Kasey Michaels (24 page)

“That’s a fairly good description of the man, actually,” Simon told her. “And he uses all his tricks to great advantage with the ladies, however, so be careful.”

Callie sobered. “You can’t mean that anyone would take him seriously,” she said, shaking her head. “Why, as if I’d believe a man who said he was in love with me after only meeting me for the second time.”

“He said that?” Simon asked, looking at her intently, secretly pleased that this inexperienced woman-child could see through Armand’s banterings when many more sophisticated females could not. “When?”

She waved away his question. “It doesn’t matter, because he was only teasing me, you know. Just as you were this morning, in the park.”

Simon studied the rose pattern of the carpet at his feet, knowing that his lessons in flirting, the intimate kiss he had pressed in Cattie’s palm, had not been entirely the actions of an impersonal tutor. Yet, where she had seen through Armand’s flirting, she also had chosen to not look deeper into his own motives. Unfortunately, he had. And he was suddenly even more uncomfortable than he had been—and growing less sure of his plans for Callie by the moment.

“Mr. Gauthier has a most interesting accent,” Callie said, swinging her feet back and forth as Simon watched, so that he belatedly realized that, for all her new air of sophistication, she wasn’t wearing shoes. “At times I think he is French, then English, then perhaps even American. Emery has told me a few things about him, although I find most of it difficult to believe.”

“Armand was reared in New Orleans, in America,” Simon told her absently, his mind more fully occupied in appreciating the vision of Callie’s stocking-clad toes, the fragility of her ankles, the memory of how long and shapely her legs had appeared when she had been playing the part of a young man. “Or so he says.”

“Or so he says?” Callie repeated. “Don’t you believe him?”

“I’d be a blockheaded fool if I did,” Simon said, “seeing as how Armand delights in telling wild stories. The most empty-headed ladies of the
ton
find this litany of lies to be highly attractive, which amuses Armand, I believe.”

“And Mr. Gauthier does all this fibbing on purpose?”

“Armand does enjoy exploiting the foibles of his fellow man,” Simon agreed, “but he is usually content to be an observer of society rather than a participant. Usually.”

“But not right now?” Callie asked, showing again her quick intelligence. “He isn’t just standing back and observing our plans for Noel Kinsey. He doesn’t approve, does he?”

“I’ve seen him more pleased,” Simon admitted, looking down to see that Callie had impulsively placed her hand on his arm. “I believe he sees you being hurt in some way.”

‘Well, that’s just above everything silly!” Callie protested, obviously not seeing any danger in Simon’s plan, or in their close proximity in this, her virgin bedchamber. “I’m going to go to balls and routs and plays. I’m going to dance and flirt and dangle my nonexistent dowry in the earl’s face so that he is so lovestruck you can fleece him at cards and rid him of his fortune. Nothing could be simpler or less dangerous. How could I possibly be hurt?”

“You could fall in love with Armand,” Simon suggested, watching her carefully.

“Fall in love with—is that why you’ve come up here? To warn me away from Mr. Gauthier as if I was one of those absurd society misses who would believe a man so obviously insincere as your deliberately secretive friend? Well, if that isn’t above everything silly!”

“He’s wealthy, handsome, intelligent, agreeable—an extremely good catch, Callie.”

She rolled her eyes. “And insincere and full of himself, and entirely too
smooth
for my liking. Anything else? Or have I put your mind to rest on that head?”

“Or you could, in your gratitude, fall in love with me,” Simon continued, desperately aware of their proximity on the bed, of the way her thigh was brushing up against his, aware of the scent of her, the innocent beauty of her, his attraction to her. An attraction he had been fighting since first discovering the impudent creature in his coach. And if she now compared him to Armand, or her brother Justyn, or even to her good and comfortable friend Lester, he might, he realized with a sinking heart, go into a sad decline.

He watched her press her lips together, moistening them with the tip of her tongue. “That’s Imogene’s hope, not mine,” she said, averting her eyes as Simon took her hand in his, stroking his thumb across the back of her knuckles—doing his best to ignore the fact that his heart had just done a small flip in his chest. “You don’t really believe I’d talk myself into doing any such thing, even to please your mother, whom I definitely adore?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said honestly, his hopes still most ridiculously on the ascendant. “My mother has had her share of outlandish ideas.”

