Kasey Michaels (5 page)

“I don’t know, Callie,” he answered honestly. “A prayer, perhaps?”

The statue shattered against the wall a good six inches above his head. Lester Plum was getting very good at ducking, and Callie’s heart hadn’t really been in the throw. Within ten minutes, however, after Cattle had explained that “one small alteration” in her hastily reworked plan to take to the flagways of Mayfair in broad daylight in search of Kinsey, Lester Plum was wishing he’d just let the dratted thing hit him. At least then he would have been put out of his misery.

“Are you going to eat that honey bun, Simon, or simply allow it to grow stale sitting there?”

Simon lowered his newspaper, peered down the long table at the woman occupying the seat at the opposite end. He then looked to the honey bun in front of him and, with a quick, rearranging shake of the pages, lifted the newspaper in front of his face once more. “You can’t have it, Mother. You made me promise, remember?”

“Oh, if that doesn’t beat the Dutch! You would have forgotten my birthday last year if I hadn’t pinned a note to Silsby so that you’d see it when he shaved you. You forgot you’d been invited to your Great-aunt Alice’s for dinner a fortnight ago. I had to spend a dashed-dull quarter hour listening to her tell me that she believed I had murdered you, seeing as how none of our relatives has laid eyes on you in ages and ages. But say one stupid thing to you, utter a single meaningless phrase in a moment of weakness, and
that
you have embroidered on your brain. I’ve nursed a snake at my bosom, I vow I have.”

Simon sighed and lowered the paper once more, this time placing it on the table, so that Roberts, the footman in attendance, scurried forward quickly and neatly refolded it for his master. “I may be a snake, Mother, but it was not your bosom that nursed me. You never would have taken time away from your horses and the card table for such domestic chores,” Simon said coolly, then waited for the explosion.

It wasn’t long in coming. The Viscountess Brockton pushed back her chair and rose to her considerably intimidating height of nearly six feet and gave out with a trumpeting “
Harrumph!
” She then charged down the length of the table, her striped lavender and blushing pink dressing gown billowing out behind her substantial body like a man-o’-war in full sail, and nearly succeeded in grabbing up the honey bun before Simon had time to swing it, plate and all, out of her reach.

“Ungrateful wretch!” she sputtered, collapsing into the quickly pulled-out chair to Simon’s right. The Brockton footmen were all very light on their feet, which was a necessity of employment in this rather unique household, and Roberts was far and away the best of the lot. She plopped her plump elbows on the table and her double chin in her hands as she smiled somewhat sloppily at her dear son, her only child, her most perfect production. “Explain to me again, dear boy, why on earth I am forced to sit at quite the opposite end of this ridiculously long table.”

Simon leaned over and kissed his mother’s forehead. “So that I don’t starve to death, Mother,” he reminded her, then gave in and placed the plate in front of her. “Just remember tonight as Kathleen has her far-from-dainty foot shoved against your spine, trying to stuff you into your corset, that this wasn’t my idea.”

“Ummm... still warm,” the viscountess fairly purred around her first bite of sweet honey bun. “If I didn’t have to marry, I would toss away all my corsets and never look at another slice of dry toast, I vow it!”

Simon looked appealingly to Roberts, making a “V” of his index and middle finger. The servant quickly stepped to the sideboard and opened the airtight case holding a selection of the Viscount’s finest cigars. Plucking one out and cutting off the tip with a small scissors, Roberts then positioned the cigar on a silver platter and carried it to the table, placing it in front of his employer.

After sticking the cigar in the corner of his mouth, then allowing Roberts to light it for him, Simon blew out a fine, thin stream of smoke, and said, “That’s it, Mother. Turn me into a cur. Marry before the Season is out, or it’s the dower house for you, woman!”

“Don’t be funning me, young man,” Imogene Roxbury said, plucking the cigar from between her son’s fingers and taking a healthy—or unhealthy—puff on the thing. “You’ll be marrying any day now, and I refuse to be the Dowager Viscountess. Dowager—what a disgusting,
aging
term. If you had any consideration for me, any true love, you would take a vow of bachelorhood.”

