Kasey Michaels (22 page)

With her back to Imogene—who talked a lot about being outrageous but strangely didn’t advocate any such behavior for Callie—she blew him one instead.

Bartholomew’s eyes very nearly popped out of his skull, and he quickly turned to Imogene. “Ma’am, you were asking? Did Simon—
did
he—did
I
? Um, that is, um—
what
was the question again, please?”

“Thought you had more to say for yourself, Bartholomew Boothe,” Imogene said, tsk-tsking a time or two before she gave in to a triumphant smile. “Struck you dumb, hasn’t she? Did it all m’self, you know, with no help from Simon. A miracle, don’t you think?”

Bartholomew let out his breath in a rush, visibly relaxing now that he had been given permission to say what was on his mind. “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he declared feelingly. “A true miracle. Hard to believe Simon thinks there’s still a prodigious amount of work to be done until she’s up to snuff and ready to set loose on the town.”

Callie turned her head away, as if reacting to a physical blow. “He—he said that, Mr. Boothe?”

“You were doing well enough with your cow-eyed looks and stupid stammering, Bones,” the viscountess grumbled, rising from the padded bench to walk toward Bartholomew in what greatly resembled a militant stomp. “Should have kept to it rather than trying to string a single silly sentence together using someone else’s words.”

She sailed past Bartholomew—who nearly fainted in gratitude at having been dismissed with only a scolding and not a cuff on the ear—and poked her head out into the hallway to bellow: “
Simon
! I’ll have a word with you!
Now
! Oh—hullo, there, Armand. Come to ogle, like that idiot Bones? Well, don’t just stand there—come in, come in! We give performances each day at two and four, tuppence a ticket. So sorry that the trained monkey doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, but we do the best we can.
Si-mon
!”

Callie stuffed a knuckle into her mouth to keep from giggling at the viscountess’s tirade, then gazed at Armand Gauthier rather quizzically as he pressed an impudent kiss against Imogene’s powdery cheek. He clearly wasn’t in the least bit afraid of the woman—unlike Mr. Boothe, who looked as near to tears as the belowstairs maid, Letty, had been just this morning when the viscountess had dared to look at her crooked for having arrived with a breakfast tray lacking a teapot.

“Excuse me, miss,” Mr. Gauthier said now, strolling into the music room as if he owned it and crossing to take up Callie’s hand, pressing a kiss against her suddenly heated skin, then stroking the back of her fingers with his thumb. “I was told Miss Caledonia Johnston was somewhere about, but I cannot see hide nor hair of the young woman. Perhaps I am simply too dazzled by your beauty? Where is the little ragamuffin, do you know?” he asked, making a great business out of peering about the room, as if the missing Miss Johnston was stuck behind a chair in one of the corners. “Ah, well, we won’t miss her, will we? Come, my most enchanting creature, let us be away from here—a watery English sun and my carriage both await.”

Callie, who knew the devastatingly attractive man was teasing her but had no idea how to respond to his careless bantering, looked to Bartholomew Boothe in mute appeal.

She might just as well have applied to the bust of Mark Antony on the mantel, for all the good that did her. Bartholomew, fully occupied in staying out of Imogene’s way as that good lady reentered the room, only ducked her imploring glance and hurried over to the bench the viscountess had so recently vacated. He sat himself down and proceeded to do his best to pretend he was invisible.

Callie’s head was spinning with the knowledge that Armand’s Gauthier’s hand-kissing, the intimate squeeze he had given her fingers, fell into some dangerous gray area between impersonally polite and downright provocative. She took a deep breath, looked the man square in the eye, and mumbled, “It is a distinct pleasure to see you again, Mr. Gauthier, I’m sure.” Then she rolled her eyes heavenward, believing that to be the most inane, stupid response she could possibly have made—other than to make some comment on
his
comment on the weather.

So thinking, and not much caring for being put so much on the spot by the man, she then added, smiling, “But I really must remain here, I’m afraid, as dinner is to be served within the hour. However, if we were to locate a small round hat and a tambourine, Mr. Gauthier, would you be willing to play the part of the performing monkey the viscountess mentioned? You seem to have the requisite love of mischief, if not the tail. Oh, and you might return my hand to me anytime you feel it convenient to do so, as I’ve lately realized that I have developed a most overpowering attachment to it.”

