A Scandalous Proposal (10 page)

“What sort of signal?”

“Nothing too elaborate. If we espy anything unusual, it would be a simple matter of cranking open one of these windows and giving a whistle,” he told her. “How else could I do it?”

Pity him? Was she mad? It wasn't her fault he'd chosen to compromise her with those two adorable cherubs, just so he could run tame in Oliver's household.

“Indeed, yes, how else? How silly of me to badger the hero with obvious questions. What a brilliant plan. I stand in awe, my lord, truly. Such a shame that those old windows have been painted shut for what's probably decades.”

“Damn.”
The baron tried the handle, and it turned easily, the casement opening just as easily. He swiftly closed it again. Without looking at her, he said, “You're worse than a menace. Go sit down.”

Satisfied she'd gotten just a little of her own back, she walked over to the window seat and sat down beside him, twisting enough to be able to see through the narrow opening in the draperies.

They were shoulder to shoulder, their cheeks nearly touching. She could feel Coop's eyes on her.

“Dany,” he said after a moment.

“What?”

“Over. There. At the other window. I said
go
sit down, not
come
sit down. And while you're at it, you misbuttoned your jacket. Fix it, before somebody comes in and thinks I'm responsible for your dishevelment and you'll have lost any hope of breaking our engagement without forcing me into a duel with either your father or your brother.”

She practically flew from the window seat to take up her position at the other window, and immediately began to fiddle with her buttons in the dark. She hadn't misbuttoned at all.

One thing she could say for him—he gave as good as he got. Why, she could almost think, in other circumstances, they could have been the best of chums.

“You could have simply asked me to move. And to think at least half the people in this house, my sister most especially, believes we're in here being indecent. I was even beginning to pity you.”

“Don't bother. The more I'm around you, the more I'm pitying myself. Damn, somebody's stepping out from the earl's stables. He'd better not stay long, or the blackmailer will never show himself.”

Dany pushed the drapery aside and squinted down into the mews. It might be dark, but there was no missing her maid's rotund brother, even if he was mostly in shadow. “That's only Sam,” she said. “He sleeps in the stables. Why is he looking around like that? Do you think he heard something and has stepped out to investigate? Let's hope he didn't scare off the— Oh, my heavens!”

She let the drapery drop just as Sam began lowering his trousers even as he turned to face the stone stable wall.

Coop's laughter, strong and clear, was so engaging that she couldn't help but join him in his mirth. It would be stupid beyond measure to pretend she didn't know what Sam was about.

“That's what peeking out of windows will get you, I suppose,” she said when she could control herself again. “Is he gone yet?”

“He's gone. If the earl ever wonders why no ivy grows on that side of the stable doors, you'll have an answer for him, although you might be wise not to volunteer the reason.”

Dany's only response was to carefully pull back the drapery again, and continue her surveillance, suggesting the baron do the same.

Which they did, for nearly two hours, during which neither spoke and many carriages made their way down the alleyway to return to stables that lined the mews.

Harnesses jingled, grooms and stable boys shouted to one another, stable doors banged and slammed. London certainly wasn't known for its quiet, no matter the hour.

Other than that business with Sam, Dany believed she had never been so bored in her life. She'd totally forgotten that she and her supposed fiancé were alone in her bedchamber. There was nothing romantical about their current situation, and if she yawned one more time she would have no recourse but to go over to her pitcher and basin and splash cold water on her face to stay awake.

“He's not coming,” she said at last, breaking the silence. “This has been an entire waste of a compromise, you know, now that you've as good as said tonight was our only chance to capture the man. I can only hope you're not an efficient hero, and have already sent off a letter to my father. Or worse, a notice to the newspapers.”

“It's too late to worry about that, I'm afraid. Since both my mother and her boon chum the Duchess of Cranbrook, who you met earlier today, were guests at the same dinner party this evening, I imagine the news of our coming nuptials will be served up at breakfast all over Mayfair tomorrow. Today,” he corrected.

Dany left her seat and joined him as he kept his watch over the mews. “Upcoming nuptials? Why would you phrase it that way? You said you were going to allow me to cry off.”

