Free Kasey Michaels by Escapade

females to suppress most human functions and reactions, which he proved with his next eager questions.
    “How about the hiccups, Callie? Do ladies get the hiccups? Oh—here’s another one. Answer me this. Do they belch? No, I guess not. What do they do with all that air then? Do they save it up the whole night long, then go home and explode?”
    “You’re an idiot, Lester,” Callie informed him, trying not to laugh aloud. “And stop pulling at your ribbons before your bonnet comes off. Honestly, Lester, were you raised in a stables?”
    “I wasn’t raised in any pink-and-white nursery, let me tell you that!” he spat with some heat. “And why I let you talk me into dressing myself up in these clothes let alone parading myself around the city streets, is something I will never understand. Why did I have to be a dowdy, old maid at her last prayers? And a poor relation at that. I don’t believe I look quite the thing in pink, for one, and the cuffs on this gown must have been turned twice. Why couldn’t I at least have been a young lady?”
    “Because we couldn’t afford anything better at the bow-wow shop where we shopped for cast-off clothing, that’s why,” Callie patiently explained for what felt like the tenth time. “If we could have dressed me up, that would have been all well and good, but we couldn’t find anything to fit. But it’s better this way, actually. Brockton is probably looking for a small female. Granted, he also could be looking for two men—one small and thin, one rather better fed. Or not looking for us, at all. But he’d never be looking for a young man and his, um, pleasingly plump aunt. Besides,” she said, trying not to giggle, “I think you underestimate your charms.”
    “I’ll get you back for this someday, Callie Johnston, I swear I will,” Lester growled, nearly coming to grief over a slight rise in the flagway. Women’s shoes were the very devil, he’d decided at least three long London blocks and a half hour earlier. Their shoes, their laces and ribbons, their straw bonnets that were worse than blinders on a horse.
    Callie patted Lester’s arm. “Now, now, Aunt Leslie, you’ll have a fit of the vapors if you keep running on like this. And wasn’t it you who said you wished to walk every step of Mayfair, and see all the wonderful sights? Such as the one just now tripping down the front steps of that building up ahead, for instance.”
    “It’s Filton? Where?” Lester asked in his normal voice, then quickly pitched it a full octave higher. “I mean— where, my dear ?” he asked before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Oh—all right. I see him now. Remember, don’t hurt me.”
    “Of course not. At least, no more than I have to,” Callie assured him, winking.
    And then they were off, heading down the flagway arm in arm, pretending to be two visitors from the hinterlands taking in the sights—all the while keeping one eye on Noel Kinsey. He was already on his way across the wide flagway, heading for, in Callie’s mind, a simply smacking, bang-up to the echo, high-perch phaeton. She wondered just whose money had paid for such a fine conveyance, and for the unfortunately flashy team in the traces. Certainly not His Lordship’s own money, that was for sure. Her heart once more hardened against the man.
    Callie’s plan was simple. So simple, yet so extraordinarily brilliant and delicious that she was only disappointed she hadn’t thought of it sooner. She went on the move, tugging at Lester’s arm to urge him into jogging along more quickly—he really didn’t have the faintest notion of how to navigate in lady’s shoes, poor dear.
    She made quick work of closing the distance between herself and Noel Kinsey, who was fully occupied in dressing down his groom for some infraction or another. His Lordship’s back was turned, his attention diverted from anyone passing along the flagway.
    In short, Kinsey could not have been more cooperative, which didn’t