Kasey Michaels (10 page)

“So?” the impervious-to-insult Lester asked, then took another bite of his favorite confection. He was enjoying it so much that Callie refrained from telling him that he was turning his lips and tongue a decidedly unappealing shade of black—or that the bonnet did nothing to improve his appearance. “What does that leave us?”

Callie shrugged. “The truth?” She shivered. “Oh, how very lowering. I never tell the truth if I can help it.”

“We’ll toss ourselves at the viscount’s mercury?”

“Throw ourselves on his
mercy
, yes,” Callie agreed distractedly, now beginning to pace the carpeting, her insides jangling at the thought of being so bereft of inspiration as to have run out of workable fibs. “There’s nothing else for it, actually,” she ended, automatically reaching up her hands to straighten her neckcloth as she heard a key turning in the lock. “Just keep chewing, Lester, and let me handle the bulk of the explanations, all right?”

Lester obediently stuffed the last, long length of licorice into his mouth as the door opened, admitting a pair of Brockton servants. One carried a sword, and the other lagged behind, hesitant and bug-eyed, looking for all the world as if he expected Callie and Lester to turn into bats, fly across the room, and nest in his hair.

Callie immediately decided on her course of action. She would be haughty. Haughty was entirely possible, as her last governess—who had not been lost due to a misdirecting signpost—had been the epitome of haughty. The second daughter of an impoverished-baron forced to earn her own way in life, the woman could have given lessons in pride to a peacock.

So thinking, and feeling none too shabby in her inexpressibles and top boots, Callie tipped up her chin, looked down her nose, and said, “Well? Have you been turned to stone, or have you something to say? Come, come. Speak up, man! Don’t dawdle!”

The butler rather reluctantly came to attention, accustomed to responding to the voice of authority even when it was directed toward him by a scrap of a girl dressed up in men’s clothing. “I—that is, we... no! The viscount. His Lordship—”

“Not stone,” Callie cut in imperiously, warming to her role, “but rather a puddle of mumbles. Well? Get on with it, man! Is our presence required in the drawing room? And what’s your name, man? My father would have had you flogged, were you in his regiment!”

“Emery, sir... um, ma’am... um, that’s Emery!” the butler stammered, clearly impressed. “And the Viscount Brockton and his mother, the viscountess, desire the pleasure of your company, and that of your, um, your companion, in the drawing room. If it pleases you,” he ended, his voice trailing off as his gaze sought the carpet.

His reaction pleased Callie so that she had to beat down the urge to grin—and perhaps do a small jig. But this was only the beginning. The viscount would not be quite so easy to intimidate, and she knew it. “Very good, Emery,” she pronounced, holding out an arm so that Lester, still caught between genders, took it rather than wrapping it protectively in his own. “That was quite clear. There may be hope for you yet.”

She took a single step forward, then halted. “Did you say the viscountess? Brockton is married, then?” Why this piece of information took some of the wind out of her newly inflated sails she had no idea.

“No, sir... um, ma’am. That would be His Lordship’s mother, you see, and a rare one she is, if you don’t mind my saying so,” the second servant piped up, stepping forward. “I’d tread careful around her, as she’s sharp as a tack, if you take my meaning. Oh—and I’m Roberts, footman, and a pleasure it is to be of assistance, sir.” He looked to Lester. “Um, I mean, ma’am.”

Emery shot the fellow a killing glance meant to freeze him in place and stop up his mouth.

“Well?” Roberts fired back verbally, obviously feeling he had something to say and not averse to saying it. “Sir, ma’am—what’s the difference? Between the pair of them, I’ve got to be right.”

Callie decided that she liked Roberts. Definitely much better than she did Emery, who was once more looking at her down the length of his thin nose as if she and Lester had lately crawled out from beneath some nasty, musty stone. “Shall we be on with it, please?” she interjected before the two servants could come to blows, aiming Lester and herself straight at the doorway. The two men parted like the Red Sea, allowing them through.

Her heart pounding, her knees considerably less than steady for all her show of bravado, Callie grabbed on to the dark mahogany railing and rapidly, jauntily, began her descent to the drawing room. She did her best to ignore Lester’s licorice-garbled entreaties to “slow down, for God’s sake!” as he held up his skirts and skipped along beside her.