“I remember. You punched me for it. The offer does remain open, but I've realized that hearing Darby and Minerva point out all the reasonableness and benefits of the thing and actually dragging you into this mess are two very different things. Therefore,” he continued, still doggedly looking out the window, “I've decided to leave matters entirely in your hands. I came to London to search for a wife, my idea being that a wife by my side would put an end to all the nonsense. I'll admit to that, as well. Perhaps that's why I didn't throw away their idea, and allowed myself to be carried along, shall we say, by the tide of events.”

He finally looked at her. “And you didn't say no.”

“Oh, so now I'm part of the reason, am I? I am to shoulder my share of blame for the predicament
you
tossed us into today? And who is Minerva?”

“My mother. You'll meet her tomorrow. I've found myself rather looking forward to seeing the two of you together. Darby mentioned the possibility of selling tickets of admittance actually.”

“I'm certain I won't like her. She sounds utterly overbearing, and obviously still has you tied to her apron strings. The more I know of you, Cooper Townsend, the less I understand how you ever became a hero.”

“At least we finally agree on something. In my defense, I do have a very good reason for not wanting the blackmailer to publish his threatened third volume, and since you and your sister are my only current avenues to finding the bastard, I plead guilty to using you. The both of you.”

Ah,
now
they were getting somewhere. Finally. “The chapbooks don't just embarrass you, do they? You're in a prodigious amount of trouble, aren't you? I felt it from the beginning, or at least I'd like to tell myself I did. Does the viscount know? Your mother? Are you going to tell me? I think you owe it to me. To tell me, that is.”

He squeezed her hand for a moment. “I'm sorry. I can't. Nobody knows. Darby has made a few guesses, as have you, but mine isn't the only reputation at stake here. I was asked to swear to secrecy and rewarded for my agreement. That, too, doesn't make me a hero, in case you were about to point that out. But at least I'm still breathing.”

Now it was her turn to place her hand on his. “For how long?”

“Pardon me?” He was leaning closer to the glass. “How long for what?”

“How long will you still be breathing?”

“I've entertained that question myself, and the only answer that seems plausible is as long as God gives me, if I find the blackmailer before he can publish whatever he believes to be the damning truth.”

“Is there a damning truth?”

He turned and smiled at her, and her traitorous heart melted. “Isn't there always?”

“Yes, I suppose so. I'm sorry. I'm even more sorry that the blackmailer didn't show himself tonight.”

“Because you were hoping for a good chase down the alleyway, or because you're still stuck with your grandmother's paste garnets?”

Dany smiled. “I know you're joking to be kind, but you really are a very nice man. I promise to be less of a problem to you, I really do. When I can,” she added, because a caveat would at least keep her from feeling too guilty if she couldn't manage to keep herself from acting on her own if the opportunity arose.

He looked at her in the faint moonlight. “Thank you. I'm still not going to tell you why I'm being blackmailed, you know.”

Dany shrugged, far from defeated. “You will. Eventually. You won't be able to help yourself. Just ask anyone. I'm very persuasive.”

“You mean you wear people down to the point where it's simply easier to let you get your way.”

She turned toward the gap in the draperies. “I take it back. You're not
that
nice. I thought women were supposed to be this huge mystery to men.”

“Is that so? Then I suppose you'll have to leave off being so utterly transparent. Come on, I think we're done here for tonight. He's not going to show.”

“Just five more minutes. There hasn't been a carriage coming back to the stables for a good quarter hour. He might feel safe now to approach. Oh, fiddle, I was wrong. Here comes another one.”

Coop all but put his cheek next to hers as he took a look for himself. “That's not a carriage, it's a hackney.”

“A what?”

“A hired cab. There's no reason for a hired cab to be in this alleyway. Move.”

Dany moved. She had no choice but to move, because Coop had pushed her back enough so that he could reach the casement handle and begin turning it.

Dany ran to the other window to watch, her head pounding with excitement. Sure enough, the hackney stopped directly in front of the Cockermouth stables, and a dark-clad figure hopped down.

Carrying a stool?

