Lessons in French (5 page)

sandalwood and polished leather.

Lilly sat up on the roof with Jacques, to direct the way to the gates of Shelford Hall.

Inside, Callie ran her hand over the velvet seat of what was certainly an elegantly

appointed traveling chaise. She could not see it well by moonlight, but she had discerned

the coat of arms painted on the door. She would have thought Trev would drive a

curricle, or even a cabriolet, something light and fast, but instead it was a great ponderous

closed vehicle like her father's carriage.

A bit too much like her father's carriage. That ceremonial vehicle stood yet in the coach

house, only used on Sundays and for funerals. Enclosed and dark and set a little away

from the stables, as it had always been, left to quiet and seclusion each week after the

wheels had been cleaned of mud and the seats brushed down.

She stared out at the slowly passing shapes of trees and hedges, all blue-white and

black under the rising moon. Not for a long time had she thought about her father's

carriage as anything more than the conveyance that she and Hermione, and now Lord and

Lady Shelford, mounted inside to drive to church. But tonight, in a different carriage,

with the thought and scent and touch of Trevelyan d'Augustin all about her, that other

memory rose vivid and inescapable.

It was Trev who had first perceived the commodious possibilities of the coach. It was

not something Callie would have considered. But then, she had not been considering

anything very rationally at the time. She had been so in love, and so besieged by the

sensations he could evoke just by glancing down at her with that faint perceptive smile at

the corner of his mouth—one of the peahens in the yard would have been more likely to

hold a sensible exchange on the matter of where they might safely meet.

His kisses she had already experienced. She was an authority on the topic. Trev said so.

He said her kisses made him feel as if he were dying, which she had taken as a

compliment, because his made her feel exactly the same way, and it was indeed a great

deal like dying, or disintegrating, or falling down some infinite well that had no name but

led somewhere that she was sure she had to go.

It had led, in fact, into her father's carriage. Even now, years later, she moistened her

lips and closed her eyes and put her gloved fingers to her mouth at the thought of the dim

coach interior, lit only by a thin line of daylight that fell down from some high window

and through the curtains, a streak of brightness across the red velvet seats. And silence,

but for his breath at her ear and throat, and the little noises she made as he touched her.

Protest and pleasure and fear almost to panic that someone would discover them, but

when he had kissed her there and even
there,
his tongue and teeth on her breast, tugging

through her gown, she had gasped and clung to his shoulders and begged with tiny

whimpers.

He'd sat up a little, his hair all mussed in the dusky light, looking as if he could not

remember who he was. Then he had freed the buttons on his trousers and guided her

hand, kissing the side of her neck. When she touched him, he shuddered and bruised her

skin as he closed his teeth. A low sound in his throat seemed to make sparks shower

down through her whole body.

She arched up against him, pressed and tangled as they were on the seat, his leg over

hers and her skirt all askew. She felt his hard man's part slide against her thigh, their

fingers twisted together over it, as if both of them searched and prevented at once. She

wanted him closer and pushed him away, frightened and seeking for more.

As she pressed her legs together, he worked his fingers inside her, finding a place that

made her sob with smothered pleasure. She'd tried to suppress the sounds that came from

her throat, but he kissed her breasts again and thrust his fingers deeper, growling in his

chest as he drew a half cry from her, delight and confusion and desperation, wanting and

wanting and pushing herself up to meet his hand. She could hear herself panting, and

him, their breath coming harder, mingling and rising until she felt a wave of such intense

pleasure burst through her that she did cry out, forgetting everything but him. He rose

over her, pressing himself hard into that intimate place, not his hand now but the thick

head of his erection pushing for entry.

"
Callista!"

The sound of her father's voice seemed to echo even now, as if he stood there yet, the

door to the carriage f lung open and Trev moving suddenly to sit up. Remembering,

Callie bit down on her fingers so hard that it hurt through the glove.

Trev had tried to conceal her, but there was no hope of it. Only an instant of

bewilderment, and then her heart had seemed to burst in horror. Sickness rose in her

throat. She had barely been aware of Trev's quick move to arrange her skirts; she had

seen only her father's face, a nightmare against the shadowed brick of the coach house

wall.

"Get down," her father said in a whisper.

Callie had scrambled past Trev, stumbling down the stairs, her gown and hair in

disarray. Her father had not touched her. He stood back, his hand working on the riding

whip he carried, as Trev swung down after her in one swift move.

"Callista," he said. "Go back to the house."

Trev started to speak, and her father struck him across the face with the whip.

Callie made a choked cry. She took an instinctive step toward Trev as she saw the line

of blood well across his cheekbone. His face was white, utterly still. He stared at her

father without speaking.

"Go to the house now, Callista," her father said. "Or do not expect ever to enter it

again."

She had run. She had turned away and run from the stable yard, up the front stairs, run

blindly through the hall and up to her room. She had not seen Trev again. He had

vanished from Shelford, from his family, from her life. Not even his mother had known

where he had gone until years later, when he began to write from France.

Late in the evening of that dreadful day, after she had sent back a tray from her room,

having no appetite to swallow anything, her father had come to her. Callie was too

mortified to do more than sit at her dressing table with her fingers gripped around her

comb until the teeth bent. She had glanced at him once, but the expression on his face

was unbearable. If it had not been her father, her own staunch and self-possessed papa,

she would have thought from his red-rimmed eyes that he had been weeping.

"Callista," he said, "I will not chastise you. You lost your mother when you were very

young, and perhaps I haven't—perhaps your governesses—" He paused, rubbing his hand

over his eyes. "I'm convinced that you did not comprehend."