“I have,” Simon pointed out as he retrieved his cigar. “Repeatedly. You simply don’t believe me.”

“As I’d have to be feather-witted to do,” she answered with a sniff, looking longingly at the cigar as Simon puffed on it once more. “You’re rich, handsome, titled—of course you wish to be married. It’s just as Miss Austen said in her lovely novel,
Pride and Prejudice
. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ I’ve never been so upset as I have been since reading that silly book this past winter! You may be fighting it, but you may as well try to shout down the wind. Marry you will, marry you must, but I’ll be demmed if I’ll be a dowager. I’m thinking countess, at the moment, if I can find myself an earl who’s willing. Countess. That has a nice ring to it, yes?”

She snatched the cigar from her son and took another satisfying puff, watching the smoke rise to the ceiling as she blew it out again. “Pity there’s such a sad paucity of the bastards these days.”

Simon did not bother to repress his appreciative chuckle. “Mother, you’re as crude as a coachie. I’m only surprised you haven’t filed your two front teeth into points, the better to whistle. Haven’t you noticed that finer manners are more the thing in London Society now? The rough-and-tumble behavior of your heyday has taken a backseat to notions such as polite speech and, horror of horrors, women not drinking gin, or crossing their legs, or blowing a cloud after breakfast.”

The viscountess pulled a face, even as she uncrossed her legs beneath the table. “I could kill your father for dying on me,” she said, sighing. “Going through the marriage mart once was almost more than I could bear. Now, as I’m nearing fifty, and with all these namby-pamby rules at Almack’s and the like, it’s enough to turn me bilious. Why, in
my
day, we went to balls in our riding clothes, and thought nothing of dancing with the same man all the night long. Now—ah!—now you can’t look at a man for more than three seconds without being linked with him romantically. Soon we’ll be putting skirts on table legs, so as not to offend the
ladies
.”

Simon looked at his mother for a long, dispassionate moment, then said, “Nearing fifty, Mother? Really. From which side, pray tell, do you approach it? Will I soon have to acknowledge you as my sister, or will we be informing the world that you carried me while you were still in leading strings yourself?”

“Ha!” Imogene exploded, leaning forward to give her son a quick, smart clap on his back. “Do you see what I mean? Say something like that to a woman of today—a
ninny
of today—and she’d fall into a swoon. Either that, or she’d descend into a sad decline it would take a diamond necklace and a trip to the Continent to cure. I’ll settle for that nice fat slice of ham you’ve been hoarding and never planning to eat.”

Simon pushed his plate toward his mother, then sat back and watched as she cut into it. His dear mother; how he loved her. Every outrageous bone in her too-tall, too-large, too-forward-by-half body. Even when she was being silly. Especially when she was being silly. Like now, having gotten it into her head that, after six years as a carefree widow, being happy as a lark in Sussex with her horses and her dogs, she felt it necessary to haul herself up to London for the Season and go husband-hunting.

She had chosen to do it by coloring her once-brown, now-graying hair a vivid blond—an unfortunate choice—and by starving herself to regain a girlish figure she’d never possessed in the first place. If she’d had her druthers; she would have simply walked up to the first man she found suitable, knocked him to the ground with one swing of her balled fist, flung him up and over her shoulder, and carried him off to the nearest church.

Simon wished she’d give up this silly notion of marriage, make a bonfire of her corsets—fed by the bottles of hair dye her maid Kathleen had been sent out to purchase on the sly—and go back to enjoying herself.

But Imogene was determined, and nothing Simon had thus far said to her had been able to convince her that she was in no fear of becoming the Dowager Viscountess, a title that seemed to be considered as several shades worse than death to the woman. What was he, a loving son, to do? Perhaps if he told her he had lately found himself quite irresistibly and romantically drawn to Armand?

