The Bedeviled Viscount Brockton, page 15
Wrinkling her nose and shaking her head, Callie admitted, “Not a step. Miss Haverly was going to hire a dancing master for me just before Justyn came home in disgrace and Papa could no longer afford to keep her on. Papa had plans to bring me Out in the Little Season last fall, you see—it being shorter, and thus less ruinous to his deflated pocketbook. But that’s neither here nor there, and I wasn’t that dreadfully disappointed, truly. But this matters, doesn’t it? That I can’t dance?”
Simon tossed the grass away with a flick of his wrist. “Oh, yes, Callie, it matters. Although, not it would seem, to my mother. Imogene, helpful dear that she is, and without consulting me first, announced early this morning that she has already sent out invitations for a small ball in your honor. I believe she wants to show you off to her friends or some such thing. That was one of the reasons I wished to speak with you today, Callie. I wanted to make sure you were up to being displayed like a prized pet pony. Because, you know, we can easily cancel the thing. Especially as you don’t know how to dance, if you’re the least bit concerned about your lack of social—”
Callie leaned forward eagerly, waving her hands to ward off his words, her niggling suspicions melting in her eagerness to hear more about her debut. “A small ball? I’ll get to have a taste of Society perhaps even before Filton returns? Have myself some fun? You know, until this moment I didn’t really believe any of this was actually going to happen. Oh, we talked about it, and I’ve let Imogene fuss over me and all—but I never believed it. Not really. Oh, Simon, how wonderful!”
He looked toward the horizon again, his throat working as he took a deep swallow of wine. The niggle started up again, but Callie ruthlessly pushed it down, much happier to be happy.
She pressed her hands to her cheeks and shook her head. “Me, Caledonia Johnston, having her very own ball in her honor. It’s beyond wonderful! And such a pity that Miss Haverly was sent away before we could get beyond globes and sums and water painting, and on to the things that really matter.”
Simon looked at her curiously. “I don’t understand. The things that really matter?”
Callie nodded, still caught up in the idea of having her first waltz. “Yes, of course. Dancing, the proper use of a fan, the rules of flirtation—there are rules, aren’t there? Heaven knows there are rules for everything else in London Society. One of them,” she said firmly, coming back to earth just as Simon pulled a cheroot from his pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, “pertains to never lighting up a cigar in the presence of a lady.”
“Is that right?” Simon commented with easily discernible indifference while making short, neat work out of lighting the tip of the cheroot. “Never?”
“Never!” Was he testing her? How far should she take this obvious trampling of London manners as per the social commandments according to Imogene? “I remember distinctly. It was on your mother’s list. Number three, as I recall. A real lady does not countenance such things.”
“And there can be no exceptions?” Simon asked, his head now wreathed in smoke and with him clearly enjoying himself at her expense.
“Oh, never. Definitely never,” Callie repeated, drawing in the smell of smoke, the aroma reminding her of Justyn, and pleasing her very much, although she wasn’t about to let Simon know that. “I should take immediate umbrage, and insist that you discard the smelly thing at once.”
“Insist, is it?”
She ignored Simon’s twinkling sherry eyes, which had such a strange, unsettling effect on her, and concentrated on the game she believed they were playing. “Yes. Insist.”
He held the cheroot between his fine white teeth, and smiled. “This is interesting. And if I didn’t comply?”
Callie looked to the curricle that stood nearby, the horses munching at the grass at their feet. She sighed theatrically. “Hmmm... this does present a problem, doesn’t it? I can’t complain to my chaperone, for we are quite alone here, aren’t we? I can’t, in this silly gown, outrace you to the curricle so that I can ride off in high dudgeon, because that would mean driving alone through the streets of London. I am quite sure that also is not done.”
“Definitely not done. Leading you back to not going on a picnic unchaperoned in the first place, yes?” Simon put forth helpfully—or it would have been helpfully, if he hadn’t been still grinning. “Perhaps you should have committed Imogene’s entire list to memory before tearing it to shreds?”
