LITMIR.BIZ

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      Damned if she didn’t drop the gloves, and punch him square in the jaw.

      “Why did you do that?”

      “You can’t mean you don’t know.”

      The force may have been what finally drove some sense into Coop’s head. For a man of five and twenty, he’d had little interest in the ladies, and probably less experience. He’d been too busy being a soldier. From the moment the blackmailer had delivered his threat, he’d been almost exclusively occupied in finding the man before he could publish and Prinny had decided to bring back neck-chopping as a form of royal sport. He hadn’t considered all of the consequences when he’d finally bowed to Darby and Minerva’s plan, as long as it might work.

      He hadn’t put all that much thought into Dany’s reaction. He was doing so now. In spades.

      “You want to marry me? Why on earth would you want to do that?”

      She bowed her head, avoiding his gaze, and his question. “I didn’t say that.”

      He rubbed at his jaw. “Then I apologize, but I really don’t understand. Although I’m certain I deserved it.”

      Now she looked up at him again. Those eyes. Damn those soul-bearing eyes. “I don’t know why I did it, not precisely. I suppose I felt insulted.”

      Coop put a crooked finger beneath her chin and leaned in, gently kissing her on the lips before retrieving her gloves and handing them to her. Her lips were soft this time, not at all wooden, and he rather enjoyed the brief experience. He may have to try it again. Soon.

      “Why did you do that?” she asked in that slightly husky voice that had intrigued him nearly as much as those eyes.

      “I don’t know, precisely. I suppose I felt an unexplainable urge. I think I’ve already established that I haven’t been thinking all that clearly today. Are you going to slap me again?”

      “No. I think I’d like you to take me back to Portman Square so that I can inform my sister of my new status as the betrothed of the hero of Quatre Bras. That ought to serve to catapult her out from beneath the covers. And you, sir, need to pen a note to my father, begging his forgiveness for presuming to take my hand before asking his permission to do so. I suggest a crate of fine claret accompany the note. Papa would forgive most anything for enough good claret.”

      Coop was astounded at her level of calm. He felt as tightly wound as a watch spring. Kissing her had only increased the tension. Maybe he should try punching something.

      He helped her up onto the curricle seat, tossed another coin to the boy he’d charged with minding the horses and they set off for Portman Square.

      Dany was once more sitting with her hands meekly folded her in lap. That couldn’t be good.

      “You’re thinking, aren’t you? I suppose you’ll want me to post our betrothal in the newspapers?”

      She answered without looking at him. “If that’s what one does, then one who compromises ladies of quality probably does it, yes. I doubt the protocol for compromise is listed in the book Mari gave me. Is there a corresponding tome for gentlemen?”

      “Probably. But I’m fairly certain I know what to do.”

      Coop knew he could have mentioned Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman. Minerva had given him the compilation of the letters on his fifteenth birthday, saying that since his father wasn’t alive to instruct him, somebody else’s father might serve as well, and probably do the job better.

      She’d consigned the book to the fire a year later, after reading his lordship’s observations on women being no more than children of a larger growth, devoid of real intelligence or good sense and prone to indulging themselves in silly little passions.

      “Good. Then you know, as I know, that the side door will be left unlocked at a quarter to twelve tonight, and my maid will be waiting there to bring you to my bedchamber. Not that my romantical sister would blink an eye, anyway, now that you’ve compromised me. In fact, she’ll probably be over the moon to assist us in any assignation. You’ve certainly gone to a whole lot of trouble to do what I’d already suggested you do.”

      There was probably something Coop could say to all of this, but he’d be damned if he could think of a thing. By the time they’d returned to Portman Square he’d half convinced himself that, no matter how the world may see him—soldier, patriot, hero, baron—when it came to managing the women in his life, he was a sad case indeed.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      THE 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.

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