Lessons in French

make her mind her elders.

Callie waited until the door clicked closed behind him. She had been well aware that all the time she was being examined, Trev and Lilly had been standing in a corner of the bedroom, speaking in low tones to one another, so that the doctor took them both for her servants.

'Lilly,' she said. 'Pray close the bedroom door. Stand outside and make certain that no one comes in.'

Lilly cast a glance at Trev and bit her lip. 'But Sir wants me to-'

'Do as I ask, if you please,' Callie interrupted. Her head hurt. She put her hand to her temple. 'I don't care what 'sir' would like at the moment.'

The maidservant bit her lip and curtsied. She turned away to the door. Trev moved a step, and Callie lifted her head.

'Do not leave!' she ordered him.

He stopped. Lilly closed the bedroom door behind her, leaving them alone. Callie sat on the bed, looking at him. He'd pulled down the scarf to show his face, but still the sinister gypsy effect was powerful.

'I can't stay long,' he said.

'Really!' Callie favored him with a dry look. 'And how do you plan to accomplish an exit, when half the county is loitering below looking for you?'

He returned a sardonic smile. 'By the window.'

'Oh, of course.' She blinked, touching her hand gingerly to the bump on her head. The doctor's probing had only made it worse. She realized that her hair was falling down.

'Are you all right?' he asked. There was a peculiar tautness about his mouth.

'I am excessively put out with you!' she said, taking this as an invitation to vent her spleen. 'You started that rout, didn't you? And you had those men helping to let the animals loose! Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? Any number of them might have been hurt or lost. And think of the prize pies!' She paused, her lip trembling. 'Someone could have been killed! It was abominable of you.'

'I'd not thought of the prize pies, I'll admit.'

'Well, you should have. And the preserves and cheeses. I'm sure poor Mrs. Franklin is weeping her heart out right now, after Hubert threw a barrel through her pear tarts. She is a new bride, you know.'

'No. I didn't know.'

'And you haven't the least regret, have you?' Her resentment grew. 'It's all quite a game to you, isn't it? You stroll into some unsuspecting town and cause a riot, and then you can't stay long.' She stood up, holding on to the bedpost when the room had a tendency to rotate about her. 'You just go away and leave the rest of us to put everything to rights.'

'Yes,' he said.

The fact that he stood there without defending himself only fed her wrath. 'Why did you do it? You didn't warn me. You didn't stop and think. Surely there was some other way to reveal Hubert, something a little less-spectacular! I thought we were to do it on the last day of the fair.'

'We were,' he said shortly.

'Then why?' she demanded.

His lip curled. 'I was angry.'

'Angry?' She blinked. 'At what?'

'You showed him the pig.' There was a note of self-mockery in his voice.

'The pig?' She had no notion what he meant.

'And laughed at what he said. Of course I had to put a stop to that at once.'

'The pig? Do you mean that fat sow?'

He gave a slight shrug of assent, like a schoolboy called up on the carpet.

'You started all that-you put us all in danger- because I laughed about a pig? Are you mad?' she exclaimed.

'It was our pig, do you see?' His voice rose to match hers. 'God damn it. I haven't asked for much. Give me a goddamned pig at least.'

She shook her head, bewildered. 'It's not my pig.'

He threw back his head and gave a brief, hard laugh. 'No. Right. I'm sorry you were hurt. Scared the daylights out of me. It's true, it could have been far more serious, I didn't realize until it got out of hand.' He sounded mortified. 'I'm sorry. My damnable temper.'

'I only laughed because Major Sturgeon was so stupid. He asked me if she was a Berkshire hog, when anyone could see that she's an Old Spot.'

He took a stride toward her. Callie leaned back against the bedpost with her hands behind her. In his rough jacket and heavy stockman's boots, he seemed much larger than he ought, his dark, satyric features fit for a highwayman. For an instant she thought he might shake her, but instead he took her cheeks between his hands.

She felt the rough wool of the mitts, and his fingertips resting on her cheeks. He bent his face to hers. 'Callie-know something, believe something. I must go, but believe that I love you. Marry that fellow if you must; I know you have your reasons. I know I've let you down at every turn. I'm not the man who could give you the sort of life you deserve. But wherever I go, mon tresor, it doesn't matter where-I'll think of you. You're in my heart. Believe me. You're the only true and honest thing in my life.'

She stood with her face turned up to his, biting her lower lip.