All right. He had proved his point, delivered his lesson. Quite well, in fact. Now it was her turn. “Perhaps,” she said, agreeing with him. “However, as chance would have it, I am not totally without alternatives.” Callie lifted her wineglass, eyeing it in speculation, then looking pointedly at the lit tip of Simon’s cheroot.
“You wouldn’t!” Simon exclaimed, quickly holding the cheroot behind his back.
With her mouth deliberately closed so that she could both smile and raise her eyebrows speculatively at the same time, Callie watched him, the wineglass still poised for use as a weapon. Simon eyed her questioningly for some moments before he said with the ease of understanding that had thus far served to endear him to her, “You’re threatening me for a reason, aren’t you, brat?”
She lowered the glass. “Yes, I am, actually,” she admitted, then spoke quickly, so that he couldn’t interrupt. “Your mother has been a dear, truly, but I can’t imagine myself dutifully taking lessons from her in how to capture a man’s attention. And this is important, isn’t it? It isn’t enough to look the part of the debutante, not if we wish to entice Noel Kinsey—who couldn’t possibly be overly interested in milk-and-water pusses in their first Season. I have to be unique, different. Perhaps a bit forward? Do you understand what I mean, Simon? How do I trick him into thinking I am interested in him and still behave like a lady? And you want me to more than interest him—you want me to stagger him, yes?”
“Your supposed dowry will serve to stagger him sufficiently,” Simon told her, once more placing the cheroot in the corner of his mouth, his guard relaxed—which is precisely how Callie wanted it to be. Poor man, for all he thought he understood her, he just didn’t know her all that well, did he? Why, she almost pitied him, Callie decided silently. And he did look so very handsome with a cheroot. Very handsome, indeed. She could quite easily bring herself to flirt with him—merely for practice, of course.
So thinking, and striking while the proverbial iron was still hot from the stove, she waved off his answer. “Yes, yes, the supposed fortune I’ve inherited from my great-aunt, who passed away only a year ago, so that I am just out of mourning and come to London to be popped off by that same aunt’s bosom chum, the Viscountess Brockton. Imogene told me all about that silliness. But heiresses must be knee-deep all over London during the Season. It will take more than deep pockets to make me unique, bring me to Noel Kinsey’s particular attention.”
“You could always tackle him in the gardens, I suppose,” Simon suggested, his mouth smiling even as his sherry eyes became somehow shuttered, as if he had just recalled something distasteful.
Callie shook her head, dismissing his words even as she rejected the recurring and increasingly unsettling thought that Simon might be rethinking his plans for her, and rushing on, “You’re deliberately not understanding me, aren’t you, Simon? I suppose I shall just have to say this baldly, without wrapping it up in fine linen, as I suppose I should. I want you to teach me how to flirt, my lord Brockton. I want you to teach me how to attract a man. How to, if needs must, even kiss him. I’ve never done that, you see. Kissed anyone.”
Simon, who had been drawing on his cheroot at the precise moment Callie made her final request, seemed to have swallowed a mouthful of smoke. He began choking, throwing the cheroot out onto the grass as his eyes began to tear and he coughed into his hand.
“Oh, poor, dear, Simon!” Callie chirped, testing her proficiency in the realm of demonstrating convincing feminine inanity. “Are you all right?”
Simon rewarded her with a killing glare. “You,” he said accusingly, slowly recovering his breath, and his voice, “you want me to what?”
Callie, bored with tiptoeing around the thing, finally lost all patience with subterfuge. “Oh, stop acting as if I’d just asked you to burn down Parliament. I thought you said we were friends.”
“Friends?” Simon repeated, glaring at her again. Really, the man had refined glaring to an art. “I see I’ll have to rush home to my study and find old Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, to refresh myself with the nuances of his definition.”
“Don’t be so deliberately thick, for goodness sake, for you can’t fool me.” Callie rolled her eyes in disgust. Really, Lester had never given her one-tenth the problem his lordship was presenting when faced with one of her very simple, reasonable requests. “I only said that I want you to teach me to flirt, how to capture a man like Noel Kinsey. Is that so difficult to understand? Or do you want your mother to instruct me? And concentrate your mind for a moment on the notion of Lester giving me lessons. Imagine the possibilities for disaster, Simon, if you will. Your mother?” she pulled a face. “Lester?”
