trif ling kiss, which no amount of diplomacy-or indeed, discourtesy-had seemed to cool. She had been so relentless in her pursuit that he'd become the butt of the captive officers' mess until he was moved to Brussels to await a prisoner exchange that had never materialized-the defeated French apparently having no pressing need for one more LeBlanc littering their countryside.
He'd forgot about her until this morning, and that her name was also Malempre-a silly oversight that annoyed him. It seemed almost an insult to Callie. But it was too late to change now. He carried in his inner pocket several copies of a broadside imprinted with the handsome image of a dark bull and the breathless details of the Malempre Challenge:
The CERTIFIED Measurements of the Celebrated
BELGIAN BULL of Malempre! Freshly Arrived
in England, to Tour the Entire Country! The
PRIZE offered to Any BULL of Any Breed that
can be Proven GREATER in All Dimensions! 500
GUINEAS and a Silver Salver with the NAME of
the Winner ENGRAVED beneath its Likeness!
He had made sure that Colonel Davenport would be absent for the formal announcement by the simple expedient of putting a man to spy on him and discov ering his schedule. The good colonel was engaged this morning to determine which farm laborer had the honor of Supporting the Largest Number of Legitimate Offspring without Recourse to the Parish, for a prize of two pounds, and thereafter to judge turnips. Presumably he would be fully occupied in the counting of children and adjudicating of root vegetables, and unable to attend the public proclamation that Trev had arranged to give under the auspices of the president of the Agricultural Society. The colonel would not remain long in the dark, however, as Trev had caused a copy of the Challenge to be delivered to him by hand, courtesy of Monsieur Malempre, along with a bottle of excellent French wine to rub salt in the wound.
Trev had at first felt a twinge of guilt over leading Davenport a dance, but then he'd thought of how the fellow had taken Callie's bull and refused to sell it back for an honest price. When he remembered her tearstained cheeks hidden under the bonnet, his brief qualm vanished, replaced by a chilly desire to carve a liberal piece out of anyone who made her unhappy. Knowing that he himself was not entirely blameless in that regard did nothing to diminish his ire, but rather made him more inclined to exact revenge on whatever culprit he could reach.
'Something is amiss, Monsieur?' Callie asked in a worried tone, gamely keeping to French as she looked up sideways at him through the netting.
Trev realized that he was scowling, and softened his expression. 'I beg your pardon,' he replied, smiling down at her. 'I was meditating on the shocking cost of pastries in this town.'
'I understand you,' she said with feeling. 'Mrs. Farr would take to her smelling salts if she knew.'
'We must pray that my bank will stand against the strain. But we have an hour or two before we issue our announcement-what would you like to do? Take in the shops?'
'I would rather look at the animals,' she said. She spoke very pretty French, he thought, when she would venture to do so. It made him want to kiss her, to brush his mouth against her lips while she formed the words. 'Would it be possible?'
'Certainly. Whatever would please you the best, ma cherie.' He f lourished his cane and pointed as they turned the corner to the wide street that was filling rapidly with all manner of livestock for the show. Under the shadow of the cathedral spire, the scent of a barnyard permeated the air. 'Where shall we begin? Let us critique the pigs!'
'Do you make a study of pigs, Monsieur?' she asked, with a muff led note of amusement.
'Of course. I've observed them frequently on my breakfast plate.' They had neared the first of the pens, where a stockman was lovingly bathing the ears of an enormously fat spotted sow. Five piglets squealed and gurgled about her panting bulk. 'Note the marvelous coil of the tail.' He gestured with his cane. 'Absolute perfection!'
'And those ears,' Callie said, nodding sagely. 'She appears to have two!'
'Four legs,' Trev added, cataloging all her points.
'Are you certain she has legs?' Callie asked dubi ously. 'I don't see any.'
'They are hidden under her porcine vastness,' he informed her. He tilted his head speculatively as they reached the pen. 'Unless she has wheels. Perhaps she rolls from place to place?'
The handler glanced up, startled to hear a language not his own. Seeing a fashionable lady and gentleman observing him, he straightened up and pulled his forelock, red-faced.
'An animal
The stockman took the bill and perused it with a serious air. He seemed to read it, though Trev had made sure there were numerals in addition to words, for the edification of the illiterate. A working man might not have book learning, but the number of guineas was something that anyone would compre hend. 'Looks to be a dead gun, sir,' the stockman said politely.
Trev was well aware of the local vernacular, but he affected surprise. 'Dead? No, he is alive, very much, I assure you!'
'Aw, no sir, I mean to say, he looks a dead good 'un, sir. Them's his length and breadth, in'net?'
