Kasey Michaels (23 page)

“You went and made her mad, didn’t you?” she heard Lester scold as she stopped a few feet down the hall, trying to catch her breath while swallowing hard in an attempt to push her heart back down her throat. “And just when I brought Scarlet home with me, too. Now what am I supposed to do with her?”

Scarlet? Who or what was a Scarlet? Callie poked her head around the corner, looking toward the ground-floor foyer. She saw a fairly pretty street vendor standing there beside a clearly flummoxed Roberts—who was pinching what looked to be a dead rat between his thumb and forefinger—a wooden tray piled high with pastries hung around her neck.

Leave it to Lester Plum to ruin her fine, dramatic exit! “Lester?” she asked carefully, backing up a few paces, until the rather vacantly smiling creature was once more out of her sight. She turned to her friend, her teeth clenched, murder in her eyes. “What in bloody hell have you done to us now?”

And then, in a move that surprised her as much as it must have shocked her good friend, Callie burst into tears and ran straight up the stairs, to fling herself on her bed and sob.

’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

—John Byrom

Chapter Ten

I
f there were a more unpleasant way to spend an hour, Simon couldn’t recall it as he sat in his study listening to his bosom chums and his beloved mother rail at him over his callous, hard-hearted, obnoxious, cavalier, selfish, close-to-criminal behavior toward that sweet young girl, Caledonia Johnston.

“There’s nothing else for it, Simon,” Bartholomew Boothe proclaimed at last, clearly having decided the thing for them all. “You’ll have to send her home.”

That statement brought the only smile to Simon’s face that he had been able to muster since the contretemps began, as his mother, Armand—even Lester, who had trouble speaking with his mouth stuffed full of chocolate tart—all turned to Bartholomew and spoke as one, even if their statements were very revealingly dissimilar.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Bones. She’ll just pick up her pistol and go Filton-hunting again, if you’ll remember the reasons behind this entire exercise,” Armand said, inclining his head toward the still in-the-dark viscountess who had no idea how Simon was using Callie’s presence to entertain his mother.

“Send her home? Are you daft, man? With everything going so splendidly?” the viscountess sputtered.

Simon’s right eyebrow climbed his forehead. “Splendidly, Mother? A moment ago you said this entire affair had taken on all the hallmarks of a disaster of biblical proportions. And blamed me for it all, as I remember.”

Imogene gave a dismissing toss of her head. “I sometimes exaggerate. You know that. Don’t rub my nose in my failings now, Simon.”

“Would I have to go, too?” Lester Plum bleated, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Never say so, now that I’m folded so nicely in the flap of luxury.”

“That’s sitting in the lap of luxury, Lester,” Simon corrected smoothly as he stood up to signal an end to the discussion. He leaned forward to plant the palms of his hands on the desk. “This is getting us nowhere,” he then told them, looking most intensely at his beloved mother, who had already opened her mouth, clearly ready to continue her harangue against her only son. “I’m going upstairs to talk reason to the brat.”

Bartholomew nodded sagely. “Going to apologize, eat a little humble pie, wear a bit of sackcloth and ashes. That ought to do it. Though I wouldn’t call her brat, Simon. Seems a mite contradictory.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind, Bones,” Simon said, walking around the desk, stopping in front of Armand Gauthier. “Well? Out with it man. I know you have something to add.”

“You’ll go into her bedchamber?” Armand only asked, picking up a pair of dice and closing his fist around it so that his knuckles showed white. “Unchaperoned?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Armand!” Simon said, his temper sparked once more. “There’s nothing between Miss Johnston and me but a mutual desire to destroy Noel Kinsey.”

Armand looked at him levelly. “So you say, my friend, so you say—and Lord knows you never lie, even to yourself.” He also stood up, neatly pulling at his jacket cuffs. “I’ll be leaving now, if you don’t mind, as I have just recalled an appointment with my confessor. Just send round a note, Simon, if you find yourself desiring his address. Bones—are you coming with me?”

