Confession Read Online Free

scoundrel!’ he exclaimed loudly without any acknowledgement of my presence.
    The little girl giggled and hid her face in my skirts.
    ‘An escaped prisoner?’ I enquired of the gentleman.
    ‘Quite correct,’ he said looking me up and down and then, glancing at the child as if to say ‘now look what you have done, I am being made to speak to a foreigner.’ He turned back to face me. ‘You would be one of the English pupils? There are two of you, are there not?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said slowly for I was wondering who on earth this interloper might be, a relative of the Hegers perhaps or a teacher I had not yet come across.
    ‘Your accent is passable I suppose – ’
    ‘You are very gracious, Sir, I am sure,’ I said, not meaning to sound impudent, but none the less sufficiently ruffled to query his presence. ‘And who are you?’
    ‘That is papa,’ Marie Pauline piped up sticking her head out from behind my skirts.
    ‘
Papa
?’
    ‘Constantin Heger,’ Monsieur Heger said.
    I blushed. I did not know where to look. ‘But…I thought – I was under the impression that you were – ’
    He cocked his head to one side, waiting, eyeing me up as a farmer might a bullock to see how much meat was on its bones. In Monsieur’s case I was hoping ‘meat’ might translate to ‘intellect’ but seeing I had been struck dumb, it was a vain hope. I smoothed down my skirts feeling more than a little rumpled under such intense scrutiny. Not that Monsieur stood the test of careful inspection himself. He was a thin, wiry man, with dark unruly hair, a swarthy complexion, dressed soberly but with oh!…what blue, confrontational eyes.
    His eyes were the same colour as Marie-Pauline’s.
    ‘You arrived…when exactly did you arrive?’
    ‘Two-and-half-weeks ago, Monsieur.’
    ‘And what are you reading?’
    ‘Reading Monsieur?’ I repeated sounding more like the aforementioned bullock than I cared to admit.
    ‘
Les livres
,’ Marie Pauline lisped up at me.
    ‘Yes, books. Literature? What are you currently reading?’ repeated Monsieur Heger tugging Marie Pauline’s hair gently.
    Again my mind went a blank as if I had never picked up a book in my life. Did I even know what one looked like? Then I heard my voice stutter, ‘Byron? Wordsworth? Southey? Milton of course and Shakespeare.’
    ‘Poetry then rather than history?’
    ‘I read history too. Hume, Rollin’s
Histoire Ancienne
.’
    ‘Biographies perhaps?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said feeling astonished that a man such as this was interested in what I might read. ‘Thomas Moore’s life of Byron and his work on Sheridan are two such that I admire – ’
    ‘And in your lessons, what are you studying there, please?’
    I mentioned the name of the small French grammar both Emily and I had been given on our arrival but on hearing its title Monsieur Heger let out a grunt of horror and threw up his hands in such a fashion, he looked quite absurd.
    ‘From tomorrow you and your sister begin lessons with me. French is not a language to be strangled at birth’ (I think I understood this phrase correctly). ‘You will come to my study at 10am. We will work very hard.’ He spat this last sentence out as if it were a challenge. Then, just as a storm raddled sea is able to transform itself into something placid and calm, he askedin a much,
much
gentler voice, ‘Are you content here? Is there anything you need or are lacking?’
    I paused.
    Monsieur waited.
    ‘The moon,’ I said. ‘I have not seen it since our first night here. I would like to see the moon.’
    ‘The moon?’ he repeated.
    I nodded and if I am not mistaken I think I detected the hint of a smile at the very edge of his mouth.
    ‘Tell me again,’ said Emily when I returned to the dormitory. She was scrabbling under her bed.
    ‘What have you dropped?’
    ‘I’m putting something away.’
    ‘What?’ I asked although I knew she wouldn’t tell me because my sister was that rarest of creatures – a young woman