Kasey Michaels Read Online Free Page A

also thanks to the prodigiously intricate dreams of his personal architect. John Nash had taken over the construction of Park Crescent, a project to the north of Portland Place that had been begun and then abandoned when its original builder had broken ground, then promptly gone bankrupt.
    For nearly a half dozen years the view to the north had been one of mounds of dirt and rubble bordered by a lovely expanse of open land. But now the area had been ambitiously renamed Regent’s Park and, if Prinny had his way, the entire area would soon cast Hyde Park into shame.
    Soon. Anytime now. Except that “anytime now” had stretched into months, into years, and the view to the north of Portland Place remained less than heartening. But the address was still impressive, the massive private residences definitely so. The Brockton mansion was its jewel.
    This was a rather insular world. The pampered ladies and gentlemen who lived in Portland Place would scarcely ever be found more than a few blocks from the area of London known as Mayfair. They drove out to Hyde Park and Bond Street and to visit other fashionable folk at their equally fashionable residences. In other words, although he had most definitely seen Westminster Bridge from a distance, Lord Brockton had seldom found reason actually to cross over the thing to the other side of the Thames.
    If he bad, he might have driven his fine team along Westminster Bridge Road, and eastward, to Horsemonger Lane, home of Horsemonger Lane Gaol. He would find the area a fine place to visit if he was of a mind to view a hanging or see residences that someone such as he would not deem fit for stables.
    It was there, in one of those tumbledown houses only a scant few miles and yet a world away from the gleaming palace Simon Roxbury called home, that one Miss Caledonia Johnston could be found. She paced the bare boards of what the landlord had laughingly called the “drawing room.” She paced, and she cursed her own stupidity as her friend and co-conspirator, Lester Plum, variously watched her progress and munched on a street vendor’s hot cross bun.
    “You did your possible, Callie. Nobody could ask more, not that anyone asked in the first place, mind you,” Lester said now, sucking on one finger after another, trying to get the last of the sweet icing into his mouth. “We’ll just toddle off home now, that’s what we’ll do. My papa says a week in this Solomon says Good-morrow city is more than enough to damn a delicate person forever.”
    “That would be Sodom and Gomorrah, Lester, I believe,” Callie corrected automatically, used to her friend’s butchering of terms unfamiliar to him.
    “Whatever. Papa also warned that it’s enough to corrupt any man, yet alone a callow boy like me. And if he was to get wind that the school chum I’m visiting is actually you? That I let you talk me into tagging along with you to this pen of inquiry? Well, then there’d be the devil and all to pay and that’s the truth.”
    “Give it up? Is that what you’re saying? The devil I will, Lester Plum, no matter if you turn tail and run! And that’s den of iniquity , you lovable idiot. London is not any of those things. It’s prodigiously fine, as a matter of fact, and I shall miss it when we leave. If only we had time to go to the theater, see a play, and maybe take a look in at one of those boxing saloons Justyn told me about, or even inspect the horses at Tatt’s—”
    “Now, Callie,” Lester said reasonably, taking up the second bun, seeing as how his good friend showed no intention of eating. Wasting food was a sin for which Saint Peter would never be able to condemn Mr. Lester Plum! “We can’t do any of that, for we have neither the time nor the blunt. This was a mad scheme from the beginning, and you know it. Coming all the way to London just to shoot a man in the leg—”
    “In the knee , Lester,” Callie interrupted heatedly. “In the knee. So that he can suffer the tortures