“Oh, now that’s rich. It isn’t proper, you say? I’ve been saddled with you all your blessed life. I remember seeing your skinny little backside when you were swimming in Trenton’s pond. All the rest of you as well.”
“I was eight years old!”
“You don’t act much older now. This, Corrie, is long overdue discipline. Just consider me acting in your Uncle Simon’s place.”
James stopped. He just couldn’t wallop her again, despite the overflowing memories of atrocious things she’d done to him over the years. He started to roll her off his lap, then saw the rocks on the ground. “Oh damnation, brat,” he said, and lifted her off his legs to set her on her feet. She stood there, rubbing her bottom, staring at him. If looks could kill, he’d be dead at her feet. He rose and shook a finger at her, much in the same manner as a long-ago tutor, Mr. Boniface. “Don’t be such a pitiful little sissy. Your bottom smarts a little, nothing more.” He looked fixedly at his boots a moment, then said, “How old are you, Corrie? I forget.”
She sniveled, wiped her hand across her running nose, stuck her chin up, and said, “I’m eighteen.”
He whipped his head up, appalled. “No, no, that’s impossible. Just look at you, a hairless young man who just happens to have a round butt beneath those ridiculous britches that no self-respecting young man would ever want. Well, I didn’t mean to say it exactly like that.”
“I am eighteen years old. Do you hear me, James Sherbrooke? What’s so impossible about that? And do you know what else?”
He stared down at her, slowly shaking his head.
“I’ve had a round backside for at least three years now! And do you know what else?”
“How was I ever to notice, what with the breeches you wear, bagging off your bottom. What else?”
“This is important, James. I am having a sort of practice season this fall. Aunt Maybella says it’s called the Little Season. And that means I’ll wear fancy gowns and silk stockings with garters to hold them up, and shoes that will raise me off the ground a good two inches. It means I’m now a grown-up. I will put my hair up, smear cream all over me so I’ll be soft, and show off my bosom.”
“It will take buckets of cream.”
“Just maybe. But I’ll soften up sooner or later and then it will take less. So what?”
“Show off what bosom?”
To his absolute horror, James believed for one second that she was going to rip her shirt open and show him her breasts, but thankfully reason prevailed and she said, eyes slits now, “I have a bosom, a very nice one that just happens to be hidden right now.”
“Hidden where?” He looked around.
She actually flushed. James would have apologized if he hadn’t known her all her life-seen her as a five-year-old with no front teeth trying to figure out how to bite into an apple, assured her she wasn’t dying when she’d begun her woman’s monthly flow at thirteen, and been the recipient of that sneer of hers too many times in recent years.
She poked her fingers against her chest. “They’re all in here, smashed down. But when I unsmash them and frame them with satin and lace, a dozen gentlemen will very likely swoon.”
He tried on one of her sneers and found that it fit him well enough. “Only in your twit’s dreams will you be able to unsmash that much. Good Lord, I’m picturing a board with knots on it.”
“A board with knots? That’s very mean of you, James.”
“Very well, you’re right. I apologize. What I should have said was that the thought of your unsmashed chest boggles my mind.”
“There’s nothing but swamp water in your mind.” She drew herself up, threw back her shoulders, stuck out her chest, and said, “My Aunt Maybella assured me this will happen.”
Since James had known Maybella Ambrose, Lady Montague, practically since his birth, he didn’t believe this for an instant. “What did she really say?”
“Very well, Aunt Maybella said something about when I was cleaned up properly I shouldn’t disgrace them. As long as I wear blue, just like her.”
“That sounds more like it.”
“Don’t you slap me in the face with your insults, James Sherbrooke. You know my aunt, she’s a veritable mistress of understatement. What she really means is that I will knock them down in the street when I ride by in my very own curricle, holding, perhaps, a poodle on my lap.”
“The only way you would knock down gentlemen is if you were driving.”
It was a meaty insult. Shaking her fist in his face, she bellowed at him, “You listen to me, you codsbreath! I drive as well as you do, maybe better. I have heard it remarked many times-I have the better eye.”
That was so patently absurd that James just rolled his own eyes. “All right, name one person who remarked that.”
“Your father, for one.”
“Impossible. My father taught me to drive. My eye is as good as his, probably better now since he’s getting old.”
She gave him a beatific smile. “Your father taught me to drive as well. And he’s not old at all. What he is is very handsome and wicked-I heard Aunt Maybella saying that to her friend, Mrs. Hubbard.”
That nearly made him puke. As for her driving, James remembered seeing the girl sitting proudly beside his father, hanging on his every word. He remembered feeling a stab of jealousy. It was mean-spirited, particularly since both Corrie’s father and mother had been killed in a riot right after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. It was an unfortunate accident that happened during an official visit by Corrie’s father, diplomatic envoy Benjamin Tybourne-Barrett, Viscount Plessante, to Paris to discuss the second restoration of the Bourbons with Talleyrand and Fouché.
Talleyrand had seen to it that Corrie, not yet three years old, was returned to England to her mother’s sister in the company of her dead mother’s heartbroken maid, and six French soldiers, who were not warmly treated.
When James finally brought his brain back, it was to hear her say, “And my uncle will have fits trying to decide which gentleman is good enough for me. I shall have my pick, you know, and that immensely lucky man will be strong and handsome and very rich, and nothing like you, James.” Another sneer, this one very refined, meant to make him shake with rage. “Just look at your eyelashes, all thick and poking out a good inch, like a Spanish lady’s fan. Even a little curl on the ends. Yes, you’ve got a girl’s eyelashes.”
He’d only been ten years old when his mother had come up with the right answer for him, and so he smiled now and said easily, “You’re wrong about that. I’ve never met a girl who had eyelashes as long and as thick as mine.”
She was silent, her mouth open. She couldn’t think of a thing to say. He laughed. “Leave my face out of this, brat. It has nothing to do with your bosom. Bosom, for God’s sake. Men don’t say bosom.”
“What do men say?”
“Never you mind. You’re too young. And you’re a lady. Well, not really, but you should be since you’re eighteen. No, I can’t believe you’re eighteen. That means nearly twenty, which would place you in the same decade as I am. It’s just not possible.”
“You bought me a birthday present just two weeks ago.”
He gave her a perfectly blank look.
Corrie smacked her palm to her forehead. “Oh, I see now, your mother bought the present and put your name on it.”
“Well, that’s not really what happened, it’s-”
“All right. Then what did you get me?”
“Well, you know, Corrie, it’s been a long time.”
“Two weeks, you bloody sod.”
“Watch your mouth, my girl, or I’ll smack you again. You talk like a damned boy. I should have gotten a riding crop for your birthday so I could use it on you when the need arose. Like right now.”
He took a menacing step toward her, got hold of himself, and stopped. To his amazement, she walked right up to him, stood toe-to-toe, sneered up at him, and said in his face, “A riding crop? You just try it. I’ll take it away from you, rip off your shirt, and whip you with it.”