"And those ears," Callie said, nodding sagely. "She appears to have two!"
"Four legs," Trev added, cataloging all her points.
"Are you certain she has legs?" Callie asked dubi ously. "I don't see any."
"They are hidden under her porcine vastness," he informed her. He tilted his head speculatively as they reached the pen. "Unless she has wheels. Perhaps she rolls from place to place?"
The handler glanced up, startled to hear a language not his own. Seeing a fashionable lady and gentleman observing him, he straightened up and pulled his forelock, red-faced.
"An animal par excellence," Trev said in thickly accented English as he indicated the pig with an approving nod. He reached inside his coat and drew forth one of the printed broadsides. "Myself, I have a bull."
The stockman took the bill and perused it with a serious air. He seemed to read it, though Trev had made sure there were numerals in addition to words, for the edification of the illiterate. A working man might not have book learning, but the number of guineas was something that anyone would compre hend. "Looks to be a dead gun, sir," the stockman said politely.
Trev was well aware of the local vernacular, but he affected surprise. "Dead? No, he is alive, very much, I assure you!"
"Aw, no sir, I mean to say, he looks a dead good 'un, sir. Them's his length and breadth, in'net?"
"And five hundred gold, you see there," Trev pointed out, "to say there is none to match him."
The stockman grinned, showing spaces in his teeth. He shook his head. "Naw, sir, I fear you'll be losing it. Him's a good big 'un you got there, but we've the biggest old bull ever you seen, right here, comin' up today from Shelford."
"Indeed!" Trev said. "But I must see this animal. Who belongs to him?"
"Colonel Davenport has him now, but 'tis his late lordship's bull. The Earl of Shelford, sir. They call him Hubert."
"Ah yes." Trev nodded wisely. "Of this bull I have had a great description. With red and black-how do you say this-the spots-ah, mottles, eh? Hubert." He gave it the French pronunciation, "Oo-bear". "I long to see him!"
"You'll see him, sir. Can't miss him, can you? He's the size of a house."
Trev turned to Callie and said in rapid French, "Good. Better to raise the challenge first, before they all learn he's gone missing." He patted her arm and reverted to English again. "And what do you think of this lovely pig, Madame?"
"A peeg of the first merit," she said obligingly, with such an earnest copy of his overwrought enunciation that Trev found it difficult to keep a straight countenance.
"Indeed," he agreed. "Great good luck to you with this peeg, mon ami."
The stockman thanked Trev with a gruff acknowl edgment. They left him turning to his curious neighbor with the broadside stretched out in his hand. From there, Trev was quite certain, the word would spread. He had planted news of a bout often enough to know how quickly intelligence could travel.
"But deplorably fat," Callie murmured as they walked away. "I cannot approve of it. She will overheat."
Trev nodded gravely. "I thought I smelled bacon burning."
She gave a gurgle of laughter under her veil but then added in a troubled tone, "It's not really a funning matter, though. It's become all the rage amongst the cottagers to show a poor pig so fat that it cannot even get up without help. I fear they suffer for it. I mean to write a letter to the society. I place full blame upon the judges for encouraging it."
He smiled. Only his Callie would champion the cause of leaner pigs for the greater good of pigdom. "I daresay they will be eager to know your view of the matter." He escorted her round a table where a woman was laying out molds of cheese in an artistic fashion.
"Of course they won't," she said wryly. "They will say that they are only pigs, and I am only a female- but pigs are most intelligent and feeling, I assure you. I taught one to play a wooden f lute once."
"A f lute!"
She nodded. "I secured it between a pair of fire dogs, and he soon learned that he could procure a bit of molasses if he made a note upon it. I stopped the holes for him, and he would play 'Baa Baa Black Sheep.'"
"Mon dieu." He shook his head. "And I was not there to see it." He slid his fingers between hers, so that their hands were clasped where they rested on his arm. She tilted her head aslant, glancing up at him, but he could not detect her expression through the veil. He wasn't sure if she knew just how difficult it had been for him to break off from their lovemaking. He was in a state of exquisite torment even to walk beside her, with her shoulder brushing his at every step. It was he who had conceived this grand plan of a manufactured marriage, but he found now that what had seemed as if it would be a diverting amusement was in fact a bittersweet ordeal.
If they had been married in truth, he would not have been strolling through a street full of straw and bawling calves, that was a certainty. He would have had her on the sofa-no, not the sofa, in the bed, stretched out on the sheets in very daylight, a long and slow and leisurely discovery of her white skin and golden red curls.
"I shall write to the officers of the Agricultural Society, in any event," she continued. "I would even-" She paused. "Well, they would never invite me to speak at the monthly meeting, so I needn't fear that, but I would."
He really very badly wanted to pull her up against him right there in the midst of the street and kiss her ruthlessly. "You are a heroine," he said, lifting her fingers brief ly to his lips. "A heroine of overstout pigs everywhere!"
"I doubt even the pigs would thank me," she admitted with a rueful chuckle. "I'm sure they like their liberal dinners."
"Then you are my heroine," he said warmly.
Her fingertips moved slightly under his as she peeked up at him. He found that their slow stroll had stopped somehow; he was distantly aware of geese honking from inside their crates to his left, and a woman carrying a red hen on his right, but he stood looking down at Callie like a callow boy gazing helplessly at the adored object of his affections, unable to see more than a hazy shadow of her face but knowing just what her shy sparkling smile was beneath the veil.
He was not a man who thought much of the future. He'd had enough of the expectations and demands of his grandfather's extravagant fantasies as a boy. In the early days of his boxing promotions, he'd had dreams of backing Jem Fowler to the Championship of England, until that ended in the bout that killed Jem and left his wife and baby on Trev's hands. It was a lesson. There were no more friends of his heart in the ring.
He maintained no ambitions for himself beyond arranging the next prize bout or making good on the betting books he held. His very detachment was his strength. With no particular desires or emotions to burden his judgment of the outcome, he was very good at what he did. It did not ruin him to pay out on a losing stake, because he never made odds that would break him.
It made no odds for him to think of the future now, but he couldn't seem to help himself. It wasn't a real future; it was this moment of smiling down at her, extended somehow into tomorrow, and the next day and the next, and he would never have to say that he must go, or put her hand away from his, or hide what he felt, or lie. He was profoundly weary of lies. He wished to be himself-if he could have settled on any notion of who he might be.
Both of them seemed to realize at the same instant that they were stopping the way. Callie gave a slight "oh!" and Trev stepped aside, escorting her up onto the pavement to avoid a goat cart that desired to pass. As he raised his eyes from the curb and looked ahead down the crowded street, he saw the certain end of any wishful reveries.