The drama of London’s Little Season continues in this vibrant new series by USA TODAY bestselling author Kasey Michaels featuring three courageous war heroes surrendering at last to love...

Who would have thought a man could tire of being fawned over and flirted with? Ever since Cooper Townsend returned from France as a hero with a new title, he has been relentlessly pursued by every marriageable miss in London. Perhaps that’s why the unconventional Miss Daniella Foster is so appealing. She doesn’t simper or flatter. She only wants him to help unmask her sister’s blackmailer, and Coop has never been so intrigued...

Let every other woman in London fight over His Lordship’s romantic attentions. Marriage is the last thing on Dany’s mind...at least until she samples his illicit kisses. Now, as a mutual enemy races to ruin Coop’s reputation and Dany’s family name, an engagement of convenience will spark an unlikely passion that might save them both.

Bonus Novella!

For your enjoyment, we’ve added in this volume

How to Woo a Spinster by Kasey Michaels!

Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Kasey Michaels

“Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

“Michaels holds the reader in her clutches and doesn’t let go.”

—RT Book Reviews on What a Gentleman Desires, 4½ stars, Top Pick

“Michaels’ beloved Regency romances are witty and smart, and the second volume in her Redgrave series is no different. The lively banter, intriguing plot, fascinating twists and turns…sheer delight.”

—RT Book Reviews on What a Lady Needs, 4½ stars

“A multilayered tale.… Here is a novel that holds attention because of the intricate story, engaging characters and wonderful writing.”

—RT Book Reviews on What an Earl Wants, 4½ stars, Top Pick

“The historical elements…imbue the novel with powerful realism that will keep readers coming back.”

—Publishers Weekly on A Midsummer Night’s Sin

“A poignant and highly satisfying read…filled with simmering sensuality, subtle touches of repartee, a hero out for revenge and a heroine ripe for adventure. You’ll enjoy the ride.”

—RT Book Reviews on How to Tame a Lady

“Michaels’ new Regency miniseries is a joy.… You will laugh and even shed a tear over this touching romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on How to Tempt a Duke

“Michaels has done it again.… Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It

A Scandalous Proposal

Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

A Scandalous Proposal

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

How to Woo a Spinster

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

Dear Reader,

A journalist once asked then president John F. Kennedy, who had captained a PT boat during World War II, just how he had come to be a war hero. His answer was given with a wink and a grin: “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.”

That quote has always stayed with me: It was involuntary.

Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “Today I shall become a hero.” Heroism, rather, is thrust upon them.

That’s pretty much what happened to Cooper McGinley Townsend at the battle of Quatre Bras. Coop had gotten up that morning wanting only to be able to return to his tent in one piece that night. But between the hours of dawn and dusk, without warning, and although he was far from the sea, the fates figuratively sank his boat.

Honors commenced to rain down on our hero, including the presentation of a rather lovely estate, a fat purse and the title of baron to go along with it. Coop, a modest man by nature, was grateful, said thank you very much, and figured that was the end of that.

Except it wasn’t. Some “close friend and confidant of the hero” published Volume One of a chapbook so stuffed with nonsense and purported feats of Coop’s derring-do (most especially with the ladies), that only a fool would give countenance to a word of it. Except that London did believe it, swallowed the nonsense whole and turned Coop’s life into a chapbook of its own.

Fame was one thing. Notoriety was a complete other kettle of fish. Coop found himself besieged by giggling young misses and their ambitious parents, all while the words Volume One warned of further ridiculousness to come.

What to do, what to do?

Let’s find out, shall we?

Happy reading,

A Scandalous Proposal

Kasey Michaels

To Sally Hawkes, a true friend.

PROLOGUE

COOPER TOWNSEND STOOD facing the tall dressing table, looking at his expression in the attached mirror, watching as he saw his usually clear green eyes going dark. He had to control himself, get past his anger, or else he wouldn’t be able to think clearly.

He’d also run out of neck clothes, as this was the third he’d managed to mangle since his friend Darby showed up in his dressing room waving a copy of Volume Two of what was becoming known as The Chronicles of a Hero.

As if the first one hadn’t been enough: The Daring and Amorous Exploits of His Lordship Cooper McGinley Townsend, Compleat with Firsthand Accounts of His Extraordinary Missions Against the Frogs in England’s Glorious Victory Over the Devil Bonaparte: Volume One.

Indeed, Volume One had been sufficient to send him off within a fortnight to the supposed safety of his newly acquired estate, where he’d hoped sanity might rule the day (even considering that his mother was in residence).

He’d returned to London only at the behest of his friend Gabriel Sinclair, and that was for only a week, at which point the delivery of a copy of the soon-to-be published Volume Two had sent him to his estate once more. But this time it was only to pack up the majority of his new wardrobe, fail to talk his mother out of returning with him and head back to the Little Season, where he would find himself a wife. He didn’t want a wife—who did? Except Gabriel, and contrary to all that was rational, his friend seemed deliriously happy contemplating the loss of his freedom.

A hasty betrothal might not solve all his problems, but it would be a start. The matchmaking mamas were getting much too clever, and at least this way his wife would be of his own choosing, and not the result of waking up one morning with a giggling debutante tucked up beside him in his bed, her mother ready to burst in—with witnesses—to cry, “You cad! We post the banns yet today!”

Which would seem silly and self-serving to consider...except for the fact that one ambitious damsel had already made it all the way into the bedchamber in his hotel suite before Ames could scoop her up and deposit her back in the lobby, where her infuriated mama grabbed her by the ear and harangued her incompetence, presumably all the way back to her coach.

Yes, he would take himself off the market. Only then would he be able to concentrate on the rest of it.

“Did you read this? I only saw it this morning, so maybe you haven’t yet had the pleasure,” Darby Travers, also Viscount Nailbourne when he chose to impress, asked, tearing himself away from the printed page in order to wave the chapbook at him.

“Yes, I’ve read it. The perpetrator—I won’t call him author—was kind enough to send me an early copy when I was in town last week. For God’s sake, Darby, put it down.”

“Not quite yet. It’s obvious you’re going to wrest the fair maiden from a fate worse than death, hero that you are. Just let me read the ending.”

“All right, since it’s unfortunately important. Go on. Damn, Darby—I didn’t say for you to read it aloud.”

But the viscount continued in his pleasant baritone, now heavily laden with amused emphasis.

“The most Beauteous and Grateful young lady, her name always to be a mystery, her Cornflower Blue Eyes awash in Diamond-Bright tears, turned to our Modest and Abashed Hero and, quite to his Astonished Surprise, flung her soft round body straight at his chest, so that he was Without Recourse save to Hold Her Close as He could feel the Frantic Beating of her Virgin Heart, the rapid rise and fall of her Perfect Bosoms, as she extolled his Virtues, his immense Bravery and indeed, Overcome by her Emotions, she cried out in Near Ecstasy as she grasped his strong shoulders, claiming the world could safely rest on their Broad Expanse, just as her fate had so lately done, and Never Fear for her honor, that which she then so Earnestly Offered Him.”

“It’s even worse than I remember,” Cooper grumbled. “And did the man never hear about the glories of a period? You almost ran out of breath there, Darby, unless you were being ‘overcome by your emotions.’”

“A little of both, I believe. You lucky dog, you.” Darby struggled to turn the last page of the cheaply made chapbook, and frowned.

“Coming soon, Volume Three: The Further Adventures and Exploits of Baron Cooper McGinley Townsend, Hero, Wherein All Is Revealed as to His Character and Private Nature, Whether Be He Devil or Saint.”

He looked up at his friend. “That’s it? There’s nothing more? My God, Coop, and with all the ripping retorts that have come rushing into my head reluctantly pushed to one side, this isn’t good. Anyone with a drop of imagination would think you took advantage of her virtue, and Lord knows what the ton lacks in intelligence it more than makes up for in lurid imagination.”

“I’m aware of that, yes, thank you.” Coop stripped off the abused neck cloth and tossed it to Sergeant Major Ames, who had been his aide-de-camp during the final defeat of Bonaparte at Waterloo, and who could now lay claim to being the most burly, most foulmouthed and most sartorially bankrupt valet in all of England.

“Man needs his digits hacked off, that’s what he needs,” Ames said, tossing a new neck cloth Coop’s way. “And then stuffed up his arse.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, Ames,” Darby drawled as he stepped forward and snatched the fresh linen out of midair. “He’s usually bearably adequate, but clearly he’s overset at the moment. Here, Coop, let me do it for you, or else we’ll be spending the remainder of our lives here in your dressing room.”

Two tall, handsome but very different men were now reflected in the mirror. Coop could have been the angel, with his blond good looks, and Darby the dark-haired devil, somehow made even more attractive with the black satin eye patch covering his left eye.

“Ames meant my anonymous good friend,” Coop pointed out, grinning as he raised his chin and allowed Darby to position the neck cloth around his raised shirt points. “And he was being kind, if not civil. It’s quite another part of the scribbler’s anatomy Ames truly has designs on, don’t you, Ames?”

“First have to find them, my lord, and I doubt the rascal has the least trouble fitting into his breeches, if you take my meaning.”

“Give me that before you choke me,” Coop said, grabbing one end of the linen strip as Darby’s bark of laughter blasted in his ear. “I returned to the city for assistance from my friends, and not only is Gabe gone to his estate, but he left you behind, which is less than helpful in any circumstance. I’ve got enough going upside down in my life as it is, and you have all the makings of a menace.”

“I’d be bereft, did I not choose to take that as a compliment. But please, a menace that can tie the Waterfall with his eyes—pardon me, eye—closed. Very well, make your own mess. We’ll even name it. The Hero’s Knot. Good choice, Sergeant Major, wouldn’t you say, because I think he’s fashioned a noose.”

“You’re quite the wit, Darby,” Cooper said as Ames helped him into his jacket. “I don’t know how you ever stop laughing. You really think this whole thing is hilariously funny, don’t you?” he asked as Darby replaced his handkerchief after lifting the black patch over his left eye and dabbing at a nonexistent tear of amusement.

“In most cases, no, I suppose not, but to see the calm, never-ruffled Cooper so flummoxed? Yes, I admit to enjoying myself. Really, is it so very terrible, Sobersides, being cast in the role of a hero? Damsels must be sighing and swooning over their hot chocolate all over Mayfair right now, their tiny pink toes curling in delight. I repeat, you lucky dog.”

Coop and Ames exchanged glances, and the valet retrieved a folded sheet of paper from the desk in the bedchamber Coop occupied at the Pulteney Hotel. “This arrived earlier, shoved under the door just as messages are in all inferior novels. Take it down to the lobby with you, read it and decide for yourself. I’ll just say a quick good-morning to my mother and join you there shortly.”

“Am I going to be amused?” Darby asked, sliding the paper inside his jacket. “Never mind, I can see I’m not. And does it explain the neck cloth, and your jolly good humor? I suppose so. Very well, ten minutes, or else I’ll be back.”

With Darby out of the room, Coop picked up his silver-backed brushes and concentrated on taming his thick thatch of annoyingly unruly dark blond hair, or

...his Glorious Crown of sun-Kissed locks reminiscent of a Veritable Halo of Goodness even while he ran his long, straight fingers through the Mass as he stepped over the Broken Body of the Wretched Attacker and shyly smiled at the Unknown Damsel he’d Rescued from a Fate Worse Than Death.

Fate worse than death. Just what Darby had said in jest. It only went to prove anyone could write a chapbook—as long as one didn’t bother stretching his imagination beyond the trite and prurient. “Oh, God, now I’m poking sticks at one of my best friends.” Cooper sighed as he put down the brushes and spoke to the air. “‘Is it so terrible being cast in the role of a hero?’ Darby, my friend, you have no idea.”

Admittedly, at first it hadn’t been that awful. He’d served his country not once, but twice, donning the colors again after being invalided back to England in 1814 with his friends Darby, Gabriel and Jeremiah Rigby, baronet. He’d gone on to become quite the celebrity after a small yet fierce battle just outside Quatre Bras, just before Wellington’s final victory at Waterloo.

The world would never know the full truth of what had transpired that day, which was pointed out to Cooper quite forcefully by His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent himself, before he presented the hero with a small estate, a comfortably heavy purse and the title of baron. It was a magnificent reward...although some might call it a bribe, or even the hint of a threat. In any event, Cooper quickly realized he would be wise, and perhaps safer, to accept it.

But the world didn’t know any of that.

Of most interest to the average John Bull and the newspapers had been Cooper’s daring rescue of several towheaded tots (the number varied from three to a full dozen, depending on who told the story), who had wandered into the midst of what was soon to be a battlefield. Some versions included a beauteous older cousin who had been most grateful for their rescue...but then, there were romantics everywhere, weren’t there?

Three or twelve, lovely and anonymous, profoundly grateful blonde beauty or not, on his return to London Cooper found himself more popular than Christmas pudding. In the months since Waterloo he had not been able to take more than a few steps in any direction without someone calling out, “It’s him—Townsend! There he is!”

Everyone clapped him on the back. Everyone stood him up for a bottle or two. Everyone treated this son of a genteel but never more than comfortably well-off family as if he was the best of good fellows, and he’d been invited to so many house parties and boxing matches and the like that it would have taken a squadron of heroes to accept all of the invitations.

Still, the whole thing was fairly enjoyable.

But then Volume One was handed out free on the street corners, and everything changed.

Coop remembered waking one morning to have Ames present him with it. There he was on the cover of the cheap chapbook, or at least Ames told him the garish print was supposed to represent him. He was pictured as tall and lean, which he was, but with a highly exaggerated shock of unruly blond hair and vividly green eyes that had him peeking into a pier glass to check on the intensity of his own. They were green—he’d give the artist that—but certainly not that green.

The streets were flooded with the damned book that was complete with a notice on its back cover that the next in the series would reveal

The Further Adventures of Our Glorious Baron Returned from the War, Secretly Performing Heroic Acts in England, Champion of the People and Rescuer of Delicate Females in Dire Straits and Needful of His Valiant Assistance.

