LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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