by Erica Ridley
Lucien turned toward Eve in surprise. “He is ill?”
“He’s peevish,” she corrected with a wry expression. “And bored. He thought retirement would make him happy, but now he has nothing to do. It’s making him insufferable.”
“We’re discussing if having him join forces with Uncle Jasper would be a mistake or a solution,” Désirée explained in French. “Bastien and Eve could take over her father’s house, and Mr. Shelling could potter about the farm with Uncle Jasper.”
The farm where Lucien lived? He stared at his sister in disbelief. Yes, Uncle Jasper could benefit from something else to do besides the occasional game of vingt-et-un, but Eve’s father was not one of Lucien’s favorite people. He’d once opposed his daughter’s courtship on the grounds that Bastien was French, which, if you asked Lucien, was the best trait of all. Perhaps the old man had finally outgrown his prejudices, but Lucien—
Had no say in the matter, he realized belatedly. This conversation was happening without him because the consequences would occur without him. He would be in France. They would be here. There was no reason to include him in plans about their future because he was not going to be a part of it. Rather than digging up weeds or making awkward small talk with Eve’s impossible-to-please father, he’d be off waltzing with the crème de la crème in Paris, living the life he’d always wanted.
So why was his jaw clamped together and his stomach knotting in protest?
“Or perhaps the other way around,” Désirée continued. “With Eve and Bastien at the farm, he’d be closer to the smithy, whilst Mr. Shelling and Uncle Jasper would have greater access to the castle and all its resources.”
“I’m sure whatever the family decides will work out,” Lucien said gruffly, and meant it. Come what may, the family always managed to do the best they could in any circumstance.
It was just the first time “the family” did not include him.
He was glad they were carrying on without him, if a little prematurely, he told himself firmly. It was a situation that would soon become the usual, and he did not want them to suffer in any way without him. He just hadn’t expected them to find it so… easy.
From the moment of their parents’ deaths, everything Lucien had done or planned or sacrificed, had been for the good of his family. Assuring a terrified ten-year-old and eight-year-old that everything was going to be fine, struggling every waking hour in a smithy he hated, forgoing his own chance at assimilation to provide for his siblings and then their ailing uncle… He would do it all over again, a thousand times if he had to, but the achievement Lucien had been most proud of was this chance to restore their heritage and give his siblings their home back.
And they weren’t even interested.
Eve lifted her glass toward Jack. “This is excellent champagne.”
“Don’t salute me; salute this fellow.” Jack grinned at Lucien. “In a few months, this lucky devil can bathe in buckets of the stuff if he has a mind to.”
Eve feigned dismay. “Bathing in champagne sounds expensive. Never say Lucien is a spendthrift.”
“Lucien is conservative to a fault,” Désirée assured her. “He’s more likely to cultivate his own vineyard than to depend upon anyone else’s.”
“A vineyard,” Jack sighed dreamily.
“Be careful, grand frère,” Désirée teased Lucien. “If Jack finds out there’s so much as a single grape growing on your property, you’ll never get rid of us.”
Lucien gazed back at her, feeling two stone lighter. Perhaps that was the answer!
His family would never permanently abscond from England; that much was clear. But it didn’t mean they couldn’t spend extended visits in France, if Lucien provided an attractive enough incentive.
Living a life of leisure one day had been the dream that sustained him through year after year at the smithy. But a vineyard… who could object to that?
Their parents had owned one. If Lucien managed to get the family property restored, the old vineyard would be ready and waiting. Because he’d grown up with it, Lucien was as familiar with grapes as he was with a hammer. It would give him renewed purpose and make his home an attractive family destination in one fell swoop.
“You have a bargain,” he told his sister in French. “If I provide the vineyard, you all must come and enjoy the harvest.” His eyes fell on Annie and Frederick. “And learn French.”
“We’re learning already,” Frederick answered in heavily accented French, without missing a beat.
Annie rested her elbow on Lucien’s knee. “Si nous apprenons le français pour vous, allez-vous apprendre l'anglais pour nous?”
If we learn French for you, will you learn English for us?
Lucien stared at her in alarm.
He’d given up on English because he’d given up on England. He was leaving; who needed it?
But the answer was: his niece and nephew. His family. He wanted them to feel comfortable and fit in when they visited over there; they wanted the same for him whenever he was here. Honor and fairness meant he couldn’t possibly put in less effort than a ten-year-old.
He’d sworn to protect his family. That included being a good uncle to Annie and Frederick, and any future nieces and nephews. What kind of uncle wouldn’t even bother to try to communicate effectively in their language?
“Je le ferai,” he promised them in French, then corrected himself. “I will do it.”
Désirée shot him a look of surprise. “You’re studying the books I left you?”
Not exactly. Lucien cleared his throat rather than respond.
“I’m so relieved,” she continued. “I was afraid that if I didn’t have time to help, you’d give up entirely.”
Lucien smiled blandly and hoped the heat rising up the back of his neck didn’t lend its telltale flush to his face.
The truth was, staring at page after page of English text—whether in a children’s book or the village Gazette—was not going to make him fluent. If he wanted to improve, he needed a tutor.