Now mamas wanted him for their daughters. Fathers wanted him because he was a hero, and wouldn’t “M’son-in-law the hero, yes, indeed” sound all the crack in the clubs? Married women wanted him because—good Lord, who knew why married women wanted anything...and sweet young damsels considered Coop the catch of the year.

“And now this. So much for my plan of throwing myself into the Little Season and finding a wife in order to put an end to the nonsense.”

“My lord? I didn’t quite catch all of that?”

“Never mind, Ames. I was thinking about that damn note again.”

He had already committed that to memory, as well.

Ten thousand pounds or the next volume will be Our Hero Falls from Grace as the True Identity of the Supposed Innocents Rescued at Quatre Bras is Revealed, Much to the Shame That Rises to the Highest Reaches of the Crown Itself. Yes, my hero, this is blackmail, and I’m quite good at it. Remain in London, Baron Townsend, no more dashing to hide yourself at your estate. I will be in touch.

“Ah, Ames. So much for brilliant ideas, not to mention the size of the cow Prinny will birth if the truth were to become known. We can only hope to God Darby has had his fill of poking fun and is about to offer his help,” he said now, accepting his gloves and curly brimmed beaver from Ames before heading for the stairs leading to the lobby.

“You didn’t want to get bracketed, anyway,” his man reminded him.

“True enough, but if I can’t find our underendowed bastard of a biographer, we can probably wave goodbye to the estate and you can stop addressing me as ‘my lord.’ I don’t even want to think what my mother would say.”

Ames screwed his face into a grimace. “That could be the worst, my lord, I agree. She says more than enough as it is, don’t she?”

Coop laughed. “Thank you, Ames, for that reminder. Please tell her I was called away and will see her at dinner tonight. I go forth now with doubled determination, and twice the haste.”

The sergeant major sharply saluted. “Just as a hero should, sir.”

“I’m quite fond of you, Ames, but I could still sack you,” Coop warned him as the other man quickly hid his grin beneath his prodigiously large mustache.

Darby was waiting, pacing, in the lobby. “You get yourself into the damnedest predicaments, don’t you?” he said, handing back the folded paper.

“You mistake the matter. That’s you, along with Gabe and Rigby. I’m the sensible one, remember, always there to pull you three free of the briars at every turn.”

“Point taken. And what does your sensible self plan to do now that the thorns are sticking into your own backside? I hope it includes finding this bastard and wringing his scrawny neck.”

Darby’s outrage soothed Coop somewhat. “Yes, that was the plan, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know, not with you. You’re too damn civilized. You’re not going to tell me the lady’s name, are you? The fair damsel who could or, perhaps, could not have been there the day of your daring rescue.”

“Why, Darby, I do believe I’ve forgotten it. Imagine that.” Then he flinched, knowing his friend had tricked him. How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, that his friend could pry a secret from a clam.

“Aha! Then there was a woman. At least I’ve gotten that out of you. You are a hero, you know, pure of heart and straight as the best-carved arrow. That, and a damn fool, now that I know our own fat Florizel is somehow involved. Baron? Seems to me you could have held out for earl. Shall we get started?”

CHAPTER ONE

THE WALK FROM the Pulteney to the nearest club was too short for any but an old man or an utter twit with pretensions of grandeur to bother bringing around his curricle from the stables or hailing a hackney, or so Darby protested when Coop suggested they do the latter.

“I could be recognized,” Coop pointed out quietly.

Darby was busy pulling on his gloves. “By whom? Not that I’m lobbing stones at your usual modesty, but that remark could be thought by some to verge on the cocky. I suppose vanity comes along with this heroing business.”

“You’re enjoying yourself again, aren’t you? You know who—whom. By everybody. Sometimes I want to turn myself around to see if there’s some sort of sign pinned to my back.”

“Really? Draw a crowd wherever you go, do you? Well, good on you. And good on me, for I am the favored one, aren’t I, out on the strut on this lovely, sunshiny day with the hero of all these brave, not to mention amorous, exploits. Gabe and Rigby don’t know what they’re missing. Come on, I want to see this. Maybe you’ll find another fair damsel to rescue along the way.”

Barely a block from the hotel, Coop was fighting an impulse to turn to his friend and utter the classic words of any bygone childhood: “I told you so.”

“G’day ta yer, guv’nor,” the first to recognize him had called out, the man bowing and tugging at a nonexistent forelock as Coop and Darby approached the corner.

“Yes, good day,” Coop responded, slightly tipping his head to the hawker balancing a ten-foot pole stacked high with curly brimmed beavers that had seen better days, even better decades.

“It’s the tip I think he’s wanting, not a tip of your head. That is, unless you wish to purchase one, which I wouldn’t recommend. Lice, you understand, nasty things,” Darby informed him, not bothering to lower his voice. “But since you’re a hero, and heroing comes with certain expectations from the hoi polloi—yes, you fine fellow, that indeed was a compliment, and your smile is quite in order—I’ll handle this. Here, my good man,” he said, reaching into his pocket, and flipped a copper into the air for the fellow to snag with the skill of long practice. “Compliments of the baron. On your way now.”

Cooper looked around to see that the two of them were rapidly becoming the cynosure of all eyes. “Now you’ve done it, you fool.”

“Done what? I can’t let our hero’s brass be tarnished because you’re a skinflint. Have a bit of pride, man.”

“Pride, is it? How fast can you run in those shiny new boots?”

After a suspicious bite at the copper, the grinning man raised his hand, showing his prize, and called out, “Make way! Make way! The hero passes! Make way for the brave Baron Townsend!”

“Oh, for the love of... See what you’ve started?”

“I’m beginning to, yes. I thought you might be exaggerating, but I should have known better. I’m the one who does that.” Darby turned in a graceful circle. “Shall we be off? Standing still doesn’t seem a prudent option.”

On all sides, people were beginning to cross the intersection, heading directly for Coop while, in front of them, a pair of eager lads carrying homemade brooms raced to be the first to clear the street so that the hero could cross without, well, stepping in anything. In their zeal, they fell to battling each other with their broomsticks, and the smaller one could have come to grief had not Coop stepped in to separate them.

Holding his handkerchief to his bruised cheek—the one that had been more than delicately kissed by one of the broom handles—he and Darby continued on their way, not quite at a run, but certainly they stepped sharply to avoid the gathering crowd.

Just before they turned the corner into an alley, Darby wisely tossed several coins over his shoulder and the pursuers slid to a collective halt so quickly they tumbled over one another like ninepins as they dived for the coins, fists already flying.

“Ah, a smile, and bloody well time. I’d wondered if you’d completely lost your sense of delight thanks to your biographer. Shall we be off?”

“More at a canter than a trot? Yes, I do believe so.”

At a renewed shout from the mob, they upped their pace to a near-gallop, dodging suspicious puddles, ducking under sagging lengths of gray laundry, tipping their hats to a toothless hag who offered to show her “wares” for a penny.

Twist here, turn there, retreat at the sight of a dead-ended alley. They didn’t stop until they’d lost the last of their pursuers, but by that time Cooper was hard-pressed to do so much as figure out the direction of north, trapped as they were beneath ramshackle structures whose upper stories leaned out of the alley, nearly touching each other, blocking out the sun.

“Where are we?” he asked, not quite liking the look of a rather burly man who was watching them from his seat on the threshold of a building lacking a door.

“Sorry,” Darby whispered, stopping to put his hands on his knees and catch his breath. “But were you asking me, or that faintly terrifying creature over there currently eyeing us as if we’d look good circling on a spit for dinner?”

“You, of course, and don’t stop. I thought you knew where we’re headed?”

“I did,” Darby said, “about three turns ago. But I was much younger last time I pulled a stunt like this, and considerably less sober. Ah, damn, Coop. I think you might owe me a new pair of boots.”

Coop didn’t bother inspecting his friend’s new boots—friendship had its limits—but did give Darby a mighty shove to safety as he heard a female voice from above warning that she was about to empty a slop bucket. Which she did a half second later, cackling merrily as her targets barely escaped her fine joke.

“You can’t say everyone in London has read about your exploits, unless that was the woman’s way of expressing her joy at seeing you,” Darby said as they finally halted once more just before somehow reaching Bond Street, both of them brushing at their sleeves, checking for dirt that may have been left behind by grubby hands, for everyone had wanted to touch the great hero. “You know, all in all—my poor boots to one side—that was fairly exhilarating. Pity Rigby wasn’t with us. Our plump friend could do with a bit of exercise.”

Coop was still trying to catch his breath. “That’s it? That’s all you can say? You didn’t hear the demands to know the name of the latest fair beauty I’ve supposedly saved? You didn’t hear the suggestions called out as to what I should do with her? A few were quite specific.”

“Yes, I heard, but chose to pretend I didn’t. Your blushes were more than enough. At least one of them should probably be chained up in Bedlam, or else gelded. Why didn’t I notice this when you were in town last week?”

“The second volume of my supposed exploits only surfaced once I was gone back to the country. When Prinny first honored me I was treated rather well, pointed to, yes, spoken to—more than a few wishing to shake my hand, clap me on the back, introduce their daughters to me. The added attention brought to me by the appearance of Volume One came as a jolt, especially when it somehow fostered a nearly unnatural interest from the ladies. It’s Volume Two, though—all this business about my supposed heroics since returning to England—which has seemed to raise quite another emotion besides simple gratitude. It was bad enough when I first returned. Crowds did tend to gather. But this is the first time I’ve actually had to run from them. Things can’t continue this way, Darby, they just can’t.”

“True. Only imagine what it would be like if your blackmailer makes good on his threat—the one I don’t quite understand and apparently am not allowed to know, even as I am applied to for assistance. You’d have to emigrate. The admiration of the mob has always been known to turn into hatred at the drop of a pin.”

“The thought has crossed my mind, yes. But in the meantime, let’s go find us both a bootblack.”

“And after that, a bird and a bottle,” Darby agreed. “But I’m not a demanding sort. I’m willing to make do without the bird.”

CHAPTER TWO

DANIELLA FOSTER, VARIOUSLY known to her family as Dany, the Baby or, not all that infrequently, the Bane of Mama’s Existence, eyed the purple silk turban perched on a wooden stand in the corner of the fitting room. It felt as if she’d been there for a small eternity, and she’d already inspected most every inch of the crowded room at the back of the dress shop.

She wasn’t bored, because Dany was never bored. She was interested in everything around her, curious about the world in general, which had led her, in her youth, to getting down on the muddy ground to be nose to nose with an earthworm, all the way up to the present, which just happened to include wondering how it would feel to wear a turban. Would it itch? Probably, but how could she know for certain if she didn’t try?

“I still say it’s pretty,” she announced, “and would fit me perfectly.”

Her sister, Marietta, Countess of Cockermouth, just now being pinned into the last new gown she’d commissioned, did not agree. “I’ve told you, Dany, purple is reserved for dowagers, as are turbans. No, don’t touch it.”

“Why not?” Dany plucked the turban from its stand. “That doesn’t seem fair, you know,” she said, demonstrating her version of fairness as she lowered the thing onto her newly cropped tumble of red-gold hair. “Do you see that? The color very nearly matches my eyes.”

“Your eyes are blue.”

“Not in this turban, they’re not. Look.”

Dany stepped directly in front of her sister, who was a good eight inches taller than her at the moment, as she was standing on a round platform for the fittings.

Marietta frowned. “Some would say you’re a witch, you know. That thing should clash with your hair, what you left of it when you had that mad fit and took a scissors to it. Your skin is too pale, your eyes are ridiculously large and your hair is... I’m surprised Mama didn’t have an apoplexy. Yet you...yes, Dany, you look wonderful. Petite, and fragile, and innocent as any cherub. You always look wonderful. You don’t know how to appear as anything less than winsome and adorable. It’s one of the things I like least about you.”

Dany went up on tiptoe and kissed her sister’s cheek. “Thank you, Mari. But you know I don’t hold a candle to your serene beauty. Why, it took only a single look at you across the floor at Almacks for Oliver to fall madly and hopelessly and eternally in love with— Oh, Mari, don’t cry.”

Turning to the seamstress, who was looking at both of them curiously, and Marietta’s maid, who was already hunting a handkerchief in her mistress’s reticule, Dany quickly asked the women to please leave them alone for a bit.

“Increasing, is the countess, and good for her,” the seamstress said, nodding her gray head toward the maid. “They gets like that, you know, all weepy and such for no reason at all. I’ll be certain to leave plenty of fabric for lettin’ out the seams.”

“I’m not—”

“Crying,” Dany interjected quickly, squeezing Marietta’s hands so tightly her sister winced. “No, darling, of course you’re not crying. We neither of us think any such thing.” Then she winked at the seamstress, who reluctantly let the drape fall shut over the doorway, she and the maid on the other side of it. Let the woman think Mari was increasing. Anything was better than the real reason her sister had turned into a watering pot. “You were going to blurt out the truth, weren’t you?” she asked—perhaps accused—as she helped her sister down from the hemming platform.

“I most certainly was not. I’m still wondering what on earth prompted me to say anything to you. I must have suffered a temporary aberration of the mind.”

“No,” Dany said flatly as she watched her sister gingerly lower herself onto a chair, making sure she didn’t encounter any pins on the way down. “You did that when you wrote those silly letters to your secret admirer. And Mama says you’re the sensible one, and I’m to imitate you in all you do. But you know what, Mari? I would have at least asked my admirer’s name. Oh, here, take this, and blow your nose,” she ended, fishing an embroidered hankie from her own reticule and all but shoving it in her sister’s face.

“Lower your voice, Dany.” Marietta looked left to right and back again, as if making certain no one was hiding in the cluttered room, possibly taking notes, and then whispered, “And it wasn’t my fault. All the married ladies of the ton have secret admirers. It’s just silly fun. Especially when our husbands desert us to go off to hunting lodges and gambling parties and whatever it is gentlemen who wish to avoid their wives call amusement.”

