What Happens in Piccadilly

by Bowlin, Chasity

  “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for being, Montgomery. You may relax in the knowledge that I am here at the request of Mr. Charles Burney… the return of a favor, if you will.”

  Winn’s blood went cold. “Burney is a good man to know. A trusted friend… most of the time.”

  “Most of the time?” Averston asked. “What must the young man have done to be damned by such faint praise?”

  Deciding to brazen it out, Winn replied, “He’s made free with a bit of information that he ought to have kept secret. It could be very damaging to someone…” to someone I care a great deal for. “To someone I know.”

  “It rather sounds as if you are in some sort of romantic entanglement. Is the lady married? Or is she promised to someone else? Tell me, what bastard have you sired that will inherit another man’s title?”

  “It isn’t that sort of secret,” Winn said. Whether it was simply wishful thinking on his part, he couldn’t say. But he didn’t believe that Averston knew the truth, at least not yet. “Why did you come here, Averston?”

  The duke shrugged. “Mr. Burney thought my presence might aid his sister in making a successful launch into society. I’ll even dance with the girl. But I’ve no designs on her. It seems you might, however. Pretty little thing, though I wouldn’t have pegged you for one to court children.”

  “I do not have designs on her,” Winn replied. “Our families are of long acquaintance and I feel what one might refer to as a brotherly regard for her… and for Burney. Tell me, what sort of favor did Burney do for you?”

  Averston didn’t smile, but his lips did tighten in a smirk that was likely the closest he came to such an expression. “It was of a somewhat personal nature. He provided invaluable assistance in arranging a rather particular assignation for me. It’s nothing you need concern yourself with. I realize I’m hardly looked upon as a humanitarian, but I’m not a monster, Montgomery. I’m here to settle a debt. Nothing more.”

  Winn considered the other man’s response carefully. He couldn’t challenge him further on the matter without arousing suspicion. But he had to wonder what Averston hoped to gain from an association with Burney, and what cost it might have for the young man he’d long considered a friend, despite their recent disagreement. “He’s a boy… trusting, gullible and easily led astray. If you’ve a mind to mentor him, Averston, I pray you offer him some guidance on how to conduct himself in business.”

  “Is that what I am to be? His mentor?”

  “It’s what you could be,” Winn offered. “It’s not a terrible thing to look after another person… to consider someone else’s well-being above one’s own.”

  “Ah… this is about your little crew of orphans, isn’t it? They’ve made you a changed man, have they?”

  Winn stiffened. “They’re children who’ve lost everything that mattered to them in this world and have been placed at the mercy of a stranger. Surely even you would not jest about that.”

  Averston’s expression tightened for just a moment, then he gave a curt nod. “Quite right. Some things should never be a source of amusement. I’ve no nefarious intentions for your young friend, Montgomery. You have my word on that.”

  Winn nodded. “Then I bid you good night.”

  Turning on his heel, Winn left the ballroom immediately. He retrieved his coat, instructed the butler to have his carriage sent home and then set out on foot. The exchange with Averston had left him too tense to simply stand around waiting for the carriage to make it to him. The walk, he decided, would clear his head.

  But by the time Winn reached his own home, he realized that the short distance had done little to help him. He was still puzzling over Averston, puzzling over what sort of trouble Charles Burney might actually be in to prompt him to behave in a manner so out of character as to resort to blackmail and he was still working out the best ways to keep Miss Calliope St. James safe from even the hint of a threat.

  Entering his home, Foster greeted him and aided him with his coat. “Are the children settled for the night?”

  “I suspect they are, my lord. Miss St. James went up with them some time ago, but I haven’t seen her come down.”

  Winn glanced at the case clock. It was after ten. She should have been long gone by that point. “Foster, send to the stables so that when the coach arrives it isn’t unhitched. Miss St. James will go home that way. It’s too late for her to walk.”

  Foster nodded, “Aye, my lord. I’ll see to it.”

  Winn took the stairs swiftly, making his way to the children’s quarters. Outside the door to the bedchamber Claudia and Charlotte shared, he heard whispered voices, and one of them belonged to William. Fearing that plots were afoot, Winn opened the door and peered inside. “The lot of you should be asleep.”

  Claudia shushed him and pointed toward Charlotte’s bed. “Miss St. James was telling us a story for bedtime.”

  Winn looked and immediately wished he hadn’t. Miss St. James was lying on Charlotte’s bed, snuggled up with precocious child and both were fast asleep. Part of him was tempted to simply let her stay there, but she’d been so adamant that staying overnight in his home was unacceptable. If he breeched her trust by not waking her and sending her home, it would be an unpardonable sin in her eyes.

  “Wake her, Claudia, but gently and as quietly as possible. I will see her home,” he instructed. “And you, William, come with me. You need to be in your own bed.”

  The little boy rose and reluctantly followed him out, heading to his assigned chamber that was just across the hall from his sisters’. As they walked, Winn ruffled his hair. “What sort of story was Miss St. James telling you? Princesses in castles?”

  “No. Dragons,” he said. “And pirate treasure.”