She sat silent, allowing him to excuse her. She well knew she had been wicked.

Anything and everything to do with Trev was a transgression. She had kept it secret

because she had known that with perfect clarity. All she had to say for herself was that he

made her lose all shame and reason, and that was no defense.

"I must—" He turned his back on her. "I must ask this. Did he—ah—"

He seemed to lose the tail of his sentence. She felt the ivory teeth of her comb break

with a tiny snap. She stared down at the red marks on her fingers.

"He claimed that he did not utterly soil and ruin you," her father said in a rush. "I

cannot—I will not—take the word of a blackguarding French scoundrel, but if you tell

me that is so—" His voice changed. He seemed almost to plead. "Callie, I will believe

you."

"He didn't, Papa," she said quickly, flushing so hot that she felt feverish. Callie

perfectly understood what he meant. She was as well acquainted with certain facts of life

as any farmer's daughter would be. But she should not have touched that place where

Trev had guided her hand, or let him do what he had to her—what girl of any slightest

modesty would not have comprehended that!

Her papa let go of a deep breath. "I see."

She picked at the tiny broken teeth of her comb. He turned back to face her. Callie

stared at her toes.

"My very dear," he said. "Oh, my dear. I'd have given my life to spare you this. He's a

villain of the lowest sort. I know that he made you believe he loved you, or you would

never have been so rash, but, Callie, Callie…" He gazed at her, his eyes damp. "It is all

lies. You're a substantial heiress. You're underage. These wretches with their polished

address, they're full of any pretense in order to get you into their power." His lip curled

with scorn. "But he'd never have touched a penny of your fortune. It's well protected for

you, I've made certain of that. He knows it now, if he did not before."

She had nodded. She had not wholly believed him. Trev's sweet falsehoods had been

still too close then, the way he made her feel too vivid to disbelieve.

Trev had said they would fly to the border to be married, because neither of them was

of age. In the years after, she was amazed to look back and think that she had ever had

the nerve to fall in with such plans. But then she had always done so, whether it was a

secret jaunt to see the finish of a horse race, amid a very mixed crowd of rowdies and

questionable gentlemen, or a visit to the graveyard by a full moon. She had known he was

wild, but she had trusted him. It had not seemed so bad or frightening to slip out of the

house at midnight, as long as Trev would be waiting for her under the ancient yew that

guarded her window.

No doubt those escapades had hardened and habituated her, rather like the criminal

classes, to accept without serious question his idea that it would be a grand adventure to

elope. Of course she had known it was an iniquitous thing to do, and that her father

deeply disapproved of Trev and would never countenance a marriage between them,

clandestine or otherwise, but all that she somehow had put aside in her euphoria that

someone as splendid and handsome and enthralling as Trevelyan loved her.

She had barely been seventeen. She was not so naïve anymore. The point had been

borne in upon her by three subsequent gentlemen just how unlikely it was that Lady

Callista Taillefaire would inspire any true romantic passions in the male heart.

"Well," her father had said gruff ly. "I wish for you to go to your cousins in Chester for

a time. But we'll take a visit up to Hereford first. You and I. There are some cattle sales I

wish to see, and you will advise me on what I should buy. You'll like that, eh? We'll

depart tomorrow, as soon as your maid can make ready."

So she had gone away for a few months and then come home. Her father had made her

excuses well. No word of her indiscretion had ever been disclosed, no hint or insinuation

of it whispered over the years. Shelford was a small place, and she was notorious for her

triple jilting, but not even the most scandalous gossip had ever connected her name with

Trevelyan's.

Not even his family had known. Madame de Monceaux had spoken often of her

bewilderment and grief, and his grandfather cursed the boy to damnation for his

capricious desertion of his family. Callie felt heavily to blame. After she was allowed to

return, she had quietly done everything she could for their welfare, but the occasional

pheasant or basket of fruit from Shelford Hall was a poor recompense for the loss of a

son.

Callie gathered her shawl about her, sitting up as the carriage turned in at the gates of

her home. She looked out the window at the fields along the drive, their dim, silvered

expanse dotted with the dark humps of sleeping cattle. The Hall was a high black shape, a

few windows glowing softly here and there along the length of its regular facade.

The coach rolled to a stop. Lanterns glinted on the broad stairs as Shelford's footman

opened the door for her. Callie unclasped her fingers, aware of a secret lift of her spirits

as she stepped down from the carriage. Trev had come home. She was needed at Dove

House early in the morning. But she made no request for a mount to be ready or a maid to

be prepared to accompany her. She would rise before dawn and walk by the back way to

his den of iniquity, so that she would not be seen in the village.

In truth, Trev might be a practiced villain, but she feared that he had not required much

practice to lead her astray.

Three

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAND CALLIE INTO A CARRIAGE without skeletons

rising up to point accusing fingers at him. Trev had been exquisitely polite as he bid her

good night. Fortunately there was little moonlight, so both of them could direct their full

attention to the mundane matter of safely negotiating her way onto the steps. He watched

the carriage lumber into the darkness of the narrow, tree-choked lane.

He was beset by skeletons in Shelford. His mother, whom he had neglected beyond

shame. His sisters, lost to scarlet fever, lying in graves he had not visited. His

grandfather, unmourned and full of condemnation, rising up like some vengeful character

from a play by Shakespeare. And Callie—shy, passionate, a very much living reminder of

one of the more reprehensible moments in a notably careless career.