A Scandalous Proposal (16 page)

“You were young,” Dany repeated, nodding her head. “Was he expelled?”

“The woman died the next day, and suddenly Ferdie was gone. The marquis made a sizable donation to the school's chapel, and Ferdie was banished to a distant cousin somewhere in the wilds of north Ireland, not to leave unless he wished to be disowned. I seem to remember that the cousin was some sort of fire and brimstone holy man who had eschewed money, wine, women and most probably indoor privies. And yes, before you ask, we all found great pleasure in hearing that via Ferdie's suddenly unemployed valet. When his father died last winter, Ferdie came into the title. I really don't know more than that.”

“Yes, you do. Or you think you do. We're almost there, aren't we?”

He took both her hands in his, lightly rubbing his thumbs over her soft skin. “I'll reserve judgment until I've spoken to Ned and Geoff. But yes, I think we've found our man in Ferdie, although he wasn't the person who brushed past us in the jewelry shop. As to where
we
are, you and I, I have no answer for you.”

Dany sighed. “I know. Neither do I. We don't even know each other, do we?”

He leaned in, to whisper his next words in her ear. “How long do you think it takes until two people can be said to know each other?”

Her sigh was rather shaky, and lit a small fire inside him. “Surely longer than two days, don't you think?”

“Perhaps—” he paused, pressed a light kiss against her ear “—perhaps it takes a lifetime to really know someone else. Or you can know them in an instant, and spend the rest of your life delighting in the knowing.”

She moved slightly away from him, although she didn't withdraw her hands. “That sounded lovely, if a bit romantical. My parents are...comfortable. Do you think all people who know each other for a lifetime are comfortable with each other?”

He pulled her closer, knowing he should consider her question carefully. “I'm comfortable with you now.”

“Really? That's nice, I suppose.”

Nice? Well, wasn't that encouraging?

“You'd rather I were uncomfortable?”

“I suppose I'm thinking about Mari and Oliver, and how she worries that he's...he's not as interested as he had been when they married. I don't think I wish ever to be thought of as a pair of comfortable old slippers.”

He smiled. “I'd say you may rest assured that would never happen.”

“You say that now. But perhaps we're simply friends. People can strike up friendships quite easily, especially in times of crisis. I already feel as if Clarice is a friend.”

Was Dany sounding just a tad desperate? Attempting to find rhyme or reason in feelings she'd not expected and didn't know how to interpret?

Should I tell her I'm struggling with the same attempt?

He changed the subject, if only to give them both a chance to relax.

“This sham betrothal was a mistake, for too many reasons to mention, one of them being we seem to have solved the question of who is the blackmailer with almost stunning ease. In fact, all we've succeeded in doing is warning Ferdie that we know both your sister and I are being blackmailed. Worse, that Yothers woman showing up with gossip about Darby—my good friend Darby, no less—could very well have tipped him off that we'd planted that gossip, and that the woman had done just what we'd hoped, leading us straight to him. At this point, he may go underground.”

“Retire from the game, you mean? I don't know the man, of course, but he seems to have gone to a prodigious amount of trouble to seek his revenge. I doubt he'll turn away at the first fence.”

Bless her, she was always ready to jump from subject to subject, and put her very good mind to very good use. More discussion of their impromptu proposal would wait for another day.

Coop had a sudden memory of Ferdie's bloody face, where one of the blows from the crop had sliced him to the bone. No, with the scar that wound must have left behind, greeting him in the shaving mirror every morning, it was doubtful he'd give up now.

“Damn.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hear me out. Ferdie has had a long time to build on his hate, plot his revenge on us. We fairly well destroyed his life for the past half dozen years or more, maybe forever, in his mind. That's not something easily forgotten. But first he had to figure out how to target his victims, or his oppressors, as that's probably how he sees the thing. Two of them were out of reach—Johnny and Thad—but he's already gotten to two others.”

“Two? You said Ned Givens was exposed as a card cheat. Who's the other?”

“Davy. It had to be. I said he'd suffered an accident, but that's not true. He killed himself.”