“To your confessor?” Bones asked, confused. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because his confessor is probably an innkeeper at some low dive at the bottom end of Bond Street,” Simon bit out testily. His mother looked at him with a beaming smile that made him long to plant the clever-tongued Armand a facer. Just one good, solid punch, meant to rearrange his friend’s knowing expression which had so encouraged his already-ambitious mother into believing that, yes indeed, there was a very good chance of a match between her son and Caledonia Johnston.

“I’ll give you a quarter hour with her, son, no more,” the viscountess declared, taking hold of Simon’s arm as he made to brush past her. “I’ll play Cupid, but I’ll be damned if I’ll have you make me into a procuress!”

Simon took a deep breath, looking at each occupant of the room in turn. “I begin to wonder if Noel Kinsey’s downfall is worth it,” he said, then stomped out of the room, wishing he might be leaving on the next tide, as was Byron, who had wisely decided that he’d had enough of London for the nonce.

“My lord? You should know this, I suppose,” Lester called after him by way of a friendly warning. “She throws things sometimes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Simon replied, never breaking stride as he walked into the foyer, where Roberts was still standing in front of the round table in its center, looking down at a black splotch on its highly polished surface.

“What do I do with it, milord?” he asked, pointing a finger at the offending article. “Emery says to give it to Silsby, but as he was laughing to split his sides as he said it, I don’t think I should.”

Simon eyed the item in question owlishly for a moment, then picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket. “There, Roberts, that’s one problem solved. Now, what has Emery done with the young woman?”

“Scarlet?” Roberts asked, his face splitting into a grin. “He took her to the kitchens, milord, just as the viscountess ordered and I’d already said m’self, seeing as how I know how her ladyship dotes on fine pastries and the like. She said as how you wouldn’t mind, as you delight in emptying your pockets for servants, and females cost a full two pounds less in tax a year than men.” He frowned as a sudden thought hit him. “You wouldn’t think of replacing us all with females, would you, milord? That is to say, if you was squeezed for pennies or anything?”

“Only if you discover a great need to give me advice on how to handle Miss Johnston, Roberts,” Simon warned, turning for the staircase.

“Oh, not me, milord!” Roberts averred feelingly. “But I did hear Emery saying to Silsby that we wouldn’t be at such sixes and sevens if the vola... vowel-a—”

“Volatile, Roberts,” Simon supplied helpfully, amazed at his own forbearance.

“Yes, milord, that’s it. That’s what Emery said. He said we wouldn’t be at such sixes and sevens if the
vol-a-tile
young miss was to be out and about with other young misses, seeing the sights and picking up ribbons and laces and such, seeing as how she has nothing to do all the day but twiddle her thumbs. Does that help, milord?”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Roberts,” Simon promised dully, not surprised to know that the goings-on of the master of the household had become a point of common discussion below-stairs. “I’ll keep it in mind.” Then, suddenly impatient to have this ridiculousness settled once and for all, he bounded up the stairs two at a time, heading for Callie’s bedchamber. He knocked his knuckles against the wood with all the charm and subtlety of an army storming the gates of an enemy city.

“Oh, just go away, Lester!” Callie called from behind the door. “There aren’t enough chocolate tarts in all of England to make me forgive you this latest silliness.”

“I agree, brat,” Simon said, not enjoying having been put in the position of cooling his heels in his own hallway. “All that remains is whether to shoot him or hang him. Let me in and we’ll discuss his punishment.”

“Simon—Lord Brockton?” Callie’s usually attractively husky voice held a faint squeak. “You’re knocking on my door?”

“I refuse to answer the obvious. Now open the door before I have to resort to the mutually embarrassing prospect of asking Emery to fetch me the key.”

He heard a slight rustling on the other side of the wood before the handle turned and Callie’s head appeared in the resulting crack as she pulled the door open. “Mutually embarrassing for whom, my lord? You and Emery? For I certainly am not the least bit embarrassed. I’m
angry
! Mostly with
you
!”

“You’ve been crying,” Simon said, taking in the slight puffiness around her large green eyes, and suddenly feeling as if the only thing he, as a gentleman, could do was to go off to slit his throat. He’d had no idea her unhappiness could affect him this deeply. “I never meant to make you cry, Callie,” he said honestly, entering the guest chamber as she let go of the door and walked away from him.