Her bootheels clicking smartly against the black-and-white tiles of the first-floor foyer, she stopped midway between the staircase and the double doors that, she presumed, led to the drawing room, waiting for Emery to announce her. She thought it ought to be a fairly neat trick if he could pull it off, as the man was still most obviously stumbling over matters of gender just as Lester was still tripping over his hem.

It was, however, a confusion the butler seemed to have reduced in his mind. After gifting her with a slight inclination of his head, he threw open the double doors, took a single step onto the Aubusson carpet, cleared his throat and announced in typical high-nosed, butlerlike stentorian tones, “The riffraff, my lord, my lady.” He then bowed himself out.

“
Touché
,” Callie whispered appreciatively as he went by her.

Emery bowed to her again, this time relaxing enough to bend from the waist. “A word of warning, if I might? Her Ladyship is the viscountess, not the dowager viscountess. If you value your life, that is.”

“Why, thank you, Emery,” Callie said, her smile brilliant, thus beginning an unlikely friendship she had no reason to believe would last beyond the next uncomfortable hour.

With a last squeeze of Lester’s faintly clammy paw, Callie took a deep breath, aimed her chin at the ornately decorated ceiling, and sauntered into the room. She began by chirping out, “How lovely to be out and about again after my recent, unfortunate incarceration. The bread and butter was lovely, by the way, thank you so much for sending it up to us. If some one of you would be kind enough to return my hat, we’ll be on our way now.”

“What cheek!” a deep, female voice exclaimed in high good humor from somewhere to the left of her. Callie turned her head and upper body in that direction—all the best dandies employed that small gambit, partly to impress, partly because their ears could otherwise come to grief on their high, starched shirt points.

What she saw was, undoubtedly, the viscountess. The woman was ensconced in a large, wing-back chair, her slippered toes propped on top of a brocade ottoman. She appeared, even seated, to be a very large woman, taller than most, and with an imposingly well-packed, sturdy body rather than a soft, aging one running to fat. Her eyes were a bright, lively blue, her hair a vivid, truly atrocious yellow, and her smile was one that warned of a razor tongue that she would not hesitate to employ in slicing any opponent into very small, bloody pieces. In short, this was a formidable woman. In fact, Callie took to her immediately.

“My lady,” Callie said with all deference, bowing in her direction. “It is my considered opinion that you might give good lessons in
cheek
. Your son, I also believe, must have studied at your knee and then, realizing he did not possess half your wit, succumbed to rough-and-tumble bullying instead—when he does not attempt to destroy an adversary by
talking
her to death. You are, of course, aware that he has just lately abducted my companion and myself straight off the street?”

The viscountess popped a sugarplum into the pink cavern of her mouth, the three—no, four—bracelets on her arm jingling as she then brushed bits of sugar from the front of her deep purple gown. “Abducted, you say? I believe my son saw it more in the way of a rescue. But I shall investigate just the same. Simon? Would you care to answer the young lady’s charges? Oh, and by the by, I once wore breeches. Demmed comfortable, aren’t they, gel?” She frowned, sighing deeply. “Although yours fit much better than mine ever did. Either that,” she ended with a wink, “or my mirror was wider.”

“If you’re quite done corrupting the already thoroughly corrupted, Mother,” Simon began, stepping forward from his place in front of the mantel and into Callie’s line of sight, “I think I’d like to handle the interview from here. If it pleases you, of course.”

The viscountess winked, then wrinkled her nose at Callie. “Stiff-backed, just like his father. But he’ll come around. Lord knows I have, and I’ve only had since this morning to get used to the notion. Give him time, my dear, and you’ll have him right and tight, curled close round your pretty thumb just as I did with his father. But you will wait until I snag an earl, won’t you? There’s a love.”

Thoroughly confused, but aware that his mother’s words had served to put a dark scowl on her son’s face—which pleased Callie mightily—she only acknowledged the viscountess’s words with a small nod before turning to glare at Simon Roxbury, Viscount Brockton and King of All Interfering Monsters. “My lord?” she offered, falling back on bravado once more and giving him the opening to speak she was sure he would have taken without her permission. “May I presume that you are about to make the introductions?”