Dany replaced the turban on its stand. It had been interesting to see how she looked in the thing, but it definitely was beginning to itch. When she became a dowager she would make sure all her turbans were lined with soft cotton.

“Is that so? And is it all still silly fun for you now that your admirer is demanding five hundred pounds for his silence, his promise to return your notes to you? Is that just another part of the game?”

Marietta blew her nose none too delicately. “You know it isn’t. I don’t have five hundred pounds, Dany, and Oliver will be home in a fortnight. Oh, this is all his fault. If he’d only paid me more attention. It used to be I couldn’t budge him out of my bed, but—no, don’t listen to me, Dany. You’re an unmarried woman.”

“True, but I’m not still in the nursery. Oliver is sadly lacking in romance, isn’t that it?”

Her sister’s shoulders slumped. “He...he forgot my birthday. He went traipsing off to Scotland with his ramshackle friends, and totally forgot my birthday. Our first year together he bought me diamond eardrops, the second a ruby bracelet and the third a three-strand pearl necklace. Now? Now nothing.” She looked up at Dany, her blue eyes awash in tears. “I don’t want to be a wife, Dany. He’s clearly bored, having a wife. I want to be his love.”

Dany motioned for her sister to stand up, and began helping her out of the gown. “I remember when you nearly called off the wedding.”

“That was all Dexter’s fault,” Marietta pointed out as she bent her knees, her arms straight up over her head, and allowed Dany to remove the gown. “And we don’t talk about that.”

Dany, carefully holding the gown at the neck, stuck it past the slight gap in the curtain, feeling confident the seamstress would be standing there to receive it (and anything she might overhear). No, they didn’t talk about it, what Dex had said, not after their father had threatened to disown him if he did anything to cost his sister a wealthy, eligible earl.

Oliver Oswald, Earl of Cockermouth. Marietta had written those words in an old copybook at least two hundred times, along with Marietta Foster Oswald, Her Ladyship Countess Cockermouth. She’d been so proud, right up until the moment Dex had whispered a less than civilized definition of the word as seen by youths who found such things giggle-worthy.

“Oliver explained it all,” Marietta said now, diving into the sprigged muslin gown she’d chosen for her shopping trip to Bond Street. “The name is derived from the proud and ancient town’s position...”

“...at the mouth of the Cocker River, just as it joins with the River Derwent. Yes, I know. Papa made me commit that to memory. He also gave me a pretty pearl ring when I promised to stop calling you...”

“You promised!”

Dany held up her hands in submission. “I was only fourteen, still sadly innocent in the way of things, and didn’t know what I was saying. Which, as I’ve pointed out many times, you can blame on Mama, not me. Now strap on your armor, and let’s go home. We’ll put our heads together and find some way to get you out of the bramble bush you so blithely flung yourself into in the name of revenge.”

Marietta carefully smoothed on her gloves, finger by finger. “Never should have told her,” she scolded herself. “What in God’s name possessed me to think she’d be of the least assistance?” Still, now armed once again with her bonnet and gloves, outwardly she looked the epitome of calm, her fine features carefully composed in what Dany thought of as her sister’s “smug face.” Her “I am a countess, you know” face. If Marietta wasn’t so heart-stoppingly beautiful, and Dany didn’t love her so much, she would laugh.

“It’s going to be fine, Mari. It’s all going to be fine. I promise.”

“Humph, humph.” More than a polite throat-clearing, the sound was full of suggestion, or innuendo, or perhaps even hope. Or at least Dany chose to think so.

Both young women turned about to see the elderly seamstress had reentered the fitting room.

Lady Cockermouth raised her chin. “I believe we were not to be disturbed. However, as we’re finished here, you may simply send along the gowns when they are done, and we’ll be on our way.”

Marietta, embarrassed and caught off guard, was making an attempt at haughtiness, intending to put the seamstress firmly in her place by playing at the grande dame. So typical of her, and so wrong, at least in her sister’s opinion. Dany believed herself not to be so cork-brained. It would be much better, even safer, to play on the woman’s sympathy.

And then there was the “humph, humph” to consider. The woman was clearly dying to know something.

“Mrs. Yothers, I think it is? Was there perhaps something you’d like to say to Lady Cockermouth?”

“What could she possibly have to—”

“Mari, there’s a wrinkle in your right glove,” Dany interrupted, knowing it was one thing that would silence her. She abhorred wrinkles in her gloves, which was why they were so tight they nearly cut off her circulation. “Mrs. Yothers?”

“Yes, miss, my lady. I apologize, I truly do, but so as to be sure no one else disturbed you two fine ladies, I took it upon myself to send your maid outside and station myself right on the other side of the curtain. I couldn’t do much besides clap my hands over my ears not to hear that her ladyship is in a bit of a pickle.”

“I am not in a—”

“Oh, I was wrong, it isn’t a wrinkle. Why, Mari, I do believe you’ve picked up a smudge. Go on, please, Mrs. Yothers.”

“Yes, miss. And seeing as how we’re all women here, even you, young miss, and with the poor dear increasing and all...”

“I am not—”

“Here, Mari, you don’t want to forget your reticule,” Dany said, shoving the thing in her sister’s gut, leaving the latter rather breathless. And mercifully silent. “Mrs. Yothers? You were saying?”

The seamstress shot a compassionate glance at Marietta. “I remember how I was with my first. It does get better, my lady, as the months go on. Before it gets worse again, that is, but that’s over quickly enough and you’re back to doing what got you in the delicate way in the first place. But that’s not what I’m here to say. I think, Your Ladyship, what you need right now is a hero.”

Dany rolled her eyes. That’s what the “humph, humph” was about? How depressing. “A hero, Mrs. Yothers? What a splendid idea. Would you perhaps know where to locate one?”

The woman smiled as she reached into the pocket of her apron, pulling out a wrinkled, dog-eared chapbook. “I do indeed, yes. Here you go, miss. You can keep it, seeing as how I know it all by heart, anyway, and there’s a whole new one waiting for me upstairs when I go up for my tea. I hear it’s even better than the first.”

Dany was already reading the title on the front cover: The Chronicles of a Hero.

“A hero? But, Mrs. Yothers, surely this is just a made-up story? This man, this—” she looked at the cover again “—His Lordship Cooper McGinley Townsend? He’s no more real than Miss Austen’s Mr. Darcy.”

“He looked passably real to me about an hour ago, when he and his companion sauntered past, out on the strut. Spied one of my girls staring bug-eyed at him through the window, and gave her a tip of his hat, he did. Such a gentleman. Everyone knows him, miss. Purest, bravest man alive, and bent on helping other people out of their troubles, especially pretty young ladies. Prinny himself handed over a title and an estate to him. I do nothing but hear about him in here, miss. He’s a hero to all the ladies, who chase him something terrible, poor man.”

Dany looked down at the cover once more. What a ridiculous print. Nobody looked like that, at least nobody real. But if he did...

“Dany? Daniella, for pity’s sake, what are you staring at?”

“I wasn’t staring,” Dany answered quickly, folding the chapbook and stuffing it into her pocket. “I was thinking. Mrs. Yothers, you just might be right. Mari, shall we go? Thank you so much, and I’m certain Lady Cockermouth will return in the next week or less to order at least another half dozen gowns, four of them for me, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m what?” But even Marietta wasn’t that thick. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. And bonnets. And...and scarves. I do favor scarves. You know, the sheer flowy ones. And...and...”

A young boy hastened to open the door to the street for them, and Dany took her sister by the elbow, ready to pull her out of the shop if necessary before she bankrupted the earl. “Mrs. Yothers understands, don’t you, Mrs. Yothers, and is terribly appreciative of your custom?”

The seamstress blushed, and bobbed several quick curtsies. “I do indeed, miss. As my son says, mum’s the word.”

“Thank you. Mari, we should be going now.”

“We should have gone long since,” her sister pointed out as her lady’s maid rose from a bench outside the shop and fell into place three paces behind them. “We shouldn’t have come at all, not in the delicate state I’m in, and certainly I shouldn’t have dragged your flapping mouth along with me. Now look where I am—beholden to Mrs. Yothers.”

“She’ll be worth every penny if she’s right, and she doesn’t really know anything. She was being nice mostly because you’re pregnant.”

“I am not—oh, the devil with it. Tell me what’s going on in your mind, Dany, even though I’m not going to like it, nor will I approve. Mama placed you in my hands, remember.”

“The answer’s obvious, Mari. You can’t fix what’s wrong, and heaven knows I have no idea how to fix what’s wrong. But a hero? Morally upright, generous of heart and spirit, wonderfully hand—handy. I think we should apply to him for his assistance.”

“Don’t even think such a thing,” Marietta said, her voice trembling. “The poor man is absolutely besieged with all matter of ladies of the ton. Young, old, eligible misses and their mamas, married women—they’re after him day and night. Oliver told me the man had to flee London, in fact, to get away from their flirtatious entreaties and embarrassing importunities. Now he’s back, according to Mrs. Yothers, and I’m certain the ladies are making utter fools of themselves yet again. I couldn’t possibly be so bold.”

And there was the smile that had launched a thousand nervous tremors within her family. “That’s all right, Mari, because I could. In fact, I’m quite looking forward to it.”

“Dany, you wouldn’t dare! Oh, what am I saying? Of course you’d dare. But you cannot, Daniella. You simply cannot!”

“Why? At least I’d know his name, which is more than you took the time to find out when you were punishing Oliver with your unknown lothario, offering up your reputation to be shredded—and even signing your name to those dangerous notes. You couldn’t have scratched ‘Your Beloved Snookums’ or some such equally cloying and anonymous?”

“That would have been silly. He already knew my name.”

“Exactly. You didn’t have to sign your notes at all. Oh, don’t start crying again. I’m merely pointing out the obvious. Now let me think more about how I’m going to approach your hero.”

“The baron is not my hero, and you are definitely not going to attempt to run him to ground like some fox. I can’t let you do it. I’ll say it again. Mama sent you here to practice for the spring Season. I’m to tutor you, train you, set a good example for you.”

“And you’re doing a whacking great job of that so far,” Dany said, grinning. “Rule number one. I now know, as if I didn’t before, never to exchange silly letters with unknown men.”

Marietta probably hadn’t pouted so forcefully since she was twelve. “One mistake. I made one mostly innocent mistake.”

“And Oliver deserves half the blame for that. Possibly more, as there was jewelry involved. I remember. See? Lesson two, learned. If jewelry is involved, there may be exceptions to rule number one.”

“You’re being facetious.”

“And enjoying myself mightily. And more than slightly excited, I’ll admit that as well, considering I’d come to town believing I would be bored spitless. How do you propose we go at this, Mari? If we knew the baron’s direction, I could simply pen him a formal note, asking him to meet with me on an urgent personal matter involving an innocent woman’s virtue. Or do you think my chances would be better if I approach him in public, perhaps at the theater or one of the parties we’re committed to this week?”

She reached into her pocket and withdrew the chapbook. Truly, she could stare at the print for hours, just to look into those green eyes. “I believe I’d recognize him if I could somehow manage to casually bump into— Oh!”

CHAPTER THREE

“OH, FOR THE love of...” Baron Cooper Townsend instinctively grabbed the young woman by the shoulders. He’d been watching her, the way she was clinging to her companion’s arm as they proceeded along the flagway, the two of them chattering like magpies, definitely not looking where they were headed.

He believed the taller one to be the Countess of Cockermouth, although he couldn’t be certain. Besides, it was the other young lady who somehow seemed to demand his attention, simply because she existed.

And then she’d apparently tripped and all but propelled herself into his arms.

“My, my, Coop, look what you found,” his friend Darby teased, never one to fail to see the amusement in most any situation. “Or is that look what found you? I’ve lost count—is that four? Two on the way down, and now two coming back? Alas, our English misses seem sadly lacking in imagination, as well as balance.”

Cooper ignored the man, concentrating on the small, upturned face and the pair of huge indigo eyes looking up into his. They had to be the most unusual and intriguing eyes he’d ever seen; they all but swallowed him up, leaving him shocked and nearly breathless.

This did not please Baron Townsend. Levelheaded Baron Townsend. Wasn’t his world topsy-turvy enough, without adding unexpected attraction to his budget of woes?

Still, he watched, fascinated, as those eyes, like a mirror into her soul, told him her every thought, each rapidly transitioning emotion. Wide-eyed shock. Embarrassed innocence. Questioning. Recognition. Amusement, almost as if she was laughing at their situation, perhaps even at him. No, that couldn’t be possible.

“I didn’t mean that quite so literally, but how very convenient,” she said as if to herself, and her smile almost physically set him back on his heels. Damn, it had been amusement he’d seen, and it definitely was at his expense.

Wonderful. It wasn’t enough that they chased him. Did this one have to find the pursuit so amusing?

“Are you all right, miss?” he asked tightly, still lightly holding her upper arms, because that seemed to be his required opening line in these tiring encounters. “Perhaps you’ve twisted your ankle and require my assistance?”

“I seem to have tripped over an uneven brick. How careless of me, not to watch where I’m stepping. No, I don’t think I’m injured,” she said, and her voice, rather low and husky for such a small thing, surprised and further intrigued him, much against his will. “Not precisely at any rate. But if you’d be so kind as to support me over to that bench?”

Those eyes, that voice, the unique color of the little bit of her hair he could see, the alabaster skin set against those eyes and a fetchingly curved pink mouth. So much danger in such a small package.

You said hello, Coop, he reminded himself. Now say goodbye.

“I don’t think so. Why don’t you hop?” he heard himself say, and let her go.

And damn if she didn’t immediately being listing to one side, so that he was forced to swoop her up into his arms before she could collapse on the flagway.