Simon held up his hands in front of him, signaling surrender. “All right, all right. I’ll do it. Dear God, help me. I’ll do it.”
“Good!” Callie exclaimed,, feeling supremely satisfied. “When shall we begin?”
Simon sighed, looking at her as she rather childishly wriggled where she sat, smiling triumphantly, wonderfully, alluringly unaware of her exceedingly formidable beauty. “I think we already have, brat,” he said dully, so that she frowned in confusion. “For my sins, I think we already have.”
And then, believing a light had dawned somewhere inside of her, taking her closer to womanhood than she had thought herself to be, Callie blushed to the roots of her hair. “Was I flirting, Simon?” she asked quietly, nervously lowering her eyes to the blanket.
“You’re flirting now, Callie, and quite well,” he grumbled back at her, reaching over to take her hand in his. “But let’s get started with the more formal, structured aspects of the preliminaries to the mating ritual as they are played out by Society, shall we? Let’s concentrate for the nonce on the male contributions to the game.”
Her fingers tingled under his touch, sending heat all the way up her arm, into her face. This couldn’t be good. This couldn’t be good at all. But she had begun this course, and she’d finish it. “That—that seems a proper place, yes. Go ahead.”
“Thank you,” Simon said, humor evident in his tone, even as Callie’s second thoughts about this entire conversation served to melt her knees, so that she was immensely glad she was sitting down. “Now, to begin.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, placing a barely felt touch of his lips on the back of it. “That, Callie, is acceptable. Even more acceptable is merely bowing over your hand, minus the perfunctory kiss. All right?”
Callie fought the shiver that had begun to run up her once-burning arm, the slight queasiness that turned her stomach to jelly. “Acceptable. All right,” she said as calmly as possible, nodding her understanding.
He kissed her hand again, this time her fingertips, then raised his eyebrows as he looked at her. She wondered if he noticed that she was fast dissolving into a puddle of insensibility. He probably did. “That, you may have noticed, is rather more intimate, and not to be allowed unless the man in question is the prancing French dancing master I will employ for you the moment we return to Portland Place.”
Callie cleared her throat, which had become most alarmingly clogged. She blinked twice, trying to concentrate her mind on the subject at hand. “Too intimate. And what should I do about that?”
“You are to withdraw your hand at once and stare the miscreant into stunned apology, at which point he will beg your forgiveness and probably ask to lead you into the dance. You will then be wonderfully polite and agree, because if you refuse to dance with one gentleman, you are forced either to retire or sit the whole evening long, turning down all offers. If you are disposed to like the gentleman, you have won a slave for life. If, however, you take him in dislike, especially after having been fairly well forced into giving up a dance to him, well, then I suggest you make it a point to tread on his toes a time or two, just so that he knows he may be forgiven his forward behavior, but the insult has not been forgotten.”
“You’re teasing me, aren’t you, Simon?” Callie asked, still very much aware that he had not let go of her hand. She’d give him another hour, then insist he release her. “Because I have to tell you, that’s above everything silly.”
“Society is silly, Callie,” Simon pointed out, mentor to pupil, then raised her hand to his lips once more, his eyes on her face. “And now, your final lesson for today, as we must be getting back to Portland Place.”
This time he turned her hand at the last moment and pressed a kiss squarely in her palm, the tip of his tongue tracing a faint, tormenting circle against her skin before he allowed her to withdraw from his grasp. “There. Now, my dear student, my little country miss who wishes to play the role of une femme fatale, how do you respond to that?”
“Like this?” Callie answered shakily. And then—feeling as if her entire world had somehow suddenly shifted on its axis—she slapped him flat across his wickedly grinning face.
I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.