“He's carrying a stool? Why on earth would he be carrying—oh, that's not fair. It's a child, isn't it? Look, he's put the stool down and stepping up on it to—yes, there goes Mari's letter. And my garnets. And now he's putting something into the...”

Coop's ear-piercing whistles, two in quick succession, cut off what she would have said next, although why she was telling him what he could readily see for himself she had no idea.

After all, she was already halfway to the door.

CHAPTER NINE

C
OOP
CAUGHT
UP
to Dany just as she was about to throw open the side door. He grabbed her at the waist and hauled her off her feet, pulling her against him.

“There's no hurry. He's long gone,” he said, doing his best to catch his breath. How did servants loaded down with trays and whatever navigate such steep, narrow stairs? He'd damn near tumbled a few times, which would have thrown him into Dany, so that they would have ended in an inglorious heap on the next landing.

“How do you know? And put me down, for pity's sake.”

“Only if you promise not to bolt.”

“I'm not a horse. And you're crushing my ribs.”

Coop compromised. He turned about so that his back was against the door, and only then let her go.

She turned and looked at him, looked at the hat on his head. “You...you took time to retrieve your
hat
?”

“As I'll be leaving now, yes. Are you ready to check out the knothole?”

“But...but why aren't we chasing the hackney? I know we couldn't catch it, so don't look at me as if I've got two heads. But we may have been able to at least see the driver. Then we could go searching for him tomorrow.”

“Yes, out of the several hundred hackneys in London, that should be an easy enough job.” He held up the lit lantern he'd earlier requested Timmerly leave in the narrow hallway, opened the door and motioned for her to precede him. “I whistled twice, if you'll recall. That was to warn Rigby our target was heading his way. We might have had some slim chance if the hackney had come in the opposite end of the alleyway and was headed toward Darby, but Rigby has had too many good meals to hold his own in a footrace. Catching up with a hackney is definitely outside the realm of his capabilities. We can only hope he was able to catch a look at its occupant. Yes, and its driver.”

“You don't have to sound so smug.”

“Reasonable, not smug,” he said as they approached the large tree.

“You let me think we'd be able to chase him.”

“Hence the riding habit. Now I understand. Do you mind if I rethink your possible contribution to our small adventure?”

The lantern cast enough light for him to see the look of disgust on her face.

“The riding habit was easier for me to—oh, all right, yes. I chose it on purpose, but only as my second choice. Not to chase him if he showed up. I mean, not
precisely
. I made the first choice for its buttons. And we would have chased only if the opportunity should present itself. Mostly, I wanted to make certain I was dressed to accompany you when we retrieved any note he may put in the tree—and yes, I promise to stop babbling now, because I know I'm babbling. Go on, reach up and get it.”

“Yes, my queen,” he said, and then stopped, arm half raised to do as she'd commanded. “No. You get it. You put your sister's note into the knothole, correct?”

“If you insist. But move aside. Mari's tall enough to reach it, but I have to step on that old broken mounting step behind you, and then hold on to the branch and— Oh.
Oh.
”

Coop retrieved the folded scrap of paper. “Yes,
oh
. Do we have a hired lad in the hackney? A less than tall blackmailer? Or do we have a...”

“Woman! The blackmailer could be a woman? Mari may have been pouring her heart out to another female? No wonder how she could have found all the right, soppy things to say to make Mari think she had finally found someone who
understood
her anguish.”

“Some women have sympathetic, understanding sisters to confide in,” Coop couldn't help but say as he tucked the note into his waistcoat pocket and moved Dany along, back toward the side door.

“I'd be insulted if Mari hadn't begun her illicit correspondence before I arrived in town, and if I were silly enough to applaud her for doing anything so harebrained. She doesn't need sympathy. She needs her letters retrieved before Oliver gets home. I'm being leagues more helpful to her than some sweet ninny who does nothing but pat her shoulder and say, ‘There, there.' Of course, that also means we've ended up with
you
. So far, sad to say, that hasn't seemed to have helped much.”

“Unfortunately, I have to agree with you, although at least you're rid of the garnets. Let's step inside and see what our mutual tormentor has to say for himself, or herself.”

