A Scandalous Proposal (14 page)

“Jerry doesn't believe that. He'd rather I just smiled and curtsied for some space of time yet, perhaps until the spring Season. As it is, he can't wait to get me out of London, the dear thing. As if I'd go. Oh! I remember now why I was so happy to see you. Jerry told me something yesterday, something truly extraordinary and impossible and, even worse, true. But I'm not supposed to repeat what he told me. Naturally, I'm bursting at the seams to do so. Please let me tell you.”

Sensing Mrs. Yothers hovering even though she'd turned her back to the woman, Dany said, “If it's true, then I suppose it wouldn't be gossip, would it?”

“That's the spirit!” Clarice rubbed her palms together and bent her head close. “You've met Darby, haven't you? I'm sure Jerry told me you did. Darby Travers, Viscount Nailbourne? He has that patch over his eye and all? Handsome devil, if a bit too amused, if you take my meaning. Gabe—Thea's fiancé—is a happy soul, and up to most any mischief, and Coop is so upright and commonsensible, while my Jerry is very nearly their pet, bless him, and I'd never say such a thing to him. Such good friends, for such a long time. But this?” She shook her head. “Even Jerry is appalled. You're really going to let me tell you?”

Dany wondered which one of them, Mrs. Yothers or herself, would be the first to grab Clarice Goodfellow by the throat and choke this supposed secret out of her.

But she managed to retain an outward calm as she nodded. “If only to ease your mind, Clarice. Yes, I'll hear your secret.”

“Damned well about time,” the young woman whispered, this time so that Mrs. Yothers couldn't hear her. Dany barely heard her, but she was fairly certain she knew what Clarice was saying.

Now the girl took a deep breath, held it for some moments and finally said: “He owns a brothel. Him. The viscount of Nailbourne.”

Dany gave a quick shake of her head, as if she hadn't quite understood what she'd just heard. In truth, she was having some difficulty believing this was the secret Mrs. Yothers was to hear. “Pardon me? You couldn't possibly have that right. Could you?”

Clarice gave a rather haughty push at her blond curls. “My Jerry doesn't lie.”

“No, no, of course not. I wouldn't imply any such thing. But this is terrible, Clarice. Very nearly as scandalous as if he'd gone into trade. My parents have been most clear on that point. Rather a privateer than a coal merchant. But this is worse, isn't it?”

“Jerry thinks so. He said the brothel is right here in Mayfair, and that would mean that the viscount is rubbing shoulders with the men who pay to use his services. I mean, not
his
services. But the services he provides. Is that what I mean?”

“I'm sure I have no idea,” Dany lied, wishing she hadn't listened so well to her brother when he was telling her things she shouldn't know. “Clarice, Rigby was wrong to tell you. I understand you must have been bursting to tell someone, but now you can't tell anyone else. Not a single soul. The viscount would be ruined. Disgraced. Forced to leave Society.”

Was that enough, or should she add a few more hints?

Clarice was vigorously nodding her agreement, so Dany decided she had made herself clear.

“Good. Now we'll not speak of this again. Truly, it's something we shouldn't know, should we? Although I wonder if Coop knows. I may just tell him. But only him, and nobody else. This is our secret now, Clarice. And a terrible one it is. Why, it's put me quite out of countenance. I don't think I could look at a single thing in the shop today, even as I'd returned specifically to select materials for a few gowns my sister promised me. Shall we leave now, and hope you haven't chased Rigby too far?”

They hadn't. As soon as Dany stepped outside the shop she saw Rigby nervously pacing the flagway.

“There you are!” he exclaimed while Clarice held out her hands to him, as if they were meeting after an intolerably long separation. “Did you do it? Did she hear you? Where are your packages? Don't say you didn't buy anything. That would be too suspicious.”

“I'm not such a sad looby,” Clarice scolded as she slipped her arm through his and Dany joined them for what appeared to be a walk to the corner. “The bonnets will be sent to Grosvenor Square, but I allowed Dany to talk me out of the reticule, just as you wanted.”

