Kasey Michaels (30 page)

He didn’t have to stop her however, as Callie found she had run out of breath, and she was closer to bursting into tears than she wanted him to know. With a small cry of exasperation, she whirled on her heels and stomped off to look out the window at the stable yard below her.

“I was desperate that first day, grabbed at the first idea that seemed the least bit plausible. Because you wouldn’t have gone home if I’d asked you, would you?” Simon said from somewhere behind her.

She shook her head, quickly, and without turning to look at him. She didn’t want to answer him at all but knew he’d push at her and push at her until he got some sort of response.

“You would have kept chasing after Noel Kinsey, dragging poor Lester behind you, ruining my chances of completing my own carefully thought-out plans for the man. And probably getting yourself thrown into the guardhouse and Lester transported for your trouble.”

“I would not!” Callie exclaimed, her anger overtaking her to the point where she had to look at him, had to stare him down for his arrogance, his condescending view of her abilities. “Besides, Filton ruined my brother, nearly ruined our whole family. I had every right to exact revenge on him. You’re only going after him because you don’t like him on general principles. You’ve said so yourself.
Mine
is the more pressing mission. You’re only playing a grown man’s game, and you just couldn’t stand it that I might succeed and you fail.”

Simon was quiet for a long time. A long time during which Callie tried to regain her breath. Even as she watched a tic begin in his left cheek, even as she swallowed down hard as his sherry eyes went nearly black.

When he spoke, it was quietly, and with his hands drawn up into fists at his sides. “A game, Callie? Is that what you think? My solicitor’s son blew his own head off two months ago, after Filton tricked him into gambling away every penny of his inheritance from his mother. Robert was nineteen, Callie. Nineteen. The only child of a widowed father. And there was no recourse, nothing anyone could have done to bring Filton to justice. James, my solicitor, hanged himself a week later.”

“Oh, God,” Callie breathed, groping for a chair and sitting down, her eyes stinging with tears. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“Out of respect for my old friend and his son, I made certain the circumstances of their deaths didn’t get out. So nobody
knows
, Callie, not even Armand,” Simon said quietly. “But, then, he didn’t ask. He, unlike you, simply trusted me to have a good reason for what I wanted to do.”

“Yer ’quippage be ready in the yard, Guv’nor!” a male voice called out from the other side of the door at the same time there were three hard knocks against the stout wood.

Simon picked up Callie’s bonnet and handed it to her, then stepped back, his hot gaze never leaving her face as he said in a clear voice, “Thank you. We’ll be right there.”

Then, when she didn’t move, he took the bonnet from her nerveless fingers and placed it on her head, tying the bow to the left of her chin. “We have to go,” he said, helping her to her feet, running his hand along her cheek, trailing his fingers down the side of her throat. “You’ve said a lot that’s true, Callie, and much that isn’t. For one, you’re wrong about why I kissed you. That kiss wasn’t for your benefit, but for mine. And it was a mistake, one that won’t be repeated. You don’t have to worry about that, I promise.”

“A mistake.” Callie repeated, nodding, secretly amazed she could still talk, still stand upright. “I see. Well, that’s a relief. Shall we go?”

They were halfway back to Portland Place when Callie spoke again. “Does Filton have any idea why you’re after him, do you think? I mean, if he were to make the connection between you and your solicitor’s son—”

“Filton fuzzes cards, Callie,” Simon told her as he feathered a corner with an expertise she would have admired if she weren’t so miserable, so worried about a man who’d just said he’d made a “mistake” in kissing her. “At the heart of it, he’s a coward.”

“Still,” Callie went on quickly, “I think the plan you made up in order to keep me out of the way is better than yours to just empty his pockets. Safer, and with a more public humiliation. I want to help, Simon. I want to be part of the plan, this time for real. Because it was a good plan, it really was. His disgrace
should
be a public one.”

“No.”