“That might be difficult, brat,” he said, stepping close to her so that he could speak without being overheard, “as I don’t have the faintest notion who in bloody blazes you and Miss Muffet here are!”

“Oh, I say, Callie,” Lester protested, for he was standing close enough to hear, “that wasn’t very nice. Called you a brat, he did. Only your papa and Justyn do that.”

“Go sit on your tuffet, why don’t you?” Simon urged, not all that kindly, then returned his searching concentration to Callie. Lester, never difficult to overpower, promptly did as he was told.

“You really are a beast, aren’t you?” Callie whispered, casting her gaze around the room and seeing the two gentlemen who had supported Lester on the flagway standing together in the far corner, sipping from glasses and silently watching her. “I imagine I can only thank you that you didn’t have those two men torture my companion on our way here. Not that you probably didn’t think of it.”

“I didn’t, as a matter of fact,” Simon shot back. “I did, however, consider spanking
you
. Callie, is it?”

Callie raised her chin again. Really, she was getting quite weary of lifting her chin. She couldn’t imagine how her starchy governess had managed it hour after hour. And looking down her nose was beginning to make her dizzy. “All right,” she said, sighing, “I suppose I may as well attack this fence head-on. I’m Caledonia Johnston, and my friend is Lester Plum. Are you happy now, my lord?”

“Happy? Oh, I’m much more than that, Miss Johnston. I am rapidly approaching euphoric,” he answered affably enough, which made Callie long to see him hung on a hook against the nearest wall so that she could throw darts at him with something more lethal than her eyes. “Have you told Mr. Plum that, although at least one of our number found him to be quite fetching, pink may have been an unfortunate choice?”

Covering her mouth with her hand, so that he couldn’t see the appreciative upturning of her lips, Callie gave a deliberate cough, then inclined her head toward the two still-nameless gentleman. “You were about to make the introductions, my lord?” she prompted.

The viscount, good to his word, and quite clearly not at Callie’s instigation, made short work of introducing everyone to everyone else.

“The aunt
is
an uncle!” the painfully thin man who had been introduced as one Bartholomew Boothe exclaimed, first paling, then coloring a deep, embarrassed puce as he squinted in Lester’s direction. “Good God, he is! I’m really going to have to consider spectacles. How embarrassing. Armand, I swear, if you breathe a word of this—”

The gentleman introduced as Armand Gauthier—and a handsome enough specimen, Callie had to admit—only laughed at his companion, then slowly walked across the floor with an ease and grace that she immediately envied. He took up her hand as it hung slackly at her side and pressed a kiss against her skin. “Enchanted, Miss Johnston,” he drawled, then turned to Simon Roxbury and grinned. “This just gets better and better, doesn’t it, old fellow? I can’t thank you enough for including Bones and myself in your amusement.”

“Why else would one have friends, if not to delight them, Armand?” Simon purred back at the man, so that Callie felt a trickle of apprehension skip down her spine. The viscount had—for reasons Callie certainly did not understand—just warned his friend “off.” Gauthier must also have felt the new coolness in the room, and only inclined his head to her once more before returning to his friend and his snifter of brandy.

“If you’ll sit?” the viscount said then, his tone letting her know his was not a question, but a command.

Once Callie had taken up a seat beside Lester, who seemed to be suffering a chill, he was shaking that badly, Simon Roxbury stepped to the middle of the room so that his back was turned to no one, and began to speak. “Now, if I have everyone’s attention, I should like to begin at the beginning and see if we can sort our way out of this. Armand? You might want to call for pen and paper so that you can take down notes. This should make a tolerable farce, and our good friend Sheridan badly needs a new theatrical success.”

“Don’t be insufferable, Simon,” his mother warned. “For one thing, it won’t do you a spot of good. How and why Miss Johnston got here is of no real concern—all that matters is that she is here. This gel’s the one, and I have to keep these stays on a while longer if I’m to beat you to the altar. I can feel it, I’m convinced of it. Strangely, I’m not at all put out by the notion, which just goes to show I have your happiness foremost in my heart, Simon. I’m such a good mother. Ride astride, don’t you, gel? Never mind. Of course you do.”

“Mother—” Simon began warningly, then snapped his jaws shut, as interrupting the viscountess was about as thankless a task as trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a teacup.