“Ah, caught out, am I?” Dany said, laughing. “What gave me away?”

“Nothing,” Clarice told her as she winked. “I was merely guessing. Shame on you, Jerry. You just had to say no.”

“I would never say no to you, Clary. I wouldn't know how.”

You'll always have a choice, Dany. That's a promise.

Two men. Saying two very different things. Yet both employing that same suddenly serious tone.

What did it mean? Did it mean anything? Rigby was a man in love. Coop was...well, he wasn't, that's all. Why, they barely knew each other.

She spied him as the trio turned the corner. He was standing beside his coach, propping up a light post, his arms folded, his feet crossed at the ankle. He looked like a man bored to flinders, and she felt a sudden mad desire to fling herself into his arms.

Rigby and Clarice gifted him with cheery hellos before climbing into the coach, but Dany stopped right in front of him to say, “Brothel? That couldn't have been your idea.”

“True enough. Darby picked it. He wanted something salacious. Do you know what comes next?”

“I do, or at least I think I do. We come back when the shop closes this evening, and then hopefully get the chance to follow Mrs. Yothers as she goes racing off to meet with her blackmailing employer.”

Coop held out his hand to assist her into the coach. Once they were settled on the squabs and dutifully ignoring Clarice and Rigby, who were greeting each other as if parted for years (and why did she feel suddenly jealous?), he corrected her assumption.

“Darby has all of that in hand.
We
are attending the theater, to see and be seen, as last night's dinner table gossip will have spread to every corner of Mayfair by then, and it's important we make an appearance. We can't have the world thinking you've locked yourself in your bedchamber, hiding from the man who compromised you, now, can we?”

Dany pointed to the cooing lovebirds on the facing seat. “Do we have to do
that
?”

Surely he couldn't hear that smidgen of hope in my voice.

Coop smiled. “God, no. Nobody does that. Only the two of them. Unless, that is, you believe it necessary.”

“I don't think so, no,” Dany said with all the conviction she could muster, stealing another peek at her new friends, who apparently had remembered where they were and broken off their kiss. Either that, or they'd run out of air. “Do you really think it will work?”

“That?” Coop asked rather incredulously, also pointing at his friends.

“No, of course not. The viscount flushing out the blackmailer. That is what you want, isn't it? Mrs. Yothers taking him information he can use to further line their pockets?”

“You'll pardon me for not always running fast enough to catch up with your mind as it skips ahead like a flat stone skimmed across a pond. But that is the plan, yes.”

“You should have spoken with me before you launched it, you know. Or did you consider the possibility that Mrs. Yothers is not involved with the blackmailer, and is only a silly gossip, so that our
engagement
may be completely overlooked as the world turns as one on the viscount?”

Coop muttered something under his breath.

“Pardon me? I don't believe I quite caught that,” Dany said, feeling rather smug.

“I said, men shouldn't think when they drink. I believe we did consider that possibility, but not seriously. I suppose we'd better hope Mrs. Yothers is guilty, shouldn't we?”

“Yes,
we
most certainly should. You men should also confine yourselves to war, and leave intrigue to the ladies. We're much better at it. A brothel. I suppose that's better than saying he murdered his valet, or some such thing.”

“That also was considered, but Darby pointed out that then he'd be forced to polish his own boots, which he deemed totally unacceptable for a man of his stature.”

Dany looked at Coop in astonishment but quickly noticed the twinkle in his eyes—those marvelous green eyes, more priceless than any emerald—and the two of them fell against each other in shared laughter.

It was as if they'd known each other forever. And wasn't that wonderful?
They had bumped up against the edge of ridiculous and, oh, what a marvelous collision it was.

Dany could believe they were simply two people who had met and liked each other, and could possibly be passing beyond mere liking and on to something else, something perhaps even rare and magical. For this moment, these few fleeting moments, it could be believed that their lives were perfect.

Save for the blackmailer, the chapbooks, Mari's letters and her soon-to-return husband, a totally ridiculous engagement and the constantly ticking clock hanging over all their heads...

