The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) Read Free Page B

and she really was one of the best playactors. Too bad respectable ladies weren’t welcomed to playact.
    Mr. Foster then snuck up behind my sister and grabbed her handkerchief that she had loose in her hand. She turned toward the running back of Mr. Foster and yelled, “Come back here, you beast of a man!” Then took off with her sky blue skirts billowing about her as she gave chase.
    I softly laughed and turned toward Monsieur Beaumont, releasing myself from his hold, if only physically. He tilted his face and narrowed his dark blue eyes at me.
    “V. V. Buccleuch. It is such an unusual name. Mathew told me it is Scottish. I just assumed it was a relative of yours or maybe your father, but it is you.”
    I wasn’t sure what he was talking about and wondered if the hot sun had gotten the better of him in his dark uniform, but then he said, “Every book I have checked out from the Harvard library has been checked out by you. Every one by a V. Buccleuch.”
    I smiled and my heart raced. “You must read a lot.” I flinched and retracted. “I mean—oh, I sound like a braggart.”
    His laugh was no longer silent or could even be considered as quiet. Suddenly he stopped chuckling. “You have Locke’s Letter on Toleration .”
    “Yes, I do. I just got that a week ago.”
    “I know. The librarian told me that a scholar had it.”
    “He did? Mr. Winthrop was a friend of my father’s who lets me check out the books.” I was inwardly warmed that Mr. Winthrop would call me a scholar. “I love the philosophical mind of John Locke. Any philosopher really. My father and I used to spend whole days discussing philosophy.”
    Monsieur Beaumont’s smile dimmed. “May I ask, who you talk to now about philosophy?”
    I looked over at the smiling face of my mother as she was drinking wine with Mrs. Barrett, and the angry face of my sister as she was pointing a finger at Mr. Foster’s chest, and finally my eyes swept over the large frame of Mathew. My mother and sister hadn’t ever engaged in philosophy, and Mathew was such a good, kind, and intelligent man, but not a philosopher.
    I shrugged. “No one. I—”
    “Then, it is settled for us. We must meet . . . every day, I think, to make up for lost time.”
    “Meet?”
    “ Oui , don’t you think so? After all it was Locke himself that stated that it was a duty for all mankind to come together to discuss philosophy.”
    I chuckled. “ The Essay Concerning Human Nature , yes? That is what you are using as the agent to propel us to discuss philosophy . . . every day?”
    He nodded. “All right, I admit, he wrote to explore such subjects within the limits of one’s social opportunities, but I have not had anyone to talk to, nor have you, for some time. So we should meet every day. We have so much to discuss. Should we start with the Greeks?”
    I’d always wondered what impelled a person’s decisions, especially when the choices he or she made could change their lives forever more. Greed? Sex? The Greeks believed these were the main drives of humanity. But what about matters of the heart? What pushes a person to knowingly make a bad judgment?
    I cannot tell, as my own heart was beating so voraciously I couldn’t hear any advice it was giving.
      “I—I want to discuss science and math too. Newton and Leibniz.”
    Monsieur Beaumont’s smile somehow managed to widen; his eyes took in the light of the afternoon sun and radiated it back to me in the deepest color of blue.
    “As you wish, but I must warn you, I’m not good at calculus.”
    I smiled and nodded. “I am. I’ll tutor you.”
    “I will, of course, be a horrid pupil.” He lifted one black brow playfully.
    I chuckled. “That’s all right. I’ll just beat you.”
    “I’m looking forward to it then.”
    “As am I.”
    I bit down on my smile as I turned from him, instantly spying my mother and sister—my whole life. If there was even the slightest whisper of me conducting interviews with men, single