And if Désirée could no longer fill that role, he had no choice but to turn to…
Meg.
Lucien’s face was definitely flushing. His entire body felt hot and out-of-kilter. He could only manage to keep Mademoiselle Church from his mind in brief snatches, and none of the images had anything to do with learning English.
Could he ask her? Making mistakes in front of another person was just as abhorrent to him as admitting when he needed help. It had worked with his sister because Lucien trusted her implicitly. He didn’t know Meg well enough to determine if she was worthy of his trust. Yet something told him a woman as eccentric and fearless as she was, just might surprise him. Again.
The thought of her seeing his weaknesses made his palms clammy, but after everything else he had been forced to survive… He could do this, too.
Lucien set down his empty glass and rose to his feet. “Thank you for the champagne.”
“Hoops later?” Frederick asked at once.
“And flowers?” Annie added.
“Later,” Lucien promised. “There is something I… must do first.”
Although he had never visited the Farrell residence—or paid a social call to anyone in this village—Lucien knew where to go. Cressmouth had only one dairy. Ten acres of farmland for grazing cattle; eight maids a-milking in the barn. That had to be the place.
His footsteps grew less sure the closer he drew to the front door, but he forced himself to rap the knocker anyway.
After a pause so long that he almost gave up the whole idea, the door swung open, revealing the exact person he’d come to see.
“Mademoiselle Church,” he murmured.
“Meg,” she corrected automatically.
Lucien ignored the strange jump in his stomach.
“Meg,” he acknowledged. “May I come in?”
“May you…” She stepped aside at once. “Of course you can come in. You can come anywhere you like. I’d just been reading Fanny Hi
ll—the climax, if you will—and for a moment I feared I’d conjured your image from the libidinous depths of my... Do you know what? None of that matters. Why are you here? Do you want some tea?”
What Lucien wanted was to be able to understand more than eighty percent of the things she said to him. Perhaps that was being generous. More than fifty percent? Surely that would be enough to prove to his niece and nephew how much they mattered to him, and that he was trying just as hard as they were.
“No tea.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve changed my mind.”
She frowned. “So you do want tea?”
“No. I want…” He clenched his hands. Why were these words such torture to say? “English lessons.”
“English lessons.” Her blue-gray eyes widened as though those two words were as foreign-sounding to her as they were to him. “From me?”
His cheeks heated. “You said…”
“Yes, of course I said, and yes, of course I will! Do you want to start at this very moment? I don’t have any instructional materials with me, but I suppose we can begin with dialogue. That’s how children learn, isn’t it?” Her eyes widened. “Not that you’re a child. You’re obviously a man. A very big, very strong, very attractive—what I mean is, I don’t think you have to stare at English to start understanding it. Maybe we should start with something simple.”
“Please do something simple,” he begged.
“Tell me if you understand these words.” She stepped so close to him that her bodice nearly grazed his waistcoat. When she lifted her chin, her lush pink mouth was mere inches from his. She dropped her voice to a sultry murmur. “We’re all alone. Now are you going to kiss me?”
His groin tightened. Yes, Lucien had thought about stealing kisses, blast it all. He had to physically restrain himself from reaching for her. He’d been thinking about kissing her ever since she put the idea into his head in the park. No, he’d been thinking about it for much longer than that. And here she was. Soft and eager. If he were to lower his mouth to hers, there was no one to witness him making a phenomenal, delectable mistake.
“You do understand,” she breathed in wonder. Her face immediately fell. “And you’re not going to do it, or else you’d have done so by now. Pity. Do let me know when you change your mind.”
Lucien would definitely not let her know that he very much wanted to kiss her. If he let his guard down for even a moment, God only knew what might happen next.
“No lessons here.” His voice was strangled.
Being alone with her not-entirely-teasing flirtations would not be conducive to concentrating on one’s studies. The library wouldn’t work; the castle was teeming with tourists and he did not want even one more person to witness him struggle. On the other hand… they clearly needed a chaperone.
“My house,” he said firmly. “Tomorrow.”
That would give him enough time to arrange for Uncle Jasper to be in plain view of the dining room table. His sister-in-law might even walk past a few dozen times if she wasn’t working up at the castle. Maybe Lucien could even invite her extremely English father to move in six weeks early. They’d have to divide the bedchamber, which would definitely ensure Lucien got no designs on sharing it with someone else.
“Tomorrow,” she agreed. “We’ll start with an evaluation.”
She meant evaluating his English proficiency, Lucien was sure of it. And yet, the way her gaze lingered on his mouth as though she was considering evaluating a few other things, right here and now…
“À bientôt,” he blurted, and bolted out the door before he gave in to temptation.
Chapter 7
The next afternoon, Meg strode up to the smithy with a burlap sack in her arms and a few extra ringlets in her hair. She couldn’t do much about her dowdy gown, but at least all but the bodice would be hidden by the table.
This was her first time on le Duc property. Meg bounced on her toes in excitement. As she did not own a carriage or anything made out of metal, until recently she’d never had a convincing excuse to visit the smithy. But now Meg no longer required a pretext! She was not only in possession of an utterly reasonable, perfectly respectable reason to pay a call, she’d been invited by none other than the man whose every brooding sulk made her toes curl and her stomach flutter.