  “Well, she certainly knows her audience,” Winn mused. He followed William to the bed and tucked the boy in.

  “I wish she was here all the time,” William said.

  “I know you do,” Winn agreed. “But that’s not the arrangement we made. For her to be your governess, she must return to her own home in the evenings.”

  William’s lower lip turned outward in a pout. “Then she shouldn’t be our governess. She should just live here with us… you could marry her!”

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that.” Winn softened the rebuke with a slight smile. “Miss St. James and I… well, we might not suit one another.”

  “Because she’s poor?”

  Winn shook his head. “No. Not because of that… I’ve been a bachelor for a very long time. I’ve grown very used to living by my own rules. Wives have a tendency to change that.”

  “So do children. Will you send us away?”

  “No,” Winn replied emphatically. “You and your sisters are family. And family should always stay together.”

  William seemed to consider that for a long moment, then with a sly look, he suggested, “If you marry Miss St. James then she would be family, too.”

  Winn could do nothing but laugh. “You’re a sly thing, I’ll give you that. Go to sleep, William. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Winn rose from the boy’s bedside and made for the door. He’d just reached it when he heard the boy call out softly.

  “Uncle Winn?”

  “Yes?”

  William was silent for a heartbeat, clearly hesitant. Then he murmured softly, “Good night, Uncle Winn. I love you.”

  It hit him like a punch in the gut. Winn’s throat constricted and it was all he could do to choke out his own reply, “I love you, too, William. Good night.”

  Easing from the room and into the corridor, he found himself face to face with Miss St. James. She was beaming, her eyes damp with tears.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. He’s such a dear boy.”

  Winn felt his own cheeks heating. “He’s a terrible scamp… and a dear one,” he admitted. “I’ve called for the coach to see you home. You should not have stayed so late.”

  She gave him a watery chuckle. “I didn’
t mean to,” she admitted. “I brought them up and tucked them in after their dinner then fell asleep while telling them a story. I suppose I didn’t sleep very well last night. Not since you informed us of your theory.”

  “I’m sorry for that… not that I told you because I think it bears knowing,” he stated, as he offered her his arm to escort her toward the stairs. “But because it has distressed you. If there was a way to keep you safe that would allow for blissful ignorance—”

  “Absolutely not! I prefer the truth, my lord… always. No matter how unpleasant it may be,” she said firmly.

  “I thought we had agreed that in private you would call me by my given name.”

  She glanced at him from under her lashes. “I think we’re skirting propriety enough. And I heard William. I hardly think we should encourage him in thinking there is any possibility that you and I might be anything more than employer and employee. We both know it can never happen.”

  “Never is a word I dislike, Calliope.” Winn stopped just as they’d reached the top of the stairs. Once they descended, there would be footmen and a nosy butler to contend with, but standing on the landing, they had a rare moment of privacy in a house that was generally filled with chaos and many, many ears. “You overheard my conversation with William… all of it. Didn’t you?”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor and her shoulders inched backward, her pride obviously wounded by what she thought of as his dismissal of the notion. “I did. And I know what he said… about marriage. I also know very precisely how you replied.”

  He shook his head. For a woman of incredible intelligence, she was being a damned fool at the moment. “You know only what I said to a child. Should I have gone into detail and explained to him our different social positions and the kind of gossip that would ensue? Should I have told him that for a man to marry a woman who’d been in his employ, people would likely count the days between our wedding and the birth of our first child in the hopes of uncovering some hint of misdeeds? This is a complicated situation with complex solutions beyond his years. I also don’t want him hoping for something that might not come to pass. He’s suffered enough disappointment.”

  “And those are only a handful of the reasons why it would never work,” she said. “Not that I would presume to think you might propose. I’d never be so forward. But the simple fact is, it doesn’t even bear considering. Not when at the drop of a hat, a dozen reasons can easily be listed.”

  “And there are a dozen reasons that can be just as easily listed in favor of the notion,” he protested. “The children love you. They need you. A permanent arrangement between us would give them a sense of security that they desperately need. And you love them, Calliope. I know that your heart breaks at the very notion of ever having to leave them. I must marry. I cannot bring up two young women and introduce them into society without a wife at my side. We both know that. And while you may be a governess, we both know that you have been trained in all the ways and all the things that a lady should know. Then there are other very personal reasons. Would you like to know what they are?”

  “I’m assuming you are referring to the kiss we shared? That’s hardly the basis for a marriage!”

  Winn laughed. “They’ve been based on far less, I assure you. I’m not proposing to you, Miss St. James… not yet. But don’t assume that I will not. Certainly not on the basis of what I said to a very impressionable young boy. There are pressing issues to resolve first. When that is done, I assure you, we will revisit the topic.”

  She shook her head. “It would ruin you.”

  “It would raise eyebrows,” he countered. “When you have both a title and a fortune, very little can actually ruin you, Miss St. James.”

