LITMIR.BIZ

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turned to face her, nearly bumping into her, for the love of heaven. One of the problems he’d have with Dany was that she was too intelligent. He opened his mouth, and the most ridiculous question came out: “How old are you?”

      She didn’t so much as blink. “Seventeen. I’m a bit late in making my come-out next spring, by which time I’ll be the ripe old age of eighteen, but it was thought I’d needed some seasoning before my Season.”

      The answer had come quickly, without protest. Without guile. With a smile on her face.

      Coop was amazed at how much he’d learned about her in one short day.

      “I don’t believe you.”

      She rather melodramatically slapped her hands to her cheeks. “Why? Do I appear as if I’m at my last prayers? Hagged? Fagged? Perhaps there’s a wrinkle somewhere I haven’t noticed?”

      Coop felt his own cheeks coloring. “No, not that. My apologies. You just don’t—it’s difficult to believe you’re so young. When you speak, that is. Again, my apologies. In my defense, it has been a rather trying day.”

      “Don’t apologize.” Dany shrugged. “I told them nobody with more than half a brain would swallow any such a crammer, but they would insist. Is the truth important?”

      “Not to the world, no.”

      “But to you?”

      “Probably not, except for my own satisfaction. Unless you’re actually sixteen.” God, wouldn’t that just put the capper on it?

      “Really. How interesting. A year makes that much difference?”

      “I’m told even an inch is a lot, in a man’s nose,” Coop shot back, still trying to regain his usually unshakable composure.

      Her eyes rather crossed as she attempted a peek at her own nose (lovely nose, quite perfect). “Eating soup and sipping wine could become quite the logistical dilemmas, couldn’t they? I see your point. So it isn’t the age, not in general. It’s where that age is applied.” Then she frowned. “No. I really still don’t understand. But if it helps, my papa gambled a bit too deep and in the time it took for him to recover enough to launch me in anything more than Mari’s cast-off gowns, I’d had the temerity to become two years older.”

      Coop began to relax. “So you’re nearer twenty?”

      “One and twenty in January actually, as I also lost a year to a broken leg. Mama’s, not mine, and Mari was so newly married Mama felt she couldn’t foist me on her, unattended. Now, frankly, I believe she’s gone past caring. Do you really believe age means anything? My parents, and Mari as well, have sworn me to secrecy, saying it would put paid to my matrimonial chances should anyone know. Which also explains why Dexter—my large-mouthed brother—has been sent to tour the Continent with some of his ramshackle friends.”

      Cooper smiled. “You can’t keep him overseas forever.”

      “Exactly! And may I say, another argument totally lost on my parents. Am I really wise beyond my years?”

      “Wise? I don’t recall saying that,” he said facetiously. “I’d say you’re much more of a trial than I’d expected from a debutante.”

      “Oh? And what attributes do you believe commendable in a debutante?”

      “The usual, I’d imagine. Sweet. And biddable. Shy, not at all forward.”

      “Simpering? With a tendency to giggle? Smelling of nothing more than bread and butter, as Byron wrote? Proficient in discussing the state of the weather, as in it is fair, or coming on to rain, or beastly hot? No, not beastly. Horridly hot.”

      Even with the fraying cord holding a figurative sword of Damocles dangling over his head, Coop realized he could speak nonsense with Daniella Foster for hours, heartily enjoying himself. “Warm. Ladies of quality don’t know the meaning of hot.”

      “Yes, I remember now. And moist. Ladies, even if lost in a desert, would get no more than moist. However, under the circumstances, I think you’re much better off with me.”

      “Yes, in the end, that was the deciding factor,” Coop murmured just as the heavy chapel door swung open, followed closely (too closely, really) by a woman’s voice. “Aha! Basil, get yourself in here! Look what I’ve found. Oh, the shame, the shame.”

      Dany whirled about to see the intruder, or she would have if Cooper hadn’t grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her against him for a kiss. The kiss he was to have stolen just as the timepiece in his pocket chimed out the hour, which it had not yet done.

      A kiss, he would later tell Darby when he recounted the scene, as being as inspiring as pressing one’s lips against a block of wood.

      “Basil, do you see them? Minerva’s Cooper and some hapless gel, as I live and breathe. The hero of Quatre Bras—I recognized him immediately from the chapbook. Locked in a clandestine embrace.”

      “Yes, dear, I see them,” the Duke of Cranbrook said, puffing only a little from his small climb up the stairs, as neither duke nor duchess would see sixty again. “Nothing we haven’t done a time or three, eh, Viv?”

      “Not now, Basil, not when we’re being decorous,” the duchess scolded, abandoning her husband to all but float across the stone floor in a compilation of skirts and scarves that, were it any darker in the chapel, would have put most in the mind of a ghost. If ghosts wore ruffled, tule-wrapped bonnets.

      By now Dany was standing stock-still, her eyes all but popping out of her head, and Cooper had dropped to one knee, her hands held tightly in his.

      So she couldn’t run away. Or pummel him heavily about the head and shoulders, which he wouldn’t dismiss as impossible. Not from the look on her face.

      “Miss Foster,” he said hurriedly, squeezing her fingers to get her attention. “Under the circumstances, it would indeed be my honor and privilege to ask for your hand in marriage, in front of these witnesses.”

      “You hear that, Viv? We’re witnesses,” the duke said, catching up to his wife and slipping his arm about her waist. “I’ve always wanted to be a witness.”

      “Basil, hush. Pretty little thing, isn’t she? Minerva was worried about that. Oh, dear, she hasn’t answered yet. Go on, dearie, it’s your turn now. Say yes,” the duchess prodded, leaning in as if to not miss a word.

      Cooper watched Dany as she looked to the pair of seeming cherubs beaming at them, actually dropping into a brief curtsy before redirecting her attention, and indigo eyes gone close to black, to him.

      Suddenly, he felt himself transported to Bond Street.

      Those eyes, like a mirror into her soul, told him her every thought, each rapidly transitioning emotion. Wide-eyed shock. Embarrassed innocence. Questioning. Recognition. Amusement, almost as if she was laughing at their situation, perhaps even at him.

      “Just say yes, all right?” he whispered. “I’ll explain later.”

      “Oh, my, yes, you will be doing that, won’t you?” she answered just as quietly.

      “Viv, I can hear them talking, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying,” the Duke of Cranbrook complained.

      “She said yes, Your Grace,” Coop told him, rising to his feet before raising Dany’s hands for what he hoped resembled chastely devout kisses.

      “Well, good, then,” the duke chirped. “Good on you, young lady, and good on my nephew’s chum. Oh, and good on me, because now I won’t be late to dinner.” He tucked his wife’s arm within his. “Come on, sweetums, let’s leave these two lovebirds alone, to continue their billing and cooing—and whatever else they might put their minds to, eh?”

      The duchess tapped on her husband’s arm. “You’re so bad. Come along now.”

      As they turned to make their exit,

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