Read Lessons in French for Free Online Page B

heiress. You're underage. These wretches with their polished
    address, they're full of any pretense in order to get you into their power." His lip curled
    with scorn. "But he'd never have touched a penny of your fortune. It's well protected for
    you, I've made certain of that. He knows it now, if he did not before."
    She had nodded. She had not wholly believed him. Trev's sweet falsehoods had been
    still too close then, the way he made her feel too vivid to disbelieve.

    Trev had said they would fly to the border to be married, because neither of them was
    of age. In the years after, she was amazed to look back and think that she had ever had
    the nerve to fall in with such plans. But then she had always done so, whether it was a
    secret jaunt to see the finish of a horse race, amid a very mixed crowd of rowdies and
    questionable gentlemen, or a visit to the graveyard by a full moon. She had known he was
    wild, but she had trusted him. It had not seemed so bad or frightening to slip out of the
    house at midnight, as long as Trev would be waiting for her under the ancient yew that
    guarded her window.
    No doubt those escapades had hardened and habituated her, rather like the criminal
    classes, to accept without serious question his idea that it would be a grand adventure to
    elope. Of course she had known it was an iniquitous thing to do, and that her father
    deeply disapproved of Trev and would never countenance a marriage between them,
    clandestine or otherwise, but all that she somehow had put aside in her euphoria that
    someone as splendid and handsome and enthralling as Trevelyan loved her.
    She had barely been seventeen. She was not so naïve anymore. The point had been
    borne in upon her by three subsequent gentlemen just how unlikely it was that Lady
    Callista Taillefaire would inspire any true romantic passions in the male heart.
    "Well," her father had said gruff ly. "I wish for you to go to your cousins in Chester for
    a time. But we'll take a visit up to Hereford first. You and I. There are some cattle sales I
    wish to see, and you will advise me on what I should buy. You'll like that, eh? We'll
    depart tomorrow, as soon as your maid can make ready."
    So she had gone away for a few months and then come home. Her father had made her
    excuses well. No word of her indiscretion had ever been disclosed, no hint or insinuation
    of it whispered over the years. Shelford was a small place, and she was notorious for her
    triple jilting, but not even the most scandalous gossip had ever connected her name with
    Trevelyan's.
    Not even his family had known. Madame de Monceaux had spoken often of her
    bewilderment and grief, and his grandfather cursed the boy to damnation for his
    capricious desertion of his family. Callie felt heavily to blame. After she was allowed to
    return, she had quietly done everything she could for their welfare, but the occasional
    pheasant or basket of fruit from Shelford Hall was a poor recompense for the loss of a
    son.
    Callie gathered her shawl about her, sitting up as the carriage turned in at the gates of
    her home. She looked out the window at the fields along the drive, their dim, silvered
    expanse dotted with the dark humps of sleeping cattle. The Hall was a high black shape, a
    few windows glowing softly here and there along the length of its regular facade.
    The coach rolled to a stop. Lanterns glinted on the broad stairs as Shelford's footman
    opened the door for her. Callie unclasped her fingers, aware of a secret lift of her spirits
    as she stepped down from the carriage. Trev had come home. She was needed at Dove
    House early in the morning. But she made no request for a mount to be ready or a maid to
    be prepared to accompany her. She would rise before dawn and walk by the back way to
    his den of iniquity, so that she would not be seen in the village.
    In truth, Trev might be a practiced villain, but she feared that he had not required much
    practice to lead her astray.

    Three

    IT WAS