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“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 (#ulink_0207bd4f-16fb-5774-9196-6aa479ce7a37)
“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.”
