Lessons in French Read Free

her throat. She found she
    could not catch her breath.
    It was him.
    She threw a panicked look toward him, knew it certainly, and then had nowhere at all to
    look or to run. She was alone on the wall of chairs. Mrs. Adam was vanished to the
    refreshment room, and everyone else danced. She stared down at her toes with desperate
    concentration, hoping and hoping and hoping that he would not recognize her.
    He might not know her. She had not instantly recognized him. He was older. Of course
    he was older—one could hardly suppose that she herself had reached the advanced age of
    twenty-seven without him doing the same. In the first blink of a look, she had seen a
    dark-haired, handsome gentleman; it was only with her second panicked glance that she
    knew his face: sun-darkened and harder, all the smiling promise of youth matured to a
    striking man.
    He stood with a quiet confidence, as if it did not concern him to arrive late and alone, or
    to receive no welcome. Any number of people here knew him, but no one had seen him
    yet, save Callie—none who acknowledged him, at least. He had been gone from the
    vicinity for nine years.
    Callie fanned herself, staring at her lap. This was Mrs. Adam's news, of course. The
    carriage arrived for Madame de Monceaux. Her prodigal son had come home.
    It was glad tidings. Callie was pleased for his mother. The poor duchesse had so longed
    for this, failing as she had been over the past year. She had clung to those infrequent
    letters from France, read them aloud over and over to Callie, and made them both laugh
    until Madame's cough overcame her and Callie took her leave.

    For herself, Callie was terrified. Laugh she might over his written words—but she
    could hardly even breathe for the strange and sick feeling that she felt at the sight of him.
    He might not even remember her. He had never mentioned her in his letters to his
    mother. Never asked after her, though he demanded to know how everyone else in
    Shelford fared in a long list of names and reminiscences, which showed that he had not
    forgot their small country lives while he consorted with kings and great people in Paris.
    A pair of black evening shoes appeared in the limited range of her vision. She kept her
    face hidden down in her feathery fan and worked frantically with the catch on her
    bracelet, but the black shoes did not take the hint and move on. Closely fitted white
    trousers, the tail of a fine blue coat—she was so dizzy that she feared she might faint.
    "Lady Callista?" he asked in a voice of low surprise.
    She thought desperately of pretending she had not heard him over the music. But she
    remembered his voice. It was the same timbre, full of warmth. Evidently it still had the
    same dire effect on her senses.
    "Come, I know it's you," he said gently. He sat down beside her. "I can see a stray lock
    peeking out from under that prodigious lovely turban."
    She drew a deep breath. "No, can you? And I was so hoping to be taken for a Saracen."
    She tucked at the nape of her neck without looking at him.
    "You've mislaid your camel, it would appear. How do you do, Callie? I must say, I
    didn't expect to find you here in Shelford, of anyone."
    She found enough courage to lift her head. "You've come to see your mother," she said.
    "I am so glad."
    He returned a sober man's look, a stranger, no longer the wild boy who had been
    careless of any burden. His dark eyes did not smile at her. She saw in a short look that he
    had a scar on his left cheekbone, and a little crooked bump to his nose that she did not
    remember. The marks only served to make him appear more an untamed gypsy than ever,
    even severe and stiff in his formal clothes.
    "I've come to her, yes," he said. He paused, tilting his head a fraction. "But you—I
    thought you must have left Shelford long ago."
    "Oh no, I have clung here like a limpet." She opened her fan and closed it again.
    There was a little silence between them, filled with the violins and the