“But what about the viscount and your other friend? Don't you want to hear what they have to say?”

“They'll be waiting for me at the Pulteney, hopefully with a glass and a bottle, and my mother safely snoring in her bed. Do you want me to read this or not?”

She jammed her fists against her hips. It was possible she was running out of patience with him. Strangely, he found that very attractive in her. She was the only female he'd met since Quatre Bras who didn't all but drool over him.

“No, I want you to fold it into a paper bird, and then launch it out toward the mews.”

“Yes, that's what I thought,” he told her, putting the lantern on the table beside the door. “But I'll read it, anyway.” He unfolded the note, biting back a sudden curse. “Since it appears to be directed to me.”

“It is? Not Mari? Oh, God. That's not good, is it?” Dany grabbed at his wrist, pulling down his arm so that she could see the note, read it along with him.

Naughty, naughty, my lord Townsend, meddling in business that does not concern you, although I will say taking yourself off the marriage market was inspired, if your choice a decidedly odd duckling. Thanks to me, beating the drum of your undeserved popularity, you could have held out for an heiress. In any case, my congratulations; your mama appears well pleased, and it will leave you more time to contemplate the consequences of your rash actions. Because, you see, a price must be paid. Please inform the countess that my kind offer is rescinded. The earl will receive the letters upon his return. Oh, and your price just went up by a thousand pounds. After all, I must recoup my losses caused by your interference. Ten days until a copy of Volume Three is delivered to the Prince Regent. Less, if you get in my way again. You can begin counting now... I'll be in touch.

“He's not going to let her pay to get them back? I can't tell her that. What are we going to do?”

Coop looked at his brand-new fiancée. Her indigo-blue eyes were awash in tears.

He took her hands, her suddenly ice-cold and faintly trembling hands. “We'll find him, that's what we'll do,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster. “Or her. Are you up to a trip to Bond Street at eleven tomorrow morning? I fancy buying you a betrothal present.”

“You want to go
shopping
? What good is that going to— Oh, wait. I forgot. Mrs. Yo—”

He clapped a hand over her mouth and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Nothing. Not another word. Not to your sister, not to your maid, not to anyone. And for God's sake, if you keep a diary, don't write in it about any of this.”

She pushed his hand away. “How did you know I keep a diary?”

At last, he smiled. “A fortuitous guess? Now wait until I'm outside, throw the latch and get yourself upstairs. I've got to go meet my friends, hoping at least one of them saw something that might help us.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

It would take a stronger man than he to look into those eyes, see the pain and worry and not respond.

“I know. But everything will work out. I promise.”

She nodded. “I think I'll hold you to that. My hero.”

And then she went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, the same one she had repeatedly slapped with her gloves that afternoon.

“I thought you said I didn't seem very much like a hero.”

“I know. But now you rather have to be, don't you?” she said before pushing him through the doorway.

He stood outside, waiting until the sound of her footsteps on the servant stairs faded away, his hand to his cheek as he wondered what the devil that was all about, and why he was smiling, of all things.

Then he remembered the mess he was in, all of them were now in, and took off at a trot, hailed a hackney at the end of the square and directed that he be taken to the Pulteney.

As arranged, Darby and Rigby were waiting for him in his rooms, joined there by Sergeant Major Ames, the trio looking relaxed and comfortable, rather sprawled across the couches and chairs, drinks in their hands.

“Sir!” Sergeant Major Ames said, leaping to his feet to salute his employer. “We were just reminiscing about Champaubert. Fine mess that was. Called for a toast to the viscount's dimmed eye, you understand. I'll go now.”

“Yes, thank you, Ames,” Coop said, looking to Darby. How did the man do it, turn his injury into countless jokes at his own expense, even make it easy for the sergeant major to comment on it? The thing was, it was one thing to sacrifice an eye in battle, but quite another to lose it in a totally unnecessary defeat brought on them by that damn Russian general, Olssufiev.

“Are you all right?” he asked his friend after Ames had quit the room, no one commenting as he picked up one of the bottles and took it with him. It would be an hour or two of singular reminiscing for the sergeant major before he'd find sleep, Coop knew. Their losses at Champaubert, followed by their months of captivity until the deposed emperor was caught and put in a cage, had changed all their lives.

