LITMIR.BIZ

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It was a magnificent reward...although some might call it a bribe, or even the hint of a threat. In any event, Cooper quickly realized he would be wise, and perhaps safer, to accept it.

      But the world didn’t know any of that.

      Of most interest to the average John Bull and the newspapers had been Cooper’s daring rescue of several towheaded tots (the number varied from three to a full dozen, depending on who told the story), who had wandered into the midst of what was soon to be a battlefield. Some versions included a beauteous older cousin who had been most grateful for their rescue...but then, there were romantics everywhere, weren’t there?

      Three or twelve, lovely and anonymous, profoundly grateful blonde beauty or not, on his return to London Cooper found himself more popular than Christmas pudding. In the months since Waterloo he had not been able to take more than a few steps in any direction without someone calling out, “It’s him—Townsend! There he is!”

      Everyone clapped him on the back. Everyone stood him up for a bottle or two. Everyone treated this son of a genteel but never more than comfortably well-off family as if he was the best of good fellows, and he’d been invited to so many house parties and boxing matches and the like that it would have taken a squadron of heroes to accept all of the invitations.

      Still, the whole thing was fairly enjoyable.

      But then Volume One was handed out free on the street corners, and everything changed.

      Coop remembered waking one morning to have Ames present him with it. There he was on the cover of the cheap chapbook, or at least Ames told him the garish print was supposed to represent him. He was pictured as tall and lean, which he was, but with a highly exaggerated shock of unruly blond hair and vividly green eyes that had him peeking into a pier glass to check on the intensity of his own. They were green—he’d give the artist that—but certainly not that green.

      The streets were flooded with the damned book that was complete with a notice on its back cover that the next in the series would reveal

      The Further Adventures of Our Glorious Baron Returned from the War, Secretly Performing Heroic Acts in England, Champion of the People and Rescuer of Delicate Females in Dire Straits and Needful of His Valiant Assistance.

      Now mamas wanted him for their daughters. Fathers wanted him because he was a hero, and wouldn’t “M’son-in-law the hero, yes, indeed” sound all the crack in the clubs? Married women wanted him because—good Lord, who knew why married women wanted anything...and sweet young damsels considered Coop the catch of the year.

      “And now this. So much for my plan of throwing myself into the Little Season and finding a wife in order to put an end to the nonsense.”

      “My lord? I didn’t quite catch all of that?”

      “Never mind, Ames. I was thinking about that damn note again.”

      He had already committed that to memory, as well.

      Ten thousand pounds or the next volume will be Our Hero Falls from Grace as the True Identity of the Supposed Innocents Rescued at Quatre Bras is Revealed, Much to the Shame That Rises to the Highest Reaches of the Crown Itself. Yes, my hero, this is blackmail, and I’m quite good at it. Remain in London, Baron Townsend, no more dashing to hide yourself at your estate. I will be in touch.

      “Ah, Ames. So much for brilliant ideas, not to mention the size of the cow Prinny will birth if the truth were to become known. We can only hope to God Darby has had his fill of poking fun and is about to offer his help,” he said now, accepting his gloves and curly brimmed beaver from Ames before heading for the stairs leading to the lobby.

      “You didn’t want to get bracketed, anyway,” his man reminded him.

      “True enough, but if I can’t find our underendowed bastard of a biographer, we can probably wave goodbye to the estate and you can stop addressing me as ‘my lord.’ I don’t even want to think what my mother would say.”

      Ames screwed his face into a grimace. “That could be the worst, my lord, I agree. She says more than enough as it is, don’t she?”

      Coop laughed. “Thank you, Ames, for that reminder. Please tell her I was called away and will see her at dinner tonight. I go forth now with doubled determination, and twice the haste.”

      The sergeant major sharply saluted. “Just as a hero should, sir.”

      “I’m quite fond of you, Ames, but I could still sack you,” Coop warned him as the other man quickly hid his grin beneath his prodigiously large mustache.

      Darby was waiting, pacing, in the lobby. “You get yourself into the damnedest predicaments, don’t you?” he said, handing back the folded paper.

      “You mistake the matter. That’s you, along with Gabe and Rigby. I’m the sensible one, remember, always there to pull you three free of the briars at every turn.”

      “Point taken. And what does your sensible self plan to do now that the thorns are sticking into your own backside? I hope it includes finding this bastard and wringing his scrawny neck.”

      Darby’s outrage soothed Coop somewhat. “Yes, that was the plan, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”

      “I didn’t know, not with you. You’re too damn civilized. You’re not going to tell me the lady’s name, are you? The fair damsel who could or, perhaps, could not have been there the day of your daring rescue.”

      “Why, Darby, I do believe I’ve forgotten it. Imagine that.” Then he flinched, knowing his friend had tricked him. How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, that his friend could pry a secret from a clam.

      “Aha! Then there was a woman. At least I’ve gotten that out of you. You are a hero, you know, pure of heart and straight as the best-carved arrow. That, and a damn fool, now that I know our own fat Florizel is somehow involved. Baron? Seems to me you could have held out for earl. Shall we get started?”

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE WALK FROM the Pulteney to the nearest club was too short for any but an old man or an utter twit with pretensions of grandeur to bother bringing around his curricle from the stables or hailing a hackney, or so Darby protested when Coop suggested they do the latter.

      “I could be recognized,” Coop pointed out quietly.

      Darby was busy pulling on his gloves. “By whom? Not that I’m lobbing stones at your usual modesty, but that remark could be thought by some to verge on the cocky. I suppose vanity comes along with this heroing business.”

      “You’re enjoying yourself again, aren’t you? You know who—whom. By everybody. Sometimes I want to turn myself around to see if there’s some sort of sign pinned to my back.”

      “Really? Draw a crowd wherever you go, do you? Well, good on you. And good on me, for I am the favored one, aren’t I, out on the strut on this lovely, sunshiny day with the hero of all these brave, not to mention amorous, exploits. Gabe and Rigby don’t know what they’re missing. Come on, I want to see this. Maybe you’ll find another fair damsel to rescue along the way.”

      Barely a block from the hotel, Coop was fighting an impulse to turn to his friend and utter the classic words of any bygone childhood: “I told you so.”

      “G’day ta yer, guv’nor,” the first to recognize him had called out, the man bowing and tugging at a nonexistent forelock as Coop and Darby approached the corner.

      “Yes, good day,” Coop responded, slightly tipping his head to the hawker balancing a ten-foot pole stacked high with curly brimmed beavers that had seen better days, even better decades.

      “It’s the tip I think he’s wanting, not a tip of your head. That is, unless you wish to purchase one, which I wouldn’t recommend. Lice, you understand, nasty things,” Darby informed him, not bothering to lower his voice. “But since

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