LITMIR.BIZ

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for the world, I am also a gentleman. Although I will say that if there’s any truth to the fellow’s veiled hint about your particular secret reaching all the way to the highest levels of the Crown, then either he’s more daring than even I would be, or he has access to some prodigiously important people. We’re looking to the ton for our blackmailer, Coop. You’ve figured that much on your own, I’m sure.”

      Coop downed the remaining contents of his glass. “I have. I flirted momentarily with the idea that a well-placed secretary or servant could be privy to many secrets, but it would take an entire small army of coconspirators to engineer something on this grand a scale. If there is a grand scale, and the more I think, the more I believe this is not one ambitious man, acting alone.”

      “There’s an entire other world moving about in Mayfair, one many of us are sadly unaware of, I agree. So many consider them invisible, not to mention deaf and dumb. Ladies’ maids, valets, tweenies quietly repairing the fire, footmen with large ears listening in foyers. But it would take someone to cultivate them, enlist them. The scope of such an enterprise, all the bits and pieces that make up the whole? I believe I’m feeling the headache coming on.”

      “Granted, it makes sense to believe there is an organized gang wreaking havoc all across Mayfair. Or we’re wrong, and our blackmailer is just one person and his carefully selected targets.”

      “Oh, but what are the odds of that? Only one blackmailer and these few carefully selected targets of yours, and two of them they just happen to bump into each other on Bond Street—literally—and end up sharing their common predicaments?”

      “I didn’t share anything.”

      “No, but you’ll have to at some point. For one, Miss Foster is far too clever to believe you’ll be hunting down this scoundrel with all speed and fervor strictly because you’re a hero. She took my measure within a heartbeat, much as it pains me to admit it, and found me both foolish and unnecessary.”

      “Don’t go into a sulk. The countess doesn’t want you involved. I doubt she wants me involved, for that matter. She’s closeted herself in her chambers, refusing to come out again, even to shepherd her sister through the Little Season.”

      “The minx won’t take that one lying down.”

      “I agree, but happily, that’s not our problem.”

      “What’s not your problem, darlings?” The questioning voice was loud, almost booming, thanks to the fact that the woman who owned it was slightly deaf and hiked her own volume as if everyone else would have trouble hearing her. On top of that often embarrassing trait—most discomfiting when she believed she was whispering—was the fact that she rarely stopped talking. “And for pity’s sake, Cooper, don’t slouch there against the desk like some lazy oaf. I raised you better than that. Stand up, stand up. There, that’s better. Straighten your shoulders. Good posture is the sign of a gentleman, and a boon to regulation of the bowels. Look at Darby. See how straight he stands? He listened to his mother.”

      “Sadly, Mrs. Townsend, my mother flew off to her heavenly reward when I was not more than a mere infant in my cot. But I will say my nurse had a wicked hand with the birch rod if I ever slumped like a lazy oaf.”

      Cooper turned to look at his mother, tall of stature, strong of bosom and with a fierce, hawk-nosed face that would suit well as the figurehead nailed to a man-of-war. Add her natural curiosity and rather singular way of looking at most anything to the mix, and it was more than time they moved from the Pulteney, with its generous parlor but very little privacy.

      “Perhaps I spared the rod to your detriment, Cooper. Curse my soft heart, but you were always so cute,” she said as she grabbed Cooper’s cheeks between her fingers and squeezed. “Look at that face, Darby. Just look, take it all in! How could anyone ever take umbrage with that face? So wonderfully kind. So infinitely understanding.”

      “Minerva, please,” Cooper said, pulling away before she permanently dented his cheeks. He hadn’t been allowed to call her Mother since his sixteenth birthday, which was the first time the woman realized she now had a son who apparently needed to shave. She didn’t particularly want to be a mother, and felt they’d rub along much better as friends.

      He looked past her now, to where her maid was standing just inside the entry hall, struggling to maintain her hold on a half dozen bandboxes. “And not infinitely, Minerva. May I be so ungentlemanly as to inquire as to how much your latest assault on Bond Street has set me back?”

      Rose coughed. She and Cooper had established a series of signals to warn him that whatever his mother said next, he was certainly not going to be doing handsprings of joy once he heard it.

      “I am aware of your miserly hold on the purse strings. But I have your reputation to uphold, even as you ignore the responsibilities incumbent on the proud matriarch of the new Townsend dynasty. You wouldn’t dare send me out into Society in rags, now would you? Rags, Cooper.”

      Coop looked toward Rose, the maid-cum-companion, and a distant relation who had known him from his cradle. This time she rolled her eyes as she adjusted the bandbox straps on her forearms. Worse than a cough? My, this was turning into his lucky day, wasn’t it? “Forgive me my unnatural tendency to avoid bankruptcy. I’m convinced you will do me proud each time you set sail into Society.”

      “My point entirely. Foresails flapping, flags waving, creating quite the wake as I pass by. It’s only fitting, and Lord knows I’m built for it. I’m horribly shy, by nature, but I see this as a time when I must bite back on my natural reticence and hold up my end, as it were.”

      Rose’s choked cough was ignored by the lady, other than for her to raise one strong brow and dare Cooper to add any comment to what she’d just said.

      “All I do, I do for you. One cannot put anything so crass as a price on a son’s love and a mother’s obligations, dear. Even in my short time here in London, I’ve heard so many good things about a particular seamstress. Why, even Vivien gives her some bit of custom. Don’t look confused, Cooper. Vivien Sinclair, Gabriel’s aunt, and the Duchess of Cranbrook. I hadn’t seen her in dogs’ years, as she and her Basil were always flitting all over the world, but we ran into each other in the park yesterday, and it was as if we’d never parted. Good friends are like that, you know. All I had to say to her was ‘Vauxhall Gardens,’ and the pair of us went off into giggles like schoolgirls. There was this importune young scoundrel, you understand, and a proposed stroll along the Dark Gallery...”

      “How pleased I am you and Gabe’s aunt have rediscovered each other,” Cooper said, simply to stop his mother before she launched into a litany of assuredly embarrassing reminiscences. “And the seamstress?”

      “Such a sad, sorry generation you boys are, sticklers for propriety. I know Vauxhall has fallen out of favor for the ton, but in my time it was glorious. You should be delighted your mother had herself some fun, kicking up her heels and such during her grasstime. Don’t growl, Cooper, it isn’t polite. The seamstress, yes. I’ve just come from there, as a matter of fact. Mrs. Yothers—lovely woman. She gifted me with one of the gowns, and an enchanting purple turban. Itches some, but it’ll do.”

      “Why would she do that? Not give you an itchy turban—give you anything?”

      “Ah, Cooper, you still don’t understand how the world revolves, do you, for all your fine education. The lady and I had a lovely coze—chatty woman, so I wouldn’t dare pass on any secrets to her or they’d be all over Mayfair before the cat could lick its ear, but I was sure to keep my ears open!”

      “You and I must have a lovely coze of our own someday, Mrs. Townsend,” Darby interposed, his grin very much at his friend’s expense.

      “I highly doubt that, scamp. You know enough about Society for any three people as it is, and I am of course sworn to secrecy in any event. Now, back to Mrs. Yothers, if you will cease interrupting. Terrible habit. In exchange for the gowns and such, I’ve only to mention to two or three ladies—casually, simply in passing, and you know I am the epitome of discretion—that Mrs. Yothers is the only

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