Kasey Michaels (8 page)

“Tomorrow morning. There’s no great rush,” Filton supplied absently, then added, “I, alas, already have plans for this evening, if that’s what you were trying to ask. A young gentleman just up from Surrey who longs to gift me with his considerable quarterly allowance. But don’t champ at the bit so, Brockton. I’ll relieve you of your fortune in good time, I promise. Gentlemen,” he ended, perfunctorily bowing to Bartholomew and Armand in turn, then sauntering off to sit himself down at a table well away from the coveted bow window.

Sirnon’s lips were tight, his determination fixed, his deepest reasons still his own. “Oh, yes, my friends. Filton’s mine. Mine to set up, mine to bring down. I won’t brook any interference.”

“You won’t get any from me, Simon. Should have tripped him, knocked him to the floor,” Bartholomew said as Simon took up his seat once more. “I don’t like the man. Don’t like him at all, and that’s the truth. And that way he has of speaking, like each word was a pearl? ‘
Quart
-ter-ley
allow
-ance.’ Hoo! Much too impressed with himself, I say, by half and half again!”

“So much for Bones’s opinion of Filton. And our good friend the earl, by the by, thinks
you’re
dumb as houses, Simon,” Armand put in, not at all helpfully. “He cheated almost blatantly toward the end last night, and you never called him on it. I believe he sees himself as owning your entire fortune before the end of the month—if his dear great-aunt is so considerate as to cock up her toes with dispatch. If just this once, Bones is right. You should have knocked him down.”

“For what?” Simon said, having drained yet another glassful of champagne in an effort to get the bad taste out of his mouth, put there by the nonsense he had been forced to utter to keep the supercilious Filton interested. “You can’t just knock a man down, you know. There has to be a reason, and there will be if he dares to cheat too openly here at White’s. Besides, I’m not eager for a duel when there’s an easier way, and Filton’s money will go a long distance with the charities.”

“True enough, I suppose,” Armand agreed, although he was more the sort for a direct attack. “That’s our Simon, always with an eye out to helping the less fortunate.”

Silence fell over the table for some moments, until Bartholomew tapped his forefinger on the center of the table, calling his companions to attention. “You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking, Simon, that your Miss C already has a good reason to shoot Filton,” he said, smiling broadly and obviously deciding he had just said something brilliant. “She wouldn’t be chasing after him with a pistol otherwise, right? If we find her, and get her to tell us her story, then one of us can call him out, to protect this poor female victim or some such rot. Simon?”

“You think he impugned her honor, Bones? Bedded her, then left her?” Simon asked, not liking the direction his thoughts were leading him. “No. She hardly seemed the sort to be taken in, romantically or otherwise, by someone of Filton’s ilk.”

“Hoo, now, Bones,” Armand said, laughing. “Will you listen to that? Simon here has decided that his personal abductor is a woman of some virtue. Why, she probably feeds the poor, nurses the sick, and routinely robs the wealthy to give to the oppressed. Give the man a moment, Bones, and he’ll have the little minx nominated for sainthood—and all because she wants to shoot Filton. Simon—are you quite sure that clog didn’t hit its target? Bones, would you care to join me in examining our friend’s head for any unusual bumps?”

“Oh, cut line, Armand,” Simon said, smiling in spite of himself. “I have no idea as to what this girl is or isn’t. I just know she wants Noel Kinsey dead, which seems to be an admirable aspiration, all in all. Look—Filton’s leaving. Now, as I’m convinced our mysterious Miss C is even now somewhere outside, lurking about waiting for our unwary earl to reappear on the street, I suggest we adjoum this meeting and begin our saunter along St. James’s in the hopes of finding her before she does something stupid.”

“Not nice to call the girl stupid, Simon,” Bartholomew pointed out, rising and following after his friends. “She might shoot you yet.”

“How true, how true. And how good of you to point that out,” Simon agreed with a pained smile. Then he gave Bartholomew a friendly clap on his back that nearly sent him sprawling on the floor.

“And to think m’father had so wanted a daughter,” Lester grumbled, then winced as his undergarments pinched at him.