— Jane Welsh Carlyle
Chapter Nine
“Explain it to me again, Armand,” Bartholomew Boothe said as he sat in Simon’s study later that same afternoon, a glass in his hand and a perplexed frown on his face. “You’re saying that my new bay both is and isn’t the same one I saw at Tatt’s? Just what is that supposed to mean? Throckmorton promised me he had just bought her. And at Tatt’s—he even showed me his bill of sale! That’s why I took her off his hands, to help him over his gambling debt. He’s dipped badly, Throckmorton is, he told me, and had no choice but to sell her. Which didn’t keep me from getting myself a smacking great bargain, as I only paid half what I would have if I’d picked her up at Tatt’s.”
He looked from Simon to Armand Gauthier as he patted down his elaborate and too-large cravat, his confusion giving him the appearance of a perplexed pigeon—an underfed perplexed pigeon with his oversize breast feathers all a-ruffle.
“Are you saying that Throckmorton wasn’t being honest with me? Is that what you’re saying, the both of you?”
“Face the truth, Bones. Throckmorton put one over on you and that’s all there’s to it,” Armand told him, slyly smiling at Simon, who only nodded his agreement.
Bartholomew glared at Armand. “He isn’t dipped? Feeling the bailiff’s pinch?” Then he shifted his increasingly anxious gaze to Simon, obviously fighting against believing either of them. “Not drowning in the River Tick? Pockets to let? Run aground?”
“He’s flush as he ever was, Bones,” Simon concurred, taking a sip of champagne. It was nice, relaxing this way before dinner in his own house, surrounded by his friends, his mind free of thoughts of the infuriating young woman upstairs. Well, as free as it could be, he supposed, absently rubbing at his recently abused cheek. “He’s also probably off somewhere doing a jig, happy to be rid of his mistake and having recouped half of his money.”
Bones shook his head furiously. “No! No, you’re wrong. The horse just must be sickening for something. So bright and lively she was at Tatt’s last week, and again when I first bought her—so bright and lively! And now she just stands there. Stands there! Not a bit of spirit—and I had thought to race her.”
Armand spoke into his brandy snifter. “Drop another live eel down her gullet and she’ll show you spirit again,” he suggested, winking at Simon over the rim.
Simon laughed into his fist, knowing that their gullible friend Bones, Throckmorton, and even the most creditable Tattersall’s had been taken in by the most elementary of ruses. A sluggish horse invariably turned wonderfully brisk and lively with an eel in its belly—until the squiggly thing was digested, that was. Just as a fractious horse made stupid on ale could be sold as a calm, lady’s mount—until he became sober once more and kicked down the rails in his stall.
“Give it up, Bones,” Simon advised as Bartholomew continued to glare at Armand, “and have the poor mare sent to your estate to snore out her declining years. Either that, or make an early-morning visit to Fish Monger Lane tomorrow.”
“The perfidies of man,” Bartholomew grumbled at last, shaking his head as if his disappointment outstripped his anger at being duped—then had expanded itself to include not only the perfidious Throckmorton, but all of mankind, for Bartholomew’s judgments were often as sweeping as they were tardy. “Takes the heart out of a person of conscience such as myself, truly it does.”
“Poor Bones,” Armand commiserated as the obviously crushed man rose as if he had suddenly gone old and jaded and toddled over to the drinks table to refill his glass. “How it pains me to see the bright light of love for your fellow man extinguished. I am devastated for you, completely and unequivocally, and I must tell you how much sympathy I have for your deep pain.” He winked at the viscount. “So, Simon, do you think you could talk your cook into a serving of eel in parsley sauce for our friend this evening?”
Simon bit back a laugh, watching Bartholomew’s spine stiffen as the man filled his glass until it splashed over the rim. “You’re a cruel man, Armand,” Simon said with as much censure as he could muster, which wasn’t much. “I’ve always admired that in you.”
Armand nodded his handsome dark head, acknowledging Simon’s words as a compliment. “As I have always admired your expertise with the clever twisting of the sharp, bloodless knife of nefarious invention, my friend. Speaking of which, how goes our protégé? Is she champing at the bit to assist you in bringing Filton to his knees? That is, if you’ve been at long last allowed to examine the extent of your dear mother’s progress with the chit? Although I shouldn’t complain, I suppose, as my revoked dinner invitation has now been reinstated.”
