A Scandalous Proposal. Kasey Michaels
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?
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