Читать книгу Scandalous Regency Secrets Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Louise Allen - Страница 18
ОглавлениеTHE WORLD WAS a strange place, and London might perhaps be its very center of strangeness, or at least that’s what Dany had concluded over the course of the past few hours.
Her sister, somewhere between her come-out and her nearly fourth year of marriage, had turned into a twit. Not that she hadn’t always been a bit silly and romantical, but exposure to London air or a matrimonial bed or the silliness of Society had picked her up and launched her straight into the land of the cuckoos.
Mari had gone from Utter Despair to Near Euphoria once she’d heard her sister’s news. She’d asked no questions, as if young ladies met a gentleman on Bond Street every morning and were betrothed to him by the time the sun set that night, without something fairly havey-cavey transpiring somewhere in between.
To Mari, apparently, nothing else mattered except how her sister’s sudden engagement affected her. The hero had arrived. Huzzah, huzzah. He’d been immediately infatuated with Dany, and sworn on his sword to Save Them All from Shame and Ruin. One more Huzzah! All would be solved, Oliver would be over the moon to hear he was about to have an heir, there definitely would be more jewelry in Mari’s future and her world would run knee-deep in milk and honey. “Oh, and here, darling sister, take these pearls as my gift to you. You can’t be expected to go about town in grandmother’s horridly cheap garnets now. Ollie will buy me more.”
“Twit,” Dany said out loud as she sat cross-legged in front of the fire and scrubbed at her still-damp hair, her fingers serving as the only comb she’d need. “Twit, twit, double twit.” What did her sister think? That Cooper Townsend had just to wiggle his heroic ears, and the blackmailer would tumble into his lap, Mari’s letters all tied up in a blue ribbon?
Then there was Timmerly. The condescending sneer the butler had conjured up each time Dany came into view had been magically replaced with an annoying series of bows and “Yes, miss. Anything you want, miss. Can I be so honored as to order anything for you, miss? Mrs. Timmerly is already planning a magnificent trifle for your first dinner here with the baron, miss.”
Dany half expected the man to bodily throw himself in her path should an unexpected puddle appear in front of her on her way from the staircase to the drawing room. Why, at dinner, he’d actually offered to cut her meat.
And all solely because she was betrothed to the baron, the hero of Quatre Bras and those silly chapbooks. If everyone were to be as annoying as Mari and Timmerly, her pity for the baron would soon know no bounds. How did he stand all this fawning attention?
And all this business about him working under direction of “someone close to the Crown,” going about the countryside, defending innocent young women from fates worse than death. What nonsense!
She’d read the second chapbook now, as a giggling Mrs. Timmerly had offered her own copy, and she didn’t believe the half of it. The quarter of it. Why, there weren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all the rescues written about in Volume Two.
And what was a fate worse than death, anyway? There certainly wasn’t anything more final than death. Both volumes had been rather vague on that point. Just as they were vague on what the baron did with his rescued damsels. Especially at the end of Volume Two.
Dany picked up the book and read the section again.
Overcome by her Emotions, she cried out in Near Ecstasy as she grasped his strong shoulders, claiming the world could safely rest on their Broad Expanse, just as her fate had so lately done, and Never Fear for her honor, that which she then so Earnestly Offered Him.
“I may not be so sure on the worse-than-death business, but it would take a real looby to not understand what that means.”
“You said something, Miss Dany?”
She smiled at the maid. “Nothing worth a second airing, no. Life is strange, isn’t it, Emmaline? One moment you think you know everything, and the next you’re certain you’ll never really know anything. And yes, before you say it, in between those two opposing conclusions is the part where I do things like cut off all my hair.”
“It will grow back, miss. It’s doing it already. I would even go so far as to say it looks rather fetching, all clinging to your neck and your cheeks and such. Not that I’d say the same if your poor mama was to be sitting here with us.”
“Value your position that much, do you?” Dany grinned at the maid as she got to her feet, already untying the dressing gown she’d donned after her bath. “Time for me to get dressed, Emmaline. Tell me, what does one wear to welcome one’s betrothed into one’s bedchamber just before midnight?”