  Winn knew it was foolish, knew that he was pressing her when perhaps he should not. But as she stared up at him, her expression tense and somewhat pinched, he simply couldn’t leave things as they were. He moved away from the stairs, pulling her with him until they reached the door of a small unused sitting room on that floor. Inside, the room was dark but for a bit of moonlight filtering between the curtains. The furniture was all draped with holland cloths and it was quite possibly the least romantic setting ever. But they were alone with no chance of prying eyes of servants or well-meaning, interfering children.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I told you that I meant to kiss you again… and often,” he said. “There’s no better time like the present.”

  *

  Maybe it was the darkness of the room that emboldened her, maybe it was the way her heart had ached when she’d heard him utter that denial to William or perhaps it was the unwise hope that had flared within her when they’d spoken in the corridor only a moment earlier. Whatever it was, Callie found herself not waiting to be kissed by him. Instead, she pressed her hands against his chest, her fingers sliding over the fine fabric of his elegantly tailored coat and they slid up to his shoulders and around his neck. As she did so, she had to rise on her toes and tug his head down so that their lips could meet.

  It didn’t matter that she had very little experience in kissing. Nothing mattered but that she got to have that brief moment of mindlessness, where the world simply fell away and her reality consisted of only his arms around her and his mouth on hers.

  As she’d hoped, while she might have initiated the contact, he quickly took over. His lips played over hers, his tongue and his teeth coaxing her pulse to a fevered beat as she felt that now familiar heat begin to blossom inside her. It started at her center and spread outward, radiating through her body. While she’d never have been able to describe desire before, she wasn’t so foolish that she couldn’t recognize it when it occurred.

  A stolen kiss in his study, another in a carriage in the middle of the day on a busy street—those were one thing. But alone in a darkened room, the house almost completely quiet with many of the servants already in their own beds and the children tucked into theirs? It was something else altogether. There was an element of recklessness and danger to that setting. She was courting ruin, after all, and she was finding it difficult to care, at least with his arms wrapped tightly about her and his hands caressing the curve of her waist, sliding to the flare of her hips.

  His lips left hers, but any sound of protest was lost on a soft gasp as his teeth scraped over the tender flesh of her neck, nipping there just below her ear. The shock of that less than gentle but entirely seductive gesture had her shivering against him. And then his hands were roving over her again, sliding along her rib cage. When he touched her breast, cupping it gently, Callie was unprepared for the sensation, but even less prepared for her reaction to it. She simply sank against him, giving herself up to him entirely. As long as he was touching her, kissing her, as long as she could feel the heat and strength of him, she didn’t have to think about her own precarious social position, she didn’t have to think about potentially being a missing heiress or that the truths she’d been so certain of about her life and her origins were all terribly wrong. With his touch, he offered both temptation and respite.

  And then just as abruptly as it all began, it stopped. He stopped.

  “I can’t do this… I will not do this. I brought you in here thinking I might steal a kiss. I didn’t intend it to go further than that,” he said.

  “I don’t think that was entirely up to you,” she said. “I believe I instigated quite a bit of what has gone on in here.”

  He laughed, but it was a pained sound. “I’m putting you in a carriage and I’m sending you home, Calliope St. James… while I have the will and the strength to do so.”

  “I wish you didn’t.”

  The moment the words escaped her, she knew they were a mistake. So did he. She heard his indrawn breath, and then the muffled curse that followed it.

  “You will be the death of me,” he murmured. “I’m not the sort of man who takes advantage of women in his employ, Calliope. And whatever is happening between us, I can’t let it be that. I can�
�t do something that is… irrevocable. Not until we know what the future holds.”

  “Will we ever know that? Honestly?”

  He raised one hand to her face, cupping it gently. Unable to help herself, Callie leaned into that caress, savoring the touch.

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “We will. Now, go. The carriage is waiting for you. I can’t accompany you. I can’t face any further temptation tonight…. not without compromising my scruples and your virtue.”

  She wasn’t nearly as frightened of that prospect as she should have been, which was all the proof she needed that she should do everything in her power to put distance between them and keep it that way. Stepping back, Callie nodded. “I’ll see you on Monday.” And in the meantime, she’d have to make some very difficult decisions.

  He opened the door and slipped from the room. Callie took a deep breath and followed suit.

  *

  The ball was a success. Amelia was a success. Relieved beyond measure, Burney slipped away from the crowd. He didn’t want to dampen her enjoyment of the evening, but watching bottle after bottle of champagne being opened, he was sweating profusely. The event had been financed entirely on credit. And now he had no way of paying the bills due. Slipping into the study, he made his way to the desk and sank into his chair, resting his head in his hands. There was a brace of pistols in the drawer and if not for harm it would cause his sister, he’d have put a pistol ball in his brain and ended it all.

  “You’re looking rather grim.”

  Burney startled, and sat upright. There in the shadows of the room, the dim red glow of a cheroot clutched between his fingers, was Averston. “How did you get in here?”

  “I walked in. I’m a duke, Burney. I can do that,” Averston replied. “I thought you might seek your reprieve here and I wanted to see you.”

  Burney shook his head. “I don’t have anything to tell you. I was a bit busy today so I haven’t had an opportunity to snoop and play spy for you.”