“Why didn’t you tell me you hurt your ankle?” he demanded as he carried her over to the bench outside a milliner’s shop, her companion right behind him asking, “Dany, are you all right?”

“I told you I wasn’t injured, not precisely. I asked for your assistance, remember? I seem to have lost the heel to my shoe, see?” The beauty incongruously named Dany raised her right leg to display the damaged shoe (and give him a brief but delightful sight of her shapely ankle). She looked up at him, understanding rising in her eyes even as the sun rises at dawn. “You didn’t believe me. Are you often accosted in the street by admiring and hopeful females, my lord Townsend?”

Coop straightened. “So you do know who I am?”

“And you said it wasn’t a good likeness,” Darby said, holding out a copy of the damned Volume One. “This fell out of the young lady’s hand as you performed your less than impressive imitation of Sir Galahad to the rescue.”

“Give that back,” Dany demanded, holding out her hand. “I’ve yet to read it.”

“And that’s how it will remain, unread,” Coop said. “Put that in your pocket, if you please.”

“Excuse me,” the older of the two women said imperiously, inserting her body between that of Coop and Dany. “I don’t know who you gentlemen are, but you would both please me very much by taking yourselves off now so that I may attend to my sister.”

“You hear that?” Darby clapped Coop on his back. “The hero of Quatre Bras and all points west has just been dismissed. How lowering.”

Coop took a step back and bowed. “A thousand pardons, ladies. We’ll be on our way. But first, if I may be so bold as to ask we exchange introductions? I believe you might be Oliver’s countess. My friend here is the viscount Nailbourne, and I am...”

“He’s Baron Cooper McGinley Townsend, Mari, hero, as if you didn’t know, or would if you’d lower your chin enough to be able to look at him. Just the man we were talking about before I so providentially tripped and landed in his arms. Twice.”

“Dany!”

The countess sat down beside her sister all at once, rather as if someone had pushed her onto the bench.

Dany looked up at Coop, those huge eyes of hers filled with amusement and obvious mischief. “While my sister plots ways to gag me and have me sent back to the country, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Daniella Foster, here in London, according to my fond papa, to obtain a little town polish before I’m officially sicced on Society in the spring. And sadly failing to acquire any, if my sister’s forlorn sighs mean anything. I’ve been looking for you, Your Lordship. It would appear my sister needs a hero.”

“I’m not looking for...” the countess began, but then subsided.

Dany got to her feet, Darby stepping forward to assist her, moving faster than Coop, who was still repeating her outlandish words in his head. This left him to hold out his arm to the countess, who ignored the gesture, instead grabbing on to her maid in a near-death grip.

When he did open his mouth, it was to hear himself solemnly pronounce as he bowed to the countess, “My lady, I am of course your servant,” as if he was penning his own silly chapter in Volume Three. Apparently he’d lost half his mind in the past few minutes. And here he’d always thought it was only other men who made cakes out of themselves at the bat of an eyelash.

Just then a town coach bearing the Cockermouth crest on its door pulled to the curb. A liveried groom hopped down from the bench to open said door and let down the stairs.

And none too soon, Coop realized as the maid assisted the countess to the equipage, before I shove my other foot in my mouth and volunteer Darby’s assistance, as well.

But it was already too late.

“Miss Foster, although there have been no written reports of my derring-do, I should be honored to likewise offer my assistance,” Darby said, smiling at his friend. “Isn’t that right, Baron? Two heads always being better than one when it comes to this heroing business.”

“Why, thank you, my lord,” she responded even as she half hopped toward the coach with his support. “Number Eleven Portman Square in an hour? Although I doubt the countess will join us. She’s found herself in a rather delicate situation.”

The countess’s voice rang out from the coach. “I am not in a delicate...! Daniella, get in this coach. At once!”

The two gentlemen watched as the coachman drove off.

“Our Miss Foster is going to get an earful all the way back to Portman Square,” Darby said once they turned to continue their walk. “And it won’t be her first, I’d imagine. What an odd little creature. Not a drop of guile anywhere—honest, forthright and apparently amused even as she clearly wants to help the countess. Society will have her for lunch, you know, even here, in the Little Season.”

“Or she’ll have all of Society at her feet,” Coop countered, realizing he was none too happy with his conclusion. “The ton has often embraced the eccentric, and she certainly at least qualifies as an Original.”

“Oh, she’s more than that, old friend. I’ve just realized she managed to remove the chapbook from my pocket.”

“She what?” Coop turned to look at the flagway, hoping the chapbook had simply fallen to the ground once more. It wasn’t there, just the broken heel of Dany’s right shoe, which he quickly retrieved. “My God. Forward, cheeky and a pickpocket. What do you think we’ve gotten ourselves into, Darby? I won’t help with an elopement, and neither will you, if that’s what this is about. Oliver’s a friend.”

“And as our friend, we have offered our services to his wife, or at least to find out what’s going on so that we might warn him. It’s probably all a tempest in a teapot, anyway, knowing women, and easily put to rights, whatever her problem. If nothing else, it should serve to take your mind off your blackmailer for a few hours.”

Coop frowned. “Nothing will take my mind off the bastard,” he said, but as they wisely hailed a hackney to take them back to the Pulteney for what Darby had called “a wash and a brush-up,” it was thoughts of Daniella Foster that most occupied his mind.

He had originally come back to London to find himself a wife, there was that.

But surely not someone like Daniella Foster; he was too levelheaded to go that particular route, no matter how great the initial attraction. Wasn’t it enough his mother was also more than an Original?

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS QUIET in the Portman Square drawing room now that the countess had retired to her bedchamber, led there by the promise of tea and freshly baked lemon cakes. She’d run out of complaints and threats, anyway, emptied her budget of Things Ladies of Good Breeding Do Not Say or Do and thrown up her hands in defeat when her sister grinned and asked, “So, are you breeding, Mari? You’ve been rather overset lately. Perhaps you haven’t been counting?”

Having successfully routed her sister at last, Dany looked across the room, to where her maid, Emmaline, had been told to take up residence on a chair positioned close by a front-facing window. There were two reasons for that. One, Emmaline would be able to watch out the window to alert her mistress when one of the carriages stopped in front of Number Eleven, and two, the carriage traffic would help muffle voices while Dany and the gentlemen spoke.

Oh, and a third: young unmarried ladies needs must be chaperoned at all times or else the entire world just might disintegrate into cinders, or some such calamity. Of course, were that true, Dany would have destroyed the world at least six times over by now. And that was just this year.

In any event, Emmaline was discreet. She’d kept many a secret for Dany over the years, either out of affection or because she’d be sacked on the spot for having allowed any of her mistress’s daring exploits, many of which had necessarily included her cooperation. Dany preferred to believe it was affection.

She glanced at the mantel clock, mentally calculating the time between their departure from Bond Street and now, and pulled the chapbook from her pocket. The thing was thin of pages, no more than thirty at the most, quite shopworn, and with luck she could finish it before the hero and his viscount friend arrived.

But first she’d look at the cover again. The baron truly owned one of the most pleasing collections of features she’d ever seen gathered together all in one place. Hair so thick and blond that it would have to be the envy of all the many women who both dyed their locks and supplemented them with itchy bunches of wool to help conceal the thin patches.

Not that Dany had that problem. When it came to her own hair, the true bane of her existence was its color. Not red, not chestnut, not even orange, thank God and all the little fishies. Her mother (believing herself to be out of her younger daughter’s hearing), had once described the curious mix of red and gold as trashy, the sort of hair that couldn’t possibly come from nature, and was favored by loose women who flaunt their bosoms and kick up their skirts to expose their ankles in the chorus in order to delight the randy young gentlemen in the pit at Covent Garden.

Although sometimes Dany thought that might not exactly be considered a bane on her existence, as at least the kicking up of her heels sounded rather fun. To date, the only thing growing up had proved to Dany was that the mere passing of years could turn a female’s life into one long, boring existence, with nothing to look forward to but purple turbans.

She’d marry somewhere in between some sort of hopeful kicking up of her heels and the turbans, she supposed, although she was in no hurry to please her parents by accepting the first gentleman willing to take her off their hands. She hoped for at least two Seasons before anyone was that brave, anyway.

But on to the baron’s eyes. The engraver had been a tad too generous with the green, but by and large, they were the most compelling eyes Dany had seen outside of her childhood pet beagle, which somehow had managed one blue and one brown eye. And they were sweet, and sympathetic, just like her puppy’s eyes when he wanted to convince her he deserved a treat. Winsome, yet wise, and not a stranger to humor.

Yes, she really did admire the baron’s eyes. They were nearly as fascinating as her own, she thought immodestly—she would have said truthfully—which seemed to change color with her mood or what she wore. Not that she was in any great hurry to be limited to dowager purple.

His nose definitely surpassed hers. She liked the small bump in it just below the bridge, which kept him from being too pretty. Hers was straight, perhaps a bit pert. In short, it was simply a nose. It served its purpose but would never garner any accolades.

And then there was his mouth. Oh, my, yes, his mouth. Her father had no upper lip, none at all, as if he’d been hiding behind a door when they were handed out. The baron’s upper lip was generously formed, and nicely peaked into the bargain, and his bottom lip full, just pronounced enough that there was a hint of shadow beneath it.

He didn’t favor side-whiskers, for which she was grateful, seeing that her brother, Dexter, he of the madly curling black hair, had taken to wearing his long enough to clump around the bottom of his ears, making him look rather like a poodle.

And he was tall—the baron, that is—so that the top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulders. Ordinarily that would annoy her. She’d always thought she would be attracted to shorter men, so that she didn’t feel overpowered. But she didn’t feel small or powerless beside the baron. She felt...protected. Most especially when he had caught her as she fell and lifted her high in his arms. It had been quite the extraordinary experience.

“I suppose I can’t trip again, because that would be too obvious. Pity,” she said to herself, opening the chapbook. It was time to stop thinking and start reading. Time to see just what sort of hero the baron was, if he was a hero at all. She hoped at least part of the story would turn out to be real.

She had only two pages to go when the mantel clock struck the hour of one, but she pressed on, determined to finish.

The April day was made for Pic-a-nicks beneath the Budding trees, a day for Good Food, Fine Wine and Lovers. Instead, it was a Day for Killing and Dying, and by evening the green field would Run Red with blood and gore. The English soldiers looked out across the field, wondering if they would by lying there within the next few hours, Broken in body and Food only for the worms. This was not their Choice—it was their Duty—and they would Fight to the Death for both King and Country, for the Little Corporal had broken free of his prison and had marched nearly into Brussels, threatening the Entire World once again with his Insane Ambition.

The troops had hoped to reach the High Ground above them, and from there Defend their Position if an attack should come. But they’d been Too Late, and when a scout reported seeing French troops Advancing Toward Them, there’d been no choice but to take refuge in the trees at the Bottom of the hill, hoping the French would not Detect them until they’d come too far down the hill to Retreat without Tripping over one another.

But something was wrong. The Fates had placed a low Stone Wall and the Ruins of an old Kiln halfway up to the top of the hill. Several Small Figures huddled there inside the Kiln, at least a half dozen Children and a heavily veiled Lady who could be their nurse or their mother. Whether they hid from the English or the French could not be known. Either way, they were about to be Caught smack in the middle of a Battle.

It was the Worst of all possible Nightmares. How could the English fire, knowing the Children and a Frail Female were between them and the French? No man of merit would Dare such a thing. Even the officers had sent Whispered Commands down the line. Keep your positions! Hold your fire!

But one Brave Man broke ranks, tossing away his rifle and uniform cap, crouching nearly in half as he ran Up the Hill without regard to his own safety. Every last man held his breath as Captain Cooper McGinley Townsend seemed to be Arguing with the woman, convincing her to Leave her ill-chosen safe harbor.

And still the Enemy advanced. It was now possible to see the distinctive Brass Eagle topping a tall staff, and the French Colors flapping in the breeze. Their Full Force would crest the hill in Mere Seconds, hopefully stop to assay the land below. Could they See beyond the wall? Would the sunlit blaze of the captain’s Distinctive Blond Mane catch the sunlight and give away his Position?

With one breath, one silent collective thought, the troops prayed: Run! Run now, before it’s Disaster for all of us!

And run he did. Gathering the youngest against his chest even as he Threw the protesting woman over his shoulder, he motioned for the other children to Run on Ahead as he Raced across the field, out from behind the Fragile Safety of the Broken stone wall, and toward the trees, Throwing Himself and His Precious Burdens into concealment mere seconds before the first horse and rider could be seen Cresting the Hilltop.

The English General dismounted and began walking the Line. “Now that’s how to disobey orders, hmm? Bloody well done, Townsend. Today, gentlemen, we have witnessed the birth of a Hero. Now, what say we rid the World of a few of these hopping frogs, hmm? They’ll send Infantry first. Ah, and here they come a-marching, all smug and unsuspecting. Steady, men. Hold...hold...hold. First rank, Forward if you please. Kneel. Raise your weapons. Hold. Hold. Fire!”

Just as it was Coming on to Dusk, our Hero strode into the camp, bloodied but not bowed, the rescued Innocents, orphans all, skipping merrily behind him, a sweet, towheaded cherub no more than three perched on his Strong Shoulders, waving his small cap in Victory, but with the heavily veiled Lady Curiously Absent.

Huzzah! the assembled soldiers cried out, raising their rifles in Salute after Salute, for they had lost many Brave Men that day and the sight of the Children once again firmed their resolve to Fight On. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

The women of the camp Raced forward, gathering the Children against their skirts and hustling them off to the cook tents to be fed, and our brave Captain was swiftly surrounded by his soldiers in arms, All of Them wishing to pat his back, shake his hand.

Huzzah! Huzzah! May the whole world Rejoice in such Modest Bravery!

...and thus, Dear Readers, is how the Baron Cooper McGinley Townsend, Hero, came to be.

There is just a bit More before we term this story Told, although it will not, alas, Satisfy the Curious among Us.

