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Back Lessons in French Save as PDF
Chapters (28)
  1. Table of Contents
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Epilogue
  26. Author's Note
  27. About the Author
  28. Cover

Callie wished he'd fought off the urge. If he hadn't come, if he hadn't thought she was his long-lost paramour, she might still have had her three days of adventure with Trev. Now it was all a shambles. She had lost her best friend with one splendid, delirious mistake. Trev had parted with her at the dressmaker's without giving her any instructions to return. And indeed—how could she go back to the Gerard as Madame Malempré now?

She kept smiling, but there was a stinging blur in her eyes. She blinked, hoping that it would only seem to be the cold, and looked up at Major Sturgeon. "I haven't had much time to consider your offer," she said softly.

"Of course not!" He affected a great dismay. "I beg you not to suppose that I mean to worry you on that head. Tell me, what premium class do you most hope to win?"

She answered at random, finding that she wished to move away from her own stock and the man who still loitered there, rubbing his hands in the fingerless mitts over her herdsman's fire. She turned her back on him, directing the major toward the pavement, stopping to speak vaguely of a fine draft pony that stood harnessed to a farm cart in the next row, its mane braided, its hoof feathers lovingly brushed out to perfect unstained white. Major Sturgeon made gallant attempts to compliment her expertise. He had to make do with that, she supposed, since he couldn't compliment her looks or charm.

Sixteen

Sixteen

TREV HAD THOUGHT HE COULD TAKE IT. HE'D THOUGHT he could endure the idea that she would marry another man. For near a decade he'd assumed she already had, reckoned she was a happy wife with all her children about her, an image which had been sufficient to keep him on the other side of the Channel, if not the other side of the world, for a good part of the last ten years. He'd wandered back to England finally, having failed to recover Monceaux and botched pretty much everything else he'd set his hand to before he discovered in himself a particular talent for arranging boxing spectacles of both fixed and fair varieties. By then she had faded to a soft-edged memory, blunted in the golden autumn mist of his past, the mere image of a copper-haired, kissable waif in an outmoded gown. He'd hardly been eating his heart out for her. In truth, he'd remembered her father with stronger feeling.