“Stop that, Lester!” Callie hissed under her breath as she smiled, nodded, and tipped her hat to a superior-looking matron and her maid who were passing by them on the flagway. Both women were eyeing Lester in some alarm as he struggled to scratch behind himself. “Ladies don’t touch themselves there in public. Or in private either, as a matter of fact.”

Lester stopped dead on the flagway and gaped at Callie. “They don’t? How in blazes do they manage that, I wonder? Don’t females ever get an itch on their backsides?”

Callie rolled her eyes, then spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “If they do, they don’t acknowledge it,” she explained tersely.

“Really? What about their noses? Do they get itches on their noses?”

“They might, but they don’t scratch at their noses in public either. Or pick at them, if you were about to ask that next.”

“Amazing! Such fortitude!” Clearly Lester was entranced with the ability of females to suppress most human functions and reactions, which he proved with his next eager questions.

“How about the hiccups, Callie? Do ladies get the hiccups? Oh—here’s another one. Answer me this. Do they belch? No, I guess not. What do they do with all that air then? Do they save it up the whole night long, then go home and explode?”

“You’re an idiot, Lester,” Callie informed him, trying not to laugh aloud. “And stop pulling at your ribbons before your bonnet comes off. Honestly, Lester, were you raised in a stables?”

“I wasn’t raised in any pink-and-white nursery, let me tell you that!” he spat with some heat. “And why I let you talk me into dressing myself up in these clothes let alone parading myself around the city streets, is something I will never understand. Why did I have to be a dowdy, old maid at her last prayers? And a poor relation at that. I don’t believe I look quite the thing in pink, for one, and the cuffs on this gown must have been turned twice. Why couldn’t I at least have been a young lady?”

“Because we couldn’t afford anything better at the bow-wow shop where we shopped for cast-off clothing, that’s why,” Callie patiently explained for what felt like the tenth time. “If we could have dressed me up, that would have been all well and good, but we couldn’t find anything to fit. But it’s better this way, actually. Brockton is probably looking for a small female. Granted, he also could be looking for two men—one small and thin, one rather better fed. Or not looking for us, at all. But he’d never be looking for a young man and his, um, pleasingly
plump
aunt. Besides,” she said, trying not to giggle, “I think you underestimate your charms.”

“I’ll get you back for this someday, Callie Johnston, I swear I will,” Lester growled, nearly coming to grief over a slight rise in the flagway. Women’s shoes were the very devil, he’d decided at least three long London blocks and a half hour earlier. Their shoes, their laces and ribbons, their straw bonnets that were worse than blinders on a horse.

Callie patted Lester’s arm. “Now, now, Aunt Leslie, you’ll have a fit of the vapors if you keep running on like this. And wasn’t it you who said you wished to walk every step of Mayfair, and see all the wonderful sights? Such as the one just now tripping down the front steps of that building up ahead, for instance.”

“It’s Filton? Where?” Lester asked in his normal voice, then quickly pitched it a full octave higher. “I mean—
where, my dear
?” he asked before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Oh—all right. I see him now. Remember, don’t hurt me.”

“Of course not. At least, no more than I have to,” Callie assured him, winking.

And then they were off, heading down the flagway arm in arm, pretending to be two visitors from the hinterlands taking in the sights—all the while keeping one eye on Noel Kinsey. He was already on his way across the wide flagway, heading for, in Callie’s mind, a simply smacking, bang-up to the echo, high-perch phaeton. She wondered just whose money had paid for such a fine conveyance, and for the unfortunately flashy team in the traces. Certainly not His Lordship’s own money, that was for sure. Her heart once more hardened against the man.

Callie’s plan was simple. So simple, yet so extraordinarily brilliant and delicious that she was only disappointed she hadn’t thought of it sooner. She went on the move, tugging at Lester’s arm to urge him into jogging along more quickly—he really didn’t have the faintest notion of how to navigate in lady’s shoes, poor dear.

She made quick work of closing the distance between herself and Noel Kinsey, who was fully occupied in dressing down his groom for some infraction or another. His Lordship’s back was turned, his attention diverted from anyone passing along the flagway.