Dany's body went taut with excitement; clearly she loved a mystery, but not as much as solving that mystery. “Because Ferdie was going to expose him? Is that what you're saying? What did he do wrong?”

“Nothing that I know of, but there had to be something.”

He loved a man, that's what he did wrong, at least according to the world. What else could he have meant with that note? Somehow, Ferdie had found out, and threatened him with exposure. Lord knew he had enough money in his pockets to buy most any information he wanted.

Including information on me? Yes, of course.

“I'm sorry,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. “This is difficult for you, isn't it?”

“If by difficult you mean it's taking everything in me not to rush you back to Portman Square before hunting the man down to wring his neck, then yes, it's difficult. I have to get to Ned tomorrow. I'm already certain he's in the Fleet because of Ferdie, but I want to hear it from him.”

“He did cheat at cards, didn't he?”

“He did in school, but after we skinned him to his unmentionables and ran him up the flagpole by his ankles, he promised never to do it again. Which he didn't, as far as I know, even if it was because no one would sit down with him again. He was really quite good at fuzzing the cards, I'll hand him that, so he may have tried it again, just to keep in practice. What we need to know is if Ferdie had a hand in exposing him.”

Dany nodded. “Once we know for certain what we're already convinced we know, what do we do? Mari needs those letters, Coop, and you need to stop this horrible Ferdie person from publishing another chapbook. Only then can you wring his neck, which I wouldn't suggest doing because people get hanged for that sort of thing and I'd rather miss you.”

“How gratifying. No, I learned my lesson that night at school. Giving in to violence is no answer to anything.”

“Wait a moment. Is that why you're a sobersides—although I certainly don't think you are, not at all.”

“No, that would be my friends, and my own mother,” Coop said, hoping she could hear the smile in his voice.

She squeezed his hands. “The others weren't with you, or perhaps they'd feel the same. Your life changed that night, didn't it?”

Her conclusion was something he'd considered. He'd learned that with enough money and position, a person could be bought out of being charged for murder, and that some lives apparently meant less than others. All he could say for certain was that, although they were all of the same age, he'd felt older than his friends after Ferdie than he had before Ferdie.

“At least I didn't swear off strong spirits, or my own mother wouldn't speak to me,” he quipped, drawing a smile from her before they could both sink into solemn silence.

“You can't turn him over to the courts,” she pointed out, her mind leaping ahead. “Not without exposing Mari, or yourself. So how will you stop him? Really, it's a shame he has no secrets you can reveal, turnabout being fair play and all of that.”

“What did you say? No, wait, I heard you. Turnabout is fair play. Dany, you're a genius!”

“I am? Oh, good, at last someone has recognized what I've always believed.” She leaned toward him. “How am I a genius?”

“I'm not quite sure yet, but we'll think of something.”

“Before I'm too delighted, I'd like you to clarify something for me. When you say
we
, do you mean you and the viscount and Rigby? Or do you mean we, as in the way I'd prefer you say it? As in you and the viscount and Rigby and the genius?”

“I wouldn't take a step without you. I don't think I'd dare.”

“Wonderful, because I'd hate having to run to catch up. Still, and even as friends, I think perhaps we should shake on it. You know, to seal the bond, as you men do?”

He saw an opening and, crass as he could consider himself, he took it.

“I'd rather seal the bond the way men and women do.”

Or perhaps it was the opening she had sought. With Dany, he knew he would never be sure which one of them, as it were, was driving the coach.

“Well, for goodness' sake, Coop, it's about time. I was about to begin wondering if I'd become repulsive to you now that we're supposedly betrothed.”

He relaxed...but he certainly wasn't comfortable. “Or that I'd become too comfortable?”

“Yes, that, as well, I suppose. I fear I may share some of my sister's romantical failings, and would really like it very much if you were to kiss me.”

Apparently both of them had a hand on the reins, and seemed to be heading in the same direction.

He closed the gap between them to little more than scant inches. “If you haven't noticed, I've been of the same mind all evening.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes, I think I did notice.”

