Kasey Michaels (18 page)

Simon pointed at Silsby with his index finger. “That—
that’s
it, Silsby,” he agreed with more enthusiasm than probably necessary, agreeing that his valet had put his own finger on precisely the problem. “Having seen so little of the mansion, Miss Johnston became understandably confused. If you’d be good enough to direct her, I shall be down shortly myself, as I believe I’ve just heard the final gong.”

“Very good, m’lord,” Silsby said, his smile knowing. “I’ll just do that, then be back to give that coat of yours a final brush-up?”

Bowing to blackmail was never comfortable, but Simon took his defeat with good grace. Nodding his agreement to Silsby’s plan, he then avoided Caledonia’s gorgeous, glorious, aggravated green glare until she at last turned on her heels and exited the dressing room.

At which time Simon Roxbury, Viscount Brockton, a man who considered himself toughened by war and forged hard as iron by his years in society, allowed himself to lean heavily against his dressing table, his knees having somehow lost most of their starch.

“And beneath it all, and for my sins,” he breathed quietly, “I already know that she possesses a most magnificent pair of long, straight legs.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, dreading the next few hours of this altogether-depressing, bewildering day. And all the days that stretched between this moment and the one where he would wave Miss Caledonia Johnston out of his life.

“My God,” he groaned, wiping a hand across his mouth as he thought about those coming days, thought about possibly introducing the maddening, maddeningly beautiful but naive, green-as-grass Caledonia to society, to Armand Gauthier. “What have I done?”

—French Saying

Chapter Eight

I
f one did not enter purgatory until after death, Simon had to wonder what name to give to the near eternity he’d spent having dinner in Portland Square the previous evening.

That his mother had wrought a near miracle—in keeping with the religious theme Simon found himself drawn to when thinking of the evening—was not to overstate her success. But having to spend the entire evening listening to his mother’s glee at having performed this marvelous feat would, Simon was sure, have tested the patience of Job.

“Now, watch, Simon,” she’d commanded. “Watch her walk. Floats, don’t she? You would think she’d clump across the room, like most horsewomen, but she don’t. Had her walking with a book on her head all the week long. Two books, near the end of the thing, then the whole set. You might think me to be rough-and-tumble, Simon, and I am, but that don’t mean I don’t know what’s right and proper.”

Simon had smiled, and nodded, and averted his gaze from Caledonia Johnston’s angry glare.

“See? See, Simon?” his mother had continued once they were all at table. “See how she holds a fork? I taught her that. Not that she came to me a total loss, but I rounded off the edges, put the patina on her. I may not see the point to all this playacting and fancy manners, but I’m not blind to them, either, or their importance in this namby-pamby world that honors such nonsense.”

Simon and Roberts had exchanged pained glances.

“Won’t embarrass you either, I promise. There—there, did you see that? Chews with her mouth nicely closed. Not like that Bones fellow of yours. Thank the good Lord I had the sense to send round notes this afternoon to the pair of those boys, warning them away from here this evening, as I wanted us to be private, more like family. Nice enough and all that, the two of them are, but Gauthier is much too easily amused, and that man Bones sucks up food like a pig swallowing down slops. Expect him to snort soup up his snout any moment, I do. Roberts, I want another serving of the—damn, boy, but you’re good at this anticipating stuff, ain’t you? Knew I wanted the beets almost before I did. But raise his wages again, Simon, and he’ll soon own us. You pay them so much now, the servants would probably chew for you if you asked them!”

Simon had been forced to glare at the painting over the sideboard, because Roberts was already diligently studying the ceiling.

“And the hair, Simon. What do you think of the hair? It’s too short for my liking, but short is all the crack now, Madame Yolanda says. What did she say? Oh, yes. She’s to look like an urchin, that’s what. But a clean one, of course. Do you think her neck’s too long? I don’t. That ought to please you, Simon. Oh,
smile
, son, why don’t you—or are you going to frown like that the whole of the night? If you was to get hit hard on the back of your head, if I was, for instance, to tell Roberts here to give you a good stiff swipe, why, your face could
stay
that way, do you know that? Think on it, Simon, that’s all I ask.”