“Her yellow hair,” Callie said, trying to smile, and failing.

“Her stays,” Simon added helpfully, still stroking his thumb across Callie’s knuckles, his fingers wrapped around her wrist, feeling the sudden leap of her pulse as his own responded in kind.

“Believing those chocolate tarts Lester discovered don’t matter if she hides them in her bedchamber and only eats them when nobody else is looking.” She looked down at their joined hands. “Would you please stop that?”

“No. Believing the title of Dowager Viscountess to be a fate worse than death.”

“Believing she could stand to live with that title if you were to marry me.” She looked up at him again, her green eyes wide and appealing, and only slightly apprehensive. “Why not?”

“Because you like it,” Simon told her, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “Because I like it. Because I’m a bloody fool.”

She continued looking at him “Oh.”

“Yes.
Oh
,” he said softly, gently tugging on her captured hand, drawing her closer to him, closer, looking deeply into her eyes even as she looked questioningly into his.

“Bloody hell,” he groaned, giving in to the moment and consigning the future to where it belonged, which was far, far away from this mad, glorious Now. He carefully slanted his mouth across hers, finding her lips to be a perfect fit against his own, just as her body fit him so well, her softness folding into his arms as he gently drew her closer, closer, his arms reaching so completely around her it was as if he had brought her entirely into his world, making her a part of him.

But Now didn’t last long, and the truth of the future all too quickly intruded on his thoughts again. The truth that there was no room for Caledonia Johnston in his life, no possible end to this madness but disaster. Especially once she found out how he was tricking her into believing he was actually going to expose her innocence to Noel Kinsey.

He tore his mouth away from hers, burying her head against his shoulder, trying to recapture his breath, his sanity. “This is madness,” be told her gruffly, closing his eyes tightly as he heard the unsteadiness in his voice, realized that he was having significant trouble remembering precisely how to breathe.

“You don’t have to sound so angry about it, my lord,” Callie said, attempting to put the flat of her hands between them, push him away. “Or are you simply afraid that Imogene will come walking in here at any moment and begin prattling about bridal clothes? I’m not entirely stupid, you know, and what you’ve just done has gone miles beyond anything permissible.”

She gave him another push, this time escaping because his arms had gone slack at her words. “Well,” she said, looking up at him as if measuring him for his coffin and delighting in being in charge of his execution, “that certainly served to cool your ardor, didn’t it, my fine mentor? I begin to think Armand Gauthier is the safer of the two of you. Clearly any young woman going into Society should first be given lessons not in proper curtsies and how to leave calling cards, but in pistols and swordplay.”

Simon roughly rubbed a hand across his forehead, attempting to coax his brain into locating some coherent thought that he could then force past his lips. It wasn’t working. For the first time in a very long, long time, he found himself nonplussed, entirely at a loss—and he had been brought low by a mere girl!

“I beg your forgiveness, Caledonia,” he said at last, rising from the bed—he’d been sitting beside her on the bed! Well, that, obviously, had been his first mistake. No. Coming to her bedchamber had been his first mistake. No! Thinking up this mad scheme had been his initial error. He should have sent her packing to her father with instructions to tie her to her bedpost the moment he’d got her in his clutches.
That’s
what he should have done.

And why hadn’t he done it? Armand had warned him. Bones had warned him. Not that Bones didn’t warn against everything from sleeping with the windows open to eating any undoubtedly inferior meat his dinner hostess had ordered dipped in bread crumbs or buried in concealing sauces. Bread crumbs? Sauces? What was he thinking? Why was he still here? Why wasn’t he downstairs, gulping poison? “Callie, I—”

“You want my forgiveness? Well, you can’t have it! I won’t give it to you!” Callie said, also jumping down from the bed. “What do you have to say to that?”

Simon looked at her standing there, her arms akimbo, her stocking-clad toes peeking out from beneath her hem, her cap of burnished curls tangled against her cheeks, her green eyes flashing somewhere between righteous indignation and unholy glee at having put him in such an untenable position, and he suddenly threw back his head and laughed out loud.