Their friend Gabriel Sinclair, his skull nearly bashed in by a French soldier's rifle butt, had gone into a funk, blaming himself for events he couldn't have changed, even though he'd felt certain an attack was coming. Coop himself had taken a ball in his side, and been little use to anyone when his wound had become infected. If it weren't for Ames's rough nursing and Rigby's suddenly discovered talent for finding food where none seemed to exist, things could have ended much differently for him. And Darby had lost the vision in his left eye.

Four schoolboy friends, now bound together more tightly than many brothers. They'd managed to return to their former lives, pick up the pieces and move on. But never alone. When Gabe had asked for their help, they'd come to him at once, fully prepared to make utter cakes of themselves with those damn birds. Now they were here for him, no questions asked, willing to do anything he needed of them.

“Did anyone hear from Gabe?” he asked now as he picked up one of the bottles and drank from it, not bothering to use the glass that had been placed next to it.

“I had a note from him this morning,” Rigby said. “He hopes to return to town soon, sooner than that if you need him, if possible. He's still sweeping up after that little adventure last week, I'm afraid, dealing with what his Thea believes are her new responsibilities.”

“In other words, hiding themselves away until the scandal is replaced by something more interesting,” Darby added. “Unless we get luckier than we were tonight, you might be able to help Gabe out in that quarter.”

“So neither of you saw anything?” Coop had harbored a faint hope all the way back to the Pulteney, but it had been just that, faint.

“Au contraire, mon ami,”
Darby said, saluting him with his wineglass. “Being of a vastly superior intellect, I immediately realized a hackney had no business heading down the stable row behind the mansions. Therefore, still judiciously concealing myself, at great personal danger, may I add, within a mass of prickly shrubberies, I watched its approach and then, quick as a startled hare, jumped out into the alleyway just as some numskull—no names, please—whistled loud enough to bring down a mountain and the occupant of said hackney cowered into the darkest reaches of the vehicle.”

“Wonderful. Even when my luck is in, it's out,” Coop said in disgust.

“Not entirely. If I might return to my storytelling? The nag in the traces took umbrage at the whistle, reared up—chasing me back into the briars, may I add, so that I wouldn't end my evening with a stomping—but I managed to reemerge in time to use my knife to inflict a fairly long slice in the rear canopy of the hackey.”

“Hopefully rendering it recognizable in the daylight,” Rigby supplied in some awe. “That's more than I could do, I'm afraid. The hackney was on me before I could do more than realize I'd never be able to catch it, and then it was gone. Except—and you'll pardon me for this, Darby—that wasn't a hackney.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Rigby took a sip of wine, clearly to delay his explanation until he was certain he had all attention on him. “It was meant to look like a hackney, but the horseflesh was straight out of Tatt's or I'm a monkey.”

“You're a monkey,” Darby said flatly. “But you know, thinking back on it, and considering I was more intent on keeping my one eye on the occupant, you could be right. The animal was nervy, wasn't it? Hackney nags don't move beyond a lazy walk if a cannon goes off next to them.” He looked at Coop, who was gnawing on his bottom lip, deep in thought. “What do you think? Nothing blends in more on the streets than a hackney. Is our blackmailer, far from being pinched for pennies, only masquerading as someone less than affluent?”

“Or well placed,” Coop said, mentally combining this news with the proper spelling and phrasing in the notes, the chapbooks. “Who better to move among the ton than a member of the ton.
Oh, and from deductions I made tonight, this person might also be female. Or a short male. Or,” he added, sighing, “a lad hired from the streets.”

“Multiple-choice deductions now, Coop?” Darby teased. “Tell me again about this blackmailer of yours. Precisely what is he—she, or possibly them—threatening to reveal to the world?”

“I won't tell you again because I didn't tell you in the first place, although I commend you for trying now, when I'm clearly in a weakened state. Which you would be, as well, I should point out, if you'd just spent the past several hours in Miss Foster's company. So you can sit back again, Rigby. I'm not about to bare my soul to either of you.”