'And you're beautiful,' he said. 'Believe that too. Not like some damned society diamond, no. You're beautiful like the leaves in autumn, like a spring colt kicking its heels, you're beautiful the way your animals are beautiful, even that fool pig. Do you believe me?'

She didn't answer. He pushed back a lock of her hair and kissed her gently, so sweetly that she was near to weeping.

'I want to make love to you in a field,' he whis pered. 'In the green grass or in the fresh hay. I want you beyond reason.'

'I don't believe you,' she said woodenly. 'Tell me the truth.'

His breath touched her skin. 'I am.'

Slowly she shook her head.

'The truth about me, you mean,' he said, lifting his head and looking down at her under his dark lashes.

'Tell me in truth why you're leaving. If you want me to believe-whatever else you say.'

He stood back, his hands sliding to her shoulders. 'I suppose I owe you that much, don't I?' He looked aside and suddenly let go of her, pushing away. In a voice that went to icy derision, he said, 'The truth is I've been convicted of forgery and sentenced to hang.'

Callie blinked. Then she pushed back her falling hair from her face. 'Oh come now. I'm sure I might have swallowed the rest, even about the pig, but I'm not a complete f lat, you know!'

He had been standing before her with a hard, sullen expression; at that, his lip quirked upward. 'Yes, you are,' he informed her. 'You're a pea-goose. It's one of the most charming things about you.'

She gave a little huff. 'Perhaps so, but I'm sure I'm not going to believe that you're laboring under a sentence of death.'

He tilted his head. 'Why not?'

'Well… because,' she said, not quite certain of the look in his eyes. 'For forgery, you say? I can perfectly suppose that you gave Major Sturgeon a black eye, and so the constable is after you, but I can't imagine that you did any such thing as commit a forgery. Why would you do so? You're already excessively wealthy. And besides, I don't think anyone would be hung for it. It's not a case of murder or something on that order. It's just a piece of paper.'

He leaned back against the chest of drawers, a wry smile touching the corner of his mouth. 'Very sensible, I admit. I wish the bench might have taken your point of view.'

'And here you are, quite alive,' she pointed out with some satisfaction in discovering another large hole in his claim.

'Just so,' he said. 'I was given a conditional pardon the day before they finished building the gallows. I must leave the country and never return.'

Callie had been about to poke further punctures in his ridiculous tale, but she paused at that. 'Never return?'

'It is a hanging offense, Callie,' he said gently. 'It's a crime against commerce, and that's near-worse than murder in the eyes of the magistrates.'

'I… don't see how that can be so,' she said. But she remembered suddenly that all the newspapers and even the ladies' magazines had been full of some great trial not long ago; she hadn't paid any mind to the details herself, but Dolly had followed the course of the events avidly and read them aloud at breakfast every morning at interminable length. Callie thought it had involved a lady with a very young child, and a gentleman of the sporting crowd, and a great number of sordid insinua tions and accusations. And yes-it had been a trial for forgery-she remembered that now, and the lady's life had been in peril if she were found guilty, but it had turned out to be the gentleman instead.

She wet her lips. 'Trev-' she said uncertainly. She looked up at him with a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach.

His faint smile vanished, and his jaw hardened. He gave a bitter laugh. 'Please. Go on refusing to believe me. It's not something a man cares to admit, I assure you.'

The words seemed to go past her, then spin in strange echoes round her head. 'A hanging offense,' she repeated slowly, hearing it as if from a great distance. She stared at him, every limb in her body going to water. If she had not been holding on to the bedpost, she would have slid to the f loor.

'It was not a pleasant experience,' he said. 'And so you see, I must depart.' He gave a slight mechanical bow, a move full of suppressed violence.

'What happens if they discover you here?' she asked, hardly able to command her voice.

'They hang me,' he said simply.

'Oh good God,' she breathed. Her legs were failing her. 'Oh dear God.'

He stepped forward, supporting her. 'Don't faint- Callie, my sweet life-oh no, please don't weep. Come here now. They haven't caught me yet.'

She realized that tears had sprung to her eyes, but they were not of sorrow. She gave a sob of pure terror, clinging tightly to him as he pulled her into his arms. 'You must go!' She gasped into his shoulder. 'Why are you still here?'

He held her close, kissing her temple. 'You can't guess?'

'Your mother!' She pulled back sharply. 'Does your mother know?'

His mouth f lattened. 'No. God grant she never will.'

'Of course not.' Callie turned from him, hugging herself. 'No, she mustn't know.' She turned back. 'But you must f lee directly-they're all hunting you now as