A bold Question from one of his acquaintance about the Scratches on his cheek, followed by the Assumption as to how they’d gotten there, elicited a Warning Green Flash from Townsend’s narrowed eyes before he smiled and Explained that a Holy Nun had been taking the Children to her convent for Safekeeping, but had gladly turned them over since food at the convent was limited.

A search of the area days after Bonaparte’s final defeat elicited No Nunnery in the area. There was, however, Dear Readers, a lovely Country Cottage, clearly quite hastily Abandoned, and a single remaining caretaker who Confirmed that a young woman, always Heavily Veiled, had been in Residence for some Weeks before rushing off, leaving behind nothing more than a Curious Signet Ring as payment, a ring now in the Possession of one whose Discretion can always be Trusted.

But not to fret, Loyal Readers, for our hero’s Daring Adventures do not end with this Single tale of bravery. Upon his return to our faire isle, now Baron Cooper McGinley Townsend, at the Behest of the Crown, has continued his Deeds of Bravery and Rescue, personally preserving the Honor of several damsels in Mortal Danger of their Virtue even while the Mystery persists—who is the Veiled Lady?

Dany let out a breath, not realizing she’d been holding it, and closed the chapbook. “A veiled lady? What a hum,” she said, for her interest lay more in the feat of derring-do than in anything so obviously fictitious as a veiled lady. And a signet ring, no less, also thrown into the mix, a perfect clue for someone with the interest to pursue its origin. But she supposed every story must have a lady in it somewhere, preferably veiled or beautiful or both, or else the gentlemen wouldn’t bother racking their brains and running their fingers beneath line after line to keep their place in order to not miss a word. Men were such children. And women, sadly, were possibly even worse, seeing themselves in the role of the rescued.

“Curricle, Miss Dany.”

With one last quick look at the cover of the chapbook—had she considered his wonderfully high, strong cheekbones in her initial inventory?—Dany quickly slipped it down behind the cushions of the overstuffed couch and ran her hands over her hair, bodice and skirts, just to be sure everything was still where it had been when she’d first arranged herself so carefully in anticipation of her guests.

She pressed a hand to her bosom once more, clearing her throat as daintily as possible, hoping the action might help regulate the rather rapid beating of her heart, and then lifted her chin, directing her gaze toward the doorway.

But no! She couldn’t look as if she’d been just sitting here, waiting on the man. Certainly a hero was already full enough of himself without thinking she’d been counting the minutes until his arrival. She shot to her feet as she heard Timmerly greet the visitors and direct them toward the stairs, looking about frantically for something she could be doing when the butler announced him.

Propping herself against the mantel was ludicrous, and reserved for gentlemen at any rate, not to mention the fact that she’d practically have to raise her bent arm above her head in order to rest her elbow on the thing. She spied her sister’s knitting basket and dismissed it in the same heartbeat. She’d rather be boiled in oil than found knitting, for goodness’ sake.

What to do, what to—wait, the flowers! There must be five huge bouquets scattered about the room, each more lovely the other. How impressed the gentleman would be when he saw her handiwork. She raced to a round table holding a perfectly arranged bouquet and yanked four of the blooms from the porcelain vase. In an instant, three of them were on the tabletop, dripping water onto her skirt, and one was in her hand as she posed in the motion of sliding it in with its fellow blooms.

“Ah, gentlemen,” she cooed, turning her head ever so slightly as Timmerly announced them, inwardly cursing the viscount for keeping good his promise to lend his help. She’d really rather he’d taken himself off somewhere, to amuse himself at somebody else’s expense. “How good of you to come. Timmerly, refreshments if you please.”

“Yes, Miss Dany,” the butler scolded, bowing. “But if you were to leave off playing with the posies, the countess would be that pleased. It took her ladyship and Mrs. Timmerly a good hour to arrange them this morning.”

The viscount’s bark of laughter accompanied the high-nosed butler’s exit from the drawing room, leaving Dany with nothing to do but pick up the other blooms and jam them back into the vase. Butlers could be such prunes.

“I suppose I’m caught out,” she recovered swiftly, wiping her damp hands against each other as she returned to the couch. “I was hoping to look accomplished, but the truth is, I have very few skills welcomed in polite company. Please, gentlemen, be seated.”

And the maddening viscount was at it again: “Such as picking pockets?”

She turned to the baron, who was looking, or so she hoped, at least slightly amused. Therefore, she would be amused. “Yes, my lords, although I’d rather call it retrieving what’s mine. I’ve now read it cover to cover, of course. How much is truth, sir, and how much could be termed a bag of moonshine? As for the signet ring, the tantalizing clue that just happened to be left behind to be found by your anonymous biographer? I would think both it and the veiled lady were only mentioned to encourage purchase of Volume Two. Do you by chance have a copy in your possession, or know where I might purchase one?”

The handsome, famous Cooper McGinley Townsend, who had been silent until now, his elbow propped on one arm of the chair, his chin in his hand, ignored the question to ask, “Where is the countess? I would have thought she’d had you bound and gagged and locked up in the nursery by now.”

“Oh, ouch,” the viscount said, wincing rather comically. “Did that hurt, Miss Foster? I rather think it didn’t, not from the width of that smile. We can safely ignore him, you know. He’s been locked in an unpleasant mood all day. Not that he’s ever particularly jolly, being by nature a calm, sensible, nearly boring man. My friends and I tolerate him because of his good heart, you understand. Plus, he’s managed to rescue us from most of our scrapes since our boyhoods with his good common sense. Haven’t you, Coop?”

Dany held her smile, but her heart had never been in it, so that her cheeks were beginning to ache. “The trials and tribulations of being a hero must weigh heavily.” She looked almost boldly into those suddenly dark green eyes. She felt he could look straight through her, and it was unnerving, if also faintly delicious. “I feel absolutely terrible, an encroaching beast and any other vile thing you can think of, but I fear I must hold you to your word. My sister truly does need a hero. She’s in a terrible pickle.”

Cooper got to his feet. “Yes, of course. I’m afraid the viscount is correct. My behavior, both now and on Bond Street, has been beyond reprehensible and far from anyone’s fault save my own ill humor.” He then proceeded to bow from the waist, rather elegantly, and add, “How may I make it up to you, Miss Foster?”

Dany knew herself to be many things, but a lack of backbone (or a mouth) had never been a problem. “A drive in Hyde Park today at five wouldn’t come amiss. Appearing with the hero would probably do my reputation no end of good, which should help placate my sister, who believes I’m nearly past saving even now. My lord Nailbourne? Laughing again? You are easily amused, aren’t you? Have you ever considered trotting into Society with a monkey on a chain? You could wear matching hats.”

Now, for the first time, Dany heard the baron’s laughter, clear and full and wonderfully charming. Even better, he laughed with his entire body—his smile wide, the tanned skin around his eyes crinkling, his shoulders shaking as he showed his pleasure.

“Miss Foster,” he said as he seated himself once more, this time with his legs slightly spread, and resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned toward her, “I would be delighted. But on the contrary, being seen with you will do my reputation no end of good, as I do believe you are going to take the Little Season by storm.”

Now Dany leaned forward, feeling more comfortable with each passing moment. “Now you see, that’s just what I said,” she told him earnestly. “Mari isn’t quite so sure, and I know my mother is sitting in her private parlor at home even now, making rash promises to our Lord if He will only keep me mute until some poor fool decides he can’t live without red-haired children.”

“Miss Foster, you are too candid by half. I think I adore you,” Lord Nailbourne interjected.

“Stifle yourself, Darby,” the baron warned quietly. “Ignore him, Miss Foster. He’s much more used to being the one whose every word should be considered a masterpiece of dry humor.”

“Wry humor,” the viscount corrected. “I am an observer, Miss Foster, and do occasionally delight in sharing those observations.”

“I see. And what are your observations of the situation as it stands at this time, my lord? With the three of us here, that is.”

Darby looked at his friend for a long moment, and then shook his head. “No, not today. I think I’ll wait. It might be safer.” He then got to his feet just as Timmerly entered the room with the teapot and some cakes. “I believe I now should recall that I have an appointment with my tailor. Or perhaps with my vintner. In any case, Miss Foster, I’m going to toddle off and leave the two of you to discuss her ladyship’s dilemma without me in the way. Coop, you can fill me in later if it turns out my earlier offer of assistance remains necessary.”

“Coward,” Coop murmured as the viscount preceded Timmerly out of the room. Then he turned back to Dany, who was hopefully striking her most innocent pose. One, sadly, she had never quite mastered.

“I know you’re young, and at least marginally innocent in the ways of the world, but I feel compelled to ask—did you set out deliberately to roust my good friend from the premises?”

Dany sat back against the cushions, one hand to her bosom. “Me? Do something as horridly underhanded as to all but point out that he wasn’t necessary at the moment?” She laid her hands in her lap. “Yes, of course. My sister made me promise not to share her humiliation with the viscount.”

“You could have asked him to leave.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now that, my lord, would have been impolite. Shall I pour?”

“Not for me, thank you, as I won’t be lingering much longer. You know what you are, Miss Foster? You’re the sister I’m so delighted my mother never birthed.”

Dany had been reaching for the silver teapot, but withdrew her hand, as she’d never played hostess before and she was more than a tad worried her hand might shake, giving away her true feelings now that she was all but alone with the baron (Emmaline’s snores were soft, but audible). She would have felt insulted, if not for the smile on the baron’s face. “My sister’s feelings, at least very nearly so. She has said she’d often wished I were the sister my parents didn’t have, or words to that effect. Of course, she says much the same about Dexter, our brother. But she doesn’t mean it.”

“Then I suppose I don’t, either. In fact, I’m going to convince myself you’re no more than a younger sister brimming over with good intentions. Can I safely do that, Miss Foster?”

“Oh, yes, yes. That’s exactly what I am. Not that I’m not madder than a hatter that she managed to get herself into such a predicament. Really. It sounds much more like something I would have done—at least our mother would say so. Except that I know I’m possibly outrageous at times, even a sad trial, but I’m not a complete looby.”

“My friend Oliver married a looby? You must understand that, as much as I wish to be of assistance to his wife, I refuse to do anything that would harm him.”

“Your friend Oliver married a smile as sweet as sugar, a pair of soulful blue eyes and a slim soft body he was attracted to as bees are to honey, and then found himself bracketed to a romantic ninny who believes she should continue to be courted day in and day out for the rest of their lives. I’ve told her, that sort of thing...wears off after a few years, and you become comfortable with each other, as our parents have done. But she doesn’t believe that. Mari...well, Mari needs attention. And...and drama.”

“Which the earl is no longer supplying? You’re putting me to the blush, Miss Foster.”

Dany shrugged her slim shoulders. This explaining business was more difficult than she had imagined. “As I’m not privy to their private lives, I cannot answer that, and you, my lord, should never have asked the question. I can only tell you that he forgot her birthday before heading north with his chums to hook salmon or shoot winged things, which apparently can only be considered a declaration of his disenchantment with his wife.”

Coop scratched at a spot just behind his left ear. “I should probably add this to the list I’ve been keeping on the perils of matrimony.”

“You keep a list? Do you have another on the benefits of the wedded state?”

“No, but if I ever think of anything I’ll be sure to write it down. Miss Foster, can we please get to the point? Your sister revenged herself on Oliver, didn’t she? What did she do? And please don’t tell me she took a lover, because I don’t have the faintest idea how to rescue her from anything like that, unless you expect me to kill somebody for her. Which I won’t.”

“Ah, such a sad disappointment you are, my lord. So it would be asking too much to have you insult the man’s ancestors or some such thing, then demand pistols at dawn? As a hero, I’ll assume you’re a fairly good shot, so it wouldn’t present too much of a problem for you.”

“And then I’d escape to the continent for the remainder of my days because duels are outlawed and I’d be hanged if I stayed?”

“Yes, I suppose that is too much to ask. What are you prepared to do?”

“Since I don’t know the precise nature of the problem, nothing. Again, I remind you, Oliver is a friend.”

“I was avoiding the details,” Dany told him, feeling fairly certain telling him the truth—that she was thoroughly enjoying their nonsense exchanges—would only encourage more, and she was having enough difficulty not melting each time she looked in his amused green eyes.

“Avoid them no longer, Miss Foster. Has the countess taken a lover she now wishes would disappear, preferably without a trace?”

Dany shook her head. “Nearly as bad, but not so dire as to contemplate a permanent solution meted out on the man. She began a correspondence with—and I say this with as much disgust as the words engender—a secret admirer.”

Now it seemed to be the baron’s turn to shrug his shoulders. “Is that all? I agree with you. If we were to line up the married ladies of the ton who have exchanged silly correspondence with supposed secret admirers, they’d probably stretch from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Twice. Simply tell the countess to stop fretting. I’m certain Oliver will understand, although why she’d tell him I have no idea.”

“If only it were that easy, my lord, we would not be having this conversation. My sister penned her innermost thoughts to the man, her complaints and misgivings about the beastly, horridly unromantic, probably philandering Oliver, who of course broke her heart into tiny pieces before going off with his male friends to do Lord only knows what. She bared her heart, my lord, her overwrought, melodramatic soul. And everything you can think of she should never have written.”

The baron slightly adjusted his posture. His lean cheeks colored slightly, which was so adorable, especially in a hero. “Hmm. Would this confession expand to include, um, matters of...of marital intimacy? Please say no,” he added quickly.

Even Dany knew she also should be blushing at this point. But perhaps because this all was rather old news to her, or in the light of her never experiencing “marital intimacy” and therefore not approaching the subject with the amount of gravitas she otherwise might, she answered in her usual amused way. “Or the sad lack thereof, my lord?”

“Not good, not good,” he said nearly under his breath.

“Why?”

“Why?” He looked at her directly now. “Because no man would ever wish his manhood questioned, that’s why. Who’s this secret admirer?”