“But it's wrong. I mean, for both of us. As a gentleman, shaky as that term is at the moment when applied to me, I still feel I need to point that out.”

“I believe most of the world would say so.”

He released her hands, to rest his on her shoulders. “Which begs the question—do we care what the world says?”

Now she looked at him, her indigo eyes looking black as the deepest part of the sea. “I should say we do, that
I
do. Would you mind if I didn't?”

“No,” he breathed, just before finally closing the gap between them. “I don't mind at all.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

H
IS
LIPS
WERE
cool against hers—for what else could cause a shiver to run down her spine at his merest touch?—and Dany instinctively pressed her body closer to his, to take in his warmth.

The heat was sudden and intense.

Gone was the teasing, the pleasant camaraderie. Friendship had nothing to do with what she was feeling now. It couldn't.

This was something new, different.

This was desire.

And she liked it.

Maybe it is the red hair
, she thought before she decided not to think anymore. She much preferred to feel.

Coop's kisses were short, teasing, testing and tasting, as if gauging her response, her willingness.

She wanted to grab on to his ears and pull him firmly against her, because if he were testing her, he'd soon learn that he was politely driving her mad.

So Dany wrapped her arms about his neck, lifted her feet off the floor, swinging them onto his lap, and deliberately propelled herself backward.

Down they went, onto the tufted velvet squabs, their mouths still locked together. Coop somehow sorted out arms and legs until he was lying half-beside her, their lower limbs comfortably entangled, holding her securely so that she didn't topple to the floor, which would be embarrassing as well as probably putting an end to this exciting interlude.

He was kissing her face now, more of those quick, tantalizing kisses.

And talking.

Good Lord, why is he talking?

“You're so beautiful.”

Aren't you sweet? Now hold still and kiss me again. Kiss me a thousand times. Yes, like this. Just like this. Kiss me all night long...

Her mouth opened half in shock, half on a sigh, when she felt his hand on her breast. Cupping her. Rubbing his thumb over her until her nipple responded by going taut, sending unsettling sensations throughout her body, but mostly spreading low, to her belly, and beyond.

He was kissing her. He was touching her. His breath had become fairly ragged, just like hers. She'd dug her fingertips into the cloth of his jacket, able to feel his shoulder muscles, and now wished the jacket gone, even his shirt gone, so she could press her hands directly against his strength.

It had to be the red hair. Or Coop.

They were two people in the most awkward of physical positions, in the most complicated of contrived engagements, behaving like any other two people who couldn't be close enough, couldn't hold back, were no longer in control of the situation they had created.

Something else had taken over, and was apparently very much in charge.

And I've known this would happen from the first moment I fell into his arms. Two days, two weeks, two years. What did time matter? Because I knew. I think he did, as well...

Dany couldn't hold back a soft, anguished moan when Coop broke their kiss, moved his hand from her breast.

But then he was kissing her again, trailing those kisses along the side of her throat, down onto her chest, at the same time managing to slide her gown from her shoulder.

When he took her into his mouth, Dany knew that whatever she had felt before this moment in her life had been nothing. Not happiness, not sorrow, not pain nor pleasure. Nothing compared with the waterfall of feelings pouring through her now. Hunger. Joy. Fulfillment. Conquest. Surrender. Chinese rockets exploded behind her eyes, filling her world with color.

She pressed her lower body against his, raising herself up because it felt natural to do so, and encountered his strength, his ardor.

He wanted her.

She wasn't the baby sister anymore, the too-inquisitive one, the impetuous one, the dare-anything, risk-everything, trust-too-easily bane of her mother's existence.

Or maybe she was in the process of proving that she was all of those things.

Coop lifted his head, slid her gown back in place. He looked down at her in the near darkness.

“You're right,” he said, as if he'd read her mind. “We're not ready for this.”

“We aren't?” She hoped he didn't hear the mix of relief and disappointment in her voice.

He kissed her, a long, drugging kiss, the sort that had started all this in the first place. She'd remind him of that, except then maybe he wouldn't do it again.

