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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

"You dare! You!"

"Of course I dare. Do you suppose she has no friends to take her part?"

Sturgeon was dead white with rage. "By God, I ought to kill you, you slimy little French worm."

"You son of a whore," Trev said calmly. And then he repeated it in French, for good measure.

Sturgeon stood so still that Trev could see the faint tremor in his fingers as he yanked off his glove. In the slow instant, Trev felt his own blood rise with a mad pleasure. A decade of rage pressed in his chest, lost years, impotent shame that he had stood and taken that blow from Callie's father and left her to be slighted by a man like this. With a sense of fascinated doom, he watched Sturgeon fold his glove over his fingers and lift his arm.

A duel, it was to be. He was that much an English gentleman.

The major slapped him across the face, the glove a brisk snap against his skin. "Name your weapons."

Trev hauled back and struck with a right cross before Sturgeon's mouth was even closed. He put his full weight and five years of ringside training and all his hatred for arrogant English gentlemen behind it, smashing Sturgeon's jaw with an impact that he felt all the way to his heart, deep down in his chest.

He caught the officer utterly off guard. Sturgeon went down backwards, sprawling against a table. Men leaped up to stay clear. Someone grabbed Trev's arm, restraining him. He turned round and threw another punch, hard to the gut of the major's esteemed comrade. The man doubled over. Trev jerked free of some eager bystanders and saw his tablemate hurl a blow at Sturgeon before the major could launch himself at Trev.

People scrambled, yelling and shoving at one another. Chairs toppled and bottles smashed. The barmaid shrieked in frustration as the Bluebell descended into a drunken melee.

Eight

Eight

ACCORDING TO HOARY TRADITION, THE YEW TREE outside Callie's window had been planted at the behest of Edward I. She had never had reason to doubt this fact—its girth was a full twelve feet round, and the thick old branches were gnarled and scarred enough to have seen six hundred years. They had certainly witnessed a visit by Henry Tudor to the abbey that had once stood in place of Shelford Hall, and been singed by the f lames of Cromwell's troops. Two elopements, a sermon preached by John Wesley, and a murky incident involving the tenth countess, which could have been an attempt at burglary, an abduction, or a practical joke—all were on the list of known escapades in which the old tree had played a role.