The maid blushed to the roots of her thinning gray hair. Emmaline had been with the Foster family for decades, a sweet, homely woman who’d never so much as walked out with a young man during her youth. Dany had long ago given up asking her to answer the questions her mother avoided. “About what you’ve got on, Miss Dany, or so I’ve heard.”
“Emmaline, for shame!” Dany giggled then, but she could hear her sudden nerves in that giggle, and quickly stopped. “I think the blue dimity, please.”
The maid frowned. “The one with all the buttons, miss?”
“Precisely. What do you think is going to happen tonight, Emmaline?”
“I couldn’t say as I’d know, Miss Dany. Begging your pardon, I haven’t known what was going on with you since you could stand up and walk on your own.”
“I’m a sad trial, I know,” Dany said, giving the woman a quick hug. “If Evie hadn’t married last year and gone to live with her innkeeper husband, you’d still be second maid to Mama, and not forced to deal with her unmanageable daughter. Shall we blame Evie?”
“No, Miss Dany, for if she hadn’t married she’d be here with you, and I’m that happy to be in London, able to visit with my brother Sam in the stables on my afternoon off. Sam always said he wasn’t built for sitting around in the country.”
Sam was built for sitting, however—at the dinner table.
“That’s right, I’d forgotten Sam is part of the earl’s London staff. That might be something I should keep in mind,” she ended half to herself, knowing no one could have enough allies. Sam, so rotund that at least two people could hide behind him, could also be set to watch the tree from the stables. It probably wouldn’t take more than some leftover pudding to gain his allegiance. She needed to remember to tell Coop about Sam.
Coop. He’d be here soon, tapping his foot as he waited outside for Emmaline to let him in. How had the evening dragged on for days, and now in these past few minutes she had nearly run out of time.
Emmaline approached with the blue dimity, but it was too late for that. All those buttons.
“Here,” she said, grabbing the gown and tossing it on the bed. Good Lord, Emmaline had turned down the covers! Well, that invitation had to be remedied, at once. “We’ll forget this. Just bring me my green riding habit and take yourself off to the side door to let the baron in, all right? We don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“Your riding habit, Miss Dany? You’re going riding this late? Ah, Sam won’t like that, thinking he has the cattle all bedded down for the night.”
“Tucks them in, does he?” Dany put her hands on the maid’s shoulders, steering her toward the door. “No, I’m not going riding. It’s one outfit I can manage by myself, that’s all. Now go.”
She didn’t mention that it was also one outfit she could run in, thanks to its divided skirt, just in case the need arose. Certainly the baron didn’t think she would meekly watch from the window if the blackmailer showed up and not follow after him when he set off to bring the rotter down. What was the sense of joining an adventure if she couldn’t go adventuring?
After securing the skirt at her waist, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of half boots, donned and buttoned her jacket and was just about to wonder if Cooper had changed his mind when the door opened and he walked into the room.
Oh, my.
He was dressed in evening clothes, all severe black and pristine-white stock, all loosely tumbled blond curls and bright green eyes.
And big. She hadn’t realized he was quite that big. The generously sized bedchamber suddenly seemed uncomfortably small, now that he was in it.
And with the bedcovers still turned down...
He greeted her with no more than a nod, and then turned to Emmaline. Dany imagined the look on his face as he did so, since the maid bobbed two quick curtsies and left, closing the door behind her without so much as a glance toward her mistress.
“That was ridiculously easy,” he said, tossing his hat onto the bed, of all places. “Although I probably could have done without the butler and his wife, lined up with all the other staff in the hallway, welcoming me. Next time, if there is a next time, I might just as well use the front door knocker, and perhaps bring along a marching band.”
“I had no idea...” Dany stopped, shook her head. “No, that’s really not true. I should have known. Does this happen all the time? People turning near-imbecilic at the mere prospect of seeing you?”
“Since the chapbooks, you mean? More than enough of them, yes. And if our blackmailer has one of his informers on the earl’s staff, by tomorrow he’ll know he can’t risk returning here to carry on his knothole correspondence with the countess, so let’s make the most of this single night we do have.”