“We won't give this up,” he said as he broke the kiss, long enough for them both to breathe, and then took her mouth once more, even as he righted them on the squabs.

“Stay right there,” he said, dropping a kiss on her nose before shifting to the facing seat, in order to open the small door and tell the coachman to proceed to Portman Square.

And then he was back.

And she was waiting.

Each kiss was better than the last, his strong arms around her, her hands on his shoulders, holding him close.

Each time they broke a kiss, she felt a stab of loss go through her, until he healed her with another kiss.

All night. Kiss me all night.

But when the coach came to a halt and the flambeaux outside the earl's mansion turned the interior of the coach brighter, it was time to say good-night.

Dany's bottom lip trembled, and she felt tears stinging behind her eyes.

“Until tomorrow,” Coop promised in a tone so sincere her toes curled in her evening slippers.

He kissed the palms of her hands; he pulled her close to take her mouth one last time.

“I don't want to leave you here.”

He may as well have told her he loved her. Dany nearly burst into tears, something she never did.

“I don't want you to go,” she whispered, astonished at her feeling of loss, even as she could still look into his eyes. “One more?”

She could see his smile as he tilted his head and took her in his arms again.

The door opened, and the tiger reached in to let down the steps.

“You have to go.”

“I know.”

“Give me your hand so I can help you down.”

Dany nodded. Her throat was too full to speak.

Together, the backs of their hands brushing against each other, they ascended the steps to the door of the mansion, where the light was brighter and Society's conventions most definitely ruled.

He kissed her hand as a footman opened the door and Timmerly stepped into the light cast by the candles in the foyer.

“Miss Foster, it has been my pleasure,” Coop said, bowing over her hand again. “Good night.”

“Good night, my lord,” she answered, knowing her eyes were begging him not to leave.

She watched him descend the half dozen steps before he turned, to look at her. “Good night,” he said again.

“Yes. Good night.”

“There's a chill, Miss Foster,” the butler pointed out. “Come inside now and allow Martin to shut the door.”

“In a moment.”

Coop reached the open coach door and turned once more.

“If it's all right with the countess, I'll call on you tomorrow at noon. We'll go for a drive, perhaps a picnic in Richmond Park if the weather cooperates.”

“Noon would be fine. As would earlier,” she added, and quickly wiped at a tear that had escaped down her cheek.

Anyone would think he was going off to war, and she might never see him again. Yet that's how she felt. Lost. Bereft.

Coop nodded, and stepped into the coach.

“Now, Miss Foster. The countess would not approve.”

“Dany—wait.”

She turned to see Coop all but bounding toward her, her scarf in his hand.

“You forgot this,” he said, draping it around her shoulders.

Suddenly everything was awkward.

“Th-thank you.”

“My pleasure, Miss Foster.” He leaned toward her and whispered, “What's his name?”

“His— Oh. Timmerly. Why?”

“Timmerly? A word.”

“Yes, my lord? You wanted something?”

“Indeed I do. Bloody shut your eyes,” Coop said as he pulled Dany to him for one last, lingering kiss.

This time, when they broke their embrace they were smiling. Smiles that turned to laughter, at the butler's expense, surely, but also laughing at the world, life in general, and with a happiness neither seemed ashamed to show to that world.

“Tomorrow,” Coop said, and bounded down the steps once more.

“Harry. To the Pulteney. Quickly, before I change my mind.”

The tiger closed the coach door and climbed back up onto the seat next to the coachman. “Queer as folk, all of them, that's what I say,” he commented loudly enough for Dany to hear him as the coachman flicked the reins over the horses.

“
Now
, Miss Foster?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said as she stepped inside the mansion, still struggling not to laugh. “I'm a sad trial, Timmerly
,
do you know that?”

“There have been rumors to that effect, yes, miss.”

“So you're going to tell the countess?”

“No, miss. His lordship is the hero of Quatre Bras and you are betrothed. Besides, Mrs. Timmerly and I were once young.”

“But you're comfortable now.”

He cocked his head to one side, as if considering her need for an answer. “There's love, Miss Foster, and then there's love. The first, when it strikes, is all we believe we can wish for.”