“Now, that’s more like it!” Mr. Gauthier said laughing, releasing her hand, then turning to Mr. Boothe. “Bones, remember this extraordinary day. I think I’m in love!”

“And that’s a bleeding pity, that’s what that is, Armand Gauthier,” Imogene declared flatly from the doorway, “because the gel’s already spoken for.
Si-mon!—NOW!
”

“Really? Your hopes still lie in that direction, do they, Imogene? How exceedingly interesting,” Mr. Gauthier drawled, turning curiously to Simon, who had just entered the room, looking handsome, yes, but very definitely oppressed.

Callie decided she liked him oppressed, considering the fact that he had so thoroughly confused and upset her this morning with his light bantering, followed by his seemingly innocent offer of friendship, followed by his horribly embarrassing lesson in hand-kissing—followed by her slap to his cheek and an uncomfortable silence that had lasted through the repacking of the picnic basket, the long ride back to Portland Place, and his hasty desertion of her in the foyer.

“You bellowed, Mother?” Simon quipped, tight-lipped. “What’s wrong now?” He then turned his steely gaze on the decidedly
de trop
and almost comically mortified Odo Pinabel. “You,” he said almost amicably, “go away.”

The dancing master gathered up his papers and his cloak in the space of a heartbeat, departing the room with all the ungraceful haste of a man clothed in lamb chops desperate to escape a den of hungry lions.

“Now there goes a flap-mouthed creature who will cost you an arm and half a leg for a mere quarter hour’s service,” Imogene remarked rather happily, watching the dancing master’s flight. “And you think the gel’s gowns cost you a fortune? Hah! The sum’s a trifle compared to what you’ll end up dealing out to keep the servants working in this madhouse without feeling the need to spill all our family secrets in those gossipy pubs they patronize. Either that, Simon, or our private business will be served up for dinner all over Mayfair.”

“And you’d love it,” Simon bit out, clearly unhappy. “Now, what the devil’s going on in here? Can’t you even control something as elementary as a simple dancing lesson, Mother, without my assistance?”

“Why, you miserable puppy! As if this was
my
fault!” Imogene exploded, drawing herself up to her full, and definitely impressive, height. “You’re not too old for a good caning, Simon, I warn you.”

Callie opened her mouth to defend the viscountess, then noticed that Armand Gauthier, rather than appearing embarrassed by this family contretemps, was smiling as he delicately took snuff, his gaze shifting from mother to son as if he were watching a play. “You’re
enjoying
this, aren’t you?” she demanded of the man who still stood beside her. “Don’t you find that to be the least bit strange?”

“Imogene loves nothing better than a good argument, so that Simon, being a dutiful son, indulges her from time to time,” he explained. “Keeps her blood flowing, or so she says. A real tartar, that’s our Imogene. I’d marry her in a minute if she’d have me—and if she didn’t outweigh me.”

Callie’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “So much for your great love of me, Mr. Gauthier,” she shot at him. She had to speak loudly to be heard over the viscountess, who was just then complaining about Lester’s recent discovery of delicious chocolate tarts in a small stall near Piccadilly, and biting stays, and the ignominy of becoming a—curse it all!—
dowager
.

Bartholomew ran a finger down the length of the keys, the unexpected sound calling everyone to attention. “Allow me, please, Simon,” he said importantly. He uncoiled his painfully thin form from the bench with the air of one who delights most in issuing prophecies of doom—and doing it with the air of someone whose sentences invariably end with “I told you so!”

“I think not, Bones,” Simon growled, pinning a stunned Callie to the floor with a single dark look. His expression told her that Armand Gauthier had been fair and far-out this time. The viscount wasn’t playing any sort of game with his mother, but was truly incensed. And not at his mother, either, but at
her
.

His next words proved her right. “Callie? There seems to be a problem, as we appear to be minus one dancing master. Now why am I so sure this is your doing? And I thought you understood there was a time limit to these lessons in deportment. Explain yourself, if you please. Explain yourself now.”

Incensed?
He
was incensed? And he wanted
her
to explain? How dare he! He knew what he’d done just this morning—trying to both tease and frighten her, keeping her off guard and off-balance and at his mercy (when she had been planning to do the same to him, which had
nothing
, less than nothing to do with the matter at hand!).