CHAPTER TWELVE

C
OOP
BELIEVED
HE
had never so enjoyed an evening at the theater, and he had yet to more than occasionally glance toward the stage. There could be dancing elephants in pink tulle skirts twirling on the boards for all he knew, or cared.

Watching Dany's reactions to all that was transpiring around them was so much more entertaining. She was by turn amused, dismayed, curious, as excited as any child, and just the once, had waggled her fingers (the hand with the emerald riding atop the glove) at a rude dowager across the way who had aimed her lorgnette at their box, until the woman looked away in shame.

Not that most every eye hadn't been directed at them at one time or another once they'd entered the box and taken up the chairs in the front row. There was nothing like the ton to speed news across all of Mayfair with the velocity of a volley of loosed arrows.

At the moment, Dany was leaning slightly forward, her toes tapping, as the corps de ballet—Coop believed they were meant to be angels—performed on the stage. After all, there were wings involved, although most Covent Garden dancers were, as a group, farther from innocent angels than most any group Coop could think of. Darby, it was rumored, had bedded all of them.

Darby had probably launched that rumor.

In any event, this evening Dany and he were the guests of the Duke and Duchess of Cranbrook, who insisted on the more informal Uncle Basil and Aunt Vivien, which was what Coop, Darby, Rigby and of course Gabe had called them in their youth, when they were frequent guests at Cranbrook Chase and Basil was still thrice removed from the dukedom, intent only on staying as distant from responsibility as a generous allowance permitted.

But one by one, Basil's older brothers, each just on the eve of their sixtieth birthdays, had, or so it was told to Coop by Gabe, unexpectedly opened their eyes wide, said something on the order of “Erp?” and mere seconds thereafter shuffled off this mortal coil for “a better place.”

Eventually, the trio of
erps
left Basil the dukedom and, as he was approaching his sixtieth birthday in November, the notion that he was next. He had fallen into a sad decline, refusing to leave his rooms at the ducal estate. Boosting the man from his doldrums had fallen to Gabe, which meant Coop, Darby and Rigby were immediately called upon for their assistance.

Them, and the parrots.

Basil had gone from a man hiding from his own fate to a happy fellow who, if he was going to have to die, would make the most of his remaining time. He now spent that time doing what he pleased, when it pleased him, and chasing a giggling Vivien around the bedroom. He did a lot of the latter, and not always in the bedroom.

Not that there was anyone, Gabe included, who was about to point out that, since Clarice was living under their roof; they just might be setting a bad example for Miss Goodfellow and her ardent Rigby when it came to public displays of affection.

As if Clary and her Jerry gave a fig for conventions. Clarice was Rigby's first love, and love had fairly slammed him in the face like the broad end of a shovel, convention be damned. Their wedding, slated for Christmas at Cranbrook, couldn't come too soon.

Just as Gabe's marriage to his Thea, especially as he was heir to the dukedom, had only been put off until after the duke's birthday celebration—or funeral, whichever way a gambling man might wager in the clubs.

Lovebirds. Coop knew he was surrounded by lovebirds. Thank God for Darby, the happily dedicated bachelor who had— Wait a moment. Hadn't Darby been in on the plan to have his good friend compromise Dany into a betrothal?

Why would he have done that? Why had there been such a twinkle in his eye as he'd convinced Coop it was a necessary strategy if they were to catch out the blackmailer?

And then he remembered. They'd been at Oliver's residence that first day—and how long ago it seemed now. Darby had said that he was an observer, and Dany had asked him what he was observing at the moment. That's when he'd looked at Coop for a long moment in that
way
he had and said, “No, not today. I think I'll wait. It might be safer.” And then he'd made an excuse to leave Coop and Dany alone.

No, that's impossible. The viscount Nailbourne in the role of matchmaker? He couldn't have seen something neither of us saw. Still don't see.

Do we?

Do I?

