Laura Kinsale: Lessons in French

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 accom pany 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.

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 reprehen sible moments in a notably careless career.

He still found it difficult to comprehend that she had not married. When he had left, he'd been sure that she would be wed within the year, if not sooner-as soon as her father could arrange for it.

He had not cared to stay and watch the ceremony. He was a contemptible French scoundrel, so he went to France. To his bloodthirsty delight, he'd found that Bonaparte had good use for young men with bruised hearts and even more deeply lacerated pride. For a few years Trev had labored under the name of Thibaut LeBlanc and shot at Englishmen, starved hideously, looted Spanish peasants, and learned how far down he could plunge into brute existence. What final vestige of pride or humanity he retained was burned out of him at Salamanca. He had not rejoined the crushed remnants of his company as they retreated; he'd surrendered instead to a British aide-de-camp who recognized him from their school days, and spent the rest of the wars in the reasonable comfort of various officers' prisons, interrogating French captives for Wellington's staff.

He might have gone back to Shelford after Waterloo. Instead he had remained in France. He'd begun to write to his mother, but somehow he had not told her of the battles or the ruin he had found at Monceaux, or the burned-out shell of her childhood home in Montjoie. Somehow he had written instead of how he would win it back for her, the fabled château and the titles and everything she had lost.

He knew all the stories. His grandfather had made certain of that. Instead of nursery rhymes, Trev had been weaned on tales of the Terror, of his father's heroism and his mother's sacrifice. His father had not surrendered, like Trev, but gone as a true nobleman to his fate. His mother had barely escaped the mob. Trev owed his life and his baptismal name to one Captain Trevelyan Davis, an enterprising Welshman who had smuggled her and her five young children across the channel just two days before she gave birth to him.

In spite of the bloody backdrop, his childhood had been golden. He didn't miss a father or a country he'd never known, but he remembered his pretty mother laughing while she taught his elder brother to dance. Trev had worshipped Etienne as only a seven year-old could worship a dashing brother of thirteen. Those had been the sweet, carefree times, the years of perfect boyhood bliss. Then one day Etienne had tried to raced his hot-blooded horse past a carriage, and amid a crush of wheels and his mother's frenzied grief, Trev's brother had died, and the sunny world of childhood ended.

From that time, it was Trev's duty to regain all that had been stolen. Like a personal guillotine, that expectation had hung over him, repeated with every blessing his grandfather said at meals, in each letter sent to him at the English school, repeated whether he fell ill or whether he recovered, when he was thrashed and when he was praised, repeated until Trev had been sure he would throttle his grandfather, or shoot himself, if he heard it one more time.

He had done no such thing, of course. Instead he had seethed like the silly, mutinous boy he'd been, at least before all the gold and silver plate was sold and he had to leave school and move with his family to the modest house at Shelford. After that he talked to Callie and made her laugh. An agreeable alternative to murder, making Callie laugh. She always tried not to and always did. It changed her face, made her eyes tilt upward and sparkle in the hopeless attempt to stif le her giggle, just as it had tonight.

A bird called in the dark garden, a trilling whistle that made Trev turn his head. He stared into the shadows. Then he put his hand in his pocket and felt for the pistol he carried, realizing with some annoyance that another of his skeletons had dropped round for a chat.

"Come away from the house," he said softly.

With a rustle, a figure moved out of the tangled gloom, shoving the overgrown bushes aside. A chicken squawked and f luttered. The visitor uttered a heavy handed curse and came through the gate.

"Quiet, you codpiece." Trev walked across the open yard with his hand still in his pocket. When he reached the back of the small stable, he stopped and turned. "What do you want?"

"Bill Hayter is beggin' a new match, sir."

Trev gave an exasperated sound. "I told you I've done with all that. He's been paid off. Let him go to another operator if he wants to publish a challenge."

"But the stakes-"

"I will not act as stakeholder, damn it. Do I have to place an advertisement in the papers?"

"The gentlemen of the Fancy don't trust no one but you, sir." His visitor was only a black silhouette.

"Then they may go hang," Trev said cordially.

"Sir," the man said in a plaintive tone.

"Barton-my mother is dying. A low, unfeeling fellow I may be, in the usual course of things, but I find this concerns me just a little. If you suppose I'm going to saunter off to make book at some fight that would like as not be broke up by the sheriff and land me in the dock, you may reorder your ideas."

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry to hear that." Barton was silent for a moment. Then he said tentatively, "Do you think, after she passes on, God bless 'er, that you might…"

"I might have you strung up and disemboweled. I might do that."

Barton gave a gloomy sigh. "Very well, sir." His feet shuff led on the gravel. "But I don't know what's to become of us."

"For the love of God, you had two percent of sixty thousand guineas not a fortnight ago. How'd you manage to spend twenty years' wages in two weeks? Or need I ask?"

"We ain't got your head for a numbers game, sir," Barton said humbly. "You're the lucky one. Charlie botched the calculations, and we come up short to pay out on St. Patrick when he won at Doncaster."