Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale Read Free Book Online Page A

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 stifle 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 fluttered. 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 shuffled 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."
    "That short? You'd better marry an heiress and be done with it."
    "Ain't no heiress would have me, sir," Barton said.
    "Then follow my example. Become an honest man."
    Barton gave a snort. Then he began to chuckle.
    "Go on," Trev snapped. "Get out of here before you wake the dead."

    Callie was sitting at her dressing table, dreaming of escaping from pirates, wielding a
    sword like a musketeer while Trev kicked a scalawag overboard at her side. As her maid
    unwound the length of purple silk from Callie's head, Hermione peeked inside the door,
    interrupting Trev's desperate lunge to pull Callie from the path of a cannonball.
    Her sister slipped into the room, holding her wrapper close about her. "You're home,"
    she said. "I was hoping you wouldn't be too late. Mrs. Adam said they hadn't a thing to
    eat at Dove House."
    "Nothing," Callie said. "And I'm afraid Madame has not long to live."
    "Poor woman." Hermione walked restlessly to the window, plucking at the latch as if it
    were not closed properly. "But her son has come home? High time for that, they say. I
    didn't see him; is he a tolerable gentleman?"
    "Oh yes. Elegant manners." Callie watched her sister in the mirror. Hermey took after
    their mother, everyone said, with skin of smooth perfection and soft golden brown hair
    falling loose now down her back. The