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

the moment last I did something I was terribly uncomfortable to do, but knew it would make him reside with me. “What if, like Locke instructed, the government proved to be tyrannical, brutal, like declaring martial law?”
    He took in a deep breath, tickling my ribs against his. “Like your colony now?”
    I slowly nodded. “Because of the, as Parliament calls it the Coercive Acts—”
    “Your colony calls it, you call it the Intolerable Acts.”
    “Yes, yes I do. Because of the Intolerable Acts, which were declared because some men had themselves a massive Tea Party and dunked thousands of pounds worth of tea in the Boston Harbor, the Massachusetts General Courts are no more; we cannot have town meetings, except on Sabbath; our governor does not exist, but we have in his place a general who runs my colony, a military general ; Boston Harbor is closed for commerce unless it suits that general governor; we have many, countless many men without a job because of this; and–and, we Massachusetts people are no longer chartered with Britain. Do you know what all of that means? We no longer have English liberty. Does that make us English anymore? Or are we orphans?”
    Monsieur Beaumont blinked a few times and swallowed. I loved the way his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed–to me it seemed exotically masculine. “You should be a politician. I was so moved by your speech. Gladly, I will adopt you.”
    I smiled. “Did you not notice that I’m a woman and as such, apparently, have no place in politics, save for being a politician’s wife? Besides, I can only give these little speeches to groups of our numbers. If there were even three of us, I might find myself too shy to make any comments.”
    Monsieur Beaumont shook his head. “Ah, I have faith in you. You will change that.”
    I chuckled, not knowing if he was referring to a woman being a politician or my shyness in public.
    “So then the question is, Miss Buccleuch, whether or not the Massachusetts’ people will further rebel against her mother country, hmm? To, ah, perhaps have the rebellion be something more—what’s the word?—destructive, eh?”
    To have the burning question spoken out loud was enough to make me want to crawl into a silent pause. I shrugged against his body. “We are just speaking hypothetically, sir.”
    He chuckled softly, letting the bouncing reverberations of his laughter enter my body, tuck itself deep into my heart.
    “ Mais bien sûr. You wouldn’t happen to have read Voltaire?”
    “I love Voltaire and Descartes.”
    He placed his hand over his heart and swayed. “I know that as a man I’m never to ask this from a woman, but—”
    I held my breath, waiting for the question.
    “You speak so knowledgeably and learned. How old are you?”
    I snorted out a laugh–very unladylike. But in breathless anticipation, I had—oh, goodness–I had thought he was going to ask me something improper or indecent, and he merely asked for my age.
    “Two and twenty. Now you. You have to tell me your real age.”
    He squinted and pretended to do arithmetic tables in the air. “One hundred ninety-one years, at least.”
    I chuckled once more and shook my head.  
    “Are you laughing at an ancient, infirmed man? And doubting him?”
    “Aye, that I am, old man.”
    At that he pushed me over while I was giggling too hard to straighten. Even with the rain, dousing my on-fire skin, I couldn’t impel myself back up. In so many ways I couldn’t right myself.

Chapter Four:
The Darkness of Honesty
     
    “You have a twig in your shirt.” Monsieur Beaumont said, as he gingerly retracted the small dagger of green wood from the arm of my men’s white linen shirt.
    Another week passed with the only pause in our conversations during the nights and early mornings. I was dreadfully behind in my farm work, but I didn’t care. I went as far as to ask Jonah to not worry about anything too. I’d told him it was spring and we should enjoy the fine