“What are you smiling about?” Imogene asked, interrupting Simon’s private amusement. “And why were you in so late last evening—or this morning, as is closer to being accurate? I thought you told me you and your rakish chums had planned to make an early night of it.”

Simon’s good mood disappeared upon hearing his mother’s words. “I was, um, unavoidably detained,” he said, then quickly latched on to the first thought that popped into his mind. That thought had a lot to do with his last sight of his kidnapper as she rode away from him. “Mother—do you still ride astride when at home?”

She nodded, chewing up the last bite of sweet country ham. “Only way truly to control a spirited mount,” she told him, pointing the fork at his nose. “You try riding in a skirt, Simon, with both your legs flung over the same side of the horse. To protect our femininity, you men say. Stuff and nonsense! To keep us from outshining you on the hunting field, that’s why—and to keep us atop broken-in-the-wind slugs that wouldn’t know a fine gallop from a gallon jug. Thank the good Lord your father didn’t want to see me get my neck broken to keep my long-forgotten and never-lamented chastity intact, which is the other reason men put out for having us riding all but with our arses facing the wrong end of the horse.”

She grinned widely, showing nearly all of her fine white teeth, then winked. “Now would you look at that, Simon? Roberts over there is blushing like a faint-hearted miss. Didn’t think the man had ears, for all he stands there stone-faced three times each day whilst we feed our bellies.”

Simon sneaked a look at the servant who, as his mother had pointed out, had turned beet red from the collar of his shirt to the roots of his shock of flaming red hair. “Another raise in your quarterly wage is in order, Roberts, I assume?”

“Yes, m’lord, if you wish it. Just until the good dear lady takes herself off home is all. If you don’t mind. Makes me powerful nervous she does, sir, and that’s a fact.”

“You coddle the servants, Simon, even when, if you actually read those newspapers you hide behind every day, there are up to ten thousand livery servants without a place at the moment,” the viscountess said, but she smiled even as she scolded him. “Well, we’ll leave discussing the sad state of England’s economy since the end of the war to another time.” She then winked at her son, which caused him to roll his eyes toward the ceiling, knowing what was coming next.

“I’m off!” Imogene announced abruptly, which caused Roberts to leap forward quickly to catch her tumbling chair as she stood up. It was a small competition she indulged herself in against the footman, seeing who of the pair of them could move the fastest. So far, the nervous Roberts was holding up admirably, but it was still early days in their contest, and she’d catch him napping yet.

“What do you have planned for this evening, son?” she asked as she turned to leave the room. “That insipid party at Lady Bessingham’s, I suppose? Gad, but the woman is a dull sort, prattling on and on about her demmed posies. I’ll probably be nodding off in the middle of dinner, falling nose first into the pudding. I wouldn’t mind a relaxing drive in the Promenade beforehand, I think, if you dare to be seen with your outrageous mama.”

Simon, who had risen along with his mother—reacting well, although a good full beat behind Roberts—kissed her cheek. “I would be honored, ma’am,” he told her sincerely. “My equipage and I will be outside, at your service, promptly at five.”

“And until then?” she asked, eyeing him carefully, almost slyly. “You have the look of a man with a purpose in mind for this afternoon, Simon. Could it be you’ll be shopping for new material for your coach seats? Pistol balls play the very devil with velvet, or so I’m told.”

“
Now
who has been overly generous with the servants, Mother?” Simon asked, certain either Hardwick or the groom had been speaking out of turn, and well paid for every word. Imogene shrugged her rather impressive shoulders. “I’m a mother. You’re my only chick. I do what I must do, Simon. And I did try to get you to speak on your own, but you stubbornly refused to pick up the bait. Now, who shot at you, and why in blazes did you let him?”

Simon held out his arm to his mother and ushered her from the morning room, into the hallway, much, undoubtedly, to the relief of Roberts, who immediately collapsed in a heap against the sideboard. “You tell me what you know, and I’ll supply the rest. All right?”