“And the second?”

He looked at her for another long moment, and something about him seemed to soften. “And the second, the love that remains, sustains, is all we never realized we needed. Good night, Miss Foster.”

Dany felt tears stinging at her eyes again, and went up on her tiptoes to kiss the butler's cheek. “Thank you. You're really a very nice man.”

Timmerly cleared his throat with an imperious
harrumph.
“I'm nothing of the sort. Upstairs, young lady. Martin, close your mouth.”

“Yes, Martin, before a fly wanders into it.” Laughing, Dany lifted the front of her skirts and took off up the stairs, feeling light as a feather, almost as if
she
could fly.

“Decorum, Miss Foster,” Timmerly called after her. “
Decorum
at all times.”

Dany turned at the head of the stairs, ready to ascend the next flight, but then hesitated. Mari really should know there are two kinds of love.

Besides, she knew if she didn't talk to
somebody
she probably was going to burst!

She crept down the hall on tiptoe, not wanting to alert Timmerly as to what she was doing, knocked lightly on the door of the master's bedchamber and slipped inside. There was still light from the dying fire, and for some unknown reason, a candelabra still burned on a table beside the bed. Was her sister still afraid of the dark? After all these years? She tiptoed across the floor, heading for the partially curtained four-poster.

“Mari? Mari.
Pssst. Mari.
”
She pushed the curtains farther apart.
“
Oh, for goodness' sake, Mari,
wake up
!”

The Countess of Cockermouth, serenely beautiful by day, sat up all at once, and Dany jumped back a step, clapping her hands over her mouth so as to not cry out.

“What do you have on your face?” she asked as her sister pulled off a quilted satin sleeping mask, to blink furiously in the light. “My God, Mari, you're
green
! And why were you wearing that mask? And...and where's your hair?”

“I am not green.”

“You are so,” Dany said, hopping up onto the bed. She reached out to remove a bit of something that was hanging from Mari's cheek. “And you're
molting.
Ugh!”

Mari put her hands to her face and likewise came away with a little bit of peeling
greenery
. “Now you've gone and ruined it, Dany. The instructions were to wear it for a full twelve hours in order to wake with a dewy, flawless complexion.”

“Whose instructions?”

“Mrs. Angelique Sweet, of course. She comes straight from Paris. And before you say it, no, she's not a witch, like that old crone Mama used to visit in the village to buy her elixir, until Papa drank some and took it for himself. But her results are magical. She's a highly respected...purveyor of beauty. All the best ladies of the ton seek her custom.”

Angelique Sweet. I'd wager my best new gloves the woman's real name is Agnes Clump and she hails from Cheapside.

“And if all the best ladies of the ton stuck their fingers in their ears and quacked like ducks, I suppose you'd join them in that, too. I can see you all now, marching through the park on your way to wade in the Serpentine.”

“You always think you're smarter than me, but you aren't. I have every confidence in Mrs. Sweet.”

Dany sniffed the bit of dried potion, which smelled rather like apples, and then sniffed the air...which didn't. “You have something on your hair underneath that toweling, don't you? Or are you hiding a chicken leg you stole from the kitchens?”

Her sister patted the wrapped toweling. “If you must know, Mrs. Sweet's recipe for maintaining a lush, full head of hair does contain some...some chicken fat in it, I believe.” She rushed to add, “But she warned me that many women lose handfuls of hair when they're increasing, and this is the one sure way to prevent that. Nourishing the...the follicles, whatever they are.”

“Feeding the follicles. With chicken fat,” Dany said flatly. “I begin to understand the multitude of bottles and pots on your dressing table.” She reached out to put a hand on her sister's. “Don't you know you're already beautiful?”

“Yes, I suppose I do. Mama always says I am her beautiful daughter.”

Dany rolled her eyes. Just when she wanted to hug her sister, she said something like that. Lord bless her, she never meant anything mean by what she said. Or perhaps that was the pity of the thing.

Mari plucked at another thin apple scraping. “But being beautiful can be a curse as well as a blessing.”