“I never meant to cry, and it has most certainly served to ruin my day,” she countered, hoisting herself up so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her toes dangling a good foot above the floor. “I meant to punish you for treating me like a child and expecting me to behave like a woman, ring a mighty peal over your head, then walk away the victor.” She cocked her head to one side, looking at him inquiringly. “Does that make the least bit of sense, my lord?”

“Simon,” he corrected, longing to sit down beside her and knowing that it was the last place he should be. That this chamber was the last place he should be. That being alone with Callie Johnston was not only foolhardy, it was dangerous. “And I apologize.”

“For what?” she prompted meaningfully, a small light of mischief dawning in her eyes. She might have been brought down by the events of this day, the events of these past days, but she was by no means out, and Simon was beginning to wonder why the damnable chit only lived under his roof and did not yet own it. She certainly was intelligent enough, courageous enough, daring enough, to have already conquered most of England, not just taken command of Number Forty-nine Portland Place.

Giving in to his inclinations and banishing his conscience to perdition for the moment, Simon crossed the room and sat down beside her on the satin coverlet. After all, they were friends now, weren’t they?

“Where should I begin?” he asked, remembering their ill-fated interlude in Richmond Park that morning, the interlude that never should have happened, just as his entire scheme to ruin the earl of Filton should have remained his own project and not been fudged about to figuratively include this innocent yet volatile young girl.

She looked at him for a long moment—during which time he realized, yet again, how extraordinarily beautiful she was in her most individual way—then shook her head. “Never mind,” she said, “I suppose I’ll forgive you in any case. I think we were both equally guilty, the two of us having momentarily forgotten why we have formed this alliance, as it were. It’s just that it’s taking so
long
to put our plan into action. Do you think we can perhaps convince Mr. Pinabel to return?”

“Oh, he’ll be back,” Simon said confidently, reaching into his pocket to withdraw the dead black lump he’d picked up in the foyer, “if only to retrieve this. He left in such a hurry that he completely ran out from underneath it.”

Callie reached out her hand, gingerly touching a single finger to the clump of what Simon privately believed to be horsehair. “What—what is that? Oh my dear Lord, I’ve seen this before! It’s Mr. Pinabel’s
hair
!”

Simon balanced the toupee on the end of his finger, holding it up so that Callie could get a better look at the thing. “He must have been devastated when powdered wigs were taxed out of fashion,” he mused, beginning to chuckle in spite of the presumed seriousness of the discussion he was supposed to be having with Callie.

“Let me see that!” She snatched the hairpiece from him and hopped down from the bed, going over to stand in front of her dressing table. She plopped the toupee down on top of her head and bent from the waist to admire her reflection in the low mirror, saying, “One-two-
twree
! One-two-
twree
! No, Mith, that’th
twerrible
!” Making comical faces, she tilted her head this way and that before removing the false hair and turning about to look at. Simon. “Oh, this is delicious! Do you suppose his eyebrow is horsehair as well? Do you suppose he’s really bald as a melon?”

“One can only speculate, if one has a desire to do so. I find that I do not,” Simon said with as much seriousness as he could muster, but finding himself unable to keep from smiling. “However, this settles it, brat. The man can’t return. I’d never be able to look at him without seeing how you looked in his hair. I do have my reputation to consider, and falling to the floor, clutching my stomach and howling like a mad dog would do my consequence no good whatsoever.”

She grinned as she came back to the bed, returning the toupee to him before once more seating herself. “Which leaves me with no dancing master, I’m afraid,” she said, peering up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Perhaps Mr. Gauthier could be induced to volunteer to be my tutor? Will you ask him?”

“When the devil goes ice-skating,” Simon muttered under his breath as he roughly shoved the ridiculous toupee back into his pocket, a pronouncement that brought another giggle to Callie’s lips. “You’re flirting again, brat. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, most definitely,
Simon
,” she told him, causing him to realize just how much he enjoyed hearing his name on her lips. “I wanted to see your reaction to my mention of Mr. Gauthier. I find him to be rather appealing, in an irritating sort of way. It’s as if he has his own reasons for everything he does, and looks at the rest of the world as if it has been formed for his own personal amusement. And he seems rather secretive, as if he knows some sort of joke nobody else does.”