Dany busied herself with a lemon square, shoving a bite in her mouth and mumbling around it, hoping not to be heard, but knowing she had to tell him the truth. “And therein, my lord, lies the rub. She’s never so much as met the man, or if she did, she didn’t know he and her admirer are one and the same. It’s beyond silly, actually, although she’s convinced Oliver won’t see the humor I see in the thing. To put it briefly, my lord—we don’t know.”

“She—she doesn’t know? For the love of heaven, Miss Foster, how could she not know the name of her secret admir— No, don’t answer that. Because then he wouldn’t be secret, would he? Women, you’re all to let in the attic, aren’t you?”

Dany felt it necessary to defend her gender, and perhaps even her sister in particular. “Now I may call you out. Women, by and large, are ten times more sensible than men. We wouldn’t have stupid wars, for one thing. Even my sister isn’t usually so empty-headed, if that’s what ‘to let in the attic’ means. She’s simply emotional at the moment. My God! I wonder if Mrs. Yothers was right, and she is— No, she’d know that, wouldn’t she? She’d have to know that, for pity’s sake.”

The baron got to his feet, beginning to pace. “When you’re done debating yourself, Miss Foster, perhaps we can return to this matter of the unknown secret admirer?”

Dany put down the remainder of the lemon square, her very favorite, her appetite having disappeared, perhaps forever. “The dress shop owner believes the countess is...is increasing.” She looked up at Cooper, who was now standing stock-still. “A seamstress can’t know more than the person in question, could she?”

“You’re asking me?”

“No, probably not. You’re not as calm and collected as I would have imagined a hero would be, you know.”

“I’m not a hero, damn it!” He held up his hands. “I beg your pardon, Miss Foster. But I’m not a hero. Anything you read in that god-awful chapbook was made up out of whole cloth.”

Well, wasn’t that disappointing. “None of it? You didn’t rescue any children?”

He tipped his head to one side for a moment. “Well, that’s true. But I didn’t plan it. It...it just happened. One minute I was standing there with everyone else, and the next I was tossing down my rifle and running. It seemed like the thing to do. And what does any of that matter?”

“I imagine it matters to the children you saved from being trampled or shot, the Englishmen who were then free to defend themselves from a French slaughter. Oh, and to the veiled lady. Was there a veiled lady?”

“A holy nun. A veiled nun, yes.”

“Now you’re lying,” she said, not knowing why she felt so certain, but certain nonetheless. “You’re protecting her, whoever she is. That’s why she disappeared. You took her somewhere safe, and only then returned to the camp, hours after the battle. Even now, you protect her. She must be very important to someone.”

His green eyes flashed, his eyelids narrowed—just the way his unknown biographer had written. “I don’t like you, Miss Foster.”

“That’s understandable. I’ve rather bullied my way into your life, haven’t I? I have no shame in that, however, as my sister desperately needs a hero, unwilling hero or not,” she told him brightly. “Inconveniently for you, you’re a man of your word, because you’re still here, when a lesser man would have broken down the earl’s front door in his haste to be gone. He knows who she is, naturally.”

“What?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. We’re back to my sister and her secret admirer. He knows her because the notes he wrote were delivered here. That’s only sensible. But he also knows her because she foolishly signed her name to her notes. Probably with a flourish, and including her title. Mari can be a bit of a twit.”

“All right, I think I finally understand. Your sister wants me to discover the identity of her anonymous admirer in order to have her notes returned to her. And how am I supposed to go about that, Miss Foster? Does your sister by chance keep a list of her admirers, as a sort of starting point for me, you understand?”

“No, and it’s not that simple. I can show you the letters he wrote to her, I suppose. There may be a hint or two there I’ve overlooked. But it’s his final missive—or should I say almost final missive—that is causing all of this trouble.”

So saying, she reached into her pocket and drew out a folded note, handing it over to him.

He looked at it, almost as if he didn’t want to touch it, and then suddenly all but grabbed it from her. Opening it, he read aloud.

“Five hundred pounds or the next person to read your love notes will be your husband, just before the collection is published in a pamphlet entitled Confessions of a Society Matron Forced to Seek Solace in the Arms of Another, Rejected by Her Husband, Who Apparently Is Immune to Feminine Charms, Preferring the Company of Others of His Own Persuasion.

“Yes, this is blackmail, and I’m quite good at it. Your husband returns soon, my lady, and you have no time to dawdle. I will be in touch.”

“You can see he is fairly specific while remaining disturbingly vague. Mari has no idea how to produce five pounds without applying to her husband, let alone five hundred, but she’s fairly certain whatever this man is threatening will greatly upset Oliver.”

“Upset him? Miss Foster, you have no idea, thankfully. Son of a— When did this arrive?”

“A few days ago. Why? Oh, no, he has not contacted my sister again. Should we be looking for a discreet jeweler to buy some of Mari’s necklaces, or are you thinking this is an empty threat?”

“I don’t think the countess can assume it’s an empty threat, no. May I keep this? And do you have his other notes?”

Did he seem more interested now? Yes, he did. Perhaps it was the hero in him stepping to the fore. Or concerns for Oliver. It certainly couldn’t be anything else, could it?

Dany retrieved those from behind the cushions, cloyingly tied up with a pink ribbon, because Mari didn’t learn quickly, if she learned at all. She still probably harbored at least a slight hope that the blackmailer was only trying to attempt to get her to write to him again. Which she would only do over Dany’s dead body, and so she had informed the countess. Folding up notes and placing them in...

“Oh, you might want to know how they corresponded,” she said as the baron pocketed the notes. “The first was delivered by a maid who was handed the note and a copper piece on the street, with instructions for its delivery. I’ve questioned her, naturally. The man didn’t hand off the note himself, but used a young lad who then disappeared. The rest were exchanged by tucking the notes in a knothole in the third tree from the right behind the mansion. My bedchamber windows overlook the mews, and I’ve done my best for the past several nights to remain awake and watching, but am ashamed to admit I make a poor sentry. I’ve never lasted much beyond midnight before falling asleep at my post.”

He was looking at her oddly now, very nearly measuring her. What on earth was he thinking?

“No, I can’t do that. Even Darby isn’t that foolhardy.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing, Miss Foster. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”

“Only my thoughts on how to catch out the rotter so you can teach him a firm lesson. You will do that, correct, or what is the use of finally knowing who he is? So here’s the thing, my lord. He has to communicate with my sister again, correct? Threaten her with dire consequences and upset her again, then tell her where to place the money and all of that nonsense so that he can swoop down, masked and caped, and disappear with his ill-gotten lucre.”

“Read your share of penny dreadfuls, have you?”

“The blame isn’t on my head if Mama often forgets to lock them up in her desk. But I’m right, aren’t I? He wrote that he would be in touch. I doubt he’ll wait too long, don’t you? Why, he might even return tonight, to place another message in the tree. Which means you have to be in my bedchamber before midnight. It’s the best vantage point. I know that, because I’ve tried them all. There aren’t enough shrubs to constitute a concealed hidey-hole, the windows in the kitchens are barely aboveground and I could only look from my sister’s windows if I involved her, which I won’t. She would send me straight home if she knew I was making myself personally involved in her misadventure. I’d raise too much attention if I availed myself of the view from the servants’ quarters in the attics. Oh, and before you ask, the windows in Oliver’s study are stained glass, and impossible to see through.”

“You’ve put a good measure of thought into this, haven’t you?”

“I have. Which leaves your only good vantage point the windows in my bedchamber.” She smiled at him, knowing he was becoming more frustrated by the moment. “It’s a narrow house, my lord, for all its grandeur.”

“I already ruled that out, thank you.”

“You did? Oh, so that’s what you were muttering about. But you considered it, if only briefly. What turned you against the idea?”

“Why, Miss Foster, I have no idea. Unless I’m looking at her.”

Dany was young, but women are born old as the world in some areas. “Your notoriety seems to have gone to your head, my lord, as you grossly overestimate your appeal.”

“Wonderful. Now, mere aeons too late, you’ve decided to take umbrage. Did it not occur to you that you, Miss Foster, are grossly underestimating your charms?”

Now he’d done it, made her genuinely angry. And they’d been rather enjoying each other’s banter, she was certain of it. Being friendly, even chummy, as Dexter would say. “That isn’t funny. Nor is it flattering, if that’s what you were aiming for with that ridiculous statement. I’d considered us partners in this adven—this arrangement. I can be of help. I want to help. Mari is my sister, remember. I release you of your obligation. You may leave. Now.”

“Do you feel better now that you’ve climbed up on your high horse?” he asked, shaking his head as if looking down at his favorite hound, just to see that it had piddled on his boots. “And I’m not going anywhere. No, that’s not true. I am leaving now, but I’ll return at half past four, to take you for that drive in the park. Or did you forget that?”

Rats. She had forgotten. He was going to lend his consequence to her entry into the Little Season, especially since Mari had taken to her bed, vowing not to leave it again for the Remainder of Her Life. Who’s the looby now, Daniella Foster?

Sometimes it was wiser to bend, at least a little, in order to achieve one’s ends.

“Very well, my lord, I accept your apology.”

“I rather thought you would, even though I haven’t offered one. We may or may not have much more to speak about during our drive.”

“Really?”

He got to his feet. “Possibly. First, I’m going to consult the most unlikely physician anyone could imagine, and have him examine my brain. Until later, Miss Foster.”

Then he bowed over her hand—she’d think about her reaction to that slight intimacy later—and left her where she sat, probably wise not to attempt standing anytime soon.

CHAPTER FIVE

DARBY TRAVERS FINISHED his examination of the two notes, an exercise that hadn’t taken more than a minute at the outside, and placed them back on his friend’s desk. “You aren’t really applying to me for my one-eyed opinion, are you? My sole contribution, I imagine, is only to look aghast and exclaim, ‘Good God, man, the handwriting is one and the same!’”

“As is the phrasing, yes, thank you,” Coop said, still leaning against that same desk, a glass of wine dangling from his fingertips. “The bastard seems to have begun a cottage industry of blackmailing. I wonder how many others there are out there at the moment, suffering the same dilemma.”

“If he’s going after straying husbands and wives, my best guest would number in the hundreds. But then there’s you, which makes a case for the man’s diversity of ambition, and his, shall we say, growth in said ambition. Taking the time to both pen and publish two entire chapbooks for a mere ten thousand pounds? You may be his prize victim, the pinnacle of his nefarious career, if that flatters you at all, and I begin to think you’re also a bird he will pluck more than once if you let him. I wonder how long he’s been working at his trade.”

“You’re thinking of gifting him with a few pointers?” Coop picked up the note to the countess. “Five hundred pounds. I believe the countess has already considered selling some of her jewelry to pay him. The man isn’t stupid, demanding more than she could possibly manage to produce.”

“Not as much investment involved penning sappy, soppy letters to unhappy young matrons. I imagine he considers the amount a fair return on his efforts. No more than fifty pounds to blackmail our own Prinny, and even then he’d probably only receive our royal debtor’s scribbled vowels in return.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. I’m merely looking at the thing from our blackmailer’s point of view, and must applaud his thinking. Five pounds from a shoemaker who passes off inferior leathers by means of clever dyes. Ten pounds six from the seamstress who delivers gowns and picks up various little rewards from milady’s shelves and tucks them up in her sewing basket while inside the residence. That sort of thing could take considerable effort for small reward, but one has to begin somewhere, doesn’t one? Gain polish, slowly grow your profits and then move on to larger targets?”

“You speak of this as if you’re contemplating joining the man’s ranks.”

Darby grinned. “I join nobody, although I wonder why I never considered such a venture.”

“I hesitate to guess, but perhaps because you’re bloody rich as Croesus?”

“True enough. But the fact remains that there are few people who know more secrets than I do. Happily for the world, I am also a gentleman. Although I will say that if there’s any truth to the fellow’s veiled hint about your particular secret reaching all the way to the highest levels of the Crown, then either he’s more daring than even I would be, or he has access to some prodigiously important people. We’re looking to the ton for our blackmailer, Coop. You’ve figured that much on your own, I’m sure.”

Coop downed the remaining contents of his glass. “I have. I flirted momentarily with the idea that a well-placed secretary or servant could be privy to many secrets, but it would take an entire small army of coconspirators to engineer something on this grand a scale. If there is a grand scale, and the more I think, the more I believe this is not one ambitious man, acting alone.”

“There’s an entire other world moving about in Mayfair, one many of us are sadly unaware of, I agree. So many consider them invisible, not to mention deaf and dumb. Ladies’ maids, valets, tweenies quietly repairing the fire, footmen with large ears listening in foyers. But it would take someone to cultivate them, enlist them. The scope of such an enterprise, all the bits and pieces that make up the whole? I believe I’m feeling the headache coming on.”

“Granted, it makes sense to believe there is an organized gang wreaking havoc all across Mayfair. Or we’re wrong, and our blackmailer is just one person and his carefully selected targets.”

“Oh, but what are the odds of that? Only one blackmailer and these few carefully selected targets of yours, and two of them they just happen to bump into each other on Bond Street—literally—and end up sharing their common predicaments?”

“I didn’t share anything.”

“No, but you’ll have to at some point. For one, Miss Foster is far too clever to believe you’ll be hunting down this scoundrel with all speed and fervor strictly because you’re a hero. She took my measure within a heartbeat, much as it pains me to admit it, and found me both foolish and unnecessary.”

“Don’t go into a sulk. The countess doesn’t want you involved. I doubt she wants me involved, for that matter. She’s closeted herself in her chambers, refusing to come out again, even to shepherd her sister through the Little Season.”

“The minx won’t take that one lying down.”

“I agree, but happily, that’s not our problem.”

