Laura Kinsale: Lessons in French

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, f lushing 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 f ly 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.