Oh, yes, he
knew
. Just as he knew that he was the one who had been so maddeningly pernicious as to have Imogene hire a dancing master rather than take the time to demonstrate a few simple steps to her himself. And then he sent the man away—all of which just went to show how much be wanted his plan to work, and how very little of himself he expected to expend in the process.

Oh, no. It wasn’t Simon Roxbury who was being poked and prodded and measured and pinned. It wasn’t Simon Roxbury who had been locked up for nearly a fortnight, being forced to practice how to be insipid and boring, and being treated as if he had been reared by wild wolves and was only just now learning how to walk upright. And then—and then!—for him to act as if it were she, not he, who was delaying their plans to set her loose in society to entrance Noel Kinsey?

How
dare
he!

Well, if he wanted to know what was going on, she imagined she could be coaxed, not
ordered
, to oblige him—and in spades!

So thinking, and with the smile on her face hiding—she hoped—the extreme dislike in which she took him at this moment, Callie dipped into a creditable curtsy.

Then, with a graceful sweep of her hand meant to include the company, the room, the mansion, the entirety of London itself, she began, “It’s really all quite simple, my lord, if you think you can follow along. Listen carefully. I came here to shoot Noel Kinsey. You stuck your nose in where it didn’t belong and wasn’t wanted, thwarted my very good plan, then enlisted, nay,
blackmailed
me into going along with your own convoluted scheme to bring Filton down. You have me lying to my father—not that this is an unheard-of occurrence, but you shouldn’t have encouraged me. You’ve got poor Lester wandering about London alone, which can’t be good for him, or for London for that matter. And Noel Kinsey isn’t even in the city! And I let you talk me into all of it, which is my fault. The rest of the fault, however, is yours, Viscount Brockton, and I’ll never forgive you for so underestimating me and so overestimating yourself!”

“Yes, definitely. I adore this child,” the wealthy, handsome, debonair, highly desirable object of feminine affections and aspirations, Armand Gauthier, announced to nobody in particular.

“Oh, stubble it,” Callie warned him halfheartedly, then continued, barely taking time for a breath. Her eyes never left Simon’s face as her words came faster, her voice rising as she built to a crescendo of anger and frustration. “You then turned me over to your sweet if outrageous mother, who believes she is grooming me as her daughter-in-law. You two really should have a small talk about that, I think, for I wouldn’t have you if you were served up to me on a silver platter with an apple stuffed in your mouth.”

“You’d think she was my own dear child, wouldn’t you, Simon?” the viscountess chirped, looking at Callie, her expression near to beatific.

Callie rolled her eyes at the interruption. “Imogene,
please
!” She made another sweeping gesture with her outflung arm, this time aiming toward the pianoforte. “Bones here—you don’t mind if I call you Bones, do you? No, I didn’t think so. Well, Bones here has cast himself in the role of helpful if pessimistic observer.” She turned to glare at the second man. “And Mr. Gauthier—and I
will
continue to call you Mr. Gauthier—has been ogling me this past ten minutes, even going so far as to say he now loves me, although he did not
chew
on my hand, as you did this morning, my lord.”

“
Chew
?” Armand mouthed the word silently, smiling at Simon all the while, so that Callie longed to box his ears.

“And now to you, Simon Roxbury!” she continued, the bit firmly between her teeth as she glared at the viscount. “Among your other failings that are far too numerous to mention, and with this supposed ball your mother is hosting for me looming heavily on the horizon, you have—
all
of you—conspired to frighten away my lisping, spitting, wet-palmed dancing master just as he was teaching me to count to one-two-
twree
. Not that any of this matters a whit, you understand, because this plan of yours simply isn’t going to work. I’m
leaving
!”

And with that—with Bones’s mouth at half cock, with the maddening Armand Gauthier applauding softly, with the viscountess looking unexpectedly docile, even crushed, and with Simon glaring at her as if he wanted either to spank her or kiss her (she’d examine that later, once she was safely in a coach heading to Sturminster Newton), and with Lester somehow appearing in the doorway, a chocolate tart stuffed halfway into his mouth—Callie lifted her skirts a good three inches above her ankles and quite inelegantly stomped past her friend and out of the music room.