In short, Kinsey could not have been more cooperative, which didn’t make Callie love him, but only gave her a wonderfully stationary target. She launched Lester forward... so that her friend cannoned into the earl with all his weight just as if he had stumbled over a loose stone, which he had... and lost his balance which, thanks to the force of Callie’s shove, he did... succeeding in roughly knocking Noel Kinsey to the ground... and holding him there by the simple expedient of pretending to faint dead away on top of the badly crumpled peer—which was above everything beautiful!

“Aunt Leslie, are you all right?” Callie called out, doing her best to appear alarmed even as she quickly tugged down the hem of Lester’s gown, which had risen to show just a smidgen too much of plump, hairy calf. Lester was being simply splendid—lying on his back, his arms and legs splayed out in an ungainly manner that effectively pinned Kinsey in place, his eyes shut as he feigned a very passable swoon.

“Aunt Leslie, Aunt Leslie!” Callie pleaded, bending down to gently slap at Lester’s cheeks. “Speak to me, Aunt Leslie! Have you hit your head? Sir? Sir, I beg you—release my poor aunt!”

Noel Kinsey, who was sprawled facedown on the flagway, a dead weight on his back, turned his head to one side and did his best to look up at Callie. “Re-re-
lease
her? Why, you insolent pup—the ungainly lump is
crushing
me!”

“Oh, now that’s not nice,” Callie scolded as a small crowd gathered around them, two gentlemen already taking hold of Lester by either arm and gently raising him up. Lester was soon settled in a sitting position as he stirred, moaned, and bounced his rump a time or two on Noel Kinsey’s already-abused back before being completely hauled to his feet. “See? My aunt is looking much better, no thanks to you. Now, sir, may I assist you to rise? Perhaps help you to your carriage?”

“It’s a phaeton, you twit, not a carriage, and I wouldn’t ask your bumbling, cowhanded help if I were on fire,” the earl grumbled meanly.

Callie ignored him, positioning a hand on his elbow and lifting him up—even as she placed her other hand on the pistol in her pocket. With Lester keeping any onlookers occupied with his loud, hysterical shrieks and threats to swoon yet again, it would be a simple matter to press the barrel of the pistol against Filton’s side and, in a low whisper, convince him of the reasonableness of offering both Callie and her injured “aunt” a ride back to their lodgings.

Once she had him in his stylish phaeton, and on the roadway, she would only have to get him to drive out of the city. Once free of onlookers, she could shoot him in the knee—his right knee, she had decided—and leave him near the Green Man in the care of his groom, about a half mile from where she and Lester had hidden their rented hacks.

Callie’s fingers had already slipped around the pistol as she stood just to the left and slightly behind Kinsey. She was about to push the barrel—still hidden inside the large pocket of her coat—into his ribs.

And that’s when it happened. Her right arm was suddenly halted in its movement, clamped in a vise-hard grip.

“I don’t think so, brat, although I do admire your pluck, and your resourcefulness,” a familiar, and hated, voice drawled beside her ear. “Release him. Release him now, and let him be on his way. Understood?”

Callie went stiff as a board as Noel Kinsey erupted in a flood of complaints. “I’ve never been so insulted!” the earl was saying as he tugged his arm free of Callie’s nerveless fingers. He bent to retrieve his ruined hat, using it to brush his person free of some of the dust it had collected while kissing the flagway. “There should be a law against bumpkins—and fat women! Fat, clumsy, stupid women—and their slack-jawed, bovine, Johnny Raw relatives!”

Kinsey’s groom had been fully occupied in attempting to wipe what appeared to be an appreciative grin off his face ever since his employer had pitched forward to the ground. Now he belatedly raced forward to lend his assistance, helping the insulted earl climb onto the high seat of his phaeton.

“Oh, I say, Filton,” an almost unhealthily thin man dressed in the latest fashions called out as he persevered in his attempts to keep Lester upright, which seemed to almost take more strength than the man possessed. “Aren’t you even going to ask how the lady is faring? That’s rather rude, don’t you think? Perhaps you should be offering to take the poor thing up and off to a doctor?”