Kasey Michaels (16 page)

“Can you leap that far, Armand?” Bartholomew inquired as he waved a servant over to refill his glass. “Not that Simon here is all that huge or anything like that. Certainly not as round as Alvanley, for one, or as prodigiously stout as our own Prinny. But only consider the thing. Whether approaching from Simon’s side or his toes, it would still be a considerable leap from a standing start, if you take into consideration the fact that—”

“Shut up, Bones,” Armand and Simon said at the same time, and Bartholomew subsided into his chair in defeat, his chin colliding with his neckcloth although he was still smiling quite broadly at his own wit.

Simon felt Armand’s assessing gaze on him. “She’s gotten to you, hasn’t she?” he asked quietly. “The pistol-wielding little minx has gotten to you.”

“Gotten to me?
Gotten
to me?” Simon shook his head. “Don’t be an idiot, Armand. She’s little more than a child, and a fractious child at that. I’m a good dozen years her senior, for another thing. And, for another, I don’t much like the chit. Add to that the fact that my mother likes her entirely too much, and I’d just as soon I’d never started this whole mad scheme. I should have just sent her packing for her home, let her witless father handle her.”

“She just would have come sneaking back, blown a hole in Filton, and ended up in some terrible cell, fending off rats,” Bartholomew said. Pronounced, actually. “You did the right thing, Simon. You really did. The safe thing. The prudent thing. Even though it is horribly devious of you, of course. Have you considered what will happen when she figures out what you’ve done, how you’ve duped her?”

“I don’t prefer to think she ever will find out, Bones, frankly.” Simon closed his eyes, sighed. “She’ll be coming down to dinner this evening. It was to have been four nights ago, but this time I told Imogene I’d brook no more delays.”

He opened his eyes once more, to find Bartholomew glaring at a suddenly smiling Armand. Simon glared at him, too, then realized what was going on between the two men. They
had
been wagering again. Well, he knew who had won this particular bet. Not that it mattered to him, not in the slightest. “My mother wanted to wait until something could be done with the brat’s badly chopped hair, or some such thing,” he went on just as if anyone was still listening, “then insisted on other female beautifications I did and do not even wish to contemplate.”

He picked up his newly refilled glass—it was amazing, the fine service one could secure simply by remembering to monetarily reward excellence—pausing with the rim just an inch from his lips until he was sure both men were attending him again. “I firmly cautioned our dearest Imogene against the dye pots, of course.”

“Of course,” Armand agreed vaguely as all three nodded their heads in silence, considering the viscountess’s own outlandish tresses. “Are we invited to dine tonight? I have to admit that I’m rather curious as to what your dear mother wished to accomplish that it took her a full ten days to work her miracle.”

“I’ll send you the bills for the phenomenon as they are rendered. That should put your questions to rest,” Simon commented dryly, then changed the subject. “Has there been any word on Filton’s ailing aunt? Bones? You’ve spoken to his friends, as you said you would? I’m not wishing the woman underground, but I would like Filton back in town soon, one way or the other.”

“She’s lingering with some determination as last I heard the thing two days ago,” Bartholomew reported, sighing. “But there
is
good news. Seems Filton’s aunt wasn’t—er, isn’t—quite as well off as everyone, including Filton, had believed. With any luck, he’ll be cut off without a penny.” He picked up his glass, offering it as a silent toast to wise old ladies. “I do love a good gossip, don’t you, Simon? Armand?”

“We’ll all put on our caps at least once a fortnight then, and play biddies in the Parlor, exchanging whispers about the lurid goings-on in Society,” Simon suggested, tongue-in-cheek. “Anything to make you happy, Bones.”

Bartholomew flushed to the roots of his hair. “As if I’d wear a cap!” he shot back, sniffing.

“This is good news about Filton, though, isn’t it, Simon?” Armand inquired even as he grinned at the flummoxed Bartholomew. Filton was already spending that money, I’ll wager, living off his expectations.”

“Knowing the man, I’d say you’re dead-on, Armand. Making him twice as hungry for a new infusion of funds,” Simon said consideringly. “The man is rich enough, but he spends with a free hand, while often forgetting to pay his creditors. I carefully felt out my vintner about Filton just last month, after I learned that the earl also uses him. Suffice it to say the man doesn’t hold Noel Kinsey in very high esteem, not that he dares to refuse to sell to him, for then he’d lose his custom entirely. And that’s the dilemma of it. Tradesmen are caught between delivering goods for which they may never see payment or refusing to sell to those same people and forgoing any hope of ever seeing so much as a bent penny of what is already owed them.”

Bartholomew sat forward, nodding. “As long as Filton and those like him have the appearance of being deep in the pocket, the tradesmen bide their time. Isn’t that right, Armand?”

“Correct, Bones,” Armand agreed. “But let there be a sniff, a whiff, a hint that their pockets are to let, and the tradesmen come down on these same gentlemen like flies drawn to fresh manure. Poor Sheridan had been living with duns in his drawing room for so long he had begun serving them dinner. That, and his embarrassment—for all his grace in concealing it—are probably what’s going to kill him in the end.”

“Well, we’ve become rather maudlin,” Simon said after silence fell over the table for some minutes. “Not only that, but the mud has dried on my pantaloons, leaving me less than comfortable. I believe I’ll head back to Portland Place, to prepare for the great unveiling this evening. Unless there is other news—”

“Just that I’ve decided against buying that spanking-fine bay mare I saw at Tatt’s,” Bartholomew grumbled unhappily. He glared at Armand until, as his friends chortled with laughter, he at last allowed himself to smile at his own small joke.

Callie was dressed and ready to go down to dinner as soon as the gong rang, pacing the length of her bedchamber—this lovely room she had grown to detest—and worrying over her appearance.