'And five hundred gold, you see there,' Trev pointed out, 'to say there is none to match him.'
The stockman grinned, showing spaces in his teeth. He shook his head. 'Naw, sir, I fear you'll be losing it. Him's a good big 'un you got there, but we've the biggest old bull ever you seen, right here, comin' up today from Shelford.'
'Indeed!' Trev said. 'But I must see this animal. Who belongs to him?'
'Colonel Davenport has him now, but 'tis his late lordship's bull. The Earl of Shelford, sir. They call him Hubert.'
'Ah yes.' Trev nodded wisely. 'Of this bull I have had a great description. With red and black-how do you say this-the spots-ah, mottles, eh? Hubert.' He gave it the French pronunciation, 'Oo-bear'. 'I long to see him!'
'You'll see him, sir. Can't miss him, can you? He's the size of a house.'
Trev turned to Callie and said in rapid French, 'Good. Better to raise the challenge first, before they all learn he's gone missing.' He patted her arm and reverted to English again. 'And what do you think of this lovely pig, Madame?'
'A peeg of the first merit,' she said obligingly, with such an earnest copy of his overwrought enunciation that Trev found it difficult to keep a straight countenance.
'Indeed,' he agreed. 'Great good luck to you with this peeg, mon ami.'
The stockman thanked Trev with a gruff acknowl edgment. They left him turning to his curious neighbor with the broadside stretched out in his hand. From there, Trev was quite certain, the word would spread. He had planted news of a bout often enough to know how quickly intelligence could travel.
'But deplorably fat,' Callie murmured as they walked away. 'I cannot approve of it. She will overheat.'
Trev nodded gravely. 'I thought I smelled bacon burning.'
She gave a gurgle of laughter under her veil but then added in a troubled tone, 'It's not really a funning matter, though. It's become all the rage amongst the cottagers to show a poor pig so fat that it cannot even get up without help. I fear they suffer for it. I mean to write a letter to the society. I place full blame upon the judges for encouraging it.'
He smiled. Only his Callie would champion the cause of leaner pigs for the greater good of pigdom. 'I daresay they will be eager to know your view of the matter.' He escorted her round a table where a woman was laying out molds of cheese in an artistic fashion.
'Of course they won't,' she said wryly. 'They will say that they are only pigs, and I am only a female- but pigs are most intelligent and feeling, I assure you. I taught one to play a wooden f lute once.'
'A f lute!'
She nodded. 'I secured it between a pair of fire dogs, and he soon learned that he could procure a bit of molasses if he made a note upon it. I stopped the holes for him, and he would play 'Baa Baa Black Sheep.''
'Mon dieu.' He shook his head. 'And I was not there to see it.' He slid his fingers between hers, so that their hands were clasped where they rested on his arm. She tilted her head aslant, glancing up at him, but he could not detect her expression through the veil. He wasn't sure if she knew just how difficult it had been for him to break off from their lovemaking. He was in a state of exquisite torment even to walk beside her, with her shoulder brushing his at every step. It was he who had conceived this grand plan of a manufactured marriage, but he found now that what had seemed as if it would be a diverting amusement was in fact a bittersweet ordeal.
If they had been married in truth, he would not have been strolling through a street full of straw and bawling calves, that was a certainty. He would have had her on the sofa-no, not the sofa, in the bed, stretched out on the sheets in very daylight, a long and slow and leisurely discovery of her white skin and golden red curls.
'I shall write to the officers of the Agricultural Society, in any event,' she continued. 'I would even-' She paused. 'Well, they would never invite me to speak at the monthly meeting, so I needn't fear that, but I would.'
He really very badly wanted to pull her up against him right there in the midst of the street and kiss her ruthlessly. 'You are a heroine,' he said, lifting her fingers brief ly to his lips. 'A heroine of overstout pigs everywhere!'
'I doubt even the pigs would thank me,' she admitted with a rueful chuckle. 'I'm sure they like their liberal dinners.'
'Then you are my heroine,' he said warmly.
Her fingertips moved slightly under his as she peeked up at him. He found that their slow stroll had stopped somehow; he was distantly aware of geese honking from inside their crates to his left, and a woman carrying a red hen on his right, but he stood looking down at Callie like a callow boy gazing helplessly at the adored object of his affections, unable to see more than a hazy shadow of her face but knowing just what her shy sparkling smile was beneath the veil.
He was not a man who thought much of the future. He'd had enough of the expectations and demands of his grandfather's extravagant fantasies as a boy. In the early days of his boxing promotions, he'd had dreams of backing Jem Fowler to the Championship of England, until that ended in the bout that killed Jem and left his