Callie’s sympathy died as her back went up. “You tricked me, Simon. Remember the books. Remember Imogene parading me like a prize pig at the fair. But it’s so much more than that. It was your solicitor’s son who killed himself, but it could just as easily have been Justyn. It could be so many more if a stop isn’t put to the man now. You owe me this chance to be part of the plan, now more than ever—now that I know how truly evil Filton is. I’ve
earned
that chance. Simon. Simon?”

He sent his whip out over the heads of his matched grays. “I said, no. I meant, no. I will say no, and mean no, forever. Do you understand me, Callie?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I understand you, my lord.” Callie answered tightly, the wheels inside her brain turning at a furious rate. “I understand you perfectly.”

No matter that Simon’s were known as the fastest bits of horseflesh in all of London, it was still an unbearably long, quiet, and immeasurably tense ride back to Portland Place.

—George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham

Chapter Thirteen

S
imon had begun to think he’d be an old, old man before Lady Sarah Sophia Jersey—known to her intimates as Silence—stopped talking at him and let go of her death grip on his sleeve, so delighted she was to have the Viscount Brockton and his two friends at Almack’s. Although he’d never seriously planned to accompany the ladies to the Assembly, any thoughts he’d had of seeking out Filton and continuing his plan to empty the man’s pockets had been postponed after his forced confession to Callie.

Because Filton might show his face at Almack’s, just as Callie had suggested, damn the man. And he’d be damned himself, Simon would, if he’d let her get within twenty yards of the villain.

Not now. Not ever.

“Again, Sally,” he told Lady Jersey when she paused in her never-ending monologue of
ton
gossip and other inanities to take a breath, “I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you’ve condescended to allow my mother’s young companion for the Season entrance to these hallowed rooms. I promise you, Miss Johnston is as refined and conformable as she appears, and highly cognizant of your notice. Yes, sweet and well-mannered—and with quite a handsome dowry through her great-aunt,” he added confidingly, knowing he could count on Lady Jersey to keep that small, deliberately shared secret to herself for no more time than it took for her to waylay a half dozen male guests and start wagging her tongue—reported to be hinged at both ends—at them.

After all, what better way to keep Filton away than to have Callie surrounded by no less than two dozen impecunious younger sons and middle-aged fortune hunters? In that way, at least, his plan that never had been a plan could still work to his advantage.

“How much?” Lady Jersey asked quickly and concisely—for once not saying in twenty words what could be said in two. Her eyelids were slitted, her expression one of avid, if carefully concealed, genteel interest. It would not, after all, be prudent to behave like a common shopkeeper in these affairs, but business was business, and marriage between peers and well-cushioned young heiresses was the most serious business of all.

“Now, Sally,” Simon warned laughingly, then bent low to whisper in her ear. The patroness let out a small squeal of delight and deserted him where he stood, taking straight aim at clutch of bored and eligible bachelors propping up pillars at the edge of the dance floor.

“Good, that should keep Callie occupied and safe enough,” he said quietly, satisfied with himself as he turned in quite the opposite direction and headed for his mother. She was sitting with but not quite among the other older ladies and hired companions, her bilious yellow hair concealed beneath a gold-gilt turban, fanning herself with a vengeance as the heat of the room—and, doubtless, her tight stays—played havoc with her usually sturdy constitution.

“It’s all going as planned, darling,” he told her in an easy lie that was nearly the truth, bending down to speak quietly into her ear. He hoped his words penetrated the yards of cloth swathed around her head. “Callie will be the belle of the ball within a heartbeat, her dance card filled even before Filton arrives, if he does come at all.”

“Well, if that isn’t above everything stupid,” his mother responded, the speed of her fan accelerating, the pitch of her voice a shade or two too loud not to attract unwanted attention if anyone had been sitting closer to her which, thankfully, was not the case. “I thought you wanted him panting after the gel now that I’ve brought her up to scratch. I vow, I haven’t slept in a week, worrying and worrying, and now I see I was right to worry. You’re not doing this at all right, Simon. Not at all right.”