Coop looked over at Dany, who was still tapping her foot, even sighing in pleasure, as the angels continued their hopping, skipping dance about the stage. There was so much joy encased in that small body, so much energy and love of life. Clearly, she wanted to stand up and dance.

Suddenly he wanted to dance with her, right here, at this very moment, and the world be damned. He, Cooper Townsend, good friend, granted, but occasionally accused of being a bit of a sobersides, voluntarily making a cake of himself?

Had Dany caused this change in him?

Was there another answer?

No, none that he could think of at any rate.

It was as if she'd been fashioned especially for him, to shake him awake, make him realize all he'd been missing by being so rigid and commonsensible. Why should the duke be the only one to see life as something to be enjoyed to the hilt?

But now what? This was a temporary betrothal; he'd promised Dany as much. Damn Darby for a troublemaking soothsayer; now what should he do?

“Look at the third one from the left, dearies. Her plump bakery shop bouncing and jiggling like blancmange. She could do with a wide strip of linen tied around her bosoms, to my way of thinking. Many more years of flapping those things about and they'll be at her knees.”

Thunk. Welcome back to reality, old sport. Unexpectedly tumbling into love isn't your only problem.

How had he forgotten that his mother was seated in the row directly behind them, and what were the chances he'd be killed instantly and painlessly if he stood up and threw himself out of the box and down into the pit below?

“Minerva, please, you can't say things like that around...” he said, but then closed his mouth as he realized Dany was laughing. Her slim shoulders shaking, her gloved hands concealing a wide grin. Why, there were tears gathering in her eyes from attempting to hold back her amusement.

“Ah, sterling. Just testing,” Minerva said in some satisfaction, sitting back on her chair once more, tossing one end of her just-short-of-garish purple pashmina stole around her neck as if pleased with a mission successfully accomplished. “She'll do nicely, Cooper, just as Darby said. You may keep her. Although you may want to tell Ames to remove some of the starch from
your
collars.”

His mother would never change, and he loved her. Dany was not his mother, but she clearly delighted in nonsense. Maybe that combination wasn't as bad as it might have seemed a day earlier. Actually, the two of them, together, could be fun, if fun was the correct word. Still, he had to say something, admonish his mother in some way. “Mother—”

Applause rose around them at that moment, and for an instant Coop wildly thought both Minerva and Dany would stand up and curtsy to the audience. But it was only Intermission, and an unforeseen rescue as he grabbed Dany's hand and all but mowed down Rigby and Clarice as he dragged her past a canoodling duke and duchess in the shadows, and out of the box.

“Where are we going?” she asked him as he raced her along ahead of any other patrons also intent on escaping their boxes for a bit of air and refreshment. “And can we get there before anyone can follow us?”

Coop turned to grin at her, because once again she had peeked into his mind and seen his intentions. “Had enough of our jolly friends for a while, have you? The royal box is empty and curtained, and only five boxes down this way. It's our best option.”

Carefully looking in all directions to be certain they weren't observed, he then pushed back the velvet curtains and entered the royal box. Because the front of the box was also draped shut, the move cast the two of them into near-total darkness.

“Won't we be arrested and clapped in chains if anyone discovers us in...”

He didn't allow her to finish. He was too intent on turning her about, pulling her into his arms and taking possession of her incredibly enticing full mouth.

To silence her, of course.

Bloody hell that was the reason!

Perhaps she'd sneaked a few lessons from Rigby and Clarice's performance earlier in the coach, because this time there was nothing wooden or missish about her response to his kiss. Instead, she rather melted against him, even as her arms slid up his chest and she wrapped her hands around his neck.

His reaction to this unexpected capitulation was anything but that of a seasoned seducer.

His throat seemed to swell, his heart rate doubled and damn if there wasn't a small show of fireworks going on behind his eyelids.

Other parts of his body reacted in a purely masculine way.

She seemed to notice that, as well. And not shy away.

Coop deepened the kiss, sliding the tip of his tongue inside her mouth, tasting her sweetness, marveling when she returned ardor for ardor. His thigh somehow found its way between hers and he moved his hand down to cup her firm round bottom, move himself against her.