“What’s not your problem, darlings?” The questioning voice was loud, almost booming, thanks to the fact that the woman who owned it was slightly deaf and hiked her own volume as if everyone else would have trouble hearing her. On top of that often embarrassing trait—most discomfiting when she believed she was whispering—was the fact that she rarely stopped talking. “And for pity’s sake, Cooper, don’t slouch there against the desk like some lazy oaf. I raised you better than that. Stand up, stand up. There, that’s better. Straighten your shoulders. Good posture is the sign of a gentleman, and a boon to regulation of the bowels. Look at Darby. See how straight he stands? He listened to his mother.”

“Sadly, Mrs. Townsend, my mother flew off to her heavenly reward when I was not more than a mere infant in my cot. But I will say my nurse had a wicked hand with the birch rod if I ever slumped like a lazy oaf.”

Cooper turned to look at his mother, tall of stature, strong of bosom and with a fierce, hawk-nosed face that would suit well as the figurehead nailed to a man-of-war. Add her natural curiosity and rather singular way of looking at most anything to the mix, and it was more than time they moved from the Pulteney, with its generous parlor but very little privacy.

“Perhaps I spared the rod to your detriment, Cooper. Curse my soft heart, but you were always so cute,” she said as she grabbed Cooper’s cheeks between her fingers and squeezed. “Look at that face, Darby. Just look, take it all in! How could anyone ever take umbrage with that face? So wonderfully kind. So infinitely understanding.”

“Minerva, please,” Cooper said, pulling away before she permanently dented his cheeks. He hadn’t been allowed to call her Mother since his sixteenth birthday, which was the first time the woman realized she now had a son who apparently needed to shave. She didn’t particularly want to be a mother, and felt they’d rub along much better as friends.

He looked past her now, to where her maid was standing just inside the entry hall, struggling to maintain her hold on a half dozen bandboxes. “And not infinitely, Minerva. May I be so ungentlemanly as to inquire as to how much your latest assault on Bond Street has set me back?”

Rose coughed. She and Cooper had established a series of signals to warn him that whatever his mother said next, he was certainly not going to be doing handsprings of joy once he heard it.

“I am aware of your miserly hold on the purse strings. But I have your reputation to uphold, even as you ignore the responsibilities incumbent on the proud matriarch of the new Townsend dynasty. You wouldn’t dare send me out into Society in rags, now would you? Rags, Cooper.”

Coop looked toward Rose, the maid-cum-companion, and a distant relation who had known him from his cradle. This time she rolled her eyes as she adjusted the bandbox straps on her forearms. Worse than a cough? My, this was turning into his lucky day, wasn’t it? “Forgive me my unnatural tendency to avoid bankruptcy. I’m convinced you will do me proud each time you set sail into Society.”

“My point entirely. Foresails flapping, flags waving, creating quite the wake as I pass by. It’s only fitting, and Lord knows I’m built for it. I’m horribly shy, by nature, but I see this as a time when I must bite back on my natural reticence and hold up my end, as it were.”

Rose’s choked cough was ignored by the lady, other than for her to raise one strong brow and dare Cooper to add any comment to what she’d just said.

“All I do, I do for you. One cannot put anything so crass as a price on a son’s love and a mother’s obligations, dear. Even in my short time here in London, I’ve heard so many good things about a particular seamstress. Why, even Vivien gives her some bit of custom. Don’t look confused, Cooper. Vivien Sinclair, Gabriel’s aunt, and the Duchess of Cranbrook. I hadn’t seen her in dogs’ years, as she and her Basil were always flitting all over the world, but we ran into each other in the park yesterday, and it was as if we’d never parted. Good friends are like that, you know. All I had to say to her was ‘Vauxhall Gardens,’ and the pair of us went off into giggles like schoolgirls. There was this importune young scoundrel, you understand, and a proposed stroll along the Dark Gallery...”

“How pleased I am you and Gabe’s aunt have rediscovered each other,” Cooper said, simply to stop his mother before she launched into a litany of assuredly embarrassing reminiscences. “And the seamstress?”

“Such a sad, sorry generation you boys are, sticklers for propriety. I know Vauxhall has fallen out of favor for the ton, but in my time it was glorious. You should be delighted your mother had herself some fun, kicking up her heels and such during her grasstime. Don’t growl, Cooper, it isn’t polite. The seamstress, yes. I’ve just come from there, as a matter of fact. Mrs. Yothers—lovely woman. She gifted me with one of the gowns, and an enchanting purple turban. Itches some, but it’ll do.”

“Why would she do that? Not give you an itchy turban—give you anything?”

“Ah, Cooper, you still don’t understand how the world revolves, do you, for all your fine education. The lady and I had a lovely coze—chatty woman, so I wouldn’t dare pass on any secrets to her or they’d be all over Mayfair before the cat could lick its ear, but I was sure to keep my ears open!”

“You and I must have a lovely coze of our own someday, Mrs. Townsend,” Darby interposed, his grin very much at his friend’s expense.

“I highly doubt that, scamp. You know enough about Society for any three people as it is, and I am of course sworn to secrecy in any event. Now, back to Mrs. Yothers, if you will cease interrupting. Terrible habit. In exchange for the gowns and such, I’ve only to mention to two or three ladies—casually, simply in passing, and you know I am the epitome of discretion—that Mrs. Yothers is the only seamstress worth her salt in this entire city.”

“A thousand pardons, Minerva,” Cooper felt impelled to ask. “Did you actually say ‘epitome of discretion’?”

“I can be, if I want. I simply don’t always want. Now, to continue. We have, as you might say, struck a bargain, much the same as the arrangements I have with Mrs. Bell the milliner, the shoemaker Mr. Wood—pricey, that man! There are others. Oh, and I’ve established an account for you with Mr. Weston, who vows that you’d be poorly served by Stolz, who hires only ham-fisted tailors. I wasn’t able to manage any sort of arrangement there, but he’s still the best, or so I’m told. You have a fitting at eleven tomorrow. Now thank me.”

Coop had long ago learned that, when it came to his mother, there existed no hole deep enough to throw himself into and pull the dirt back on top of him, so he simply said, “Thank you.”

“Good, and as I’ve finished saying what I had to say, poor Rose can stop coughing like a consumptive, yes? Now, what’s not your problem, darlings? From the tone of your voices as I entered, I believe you may be thinking something you’re not saying. Come on, spit it out, and you know I can see through a lie, Cooper. You’ve much too much conscience to carry it off, which is why, Darby, you won’t speak unless requested.”

Darby raised his hand, waggling his fingers. “May I please be excused?” he asked cheekily.

“You most certainly may not,” Mrs. Townsend told him sternly, and the viscount looked to Coop for help. Which he didn’t get, damn it, for if Darby couldn’t be considered reinforcements, at least Minerva Townsend might marginally mind her tongue while he was present. No, that wouldn’t happen, but as long as Coop was stuck here, he didn’t see any reason to allow his friend to escape unscathed.

“Really, Mrs. Townsend, it’s nothing to concern you,” Darby said, but there was little hope in his voice.

“It didn’t sound like nothing. Whatever the problem, I have no doubt you’re responsible for it. You, and those two other scamps, dragging my poor Cooper into your constant mischiefs. Now, I’m going to sit down—Rose, for pity’s sake, are you still standing there? Go on, shoo, and put your feet up. You look totally fagged. And with me twenty years your senior and still not in the least deflated.”

Make that thirty, and the number might be reasonably close. Oh, yes, Cooper McGinley Townsend knew an Original when he saw one. He’d grown up with one. Give Miss Foster another forty years of practice, and she’d be more than capable of taking up his mother’s banner, to become the Terror of Society.

“Minerva, we were just speaking in general terms. Weren’t we, Darby? Nothing to set your nose to twitching.”

Mrs. Townsend adjusted her spectacles on her splendid, hawk-like beak. She didn’t need them, or so she swore, and only employed them as a prop to give her gravitas. Coop had to admit that whenever she looked at him overtop the gold frames (not to mention the hawk-like proboscis), gravitas commenced to spew out all over the place as would hot lava on the unsuspecting villagers below in the valley.

She turned her stare on the viscount once more.

“I surrender,” Darby said after a few seconds, smiling apologetically at his friend. “In my defense, she had a one-eye advantage on me. Tell her, Coop, or I’ll be forced to squawk like one of Gabe’s blasted parrots.”

“Why not? Apparently I’m already standing in a hole of my own making that resembles nothing more than a grave.”

“Cooper! You’ve never been so dramatic. A hole as deep as a grave? Where do you hear such nonsense? Are you reading poems again? I have warned you against them, again and again. They’re all frippery and unrequited love and sad tales of woe no sane person would swallow whole. A thick volume on farming, that’s what you need. You’ve got an estate to run now, you know. Learn to grow a proper turnip, that’s what I say. Can’t go wrong with turnips.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mrs. Townsend. Turnips, that’s the ticket. Commit that to memory, my friend.” Darby retreated to the drinks table, probably to pour a bracing glass of wine.

Coop was hard-pressed not to join him, but he’d ignore the glass and gulp straight from the decanter. His father had known how to handle Minerva. He’d learned to ignore her because, as impossible as it seemed, everyone save her husband and son found her vastly interesting and amusing.

Still, actually handing Minerva information she’d do God only knew what with? Coop didn’t see how any good could come from that.

The blackmail threat, the chase through the alleyways, Miss Foster. Now this? He looked at the mantel clock and inwardly winced. It was only a few minutes past three? And he still had to run the figurative gauntlet of meeting with Miss Foster a third time. Was there anything else to go wrong for him today?

“And another thing,” Minerva said, finally settling herself in a chair so that the gentlemen could sit, as well. “This Minerva business. That was all well and good before, but I realize the heavy mantle of responsibility now thrust upon me, thanks to your heroics, and believe it only commonsensible for me to once more take up the mantle of...” She sighed. “Mother. Or perhaps Mama?”

“You hate when I call you Mother. You have to be joking.”

“I most certainly am not. Henceforth, at least in public—not that I consider this scamp’s presence as anywhere near public—you will address me as Mother.”

“The gifts heaped on your shoulders just keep mounting, Coop, you lucky dog. Either that, or this figurative hole you spoke of is growing deeper.”

“Shut up, Darby. All right, Mother, since you insist. Now why don’t you retire to your chamber, where I’m certain Rose has laid out some sort of refreshment.”

“Perhaps even turnip pie,” Darby said quietly. Too quietly for Minerva to hear, but close enough for Coop to not only hear but be forced to manfully repress a laugh.

Minerva looked from one to the other. “He said something, didn’t he? Something amusing. What did he say?”

“Nothing Min—Mother. Darby’s mouth moves, but he rarely says anything of importance.”

Minerva smoothed the front of her gown, clearly settling herself in for the duration. “Well, at least we agree on something. Now, shall we travel back to the problem that isn’t your problem, because it definitely seemed very much your problem when I arrived? Come on, lads, one of you open your mouth and say something important, because I’m not leaving here until you do.”

“Race you to the door,” Darby whispered, careful not to move his lips. “Unless you can come up with a convincing fib? Because you’re wrong about the countess’s retirement to her bedchamber, Coop—you need Miss Foster out and about in Society.”

And that, Cooper was to tell himself later, was how Darby helped him dig that lifelong figurative hole even deeper, until he thought he could see a Chinaman’s straw hat.

CHAPTER SIX

DRAT THE MAN, Dany thought, standing in front of the pier glass in the hallway just outside the drawing room, slapping her gloves against her thigh. And drat Mari, so firmly sunk beneath the covers that it would take an expedition to find her.

Does one have one’s gloves on before her escort’s arrival? Does one appeared gloved and hatted and panting like a puppy eager to be put to the leash? Does one race back upstairs, only to descend—gracefully, of course—when the gentleman is announced? Which would be past ridiculous, since that would mean his horses would be left standing while he waited for her to become gloved and hatted and fill the awkward silence with inane chatter such as, “Oh, dear, how the time has flown,” or “Gracious, I had entirely forgotten I’d agreed to drive with you in the park.”

Whopping great help Mari had been, only lamenting, “For the love of heaven, why won’t she go away,” when Dany had sat herself on the bed and asked these questions.

So here she stood, still not gloved, although she’d decided the military-type shako might take more than one attempt to settle it jauntily enough over her right eye and finally donned it. Amazingly, with her hands trembling ever so slightly, she managed the perfect level of jaunty in one try.

Did Emmaline ride with her? Did she, hopefully not, plunk herself down on the seat between the baron and her mistress? If he brought an open town carriage, there would be two seats, and she could have the maid facing her—and watching her—for the entire time. And wouldn’t that be above all things wonderful, since Emmaline possessed an alarming tendency to giggle.

But no. Young gentlemen didn’t favor such equipages. He was bound to show up with some outlandish curricle, or high perch phaeton (and wouldn’t climbing up into that be interesting, while attempting to keep her ankles covered and her rump inconspicuous?). What about a tiger? Did the baron have one, some poor, terrified young lad in garish livery, balancing on a small step and hanging on to the back of the curricle for dear life? Did a tiger constitute a chaperone? Why would anyone need a chaperone in the middle of London, surrounded by everyone else in Society who had decided taking the air at Hyde Park was just the jolliest thing anyone could do at this hour?

Dany hadn’t had time to ask those questions of Mari, although she had tried, even as her sister’s maid was none too gently pushing her toward the door.

She’d ask Timmerly, but he’d only smirk at her in that obnoxious way he had, and make her feel twice the fool. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d positioned his smug self at the head of the stairs, pretending not to notice her for the past ten minutes? Honestly, some kind soul should bundle up all the rules of Society in one...

“Blast! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” she asked herself as she turned to the stairs, having remembered the thick tome her sister had handed her, commanding she commit every word to memory. The title, as she recalled, was nearly a small book in itself, and contained such words as Circumspection, Comportment, Proper. Dany had waited until Mari departed the room before kicking the offensive thing beneath the bed-skirts. Her big toe had hurt for three days.

She’d just put her hand on the railing when a footman called up, “Mr. Timmerly, sir, the hero baron has pulled to the curb. Miss shouldn’t keep such a fine pair of bays standing.”