Roberts, Simon remembered with a small chuckle, going against every rule of proper service he had been taught, had then groaned aloud and perforce dared to sit himself down at one of the side chairs placed against the wall, dropping his head into his hands.

But Simon
had
thought on what his mother had said, on all of it, as he had excused himself directly after the last plate was removed. He thought on it as he escaped the dining room, and the house entirely, giving his round of evening social engagements not a single thought before heading off to a long night of solitary drinking, and thinking some more, at his club.

And he had reached a few conclusions. One of them, that of sending his mother to America on the first ship leaving the docks, he’d discarded as mere wishful thinking brought on by too many glasses of champagne.

But early the next morning he had summoned Caledonia to his private study. They had things to discuss before Caledonia murdered him in his bed or he took the coward’s way out and deliberately went stark, staring mad.

There was a sharp knock at the door, and Simon turned as Caledonia entered, looking just as ladylike as she had the previous evening, dressed now in a simple day gown of sprigged muslin, a narrow emerald ribbon somehow tied up—most fetchingly, dammit—in her short, cropped hair.

“You summoned me, my lord?” she asked, her faintly husky voice edged with steel.

She was also achingly beautiful again this morning, perhaps even more beautiful than she had appeared last night, if such a thing were possible. “I didn’t
summon
you, Miss Johnston,” he corrected, hoping to show her that he was willing to be friendly—just not too friendly. “I merely requested Roberts to ask if you could attend me for a moment or two, if it was convenient.”

“Attend you?” She closed the door and stood very still just inside the room. “Or
entertain
you? Perhaps you wished for me to walk for you again, or even chew for you? I chew prodigiously well, you know. Or would you rather I discuss the sad state of the English weather? I have been coached in all sorts of empty-headed prattling, although I had no chance to show off my expertise in inanities last night, as your mother refused to shut her own mouth long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. Oh, yes—I’ve murdered her, in case you’re wondering about her absence this morning, and have ordered the most obedient Roberts to bury her body somewhere in the mews. Emery, who came as near to blushing as his starchiness allowed when Imogene asked him to comment on the fetchingly clever cut of my bodice last night, has gone to locate a second shovel. There was a most remarkable spring in his step as he went off on his hunt, even with him being fairly aged and all.”

Simon looked at her for a long time, seeing the hard anger in the set of her full, pink mouth, the determination in her stiffly straight spine—and the light of wicked humor dancing in her glorious green eyes. God. Why did he suddenly, inexplicably, find himself longing to soundly kiss the incorrigible brat? “Poor old Imogene,” he pronounced sadly, whipping his errant thought back behind a then firmly closed door in his mind, barely able to keep his lips from twitching in his own sudden good humor. “I will miss her.”

And then, in a most remarkable moment that would forever live in Simon’s memory, he and Caledonia Johnston fell into each other’s arms like the best of chums, laughing like naughty children.

“This is nice,” Callie said as she opened her mouth, allowing Simon to feed her another grape. She lay on her back as she spoke, her head on Simon’s knee as the two of them reclined on the blanket he had spread on the grass in a secluded corner of Richmond Park. “I believe I should probably be very good at
decadent
, don’t you?”

“Decadent isn’t precisely what we’ve been striving for, brat, but yes, I do think you’d be rather good at it,” Simon said, peeling her another grape as she gave out with a delighted giggle.

How strange that they had started off so very much on the wrong foot—the incident of the pistol, and the clog, still embarrassed Callie when she thought of it—only to end up crying friends. How they had laughed in his study that morning, Callie doing a more than passable imitation of Imogene’s behavior at table the previous evening, with Simon playing the role of Roberts with all the pained grimaces and eye rollings of a premier tragedy queen.

It was only when they’d heard the viscountess in the hallway, bellowing out Callie’s name, that Simon had sobered, putting a finger to his lips to warn her to silence until his mother turned into the morning room, lured more by the scent of fresh-cooked ham than by any desire to see her protégé.