“You really think someone on the staff is in the blackmailer’s employ? Really? And what are you doing?”
Coop was moving about the bedchamber, using a brass snuffer to extinguish the candles. “To answer your first question, nothing is impossible. As to the second, we need this room in darkness before we push back the drapes.”
Dany pulled a face. “Oh, I did that wrong, didn’t I? If he did think to deliver another threat, he clearly would have seen me outlined against the glass, wouldn’t he?”
“In your defense, you’re rather new at this,” he said, snuffing the last candles, pitching the room into darkness save for the light from the fire. “Will you be staying here with me, or are you planning a midnight ride?”
She glanced down at her outfit, belatedly realizing she had foregone a blouse in favor of haste, and she looked decidedly bare above the last button of her jacket. She imagined it would be impossible to blow out the fire, to turn the room completely dark. Besides, it was fairly obvious he’d already noticed her missing bit of wardrobe. And he couldn’t resist jabbing her about it, could he?
Really, once people got to know the baron, perhaps they wouldn’t all be so loopy and silly when he was around. He was just a man, and a maddening one at that. Especially when his smile carried all the way to his eyes, as it was doing now.
“Let’s be on with this, shall we? Or do you want to stand here being obnoxious until the blackmailer has been and gone?” she snapped, resisting clapping her hands to her chest only with the greatest of effort. She bared more to the world in her evening dresses, but there was something very different about showing that same skin above a severely cut riding habit.
Or maybe just in exposing that skin to one Baron Townsend...
“If he’s going to appear at all.”
“I know. He hasn’t yet, and it has been five days—nights—since his threat. He’s bound to show up soon.”
She watched as he positioned the fire screen so that it blocked some of the light from the fire, redirecting it toward the bed, before he walked to one of the long pair of windows and pushed back the drapery as he sat down on the window seat.
“Tonight’s our last chance, if I’m correct about someone in this house being in his employ. Did you have your sister pen the note and put it in the knothole?”
“I did, yes. She actually wrote Dear Blackmailer by way of salutation. She promised the five hundred pounds would be put into the knothole as soon as her letters were placed there for her retrieval. We also wrapped up our grandmother’s garnets and put them with the note.”
Coop turned to look at her. “Why would she have done that?”
“Because they’re ugly, I never liked them and I’m fairly certain they’re paste, thanks to our father’s forays into the gaming hells a few years ago.” She thought about what she’d said, because he was looking at her as if he’d never been anywhere near the inside of a woman’s head before and that his first foray there was proving more than a tad unsettling. “To show her good faith, that is.”
Coop shifted his gaze to the mews and the line of trees. “So you decided to show your sister’s good faith by gifting the man with a down payment of paste garnets? Because you never liked them, anyway. You’re a rather frightening young woman, but I imagine you already know that.”
“I probably am, I think I do and he might not notice. They’re very good paste,” Dany said, defending her brilliant idea. Poor hero. If she’d found it sometimes difficult to be Dany, she could only imagine how other people could be uncomfortable in her presence. She was beginning to actually pity him.
“Well, then, that makes it all right, doesn’t it? I suppose I should thank you for obeying at least half of my instructions.”
“Probably. I can be a sad failure at matters requiring cooperation. I say it’s because I have a mind of my own, although Mama insists I’m only good for driving others out of their minds,” she admitted truthfully. “Can you see well enough to know if someone approaches the tree? I couldn’t see much of anything the first two nights I tried to watch, but the moon is growing fuller now.”
“Probably what the blackmailer has been waiting for. Enough light to see, but not a full moon, or he would chance being seen, as well. By the way, I’ve got Viscount Nailbourne stationed at one end of the alleyway and my friend Jeremiah Rigby at the other, prepared to act on my signal.”
“What sort of signal?”
“Nothing too elaborate. If we espy anything unusual, it would be a simple matter of cranking open one of these windows and giving a whistle,” he told her. “How else could I do it?”
Pity him? Was she mad? It wasn’t her fault he’d chosen to compromise her with those two adorable cherubs, just so he could run tame in Oliver’s household.
