Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

“Wouldn’t—wouldn’t do any good, all she has is my word they’re worth anything—“

He slapped Morgan again, hard enough to split his lips. “Stupid sod! Do you honestly think she won’t read your pitiful letters? You are a fool, little boy. But don’t ever make the mistake of thinking I am!”

Morgan was shaking his head frantically. “No, Johnny, no, you don’t understand, she can’t read them! They’re not in English!”

Surprise left John Lachley momentarily speechless. “Not in English?” It came out flat as a squashed tomato. “What do you mean, not in English? Eddy doesn’t have the intelligence to learn another language. I’m surprised the dear boy can speak his own, let alone a foreign one. Come, now, Morgan, you’ll have to do better than that.”

Morgan was crying again. “You’ll see, I’ll get them for you, Johnny, I’ll show you, they’re not in English, they’re in Welsh, his tutor helped him—“

He backhanded the sniveling liar. Morgan’s head snapped violently sideways.

“Don’t play me for a fool!”

“Please,” Morgan whimpered, bleeding from cut lips and a streaming nose, “it’s true, why would I lie to you now, Johnny, when you promised you wouldn’t hurt me again if I told you the truth? You have to believe me, please . . .”

John Lachley was going to enjoy coercing the truth from this pathetic little liar.

But Morgan wasn’t done blubbering yet. His eyes, a watery blue from the tears streaming down his face, were huge and desperate as he babbled out, “Eddy told me about it, right after he sent the first one in Welsh, asked me if I liked his surprise. He thought it was a grand joke, because the ever-brilliant Mr. James K. Stephen—“ it came out bitter, jealous, sounding very much, in fact, like Eddy “—was always so smart and learned things so easily and made sure Eddy was laughed at all through Cambridge, because everybody but a few of the dons knew it was Mr. James K. Stephen writing Eddy’s translations in Latin and Greek for him, so Eddy could copy them out correctly in his own hand! He told me about it, how much he paid dear Jamesy for each translation his tutor did for him while they were still at Cambridge! So when Eddy wanted to write letters nobody else could read, he got the doting Mr. James K. Stephen to help him translate those for him, too, paid him ten sovereigns for each letter, so he wouldn’t whisper about them afterwards . . .”