He broke the kiss but not their embrace, moving his mouth along the side of her throat, pressing kisses against the exposed skin above the neckline of her modest gown, lightly squeezing her breast as she threw back her head in the age-old signal of acceptance.

Coop, with the last shreds of sanity he retained, knew he had to stop. This was not the time, and most definitely not the place.

And who knew she'd be so willing? God, she was willing.

It was that thought that truly stopped him.

He had to know. Curse him for a fool, he had to know.

He put his hands on her shoulders and put a careful six inches between them, attempting to make out her expression in the darkness.

“Are you in any way serious, or is this just another adventure?”

The sound of her palm hitting his cheek could not be considered one heard 'round the world, or even outside the royal box, but it was one totally deserved, and Coop knew it.

“Oh, God, Dany, I'm...”

“Not another word, my friend. You've more than dug this particular hole deep enough. Although I was going to stop you, anyway, for the sake of my own delicate sensibilities.”

Coop and Dany turned as one, to see the dark outline of one Darby Travers standing just to the left of the railing overlooking the theater.

“How did you...?”

“Where else were you going to go?” Darby interrupted, stepping toward them to bow over Dany's hand. “I knew you couldn't remain in the duke's box throughout the entire evening, not without running stark, staring mad into the streets, and this was so wonderfully convenient. Or am I wrong, and Minerva is behaving herself?”

“She was behaving exactly like Minerva,” Coop said, putting a protective arm around Dany's shoulders—why, he didn't know, since he could be considered the enemy at the moment. “But Dany has passed muster by allowing herself to be amused.”

Dany shook off his light embrace and wrapped her silk shawl more closely around her. “If I may be allowed to speak?”

“I don't know,” Darby said. “Coop, do we dare?”

“I'd ask you to go away,” Dany said in some heat, “but that would only amuse
you
, my lord. Why are you here? Aren't you supposed to be following Mrs. Yothers?”

“Ah, dear lady, but I am. Or at least I was. I followed her directly here from her shop. She purchased a ticket, stepped inside, ignored the staircase to the highest balconies and made her way to a box situated directly across from this one, as coincidence would have it. Conveniently, at least for us, she extracted a folded paper from her reticule before stepping inside the box. She tarried inside but a moment, and is now on her way back to same said shop, I'd imagine, having delivered her missive to her—I suppose I should say
employer
?”

“Tipping him to the carefully fed gossip about you.” Coop took a step toward his friend. All right, they were making progress. “Good, at least something is going as planned. Who occupies the box?”

“Yes, that's where it gets a bit sticky. I suppose now I have to reveal that I was using the royal box as a vantage point, to see who occupies that box, and that you shocked me all hollow when the two of you stepped in here and began— Well, that's enough of that.”

“I knew you weren't that perceptive,” Dany said with readily apparent satisfaction. “But you are lucky, I will admit to that.”

Darby touched his fingertips to his patch. “That's me, Miss Foster. I've been basking in good fortune all my life.”

“Oh. I'm so sorry...”

“Don't fall for that one, Dany,” Coop warned her. “If the ball had been an inch lower we'd be putting posies in front of his headstone once a year.”

“But that's not lucky, it's only
less
unlucky,” Dany pointed out in what Coop had come to understand to be typical Daniella Foster logic. “Again, I'm sorry, my lord. But if I may admit to a concern I've had ever since my trip to Mrs. Yothers's shop this morning? What if Clarice and I weren't as convincing as we supposed, and all Mrs. Yothers wrote in her note this evening is that we're onto her?”

“Does it matter, Miss Foster?”

“No, I suppose not, unless you've set your heart on being blackmailed, but it would be disheartening to believe we were that unconvincing. Now, tell us who is sitting in the box.”

“Doesn't cling to things until they become maudlin, does she?” Darby joked, and then suggested they vacate the royal box before someone else got the bright idea for a quick assignation at the king's expense.