Simon had then taken Callie’s hand, still warning her to silence, and the two of them had sneaked down the hallway toward the kitchens, and the servant stairs.

Within ten minutes, Callie had raced off upstairs to fetch her bonnet and a thin shawl and Simon had convinced the cook to pack up a basket with stuffs he’d located in a speedy ransacking of the larder and cupboards.

Within fifteen minutes they had been in Simon’s curricle, on their way to a picnic in Richmond Park, giggling like two mischievous children who had escaped the nursery for a bit of a frolic.

“We’re lucky that the weather cooperated,” Simon told her as he fed her yet another grape while she smiled up at him, thinking him to be immeasurably more human than she had heretofore believed. She felt quite at her ease with him, as if he were another older brother, much like her beloved Justyn. He popped an unpeeled grape into his own mouth. “Comfortable, brat?”

Callie still wasn’t quite sure how she had come to be lying with her head in the viscount’s lap, looking up into his handsome, unreadable face but, as he had told her to make herself comfortable as they sat on the grass, it had seemed a good idea at the time. After all, she and Lester had always been this informal, and Simon Roxbury was a very good friend.

That was it. She had always felt comfortable with male companionship. Simon Roxbury was like Lester. Like Justyn. There was really no harm in it, surely there wasn’t.

She wiggled her stocking-clad toes now as they peeked out from beneath the hem of her gown, then wriggled her entire body a time or two, repositioning her head on his thigh. “Imo-gene’s list of rules—she presented me with one, you know, which I immediately tore into pieces when she left the room—included occasionally being allowed an unchaperoned walk to church with a gentleman, or an early-morning excursion to a park,” she told him, grinning. “However, I can recall no mention, of an unchaperoned picnic in that park. In short, I’m thinking that we’re in breach of one of Imogene’s rules, just as I was last night, daring to come to see you in your dressing room.”

“And you’re correct in your thinking on both counts, brat,” Simon said affably, but she sensed that he was at least momentarily unnerved by her remark. And so, to lighten the suddenly tense mood, and as words seemed to fail her, she gifted him with a bright smile.

“What is it?” he asked. “I’m not sure I should be happy with that smile.”

“Nothing,” she answered quickly. “It’s just that I like it when you call me brat. You have my permission to call me your brat any time you wish.”

“How wonderful for both of us, I’m sure,” Simon purred, shaking his head. Then he positioned his hands under her shoulders and raised her up so that she drew her legs under her for balance and sat there, looking at him, wondering why she suddenly felt a chill in the air, as she had only been teasing him. Hadn’t she?

“However,” he went on, his tone still lazy as he reclined almost prone against a tree trunk, so that she felt happy again, “as we’re friends now, as well as cohorts in our planned escapade, I suppose we’ll both be forgiven a few small, harmless lapses in propriety. From now on, in private, I will be Simon and you will be Callie. All right? Now, are you ready for the chicken, or will you have me feeding you grapes all the afternoon long?”

To answer him, Callie reached for the basket, opening it and giving a small squeal of delight as she saw the whole roasted chicken the cook had wrapped inside a checkered cloth. “I’ll have a leg, if you don’t mind, and I’ll eat it with my fingers, too, the way I do at home. Oh,” she said, sighing as she ripped one leg free, “you cannot know how I’ve longed to put off this pretense of being a lady!”

Simon watched as she took a healthy bite of crisp brown skin and dark meat, then he personally dabbed at her greasy chin with one of the linen serviettes he’d pulled from the basket. He then leaned back once more, seemingly content to watch her eat. “You
are
a lady, Callie,” he said, so that she smiled around a mouthful of chicken, pleased that he had dropped his insistence on calling her Caledonia. “Tell me, and this is just out of my own curiosity—is your father a baronet or a knight? Having that Sir stuck in front of his name has eased our problems mightily, getting you into society. But I remain curious.”