Read A Difficult Disguise Online
Authors: Kasey Michaels
Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #Regency, #Romantic Comedy, #Historical Romance, #New York Times Bestselling Author, #Regency Romance
A Difficult Disguise (27 page)
Their song faltered and then died away completely as none of the merry trio could recollect the words to the fifteenth verse of the ditty they had been composing all that evening long (a bawdy tune whose loss to the pages of musical history could only be termed a blessing).
In silence they marched on, crisscrossing the roadway several times in the meandering gait of the happily inebriated, until they at last reached the crossroads. Once at this juncture their wine-bemused mental faculties combined with a sudden deterioration of their physical coordination, and they fortuitously sat themselves down beside the signpost before they either set off on a wrong turning or tumbled into a puddle and drowned themselves.
“Anyone know where we’re at?” one of the young men asked of his companions.
“Signpost here,” pointed out the second youth. “Jeremy,” this one ordered the third, “your neck of the woods—tell us—are we lost?”
The one called Jeremy hauled himself upright by means of a hand over hand climbing bf the signpost until he stood, rocking slightly on his heels, staring owlishly at the five fingerposts nailed to the main signpost.
After a few moments spent in fierce concentration he announced happily, “We’re in England!” before collapsing to the ground in a paroxysm of giggles.
“Cup shot,” the first young man observed sagely. “Well and truly corned.”
“Thass no’ so,” Jeremy protested. “No more than a drop in the eye, Billy, thass all, no more.”
The one called Billy shook his head in the negative. “Drunk as an emperor,” he persisted.
“An emperor?” Jeremy questioned vaguely.
Their companion, Cuthbert Simpson, and the acknowledged leader of the trio, translated. “He means you’re ten times as drunk as a lord. And, worse luck, he’s right.”
“Wanna go home,” Jeremy retorted feebly. “Feeling dashed queer.”
“Is it any wonder, my dear friend?” Cuffy, as Cuthbert was known to his friends, countered. “I
did
try to talk you out of jumping off that hen house with a chicken tucked under each arm. Any fool could have told you it wouldn’t work.”
Jeremy hung his head. “It should have worked. There were wings and feathers enough.”
“That’s true, you jingle brain,” Cuffy countered, “except that even Billy here knows
chickens don’t fly
. But did you listen? Oh no, not the so-smart Lord Jeremy Mannering. You were going to let those chickens fly you twice around the barn and into the second-story bedroom of the good farmer Bates’s granddaughter.”
Jeremy looked down at the front of his fine waistcoat and breeches, covered now with dry, caked mud acquired when his body made rude contact with the soggy farmyard, and decided to change the subject. “What say we head back to Linton Hall? But first,” his eyes lit with another sterling idea, “what say we, um,
rearrange
these little fingerposts?”
As this practice had long been looked upon as an almost mandatory prank, committed by youths out on a lark for untold generations, this idea met with near instant agreement.
Within minutes the deed was done, and the trio was about to set off again when suddenly they heard the thundering approach of horses moving fast.
“Bing avast, you coves; play least in sight behind the crackmans! It’s land pirates—prod your dew beaters!”
Jeremy thumped his fists against his hips. “There he goes again, Cuffy, spouting thieves’ cant gibberish from that damned book. Good God. The fella reads one book in eighteen years and it has to be a damned dictionary of sporting language. What’s he saying?”
“He says we’re to go through the hedges because highwaymen are approaching. We’re supposed to run away on foot—move our dew beaters,” Cuffy responded rapidly, moving toward the hedges. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that Jeremy was still standing in the middle of the road, laughing at the thought of calling feet “dew beaters.” “Jeremy!” Cuffy commanded tersely. “Bing avast your arse!”
Belatedly, Jeremy moved, diving headfirst into the hedges alongside the road just before a large post chaise and four plunged to a halt at the crossroads. “A rattle and prad,” announced Billy anticlimactically.
“Brilliant deduction, friend,” responded Cuffy, still spitting leaves from his mouth thanks to his mad dash through the hedge, “if only a trifle tardy. Look—the postilion is reading the fingerposts. Now he’s telling the driver, yes Billy, I mean the rattling cove, which way to go.”
The post chaise lumbered off down the road, in quite the opposite direction of its intended destination, and Cuffy saw a dark female shape outlined through the side window.
“Well, well, my lady,” he murmured thoughtfully as he threw an irreverent kiss at the departing vehicle, “and whose uninvited guest shall you be this night?”
About the Author
Kasey Michaels began her career scribbling her stories on yellow legal pads while the family slept. She totally denies she chiseled them into flat rocks, but yes, she began her career a long time ago. Now Kasey is the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of more than 110 books (she doesn't count them). Kasey has received four coveted Starred Reviews from
Publishers Weekly
, three for historical romance,
The Secrets of the Heart
,
The Butler Did it
, and
The Taming of a Rake
, and for the contemporary romance
Love To Love You Baby
(that shows diversity, you see). She is a recipient of the RITA, a Waldenbooks and Bookrak Bestseller award, and many awards from
Romantic Times
magazine, including a Career Achievement award for her Regency era historical romances. She is an Honor Roll author in Romance Writers of America, Inc., and is a past president of Novelists, Inc. (NINC), the only international writers organization devoted solely to the needs of multi-published authors. Please visit Kasey on her website at
www.KaseyMichaels.com
.
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