“Indeed, yes, how else? How silly of me to badger the hero with obvious questions. What a brilliant plan. I stand in awe, my lord, truly. Such a shame that those old windows have been painted shut for what’s probably decades.”
“Damn.” The baron tried the handle, and it turned easily, the casement opening just as easily. He swiftly closed it again. Without looking at her, he said, “You’re worse than a menace. Go sit down.”
Satisfied she’d gotten just a little of her own back, she walked over to the window seat and sat down beside him, twisting enough to be able to see through the narrow opening in the draperies.
They were shoulder to shoulder, their cheeks nearly touching. She could feel Coop’s eyes on her.
“Dany,” he said after a moment.
“What?”
“Over. There. At the other window. I said go sit down, not come sit down. And while you’re at it, you misbuttoned your jacket. Fix it, before somebody comes in and thinks I’m responsible for your dishevelment and you’ll have lost any hope of breaking our engagement without forcing me into a duel with either your father or your brother.”
She practically flew from the window seat to take up her position at the other window, and immediately began to fiddle with her buttons in the dark. She hadn’t misbuttoned at all.
One thing she could say for him—he gave as good as he got. Why, she could almost think, in other circumstances, they could have been the best of chums.
“You could have simply asked me to move. And to think at least half the people in this house, my sister most especially, believes we’re in here being indecent. I was even beginning to pity you.”
“Don’t bother. The more I’m around you, the more I’m pitying myself. Damn, somebody’s stepping out from the earl’s stables. He’d better not stay long, or the blackmailer will never show himself.”
Dany pushed the drapery aside and squinted down into the mews. It might be dark, but there was no missing her maid’s rotund brother, even if he was mostly in shadow. “That’s only Sam,” she said. “He sleeps in the stables. Why is he looking around like that? Do you think he heard something and has stepped out to investigate? Let’s hope he didn’t scare off the— Oh, my heavens!”
She let the drapery drop just as Sam began lowering his trousers even as he turned to face the stone stable wall.
Coop’s laughter, strong and clear, was so engaging that she couldn’t help but join him in his mirth. It would be stupid beyond measure to pretend she didn’t know what Sam was about.
“That’s what peeking out of windows will get you, I suppose,” she said when she could control herself again. “Is he gone yet?”
“He’s gone. If the earl ever wonders why no ivy grows on that side of the stable doors, you’ll have an answer for him, although you might be wise not to volunteer the reason.”
Dany’s only response was to carefully pull back the drapery again, and continue her surveillance, suggesting the baron do the same.
Which they did, for nearly two hours, during which neither spoke and many carriages made their way down the alleyway to return to stables that lined the mews.
Harnesses jingled, grooms and stable boys shouted to one another, stable doors banged and slammed. London certainly wasn’t known for its quiet, no matter the hour.
Other than that business with Sam, Dany believed she had never been so bored in her life. She’d totally forgotten that she and her supposed fiancé were alone in her bedchamber. There was nothing romantical about their current situation, and if she yawned one more time she would have no recourse but to go over to her pitcher and basin and splash cold water on her face to stay awake.
“He’s not coming,” she said at last, breaking the silence. “This has been an entire waste of a compromise, you know, now that you’ve as good as said tonight was our only chance to capture the man. I can only hope you’re not an efficient hero, and have already sent off a letter to my father. Or worse, a notice to the newspapers.”
“It’s too late to worry about that, I’m afraid. Since both my mother and her boon chum the Duchess of Cranbrook, who you met earlier today, were guests at the same dinner party this evening, I imagine the news of our coming nuptials will be served up at breakfast all over Mayfair tomorrow. Today,” he corrected.
Dany left her seat and joined him as he kept his watch over the mews. “Upcoming nuptials? Why would you phrase it that way? You said you were going to allow me to cry off.”
“I remember. You punched me for it. The offer does remain open, but I’ve realized that hearing Darby and Minerva point out all the reasonableness and benefits of the thing and actually dragging you into this mess are two very different things. Therefore,” he continued, still doggedly looking out the window, “I’ve decided to leave matters entirely in your hands. I came to London to search for a wife, my idea being that a wife by my side would put an end to all the nonsense. I’ll admit to that, as well. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t throw away their idea, and allowed myself to be carried along, shall we say, by the tide of events.”
