No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper Page A

then?”
    “You will be. There are people in London who can see to it, if necessary.”
    “All right.” Joan drummed her fingers on the desk. “So. I get close to him, and he either invites me to his place or arranges to meet me somewhere. I don’t know how they do things here.”
    “He’ll probably have you to his house. He could hardly seduce you under my roof, and I’ve never known him to use a hotel. Our earlier agreement still holds,” Simon added. “Perhaps it would be better if he did suggest a hotel. I could confront him there while you disposed of the book.”
    “Yeah. Maybe.” Joan gave him a long look. “Do you have any plans?”
    “One,” he said. “There are geasa —spells of binding—in old books. I don’t have any myself, but if I can find one, I can make sure that Alex harms nobody else. I can even get him to leave off his study of the occult.”
    He regretted even that, in a way. There was much he never would have discovered in his youth if not for Alex’s damn-the-odds enthusiasm for the latest ritual, the next source of information, the newest avenue of amusement. In another life, the man might have been a great asset to the world.
    It didn’t matter.
    “Got any leads?” Joan asked.
    “A few hints. Are we pressed for time?”
    “Unless a rock falls on my head or something, I’ve got about forty years. I don’t know the people Reynell’s fucking with, though. If they matter to you, you might want to be speedy about this.”
    “Thank you for that,” he said.
    He knew Alex was capable of ruining men at the card table and ladies in the bedroom, of exposing innocent girls to evil far beyond the petty sins of this world, of willful and deliberate murder. Perhaps he’d gotten in over his head, perhaps he was sorry now…but most likely he was acting now as he always had, and people were suffering for it.
    On the other hand, Simon knew two other magicians. Both were outside the country, and one was quite elderly. Just now, he and Joan were the only people in the world who knew Alex’s path and could stand in his way. If they ran instead of walked and fell by doing so—
    In the end, he stayed as close to the middle path as he could get. “Give me until we go to London. That should be time enough—it’ll take a month or two to get you ready.”
    The look Joan gave him was so searching as to be, from another woman, entirely indecent. From her, though, it was just evaluation: Can you do what you say? Simon half expected her to look at his teeth.
    “I’m in,” she said. “Where do we start?”
    “With you.” Ideas began to fall into place like tumblers in a lock. “We’ll say you’re from America, one of the Western states. That’ll explain why nobody’s heard of you, and it’ll cover what we can’t fix.”
    “Fix?” she asked, dryly amused.
    “Fix. You’ll have to learn to act like a lady. At least in public.”
    “Damn, I thought so. Lay it on me.”
    “For one thing, ladies don’t curse. No profanity, no blasphemy, no vulgarity.”
    “No shit?” she asked, quirking a grin. Simon had to laugh in response. “What if I’m, um, angry?”
    “Ladies aren’t supposed to get angry most of the time,” he said, and wasn’t surprised to see the face she made. “If someone makes improper advances or swears around you, or so forth, then you should be very cold and correct. Or faint.”
    “Faint. Yeah, I don’t think that’ll be happening. Not unless it gives me a major tactical advantage.”
    “Oh, it does.”
    Joan smiled again, impishly, and suddenly Simon didn’t think he’d have to worry about her being pretty enough. He shifted in his chair, trying to ignore his body’s response.
    Her question didn’t help either: “Were you an innocent bystander or the one making the improper advances?”
    “That,” he said, “depends on the occasion.”
    “Mmm. Anything else?”
    “Quite a bit. There are a number of rules you’ll have to follow…while implying