“My God, Callie!” he then blurted out honestly, feeling extremely lighthearted, and young, and most definitely alive. “If I were Armand, I’d be saying that I think I’m in love!”

Callie eyed him narrowly for the space of three heartbeats. Then, with a dismissive toss of her beautiful head, she declared flatly: “Ha!”

“Ha?” Simon repeated, more than slightly taken aback.

“Yes, Simon—ha! Ha, ha,
ha
!” she said, already walking toward the door. “You’d say anything to keep me here, so that Armand Gauthier isn’t proved right and so that Bartholomew Boothe can keep telling you you’re wrong. You’d do anything to keep Imogene happy, and occupied, and out of your way while you go about your business—whatever that is. And you still want to destroy Noel Kinsey and need me to help you. That’s why you said what you said. Why you did what you did is equally obvious—you’re a cad and a rotter and probably despicable! And I’ll give you five seconds to remove yourself from my
boudoir
, my lord Brockton, or else I’m going to tell your mama on you. I mean it!”

Simon felt both his ardor and confusion fading, to be replaced with a mounting anger. “You may lead Lester around by the ring you’ve put through his nose,” he gritted out angrily. “You may have my mother dancing to your tune, all of my servants singing your praises and telling me how best to please you, but I’ll be
damned
if you’ll tell
me
what to think! No wonder your father was so eager to swallow my mother’s absurd lies and leave you here in London—it’s probably the only peace he’s had since the day you were born!”

“Get out!” Callie ordered again, reaching for a small statue of a milkmaid carrying a pail. “I can’t stand the sight of you. And if you think, for one single moment, that I felt the least bit kindly toward you when you kissed me—well, you’re fair and far-out!”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Simon warned as she raised the statue, taking hold of her arm and pulling her hard against him, almost knocking the breath straight out of her. “Now, little brat—tell me you’re indifferent to
this
!” he growled, then crushed his mouth against hers again.

The immediate explosion inside his skull could not have been more powerful if Callie had succeeded in braining him with the statue rather than letting it fall to the floor, where it landed with a dull
thunk
against the carpet.

His reaction to their first kiss had been tame in comparison to what he felt now, this sudden hunger, this most immediate need to have her, possess her, never let her go. And when she slipped her hands through his arms, pressing them against the back of his waist, he was lost.

She wasn’t soft and yielding, as she had been before, but gave back as good as she got, pressing against him almost angrily, fitting herself to him—did any two people ever fit so well?—allowing him to penetrate her mouth with his tongue.

He skimmed his hands across her waist, then slid them upward, over her flat rib cage, to the tantalizing firmness of her small, perfect breasts. His thumbs grazed her nipples beneath the thin fabric of her gown. She sighed into his mouth and began using her tongue in a duel with him, shattering the last of his common sense, his lifelong dedication to Sweet Reason.

He didn’t know how long someone had been knocking on the door to the bedchamber before he heard it. Callie must have heard it at the same time. They both suddenly, mutually separated, Callie looking at the floor, Simon raising his eyes to the ceiling as if to ask a Higher Guidance just what in bloody hell had just happened.

“What is it?” he called out when he could just as easily have inquired as to the day, the month, the year—for he felt as if he knew nothing, had forgotten everything in the world except the feel and smell and taste of Caledonia Johnston.

“It’s your mother the viscountess, milord,” he heard Emery call from the other side of the thick wooden door. “She said for me to tell you that she has always been one to turn a blind eye when the situation suits but that she won’t be going to hell for you, sir, begging your pardon.”

Simon looked to Callie, who had gone over to her dressing table and was now sitting on the edge of the bench, looking as if she had just suffered a tremendous shock. “I’d better go,” he said quietly.

She only nodded, avoiding his eyes.

“We’ll have to talk about this, you know.”

She nodded once more.

“Some other time.”

Only another nod.

“I’m—”

Her head shot up, and she looked at him with tear-filled eyes. “If you say you’re sorry, Simon Roxbury, I’ll skin you with a butter knife!”

It was his turn to nod, and he did so, then turned and left the room, quietly closing the door behind him