A Scandalous Proposal (2 page)

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

T
HE
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

D
ANIELLA
F
OSTER
,
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.”