He finally looked at her. “And you didn’t say no.”
“Oh, so now I’m part of the reason, am I? I am to shoulder my share of blame for the predicament you tossed us into today? And who is Minerva?”
“My mother. You’ll meet her tomorrow. I’ve found myself rather looking forward to seeing the two of you together. Darby mentioned the possibility of selling tickets of admittance actually.”
“I’m certain I won’t like her. She sounds utterly overbearing, and obviously still has you tied to her apron strings. The more I know of you, Cooper Townsend, the less I understand how you ever became a hero.”
“At least we finally agree on something. In my defense, I do have a very good reason for not wanting the blackmailer to publish his threatened third volume, and since you and your sister are my only current avenues to finding the bastard, I plead guilty to using you. The both of you.”
Ah, now they were getting somewhere. Finally. “The chapbooks don’t just embarrass you, do they? You’re in a prodigious amount of trouble, aren’t you? I felt it from the beginning, or at least I’d like to tell myself I did. Does the viscount know? Your mother? Are you going to tell me? I think you owe it to me. To tell me, that is.”
He squeezed her hand for a moment. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Nobody knows. Darby has made a few guesses, as have you, but mine isn’t the only reputation at stake here. I was asked to swear to secrecy and rewarded for my agreement. That, too, doesn’t make me a hero, in case you were about to point that out. But at least I’m still breathing.”
Now it was her turn to place her hand on his. “For how long?”
“Pardon me?” He was leaning closer to the glass. “How long for what?”
“How long will you still be breathing?”
“I’ve entertained that question myself, and the only answer that seems plausible is as long as God gives me, if I find the blackmailer before he can publish whatever he believes to be the damning truth.”
“Is there a damning truth?”
He turned and smiled at her, and her traitorous heart melted. “Isn’t there always?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I’m sorry. I’m even more sorry that the blackmailer didn’t show himself tonight.”
“Because you were hoping for a good chase down the alleyway, or because you’re still stuck with your grandmother’s paste garnets?”
Dany smiled. “I know you’re joking to be kind, but you really are a very nice man. I promise to be less of a problem to you, I really do. When I can,” she added, because a caveat would at least keep her from feeling too guilty if she couldn’t manage to keep herself from acting on her own if the opportunity arose.
He looked at her in the faint moonlight. “Thank you. I’m still not going to tell you why I’m being blackmailed, you know.”
Dany shrugged, far from defeated. “You will. Eventually. You won’t be able to help yourself. Just ask anyone. I’m very persuasive.”
“You mean you wear people down to the point where it’s simply easier to let you get your way.”
She turned toward the gap in the draperies. “I take it back. You’re not that nice. I thought women were supposed to be this huge mystery to men.”
“Is that so? Then I suppose you’ll have to leave off being so utterly transparent. Come on, I think we’re done here for tonight. He’s not going to show.”
“Just five more minutes. There hasn’t been a carriage coming back to the stables for a good quarter hour. He might feel safe now to approach. Oh, fiddle, I was wrong. Here comes another one.”
Coop all but put his cheek next to hers as he took a look for himself. “That’s not a carriage, it’s a hackney.”
“A what?”
“A hired cab. There’s no reason for a hired cab to be in this alleyway. Move.”
Dany moved. She had no choice but to move, because Coop had pushed her back enough so that he could reach the casement handle and begin turning it.
Dany ran to the other window to watch, her head pounding with excitement. Sure enough, the hackney stopped directly in front of the Cockermouth stables, and a dark-clad figure hopped down.
Carrying a stool?
“He’s carrying a stool? Why on earth would he be carrying—oh, that’s not fair. It’s a child, isn’t it? Look, he’s put the stool down and stepping up on it to—yes, there goes Mari’s letter. And my garnets. And now he’s putting something into the...”
Coop’s ear-piercing whistles, two in quick succession, cut off what she would have said next, although why she was telling him what he could readily see for himself she had no idea.
After all, she was already halfway to the door.