“Miss Foster,” the curmudgeonly old family retainer intoned gravely, “if you’ll excuse my boldness, the foyer lies the other way.”

“You enjoy this, don’t you?” she accused as she headed for the curving staircase leading down to the foyer.

“You might wish to be more gentle with the countess, miss, now that she’s in a delicate condition.”

Dany halted with one foot already hovering over the first step, her right hand thankfully clutching the iron railing or she would have pitched face forward to the marble floor below. “My sister is not— Dear God, perhaps she is. It would be just like Mari not to know.” She looked at Timmerly. “What do you know?”

“It isn’t proper to discuss such things with young ladies.”

Dany’s mostly unpleasant day was growing worse by the moment. “It isn’t proper for young ladies to plant butlers a facer, either, but if you were to apply to any of my family they would inform you I’ve never put much stock in proper.”

The butler cleared his throat, clearly fighting a blush. “It is sufficient to say that Mrs. Timmerly is certain we’ll be welcoming the Cockermouth heir before the king’s birthday.”

Dany counted along her top teeth with her tongue until she got to nine (she might be young, but she wasn’t entirely stupid). “Oh, that isn’t good. That isn’t good at all.”

Timmerly straightened his shoulders and puffed out his chest. “I beg your pardon!”

“Oh. Sorry. It’s the greatest of good news, isn’t it? The earl will be over the moon when he returns.” Unless he believes his wife had taken a lover. “I’ll be going now, not that you care a button what I do. Mustn’t keep the horses standing.”

The footman was just opening the door for the baron when Dany went flouncing past him. “You’re late,” she told him before he could say the same to her, which the briefest glance at his expression warned her he was about to do. “We’ve a new problem to discuss.”

“O happy day,” Cooper said, following after her, and then standing back to allow his tiger—really, the livery wasn’t so bad—to assist her up onto the seat of an admittedly fine yet sober curricle. No yellow wheels for the baron Townsend, clearly. And the bays were near to extraordinary.

“You’ve a lovely pair,” she admitted once he’d gone around the equipage and boosted himself onto the seat.

His look was nearly comical. “I beg your pardon?”

“The bays are lovely, perfectly matched,” she expounded further, wondering if the baron had possibly drunk away his afternoon. It wouldn’t do well for either of them if she had to explain everything twice. “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“If I have, clearly not enough. Shall we be off?”

“I suppose so. The sooner we’re off, the sooner we’re back, which should please you enormously.”

“How well you know me, on such a short acquaintance,” Coop said as he set the curricle in motion, his tiger still standing on the flagway.

“I think you forgot someone,” Dany said, watching as the boy, no more than twelve, headed for the alleyway beside the mansion.

“Harry will go to the servants’ entrance and someone will feed him a cake or something. It’s all arranged. We’ve no need of a prepubescent chaperone, Miss Foster. We’ll be far from alone in the park.”

“Yes, I’d wondered about that. We’d look rather silly having to speak across my maid, plopped between us, her hands clapped to her ears. I really must read that book.”

“Whatever book it is, yes, please do tend to the task posthaste. I know you’re fresh from the country, but hasn’t your sister explained anything to you?”

“She’s been rather fully employed weeping into her pillow,” Dany said, at the moment not caring what the baron thought of her, or her sister. It was enough that he was here, apparently still willing to play the hero for them. Why, she’d nearly forgotten all about his green eyes. Nearly. “Which brings us to our new problem. The butler’s wife believes the countess may be increasing.”

He made an expert but not showy turn into Hyde Park, having executed the tricky maneuver of inserting the curricle into the line of various equipages without muss, fuss or banging wheels with anyone. The man was not flamboyant, not in his speech, his dress, his deportment. He was the unlikeliest hero she’d ever imagined in her daydreams. He was simply a man who stood up when necessary, and did heroic things. Perhaps it was not only his eyes...and blond locks, and strong chin line, and...and all the rest that drew her to him. She’d like to think so, or else that would make her no more than one of the giggling, sighing throng of females who probably chased him everywhere. How he must hate that!

“Really. Increasing what— Oh. Miss Foster, I don’t think this is anything you and I should be addressing. I’ll correct myself. I know it isn’t anything we should discuss. But since I have no doubt you’ll address it, anyway, is there a problem of...timing?”

“Oh, good. I was wondering how I might gracefully get around that part. Yes, I think so. Probably only Mrs. Timmerly knows for sure, since I believe Mari only just figured everything out today. So you see, my lord, it is now doubly important we seek out this blackmailer and recover her letters. Oliver must never know, can never so much as think he may have been, um...”

“Usurped? I can think of other words, although I’d rather not.”

She refused to blush. “I suppose that’s as clear as we need make that, thank you. I felt you should know, since we are working together.”

“We are? I don’t believe I’ve agreed to a partnership of any kind.”

Apparently men could be maddeningly thick. “Do you really have a choice?”

“I don’t? Please, enlighten me.”

“Yes, I should. In the interests of fairness, I feel it only fair to add that I don’t like you. I may admire you, and even find you somewhat attractive, but I don’t like you. You clearly resent that I’ve come to you for assistance, and you enjoy making me feel uncomfortable.”

“Tit for tat, Miss Foster. I haven’t had a comfortable moment since you threw yourself at me in Bond Street.”

“I did not—oh, now you’re smiling. I probably should look at you more often.”

“And be in my company far less,” he shot back. “What are you looking at, anyway? Clearly you aren’t paying attention to our fellow travelers on this road to nowhere, or you would have commented on something by now. There are many finely feathered birds taking the air today.”

“There are? Oh, goodness—is that man on the large gray actually sporting a parrot on his shoulder? How bizarre.”

“You have no idea, Miss Foster. One day I might tell you a rather amusing tale about the tethered and caged birds still being seen around Mayfair by those not clever enough to have realized the joke. Our feathered friends are no longer in fashion.”

“Yes, you do that.” Dany really didn’t much care either way about fashionable or unfashionable birds. “But no, I suppose I’m not really paying attention, am I? I suppose I thought the experience would have more to it than following everyone as they follow everyone else. What is the point, do you know?”

“The point, my fine country miss, is to see. And to be seen. You, for instance, are being seen in the company of the hero of Quatre Bras and a dozen wholly fictitious escapades of derring-do here in London. Even now, people are whispering to their companions. Who is she? Did he rescue her? Is she an heiress? Should we stop and ask, or would the hero take offense at our blatant curiosity? What to do, what to do.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Most things are, Miss Foster. But remember, this was your idea.”

Dany thought about that for a few moments. “You’re right. It was my idea. I thought it would be interesting. I thought I would get to show off my new bonnet, which I couldn’t do because I cut my hair and now even this shako had to be stuffed with paper so it didn’t fall down over my ears. I used to have tons of it, you know.”

“Paper? Or hair?”

“Hair, of course. I grew it for years, on my mother’s orders. Do you have any idea how much trouble hair can be?”

“Not exactly, no. Is it as much trouble as having to stuff your bonnets with paper?”

Dany looked at him and grinned. “The bonnets are temporary. The hair was permanent. Or at least it was. By and large, I think what’s left is rather fetching. Certainly different.”

“Ah, yes, different. I believe that relieves me from having to ask why in blue blazes you hacked it all off. The color wasn’t enough?”

“You don’t care for the color?”

“Over the centuries, man has learned there is no safe answer to that sort of question, so I’ll pretend you didn’t ask it. Look here, Miss Foster, this is getting us nowhere, and we’ve much to discuss. For my sins.”

His voice had rather trailed off on his last few words, but Dany heard them. “And what sins did you commit? I know I didn’t commit any. Well, at least not connected to the pot my sister is boiling in at the moment. I’m not declaring myself free of failings.”

Cooper exited the park as neatly as he’d entered it, putting the curricle back out on the street. “I hope you won’t mind if I don’t chivalrously exclaim that you could never be anything less than perfect.”

“And now I’ll ignore that. You know, my lord, I believe we’re beginning to understand each other.”

He kept his attention on his horses, but she did notice that his right eyebrow elevated in possible surprise. Certainly not in humor. “Does that prospect frighten you as much as it does me?” he asked as he took the bays into a turn down a rather narrow street.

“I don’t know. At least neither of us has to waste our time or words in attempting to be polite. Which, you must admit, can only be considered a good thing, because we really don’t have time to waste on conventions and silly rules of Society. Oliver will be home in less than a fortnight.”

“I agree on the need for speed. The blackmailer’s next communication could arrive at any moment.”

“Yes, which means you need to reconsider the vantage point of my bedchamber. Where are we going? I’ve no fear you plan to compromise me, but if you have a destination in mind I suggest it not be Portman Square, as we still have much to discuss.”

“More than you could imagine, Miss Foster,” he said, pulling to the curb in front of a rather ancient-looking church stuck between a haberdashery and a tobacco shop. He set the brake and looped the reins around it. “Stay where you are until I come ’round and help you down. I only say that because you haven’t read the book yet, whatever book that might be, and shouldn’t attempt a descent on your own.”

“It’s not as if I couldn’t do it, you know.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment. Just...don’t.”

She twisted about on the seat to watch as he walked behind the curricle, already tossing a coin to a young lad who had appeared out of nowhere to offer to “mind the ponies” for him.

“Perhaps you should have rethought the tiger,” she said as she allowed him to assist her to the uneven flagway. It wasn’t quite the same as being swooped up into his arms, but the touch of his hands at her waist while she rested hers on his shoulders for that brief moment wasn’t exactly a distant second in how it affected her heartbeat.

If only Mari would climb out of her latest pit of despair; Dany really did have a few important questions for her.

“Tigers are for show, unless one employs an aging pugilist, and they don’t look all that well in livery. Harry and his livery wouldn’t last a moment in this neighborhood. You failed to tell me, Miss Foster. Do you possess any other talents save pickpocketing?”

She brought herself back from her new, unexpected curiosity concerning All Things Cooper. “That’s not fair. The chapbook was mine. I was only retrieving it. What sort of talents?”

“Playacting. I’ve every hope you’ll have no problem with a bit of fibbing.”

Dany tipped up her chin. “I may have found the need in the past, yes. A fib is often more kind than the truth. Especially when one’s mother asks unfortunate questions.”

“Very good. Steadfast and upright honesty would do us no good at the moment.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we remove ourselves from the sight of passersby?”

Oh, we most certainly shall, Dany thought, quickly understanding that she should not be where she was, certainly not with him. They were in the process of being clandestine. What a lovely word—clandestine. How could she have, even for a moment, thought the baron was a sobersides? What fun!

“This chapel is no longer in use except for occasional weddings, but the frescoes are said to be in remarkably good repair. Aunt Mildred said we should not fail to see them before leaving London.”

Aunt Mildred? Ah, so the fibbing had begun.

“Then how bad of you, for not telling me to bring my sketching pad. You always were a bit of a loose screw, Cousin Mortimer. Just for that, I believe I’ll insist in inspecting every single fresco in some detail, and you’ll be stuck chaperoning me for at least another hour before you can cry off and go chasing down your highly unsuitable friends.”

Bless the baron’s heroic heart. He winked at her! She’d get him to understand she would be more of a help than a hindrance.

They mounted the six steps to a pair of heavily carved wooden doors, pausing only as Cooper handed over a penny to the old man sitting on a wooden stool, curiously not showing any hint of curiosity upon seeing customers so late in the day.

“You always were a bit of a pill, Cousin Gertrude,” he responded in just the correct tone of cousinly disgust as the old man creaked to his feet to push open one of the doors. “Next you’ll say you want me to bring you back again tomorrow, and I won’t. Not if you beg.”

The old man cleared his throat. “There be sheets of paper and charcoal sticks inside, miss, for those who wish to take rubbings from some of the tombstones out back. Some lovely old stones we’ve got, we do. Only a penny for five.”

Dany turned her most winning smile on the caretaker. “Why, thank you, good sir. Cousin, don’t just stand there like the fool you are. Give the man a penny.”

“Going to use them to stuff more bonnets?” Cooper asked, reaching into his small purse. “Here you go, sir, a six-pence. We’d rather not be disturbed.”

“None of them never does,” the old man grumbled, shaking his head as he returned to his stool as Cooper grabbed her hand and pulled her inside before she could ask the old man what he meant.

The door had barely closed before Dany turned on him, laughing. “Did you hear that? This place is used for assignations, isn’t it? The man as nearly said that. Do you take advantage of this chapel often?”

Still clasping her hand, for there were only a few candles burning and the stained-glass windows didn’t let in much light, he led her to a bench placed against one wall. “I thought I was being original, as a matter of fact. Here, sit down. You lie too easily for my comfort, Gertrude.”

“Gertie. I much prefer Gertie. So you don’t think the caretaker believed either of us?”

“Do you?”

Dany thought about that for a moment. “I’m not certain. I wouldn’t want to be thought of as a loose woman. Or as someone as silly as my sister, who probably would have thought trysting with her unknown admirer in an ancient chapel the epitome of romantic expression. Of course, in either case, you’re the rotter of the piece. Shame on you.”

The baron sat down beside her. “You don’t have a single nerve in your body, do you?”

“I don’t think so, no,” she said as every last nerve in said body commenced to tingle at his closeness. Not that he’d ever know that. “Papa vows I was a cuckoo hatchling. You do know about cuckoo birds, don’t you? They lay their eggs in other bird’s nests? If my great-aunt Isobel on my father’s side hadn’t had my same outrageous hair color, I believe Mama would have had considerable explaining to do. And don’t look at me like that. Yes, that’s how I know so much about...usurping. My brother explained it all to me. So, now can we get down to business? What time do you want me to meet you at the tradesman’s entrance? Timmerly locks all the doors at midnight, but I managed to find an extra key for the side door that leads to the kitchens. It will be a simple matter of Emmaline letting you in, and sneaking you up the servant stairs.”

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