“Thank you for your confidence in me, Mother,” Simon responded, catching Bartholomew’s wave to him out of the corner of his eye. “Now, you move yourself closer to the biddies and say just what it is we’ve rehearsed—about how you’re bringing Callie out as a favor to your dear old friend—and leave everything else to me, if you please. I promise you, if you do as I say we’ll be able to stumble through well enough tonight without Filton so much as talking to Callie. I merely wish to dangle the bait tonight,” he lied quickly, “not toss her straight into his lap at first sight.”

“Impudent, arrogant puppy!” his mother responded, then broke into a wide smile that threatened to split her face. “Strip me naked if that isn’t Freddy! Look, Simon—over there! Isn’t that the earl of Mitcham? Good God, it is! Fetch him to me—fetch him to me at once!” She grabbed on to Simon’s arm as he made to do her bidding—happy enough to have Imogene occupied with a little husband-hunting—holding him in place. “No! Wait! Simon—how do I look? This demmed turban—is it on straight? And what do I do? What do I say? Simon?”

Simon bent and kissed his mother’s cheek. “You’re the most handsome woman here, Imogene,” he told her earnestly. His too-tall, too-large mother might no longer be young, and never had been anyone’s vision of pink-and-white English prettiness, but she was definitely still the most impressive, imposing-looking and, yes,
handsome
female he’d ever encountered. “Now smile, my love. I believe the earl is coming this way. Shall I trip him for you?”

“Don’t mock me, son, I’m a desperate woman,” his mother warned, then gave him a small shove as the earl of Mitcham neared, sending Simon straight into the man’s path.

“You’re here to pop off a
granddaughter
, Freddy?” Imogene was saying within ten minutes, Simon staying around to enjoy some of the fun. “God, Freddy—never say you’re
that
ancient? Can you still be up to riding—er—riding to hounds? No, you can’t be, can you?”

“And you’re as bright and lively and full of vinegar as ever, Imogene,” the earl chuckled, not seeming to take umbrage at the viscountess’s plain speech as he creakily lowered himself into a chair beside her, leaning his cane against his knee. Simon gave his mother a small wave, bowed in the earl’s direction, and made good his escape, pretending not to notice that the woman was looking suddenly oppressed.

“There she is, Simon, getting ready to go down the dance with Werley,” Bartholomew told him as he joined him on the side of the dance floor. “That will keep her bored senseless for the next half hour, poor thing. He prates of nothing but his horses, then misses every third movement of the dance, so that he ends up standing just where he shouldn’t, still blithely talking stud fees. Armand’s got her after that, for the second waltz, and the rest of her card is already full unless I miss my guess and all those young bucks that made a beeline toward her a few minutes ago were asking directions to the dinner room. They’re buzzing live hungry wasps all around the dance floor, Simon, talking of her beauty—her
dowry
. By noon tomorrow you’ll have every fortune hunter and half-pay officer from here to John o’Groat’s leaving cards, sending posies, and cluttering up your drawing room. But there’s still no sign of Filton, so that’s all right.”

“I still think he might attend tonight,” Simon told his unusually loquacious, always-fretful friend confidently. “I’m looking forward to seeing him here, actually. Callie was right. The plan that was never a plan still can work—as long as I keep her safely out of it. I can hear myself now, telling Filton all about Callie and the whacking-great fortune she’s just inherited from her great-aunt—then inquiring of him if he hasn’t just had the same sort of splendid good luck with a great aunt of his own. I’m so glad we didn’t invent an uncle, or a rich cousin—as the great-aunt connection is so very apt, so fitting.”

“And mean,” Bartholomew said, shaking his head.

“Yes. And mean. Anyway, I’ll let him simmer with that for a moment, then complain to him about how Imogene and I are now faced with popping the fortunate girl off—and ask him if he might possibly know of someone who might be interested in a simple country miss with more money than she knows what to do with.” He lifted his handkerchief to touch the corners of his mouth. “Tell me, Bones, do you think he’ll drool?”