Did she look fine as ninepence, as Imogene had declared before rushing off with Kathleen, to complete her own toilette? Or did she look “silly,” as Lester had flatly declared around a mouthful of cucumber sandwich, a late-afternoon snack meant to keep him from starvation before dinner?

Lester had never seen her as more than a beloved sister, which might account for his reaction at viewing her in anything other than her simple, modest, and definitely youthful gowns. She had noticed that Lester’s initial reaction upon seeing her clad in London fashions for the first time had been to swallow hard and croak, “You’ll be putting a shawl or something over you, won’t you, Callie? A person could take a chill, with her chest all bare like that.”

Remembering his words, Callie walked over to the mirror and examined her reflection, raising her hands to the scoop-neck bodice of her simple white gown and giving it an upward tug, wriggling her upper body in an effort to raise the neckline an inch or two.

Or three
, she thought, grimacing as she laid the flat of one hand against her throat, looking with some fascination at the swell of her bosom, the rather well-defined and embarrassingly visible shadowy cleft between her breasts. She did feel naked, even though her shoulders, back, and arms were covered, straight to her wrists, and her gown—unlike some of her older ones left at home in Dorset—reached modestly to just below her anklebones.

“All this fine material,” she mused aloud, “and none of it where it most probably belongs.”

But she did like the gown. Liked it very much. It was so soft, for one thing, and clung to her lovingly when she walked. She admired the broad white-on-white band of fairly intricate embroidery around the flounced hem—indeed, she had spent the past ten minutes of her pacing delighting in the movement of those flounces, seeing the glimpse of yellow kid slippers that peeked out with each step.

She also delighted in the narrow yellow ribbon that tied so snugly just beneath her breasts and the almost-straight fall of fabric beneath that ribbon, the material skimming over her flat stomach and flare of hip, making her feel almost as free as she did in her breeches.

She most especially felt some small affection for the sleeves that, although snugly fitted, were capped at the shoulder by small, loose ruffles into which were tucked tiny bunches of artificial flowers—exquisite yellow-silk rosebuds in the form of tiny bouquets. And, just to add the finishing touch, the
modiste
had fashioned a narrow, fairly tight yellow ribbon that was now tied around Callie’s throat, its ends looped to one side in a simple bow in which nestled yet another small silk rosebud.

In short, she believed her gown to be quite wonderful, even if those yards and yards of material began an inch or two lower on her body than allowed for her complete comfort.

She leaned forward and peered into the mirror again, running a fingertip across her cheeks, over the bridge of her nose. The freckles hadn’t all disappeared, much to Imogene’s frustration, but Callie believed she looked passably good with the few spots that remained, sprinkled as they were in a dusting that added character—yes, that was it, character—to her rather unexceptional features.

Her cheekbones were too high, for one thing, or at least that was what Miss Haverly had declared, tsk-tsking in that lowering way of hers, saying that anything less than rosy red, apple-round English cheeks were “unseemly” in a proper young miss. Her chin, Callie knew, was also too sharp, having—again, according to Miss Haverly—“none of the softness, the roundness, of the proper English female chin, and it’s too forward-looking by half.”

And it was true, Callie supposed, for her jaw was not only slightly square, it was marred by a small dent at the very center of it. Still, she concluded as she raised her chin, mimicking Miss Haverly’s haughty pose, it was also true that she had been blessed with only the one chin, while her former governess owned
two
of them!

The remainder of her face Callie believed to be truly unremarkable. Green eyes certainly were not all that rare or exotic. She much preferred Simon Roxbury’s eyes. Although brown eyes were common, blue even more so, the particular sherry color of Brockton’s appealed to her very much. Or perhaps it was just the way they seemed to sparkle and dance when he was amused...

Callie tilted her head to the left, looking at her right ear, which, thanks to Madame Yolanda, was now almost completely visible beneath her short cap of hair. Ears were funny things. Lester’s, certainly, were adorably laughable—standing out from his head so that they fairly waved in strong breezes, and turning an intense red both in the cold of winter and the heat of embarrassment.

Justyn, she remembered, had flat ears, as did she, hugging tightly to their heads. Although Justyn’s were rather large, so that he was always careful to keep them covered straight down to the lobe. He said that he wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a wild elephant and shot down by some eager hunter before he could explain that he owed this particular disfigurement to his sire’s side of the family.

Callie sighed, her breath hitching in a small, dry sob. How she missed Justyn! She and her father had not received more than two widely spaced letters from him. One had been posted from Spain and the other from Italy. There hadn’t been much in the way of new information in either of them. He’d taken ship for India, swearing not to return until he could do so in triumph, until he was a nabob and could repay Sir Camber for all the trouble he had brought him. He was in good health. They shouldn’t worry about him. And that was all.

How would Justyn feel, she wondered, if he could see her now? He’d always called her his “brat,” as Simon Roxbury also did. But Justyn had done so affectionately, rubbing at the top of her head as he passed by her in the dining room on the way to his own chair. He’d also called her his brat when she routinely bested him at chess during long winter evenings when the weather kept them both inside, bored with their own company, so that they stayed up into the wee hours. How she missed him, and those long nights spent talking and laughing and planning wonderful adventures they would have “someday.”

Well, Justyn was certainly off on a grand adventure now, having barely survived his first adventure, that of coming to London to double the small inheritance he’d had from their mother. All those long evenings playing at cards had been for naught. He had not been in town for more than a fortnight when he’d met Noel Kinsey, who had picked him clean of every cent, every dream, and then urged him into scribbling his vowels, promising him that his luck was sure to turn sooner or later.

Callie hadn’t expected Justyn to make much of a fortune in London, seeing as how he didn’t appear to have a head for strategy—obviously, as she bested him time and again at chess. She had even begun to win against him at whist with some regularity, even though he had taught her the game.