgeon had answered Callie's invitation with

unnerving promptness, appearing at an hour of the morning that her father would have

called encroaching. Taken by surprise, Callie had managed to clutch Hermey and pull her

bodily to join them in spite of her sister's whispered protests.

They had entered in a rather clumsy stumble, but Callie managed to give the major a

brief curtsy and introduce her sister. He bowed, with a narrowing of his eyes that could

have been a wince of pain or an expression of delight. After the exchange of greetings,

Callie and Hermey seated themselves. They all three fell into an awkward silence.

Callie found that it was difficult to ignore his swathed and swollen jaw. She racked her

brain for some polite conversation, but all she could think of to say was, "Do you have

the toothache?"

Hermey gave her an exasperated glance and broke the uncomfortable moment herself.

"I'm very pleased to meet a longtime acquaintance of my sister's," she said.

"I'm grateful for the honor, Lady Hermione," he said, sounding as if his tongue were

not quite working properly. "Your sister extends me more favor than I deserve." He

bowed again toward Callie, with something that would probably have been a warm smile

if it had not appeared to cause him considerable discomfort. "I apologize for my

appearance. I took a fall from my horse."

"I'm so sorry to hear it," Hermey said. She looked at Callie expectantly.

Realizing that she could not avoid her turn, Callie said, "The horses seem rambunctious

of late."

"Do they?" Hermey smoothed her skirt. "It must be the weather."

Another silence stretched to painful proportions. Hermey maintained a tranquil smile as

she gazed into the distance, making it clear that she would offer no further aid.

"The gentlemen appear to have taken a consider able mauling too," Callie added, at a

loss for any other subject.

"Merely a scratch," the major said, an understatement of substantial proportions. "I

wished so anxiously to see you, Lady Callista, that I allowed myself to imagine my

appearance was not so shocking as I fear it must appear."

Callie looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. He must be in great need of money.

And since Trev, in spite of kissing her and informing her that his mother said he loved

her, had shown more inclination to f lee to France than to propose, the major seemed to

be her only remaining hope to avoid either billeting herself upon Hermey and Sir Thomas

for life, living out her days under the whip of Lady Shelford's sharp tongue, or residing

permanently under a pile of hay.

She was quite certain that Major Sturgeon intended to sacrifice himself on the Altar of

Mammon and offer for her hand again. There was no other discernible reason for him to

call on her. Heiresses must be thin on the ground in London this year.

The new Earl of Shelford appeared at the open door. Callie jumped to her feet, startled

to find her cousin abroad and fully dressed at this hour. She performed introductions

again, vexed to discover a slight quiver of apprehension in her voice. She hoped he would

not ring for his wife. If anyone could drive Major Sturgeon off, it would be her ladyship.

Though in truth, Callie wouldn't have been ungrateful for that. Caught between wishing

to be rid of him and the apparent necessity of marrying him, Callie subsided into

confusion and sat down again.

Lord Shelford was eagerly cordial to the major, as he was to everyone. He rang for

coffee, complaining that Callie had overlooked this obligatory aid to any gentleman's

comfort. The officer apologized again for his appearance and informed Lord Shelford of

his spill from the horse. While his lordship expressed dismay and sympathy, Callie

mused on the coincidence of two gentlemen, out of the very small number of gentlemen