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CHAPTER THREE

“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.”

“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?