Especially now that she knew all that dark glowering had been a shield to block others from glimpsing his vulnerabilities. His glares attacked first, “proving” he cared naught for others’ opinions before they could have a chance to make them known. Meg imagined such an armored retreat to be a lonely place indeed. Her pulse quickened as she stepped from the road onto the private property line. There. Was she inside the shield yet? Her racing heart certainly thought so.
Meg picked her way between the clump of carriages awaiting service until she was standing at the threshold to the smithy. There was Lucien. Black boots. Tight-fitting buckskins that outlined every muscle. Champagne-colored waistcoat. Black jacket. A slight curl to his brown hair. Strong jaw. Wide, delicious lips…
And no, she definitely was not yet behind his protective shield.
Not because the smithy now belonged to the Harpers. That might be what the title deed said, but the atmosphere inside the crowded workshop indicated the smithy still belonged to the le Ducs. Bastien and Lucien stood in the center, two bright suns about which everyone else merely orbited.
Although his brother was still talking, Lucien’s dark brown eyes glanced over and his gaze met hers.
Meg felt it all the way to her toes. And heart. And nether regions. She was fairly certain even her prurient ivory mounds perked up at the sight of him.
Lucien murmured something to his brother, then strode up to greet her. He held out his hand for her bag.
She didn’t hand it over.
He made an impatient gesture.
She enunciated clearly, “‘Give me your bag, you daft woman.’”
He held out an aggrieved hand. “‘Give me… your bag… you daft woman.’”
“No.” She wrapped her arms tighter around the sack. “You didn’t ask nicely.”
His jaw fell open. “I… repeated…”
“What does ‘daft’ mean?” she inquired carefully.
He paled. “Er…”
“There, that was your first lesson. Never repeat a word if you don’t know what it means.” She swept past him. “To your cottage, I presume?”
Meg could feel Lucien’s glare burning the back of her neck. She put an extra swing into her hips.
Just as they reached the cottage, thick pipes rattled on the side, followed by the loud gnashing and snorting of a large animal around the back.
“What,” she asked politely, “was that?”
“Chef,” Lucien answered. “We drop… rubbish into… his feeding trough.”
Meg blinked. None of that could possibly be what Lucien meant to say.
She followed him into the house. “Your keep your chef in the rear garden?”
“Can’t keep him in here,” barked a gravelly voice from inside the drawing room. “Ever seen a hog root in a parlor? Can’t say I recommend it.”
Chef was a pig. A pet pig.
“Meg,” Lucien said, pointing in her direction, then arcing his index finger toward an open door. “Uncle Jasper.”
An older man with thinning white hair sat in a wingback chair between a dining table and a crackling fireplace, one leg propped atop a stool. The small table to one side contained a teapot and a deck of playing cards.
“I’d get up and bow if it weren’t for this bloody gout.” He craned his head toward Lucien and added in French, “Don’t just stand there, boy. Take the lady’s bag and offer her a chair.”
“He already grunted very gentlemanly for the bag,” Meg assured him in French. “I was obstinate enough not to listen.”
Lucien staggered backward as if thunderstruck. “Tu parles français?”
She shrugged. “Did you think only French people were clever enough to grasp two
languages?”
He goggled at her in consternation. “Your… accent…”
“Oh, you expected a bad one. I can do that, too!” She straightened and affected a droll pose. “Je appeler Meg. Je English. Je non intelligente.”
“But… but…” he stammered in French. “You’ve been fluent all this time?”
“You never asked,” she pointed out, this time without the bad accent. “Your uncle did say I could take a seat, didn’t he? I’ll have this one here. You sit across from me, and we’ll start with—”
“Are you French?” he interrupted in desperation.
She let out a long sigh. “Yes. I am actually called ‘Marguerite.’”
He brightened. “Really?”
“No,” she said flatly. “But if you would have liked me better if I was, perhaps you ought to think about that.”
Uncle Jasper hid a laugh behind a very unconvincing cough.
Lucien had the grace to flush. “But your French…”
“Ah, that.” She began unpacking the contents of her bag. “I lived on the French Riviera for most of my childhood and moved around a bit after, but as soon as I could, I came back here.”
His shock was comical. “You lived on the Côte d'Azur and came back here?”
She pushed a notebook in his direction. “I suppose that makes us both half-French.”
A strangled sound escaped Lucien’s throat.
The noise coming from Uncle Jasper’s direction could only be described as chuckling. “Mind your words, young lady. Men have started wars for less.”
“You were born in England?” Lucien demanded.
Meg nodded and handed him a pencil.
“To English parents?” he insisted.
She nodded again. “Mostly English. But I lived in France almost twice as long as you did. Surely that makes me just as French as you… and you, just as English as me.”
He paled.
“Hope there’s an apoplexy cure in that bag,” Uncle Jasper warned.
“All right, I’ll stop.” Meg grinned at Lucien. “You’re very, very French. The Frenchest Frenchman in all of Cressmouth. Possibly the whole world. And now this nice Englishwoman is going to teach you English.”
